Former Federal President Gauck has spoken out in favor of faster arms deliveries to Ukraine. In a review of the past year, in the ZDF program Maybrit Illner, he calls on the federal government to follow up the announcement of the turning point with a policy of turning the tide.
Federal President a. D. Joachim Gauck called for a greater urgency in supplying arms to Ukraine. In the ZDF talk show Maybrit Illner, Gauck said: “It could go faster for me. For many Germans too, for all Ukrainians too.” Gauck called the Russian army’s attack on Ukraine “disgusting”. “Putin must not win,” he says literally. And: “I can’t be hopeless.”
At the same time, Gauck praised Chancellor Scholz’s “turning point” speech in front of the Bundestag four days after Russia’s attack on Ukraine. “Compared to the slowness that we are used to, the federal government’s activities can be assessed favorably,” said Gauck. It is appropriate to support the people in Ukraine who did not want this war of aggression. The federal government was aware of the turning point, and action must now follow. “But an announcement of a turning point also includes a policy of turning the tide. We have decided to deliver powerful defense systems. But the misery in Ukraine is so great, it’s all so disgusting that we have to do more. And Scholz will do it do,” said Gauck verbatim.
The distrust in politics has grown, according to the former Federal President. In his opinion, however, most people do not take to the streets because of their social hardship, but because of cultural and political uncertainty about globalization, the dissolution of borders or Europeanization. Gauck perceives a fear of modernity in many people: “Many see a development in which so much is changing as frightening.” And fear, in turn, is a difficult time for rational politics.
While Gauck understands the fears of democratic people, he lacks this when it comes to enemies of democracy. “The greatest enemy of democracy is on the right,” said Gauck bei Illner. The ex-Federal President is therefore in favor of a well-fortified democracy. “These strange enemies of the constitution” must be shown their limits. Gauck: “We don’t just live with people whose opinions we share. We have to endure when people want to remain stupid. But we don’t have to endure when they fundamentally attack our constitution.”
Gauck also commented on the current alleged overthrow fantasies of a terrorist group of Reich citizens, some of whose alleged members come from mainstream society. That doesn’t scare him, said Gauck. “You will never have a government made up entirely of dolts.” According to Gauck, the claim that many of the suspected right-wing terrorists came from mainstream society does not correspond to reality: “We have an extremely stable center.”
Gauck, on the other hand, sees no threat to society in the activists of the “last generation”. Nevertheless, he considers the “climate sticker” strategy to be wrong. “This approach is not suitable for gaining sympathy in the general public, and it is therefore worthy of criticism.” In addition, it is wrong if individuals or a group put their morals above the norms and the law.
“If we were to accept that, more and more new forces would invoke their findings and their moral concepts,” said Gauck. If the people in Germany were to allow special authorization to act in excess of the norm, democracy could be endangered.
