The biggest conspiracy theorists have company cars

It's that time again. Xavier Naidoo is being put through the media mill, the label "conspiracy theorist" is stuck on like chewing gum to a shoe, and the outrage carousel is spinning its usual rounds. Reflexively, reliably, boringly. Meanwhile, a question is being consistently avoided in this heated debate: Who are actually the biggest and most successful conspiracy theorists in this country? Spoiler alert: They're not in Mannheim. They're in Berlin.

“We can do it” – the fairy tale with a state guarantee
Angela Merkel, 2015. Three words, one promise, zero substance. "We can do it" became the most frequently quoted empty phrase in postwar German history—a political work of art devoid of content, yet sold to millions as a promise of reality. What exactly was to be achieved, by whom, with what means, and at what cost—these details were spared the public. The main thing was that the message resonated. This is usually called propaganda. In Merkel's case, it was called statesmanship.

The vaccination saga: A classic of narrative flexibility
Then came Covid. And with Covid, the most remarkable distortion of facts in recent German medical history, presented by Jens Spahn, Karl Lauterbach, and a chorus of well-meaning experts with shifting convictions. The chronology reads like a chronicle of progressive memory loss: The vaccination protects for decades. Then years. Then six months. Then a booster is needed every three to six months—but only to prevent severe cases, no longer to prevent infection, which was initially the main argument. Lauterbach himself described the vaccination as having no side effects. No side effects. A word that simply doesn't exist in pharmacology and yet strolled unchallenged through all the main news broadcasts.

In the end – after millions of doses administered, after debates about mandatory vaccination, after societal division, after "vaccinated, recovered, died" became a bitter quip – it was sheepishly admitted that the vaccine does not reliably protect against infection. This was a finding that critics had voiced from the very beginning, and for which they were – as one might guess – branded conspiracy theorists.
Masks protect. Masks don't protect. The FFP2 mask protects. The cloth mask is sufficient. Nothing is sufficient. Everything was important. Nothing was proven. But whoever said that back then was a threat to public health.

Russia is attacking – soon, immediately, any moment
For years, the German public has been bombarded with the threat of an imminent Russian attack on Germany. Soon. Right away. In two years. Maybe three. Rearm, spread fear, increase the defense budget, buy tanks. What could Russia possibly want from Germany—a country that is in advanced stages of economic self-destruction, driving away its industries, sabotaging its energy supply, and systematically ruining its middle class—remains unanswered. Perhaps Putin wants the coalition agreement. Perhaps the formula for the basic income. Who knows?

And climate change will massively overheat the Earth – a claim made with the precision of a weather forecast for the year 2150, while at the same time any critical questioning of models, data and forecast quality is considered climate denial.

The reversal of reality as a government program
The truly perverse aspect of this spectacle is the complete inversion of terminology. Anyone who questions official narratives is a conspiracy theorist. Anyone who spreads them – unchecked, unsubstantiated, with a constantly changing expiration date – is an expert, a journalist, a person in a position of responsibility.

Xavier Naidoo asks uncomfortable questions and is ostracized by society. Lauterbach proclaims one demonstrably false claim after another and becomes Federal Minister of Health. Merkel builds a political career monument on a single, meaningless sentence and receives honors.

In a world where institutional lies are considered truth and private truths are persecuted as dangerous delusions, the term "conspiracy theory" has long since become what it was meant to combat: a tool for suppressing inconvenient reality.

The biggest conspiracy theorists have company cars, press officers, and immunity – the rest get a label…