“Less Coercion” – When Politicians Reveal The Truth About Their State

“A state is called the coldest of all cold monsters.
Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: ‘I, the state, am the people’.”
Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Stefan H. Heuer, M.A.
May 19, 2025

Reading the corporate press in the late occupation regime called Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) is rarely enjoyable for me, but it’s still a duty – you should know what the enemy is saying.

And sometimes, it really is enlightening to read what the ‘German’ press tycoons Springer, Burda, and the Social Democratic Party’s press empire want to hammer into our heads, like this Monday.

Perhaps there is a secret section along the lines of “Oh, how nice!”?

In today’s online edition of the formerly conservative German newspaper „DIE WELT“, which nowadays offends many readers with the woke propaganda of the “DPA” press agency and which also considers advertising for dubious products to be advisable, there was an article that I would like to assign to this Monday series:

Under the heading “Crisis of confidence in the state” [sic!], Mr. Ulrich Exner writes about the ideas of a local Social Democratic Party (SPD) politician: “Have given citizens the impression that the state coerces them at every level”.

This sentence, which is suboptimal in terms of grammar and reading flow, comes from Leipzig’s mayor Burkhard Jung, who is also head of the German Association of Cities and Towns.

The German Association of Cities, we remember, was one of those organizations in the FRG at the time of the Corona-plandemic that had vigorously spoken out in favor of the authoritarian state’s curbing of people and extended control and had stigmatized entire groups of people with vicious scaremongering (Mr. Jung: “The pandemic of the unvaccinated is coming”:

https://www.staedtetag.de/presse/interviews/2021/einheitliche-coronamassnahmen; see also:. https://www.staedtetag.de/presse/interviews/wir-brauchen-klare-regeln-und-gute-kommunikation) –
Of course, this was only for the benefit of the alleged general public – after all, the aim was to protect the well-vaccinated from the evil viruses of the unvaccinated… And even if the Association of Cities and Towns joined a long line of equally exposed FRG organizations and personalities with this attitude, the attentive observer was left with the stale taste of state encroachment.

Before the WELT brings down the paywall, you can read:

“Over-regulation and a lack of trust in one’s own citizens: for the new President of the Association of German Cities, Burkhard Jung (SPD), these are decisive reasons for growing scepticism about democracy.

The Mayor of Leipzig pleads for less coercion by the state.”

Now that’s strong: a politician is in favor of loosening the shackles on the electorate!

This immediately creates sympathy, to which the photo of the grinning, casually dressed gentleman attached to the article could also contribute. The convinced FRG citizen, the WELT subscriber in particular, leans back and thinks to himself comfortably that there is finally someone up there who understands the people. A nice buddy, so to speak.

However, the observer, who has consciously distanced himself from society because he has come to know it as irredeemably sick and dangerous, does, thanks to his renunciation of the intellectual frugality typical of FRG citizens, comes up with some puzzles that raise questions:

1. Isn’t “coercion by the state” a characteristic of an authoritarian regime? Shouldn’t it be incompatible with the values and nature of a liberal constitutional order?
2. Should there therefore be no “coercion by the state” of people in a supposedly “liberal-democratic” system, as the FRG likes to claim to be?
3. Shouldn’t the rules and regulations of a free and democratic state even make it impossible for the state to coerce people?
4. And since the allegedly liberal, democratic and constitutional FRG apparently has the “coercion by the state”, as described by Mr. Jung, driven to an extent that a representative of this state considers critical for the state, does this not mean, conversely, that the FRG is not a liberal, democratic and constitutional state, but an authoritarian regime of the kind that the FRG itself likes to locate and loudly criticize in other countries?
5. From a purely logical point of view, is the skepticism of citizens towards the coercive state perceived by the SPD politician therefore not a longing for democracy, rather than “scepticism about democracy”, since the coercive state is authoritarian?
6. And finally: Is this gentleman, who at least recklessly, if not deliberately, agitated against groups of people, at all qualified to debate about freedom and the relationship of the people (i.e. the nation!) to the cold monster that is the state?

If you let these gentlemen talk, sooner or later they will reveal themselves.

Stefan H. Heuer, M.A.
Historian, born in 1964, has worked as a lecturer in adult education and, among others,
in Human resources development for a US-American company in Germany.

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