Habeck calls them a radicalized minority: the last generation makes the Greens nervous

Created: 01.12.2022, 18:00

By: Georg Anastasiadis

Robert Habeck (Greens) clearly distances himself from the "last generation".

A commentary by Merkur Editor-in-Chief Georg Anastasiadis.

© Michael Kappeler/dpa/Klaus Haag

As head of the Greens, Robert Habeck distances himself from the “last generation”.

The radical and ruthless protest of the young revolutionaries is becoming a serious threat to the eco-party, comments Georg Anastasiadis.

The goings-on of the “last generation” confuses the hormonal balance of the Greens: While admonitions were hailed from the Realo-Ländle Baden-Württemberg early on at the address of the mostly young revolutionaries, in Berlin some were able to express their romantic feelings for the climate activists and their hardly conceal civil disobedience.

But there, too, the blockade of Berlin Airport by chaotic people was like a cold shower.

The upper Green Robert Habeck has now felt compelled to put his foot down: For him, the doomsday prophets are a "radicalized minority" - more distancing is hardly possible.

"Last generation" discredits the Greens and the entire climate movement

In the Green Party, the bosses are getting nervous: managing the "German fear" of nuclear and climate death is part of the Greens' business model, just as the AfD scores with the fear of immigration and foreign infiltration.

But while the peaceful "Fridays for Future" student protests paved the way for the Greens to become a lifestyle and government party, the "last generation" with their methods rejected by the population is now discrediting the entire climate movement, and thus also the Greens.

This can already be seen in the polls.

Even the President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, has to ask himself critically whether he was not naïvely issuing the “last generation” a clean bill of health when he dismissed allegations of extremism against them as “nonsense”.

Anyone who accepts dangers to the life and limb of passengers without hesitation, as activists did when they occupied the Berlin runway, which meant that numerous flight captains had to head for new airports, crosses the red line that separates radical from extremist protest.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution does not have the task of making love to those in government and throwing smoke candles.

Rather, he must take a close look at where the free-democratic basic order is being called into question.

George Anastasiadis