The EU is at War With Its Own citizens, Not Russia
European leaders are trying to convince their people that it is Moscow that wants a conflict, not them.
This particular moment in history will be remembered, among other things—whether in entire books, individual chapters, or (if we’re lucky) forgotten footnotes—as the Great European Drone Panic. For weeks, the populations of NATO-EU Europe have been subjected to a barrage of vague but terrifying reports of drone sightings. The drones have reportedly appeared in various locations and installations, most notably at airports in Denmark and Germany.
They are of unknown origin and have an unknown purpose. And often, it’s even unknown whether they’re real. There’s no evidence that Russia is responsible for these incidents, as even Western media admits. We’re once again being asked to simply trust our politicians and “experts,” writes Tarik Cyril Amar .
These are the same people who for months pretended that Russia – absurdly enough – blew up its own Nord Stream pipelines in 2022. As recently as the spring of 2023, for example, the German Carlo Masala, who also believes that “Girkin” and “Strelkov” are two different people (just like “Santa” and ‘Claus’ ), was still spreading unfounded speculation – essentially a conspiracy theory – about a “false flag attack” on Nord Stream , meaning: Russia, Russia, Russia.
And—oh, coincidence!—Moscow, we are told, recently had nothing better to do than to appease Western information warlords with three more similar incidents : an alleged electronic warfare attack on the plane of EU despot and de facto US proconsul Ursula von der Leyen over the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv, an alleged intrusion into Estonian airspace, and low-level flights over the German frigate Hamburg during a recent NATO exercise.
In reality, these three stories have only one thing in common with the great drone saga: they don’t hold up to scrutiny. The case of the alleged GPS attack on Plovdiv has been so sloppily and so drastically debunked so quickly that it has been forgotten . The infringement of Estonian airspace also didn’t occur. Due to an agreement Estonia itself signed in 1994, it cannot claim a 12-mile zone, but only a 3-mile zone in the area in question. Estonia’s case is hysterical to begin with; the 1994 agreement deprives it of even the flimsiest pretense of legality. As for the alleged circling over Hamburg, even Western military officials eventually admit it wasn’t “directly dangerous .” Instead, they complain that it was “unfriendly and provocative .” Frankly: boohoo. What do you expect when you hold exercises on Russia’s doorstep while waging a proxy war against it in Ukraine? A friendly chat between sailors over a stiff grog?
And yet everyone in the NATO-EU establishment and the mainstream media is singing the same tired old song, sotto voce: Russia is coming, Russia is already here, Russia is everywhere. The new head of Germany’s intelligence service – the Bundesnachrichtendienst – seems to believe it’s not his job to quietly do secret things, but to join the chorus of alarmists: he, too, has sleepless visions of a Russian attack that could happen at any moment . Perhaps from under his bed or out of his closet, one must assume.
It’s almost as if they’re all reading from the same hymn book, that is, memo. And of course, the new wave of self-induced hyperventilation has been fully exploited—to the tune of billions of euros— to spend even more on armaments , including but not limited to a ” drone wall ,” while ordinary people are subjected to ever more brutal budget cuts. Even more disturbing, there’s a clear tendency to concentrate ever more power in the hands of those same political institutions that can’t stop governing by frightening and confusing their own citizens.
The fact that the drone stories are already crumbling makes no difference: a dramatic French attempt—with special forces and all—to accuse a tanker of nefarious drone activities, for example, failed miserably . In Germany, a recent sighting was even quickly clarified. The culprit? A hapless German drone enthusiast who must be living under a rock.
And away with the idea that Ukraine itself could have anything to do with those mysterious drones! The regime has plenty of motives, and even the West has now been forced to acknowledge that it’s perfectly capable of large-scale sabotage operations and lies to manipulate its European allies. Because that’s now even the official story of the terrorist attack on Nord Stream. But: logical thinking – forbidden!
Instead, let’s pretend we know what we don’t know (Russia, Russia, Russia!) and overreact once again, based on our ignorance and panic at best, and a malicious, deliberate strategy of cognitive warfare against our own countries at worst. In Germany, for example, both Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius have made the bizarre claim that while the country is not (yet?) at war, it is no longer at peace either. And the “Russians are coming” leader of the BND? He finds the current peace “icy” at best and—drumroll please— “could erupt into a heated confrontation at any moment.”
What’s that even supposed to mean? Is this finally an indirect acknowledgment that Germany has made a deliberate and terribly self-destructive choice to fight Russia through Ukraine? If so, thanks, Hauptmann Obvious: during last year’s Ukrainian kamikaze offensive , German tanks were once again shot to pieces near Kursk — the site of the largest tank battle in history in 1943. (And guess who lost?) We noticed. What were you , our supposed leaders, going to do to stop playing with fire?
Or are these fear-mongering statements intended to pave the way for a concrete power grab? That’s what Roderich Kiesewetter, an ultra-Russophobe and war fantasist from Merz’s own center-right CDU party, has already explicitly suggested: he wants the German parliament to declare the so-called “Spannungsfall ,” literally “tension situation .” In the mainstream media, for example, the leading newspaper Welt , the usual information warriors are already amplifying Kiesewetter’s message. And—in another striking coincidence—a recent military exercise called ” Red Storm Bravo ,” in Hamburg, one of Germany’s largest cities, was dedicated to re-enacting the “Spannungsfall” —with maximum publicity.
The consequences of initiating a “Spannungsfall” —a kind of official pre-war state of affairs—are complex and severe: open, compulsory, and universal military conscription is just one example; the army can be mobilized domestically; citizens can be conscripted; civil rights are painfully curtailed; critics of government policy, NATO, or the “Spannungsfall” itself can be targeted even more harshly than usual.
Last but not least, the “Spannungsfall” allows the government to postpone or otherwise influence elections. In Germany, it would be an ideal way for the traditional parties to at least delay the consequences of their own failures, unpopularity, and decline, on the one hand, and the rise of challengers from the so-called “populist” new right and left wings, on the other.
Carl Schmitt, Germany’s 20th-century version of Niccolo Machiavelli—brilliantly intelligent, ruthlessly realistic, and morally highly questionable—defined ultimate political power as the ability to declare a state of emergency. Schmitt’s logic was essentially simple: we live together by having rules; therefore, the power that trumps all others is the ability to decide when those rules don’t apply.
Schmitt explained extremes. In reality, governments don’t scrap all the rules in one fell swoop. Why would they? To free themselves and be even less accountable than usual, they proceed secretly and gradually. There’s no need to declare a state of emergency in its pure, all-or-nothing form. Why unnecessarily frighten their subjects and perhaps provoke resistance?
Instead, an emergency is usually declared—either fabricated or greatly exaggerated—to justify the erosion of citizens’ rights, first a little, then a lot, while the unchecked power of the rulers and their bureaucrats is increased. Call it the salami tactic of Western liberalism.
The escalation of the state of emergency into convenient timeframes—that is also the most plausible explanation for the recent surge in drone anxiety within NATO-EU Europe. This widespread drone anxiety is yet another phase in the years-long “Putin is coming for you” cognitive warfare campaign waged by the Western establishment and mainstream media against their own citizens, and serves the overall purpose of sowing even more panic about a supposedly imminent Russian attack on NATO countries.
The techniques used to escalate the war panic are dishonest and repetitive, yet highly sophisticated. As a high-ranking NATO general told us , their goal isn’t simply to manipulate “what people think .” That, in NATO terms, would be mere propaganda and simply outdated. Rather, the most advanced approach is to exploit “the vulnerabilities of the human mind” to influence “the way” people think. The target is “human capital” —yes, that’s us, all of us— “from individuals to states, to multinational organizations, in everyday life.”
Of course, the official pretext is that all of the above is what the enemy—read: Russia (and China)—is doing, or, in the worst-case scenario, what NATO will do to that enemy. But the nature of cognitive warfare easily allows for the psychological weapons to be aimed against the Western population. Because—so the pretext goes—that population is already under cognitive attack from the enemy. What else can you do but fight back on the very battlefield you believe is being attacked: their minds? We’ve seen and experienced the results of this clever trick for years.
But there’s something remarkable. In the words of Jonas Togel, one of the few Western experts who dares to point out the Western information war: ” It’s worse than ever .” Indeed, but there’s no guarantee it won’t get worse. The real question is how long our cognitive warfighters will have free rein to drive us all mad with fear.