The Fiedler Dare: Germany’s politicians never lie, they say

Berlin’s Moscow accusation rests on credibility Germany’s leaders don’t have Berlin has officially blamed a murky drone incident at the Leipzig-Halle airport on Moscow. However, as unbiased observers agree, the German authorities have not published any actual evidence to back up this accusation. Instead, they have relied on unsubstantiated claims and what seems to be the systematic management of the public mood via leaks and speculation. The stakes are high: Berlin has taken substantial punitive measures against Russia; Moscow has responded in kind. More importantly, Russian government representatives have been explicit about considering the German allegations and initiatives a deliberate escalation . Germany’s mainstream media are even more hysterical than usual: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, once the country’s flagship of serious conservative-centrist journalism, is comparing the Leipzig-Halle incident – which resulted in zero casualties or damage – with the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US. Against this backdrop of Germany’s umpteenth moral panic about Russia stampeding through the establishment, hardly anyone even notices that the prominent Ukrainian dissident journalist Anatolij Sharij – long exiled and under permanent threat from the Zelensky regime – has unearthed an eyewitness report about the events at Leipzig-Halle that contradicts the German official and mainstream accounts and even features details pointing to stage-managing and, in short, the possibility that it was faked. Read more Berlin’s latest Russia panic is reckless even by its own standards The German authorities, meanwhile, are staying the course. Not by presenting evidence, which is much talked about yet never shown, but by demanding, in effect, blind faith. In that spirit, the parliamentary domestic policy spokesman of the co-governing Social Democrats (SPD) Sebastian Fiedler has brought out things with commendable if self-sacrificing clarity.

Rejecting, in effect, demands for proof, Fiedler’s key argument – of sorts – is an odd claim: if German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Minister of the Interior Alexander Dobrindt publicly state that Russia is to blame, then “ you can be certain […] that Russia really is to blame. ” In other words, once top representatives of the Berlin government stake their credibility for all the world to see, we simply must believe whatever they say because – as it’s obviously implied – they always speak the truth. Further questions are – according to the unspoken yet unsubtle message – at least superfluous, probably unpatriotic, and perhaps even VERBOTEN! Police investigators work on the tarmac with a robot capable of defusing explosives near a Ukrainian Antonov cargo plane at Leipzig/Halle Airport on August 5, 2026 near Leipzig, Germany. © Jens Schlueter / Getty Images Now, that is an intriguing move indeed; let’s call it the Fiedler Dare. For one thing, it is extremely counterintuitive, because it means that German politicians never lie when the stakes are high. In general, though, history – and the present, too – really teaches the opposite about politics in general and everywhere: precisely when the stakes are high, lying becomes more likely, more brazen, and more obstinate. Is Fiedler suggesting that Berlin government representatives are the global exception? A superior kind of political animal? Luckily, the other thing that makes Fiedler’s astonishing claim so fascinating is that it is eminently falsifiable. Not on one but two levels: Do the two individuals mentioned explicitly always stick to the facts and only the facts? And do German government members in general? Read more Faith in fakes: How anti-Russian hysteria is driving the EU’s drone hoax Let’s start with the general issue, b