The rising star of German politics renounces social networks
The colleague of the German greens, criticized for his errors on the Web, maintains that Twitter exerts a negative influence on the public debate
Robert Habeck swims against the current. The brilliant colleague of the German Greens has announced that he gets off social networks, motivated by a series of errors on Twitter and as a consequence also of the massive data piracy of German politicians. Habeck, rising star of German politics, has come to the conclusion that networks, and especially Twitter, limit reflection and hinder political work, for its ability to model both the message and the messenger. And he has done it with an unusual exercise of self-criticism, recognizing that networks make him more aggressive and more prone to controversy.
Habeck heads the environmentalist party, which is going through a moment of political effervescence, thanks to a markedly pro-European and multicultural discourse. It is also the party that in Germany represents modernity and the counterpoint to the model of nostalgic society advocated by the far-right populists. Social networks are precisely the main propaganda tool with which the extremists spread their ideology with an intense intensity.
The trigger for Habeck's decision was a video message in which he argued that the Greens would do everything possible so that after the regional elections of autumn Thuringia, the German East German state in which they co-govern, is "free, open, liberal, democratic and ecological ". The tweeted storm did not wait. Deputy Social Democrat Carsten Schneider asked on Twitter "what kind of prison he had lived in recent decades." The regional grouping of the Greens apologized to those who would have been offended, but at that point the digital hurricane was already blowing uncontrollably over the Net. The added problem is that it was raining in the wet. Habeck had made a similar mistake last year, on the occasion of the elections in Bavaria, where he considered that the end of the supremacy of the Bavarian conservatives would mean the return of democracy.
In his blog, Habeck explained on Monday that his year has started badly in the digital arena. That on the one hand, the massive cyberattack perpetrated against German politicians has also affected the personal data of his family. But above all, having stumbled for the second time with the same stone with the statements about Thuringia kept him awake Sunday night through Monday. "How can you be so stupid as to be wrong twice in a row?", He asks in the blog post explaining the reasons for his digital withdrawal and in which he puts black on white some of the contradictions of social networks that completely affect politics and the rulers.
The green politician maintains that after much thought he has come to the conclusion that "Twitter is more aggressive than any other digital medium and that there is no other medium with so much hatred and malevolence". And he concludes that he has discovered that he is not immune to this trend of the social network, which has just over 48,000 followers. "Twitter makes me more aggressive, more strident, controversial and sharp. And everything at a speed that makes it difficult to have a space for reflection. " Habeck says that he aspires to the contrary, to understand the one in front of him and to take his worries seriously, instead of acting arrogantly and pretending that he knows everything.
Habeck also claims that the social network preferred by prominent leaders such as Donald Trump "disorients" and "desconcentra" and also feeds his vanity, when he finds himself checking what he thinks of him the Twitter world after having participated in a television debate or a party congress. This type of interaction, he concludes, becomes a kind of self-censorship and causes politicians to end up talking as the media wants and thinking of immediate triumphs instead of more calibrated long-term strategies.
Therefore, Habeck announced that it will erase its Twitter account and also Facebook, where private conversations are played, object of the recent massive data theft to the German political class. This is a radical decision at a time when polls put the Greens in second place in voting intention after Angela Merkel's center-right. The Greens are undoubtedly the star party of German politics and Habeck is one of the politicians most valued by public opinion. The ZDF public television survey last November ranked Habeck as the second of the ten best-rated politicians, after Bundestag president Wolfgang Schäuble.
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