Image via video screenshot
By Susann Witt-Stahl, junge Welt, 14 March 2025, translation and notes by Helmut-Harry Loewen
For weeks, the advertising slogan “Freedom Will Win” has been emblazoned in bright blue and yellow in Berlin's train stations. On Tuesday, the time had finally come and “Cafe Kyiv,” hosted by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) [1], opened its doors for the third time. Around five thousand participants were said to have been registered, and so the expected queue of people began forming in early hours in front of the “Colosseum” in the city’s Prenzlauer Berg district.
The organiser lured young liberals with pulsating techno beats, "sassy" fashion gags such as “Anti-Russia Social Club” T-shirts, and a pop-up market selling expensive neofascist trinkets, among other things. It was an audience, as experience has shown, particularly receptive to the hard-to-swallow offerings that were being peddled: plans for victory against Russia, Western values chauvinism [Westliche-Werte-Chauvinismus], above all war enthusiasm and military advertising. This was balm for souls battered by the Trump trauma, such as Norbert Lammert. In his opening speech, the KAS Chairman lamented the looming change of course in US-NATO policy as a “most bitter experience,” before the Green politician, Anton Hofreiter, who is always in attack mode, placed the US President alongside Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in the ranks of the “enemies of Europe.”
Weapons freaks could have their erogenous zones stimulated by a drone flight simulator in the foyer, while the “Foundation for Freedom” gave couch warriors tingling thrills with its virtual exhibition: “Capture the terrible and inspiring stories of Ukrainians living in war." Meanwhile, in the conference halls, the specters of ceasefire and negotiated peace were feverishly exorcised. Roderich Kiesewetter (CDU) [2] issued a “wake-up call” at a panel on the “war economy,” something which he has long been calling for: "We need to support Ukraine more. To do this, we need a different mindset." The Ambassador of Ukraine summed up the core mission of the organisers and their more than 130 partners [3] — from the Federal Foreign Office to the Centre for Liberal Modernity — in a nutshell: “As long as it takes” must finally give way to “Whatever it takes,” demanded Olexiy Makeyev [4]. “For the forces of light to win, action must be taken at the speed of light.”
What this means was spelled out in lectures, discussion rounds, film screenings, and so on by representatives of an international armada of influencers promoting “guns not butter.” Julian Röpcke from the tabloid Bild-Zeitung, “investigative journalist” Alexej Hock from the research portal Correctiv, and “disinformation expert” Pekka Kallioniemi, who had declared Ukrainian Nazis to be the product of Kremlin propaganda at the 2023 summit of “NAFO” social media warriors [5], demonstrated how the necessary demonisation of Russia, China and Iran operates — for example, by dubbing them the “Axis of Authoritarians,” loosely based on Ronald Reagan and compatible with “woke” Green-speak [mit »wokem« Grünen-Sprech]. The best way to do this, however, is to deprive all those marked as “enemies” of what they claim to be defending: the freedom to express themselves. Various speakers, such as Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven, former deputy director of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND)[6], called for more aggressive action against pro-Russian and pro-Chinese narratives and “propaganda tools” such as X and TikTok.
At “Cafe Kyiv,” war was not only waged on an ideological plane; it was also personified. Ukrainian soldiers, appearing in their combat uniforms, added to the frontline ambience. Members of the Azov brigade of the Ukrainian National Guard even provided the rare opportunity in Germany after eighty years to give real Nazi “heroes” a pat on the back.
Notes:
[1] Named after the first West German Chancellor, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung is a German political party foundation associated with the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). It operates in over 100 countries and commands a budget of well over 120 million euros, most of which (+95%) is derived from public funding, as is the case for the other major political foundations, such as the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Social Democratic Party), Desiderius Erasmus Foundation (AfD / Alternative for Germany), Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (Die Linke / The Left Party), Heinrich Böll Foundation (Greens), and so on. In Canada the Konrad Adenauer Foundation maintains ties with the Conservative Party and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation's Ottawa office is staffed by a former adviser to the New Democratic Party (NDP) who is a regular CBC television political panelist, to cite but two examples of the international reach of these foundations. The current chair of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation is veteran CDU politician and member of the Bundestag from 1980 to 2017, Prof. Dr. Norbert Lammert. After the recent federal election, the CDU will form the next German government headed by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, possibly in a coalition with the Social Democrats (with Defense Minister Boris Pistorius as Deputy Chancellor). That will also entail increased funding for the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, but also the foundations associated with the far-right AfD (which came in second place, ahead of the Social Democrats and Greens) and The Left Party (with its surprisingly strong showing).
[2] Roderich Kiesewetter, former Bundeswehr general staff officer and influential CDU politician who was first elected to the German Bundestag in 2009.
[3] Event partners, including the Embassy of Canada to Germany: https://lineup-cafekyiv.kas.de/partner
[4] Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany since 2022.
[5] NAFO (North Atlantic Fella Organization), a play on NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), is a social media movement and merchandising operation — which sells “make russia small again” shirts and hats — engaged in information warfare against Russia.
[6] Loringhoven was deputy director of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) between 2007 and 2010. He has served as NATO's chief of intelligence and as a German diplomat.
Original article: "Kriegseskalation in Lichtgeschwindigkeit. »Cafe Kyiv«-Kongress drängt zu Aufrüstung und Konfrontation mit der »Achse der Autoritären«." Von Susann Witt-Stahl, junge Welt, Berlin, 14.03.2025.
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