The State of Emergency in the Mind - How Björn Höcke Turns Doubt into a Political Weapon

A sentence like the ones that appear on Telegram dozens of times - casual, inconspicuous, dangerous. "Or is it merely media theater?" asks Björn Höcke in that strangely measured tone that pretends to seek truth while having already replaced it. It is the tone of a new right that no longer shouts but whispers - and yet sounds louder than any siren. The post in question reads like a political fantasy disguised as an analysis of current events. Höcke speaks of "not fully clarified airspace violations in Poland" and of the "threat scenario" allegedly being built up to "provoke an act of war." Russia, he suggests, has neither the intention nor the means to attack NATO. The real danger, he says, lies in the West itself - in the federal government, in Brussels, in the media.

Then comes the sentence that sums it all up: "Emergency laws are the last resort by which the cartel parties can stay in power." It is the moment when political analysis turns into paranoia. And yet the text works precisely because it does not sound like a call to arms. It is calculatedly calm, with the rhythm of an academic lecture. In between: quotes, buzzwords, insinuations. Carl Schmitt cannot be missing - that jurist who once turned the concept of the state of exception into a legal weapon of National Socialism. Höcke quotes him approvingly: "Sovereign is he who decides on the exception."

Anyone who reads carefully understands: this is not the work of an ignorant populist but of someone who knows exactly what he is doing. Höcke takes the sentence that once legitimized the destruction of the Weimar Republic and uses it to sow mistrust in today’s democracy. It is no coincidence, no intellectual game. It is strategy. The pattern is familiar - and yet highly dangerous. First comes doubt: could it be that everything is staged? Then suspicion: who benefits? Finally, the reversal: it is not Russia that threatens Europe, but Europe that threatens itself. This is the grammar of disinformation. It works not through lies but through suggestion.

Höcke’s Telegram post claims that the federal government is preparing an internal state of emergency to secure control through fear. But what appears here as a warning is in truth a projection - the authoritarian fantasy of deciding for oneself when democracy ends. The truly disturbing part is how familiar it all sounds. Decades after the end of dictatorship, the language of suspicion is returning - intellectually disguised, semantically polished, politically trivialized. Höcke uses terms like "sovereignty" or "emergency" not to analyze them but to reprogram them. The word becomes a decoy. The theory becomes a drug.

And the country watches

In Germany, such texts are met with ritualized outrage. A few headlines on social media, a cynical quote, and then silence again. Hardly anyone dissects the logic, no one refutes it point by point. Resistance is polite, academic, distant, mostly built on mockery. That is the reality in 2025. And that is exactly what this rhetoric feeds on: the silence of the middle of society. The United States is a warning example of where it leads when the societal center believes all of this does not concern it - unless it wishes it upon itself. Because disinformation does not work by convincing. It works by being repeated. Social media is the perfect medium for that - a parallel public sphere in which half-knowledge and conviction merge until they become indistinguishable. There, mistrust of institutions turns into a new form of faith - the belief that nothing is real anymore.

In this void, power thrives. When everything seems relative, the one who claims to understand chaos appears strong. And Höcke understands how to stage chaos. He speaks of Russia but means Germany. He warns against emergency laws while romanticizing the idea of the state of exception. He denounces the abuse of power in order to prepare it.

This is not stupidity. It is craftsmanship

The text about the "airspace violations in Poland" is no slip-up but a prototype - an example of how the new right hijacks intellectual tools to corrode the very concept of truth. What began with Carl Schmitt as a theory of the state of exception ends here as a Telegram conspiracy - packaged in the diction of political depth. But the larger story is not Höcke. It is Germany. A country so intent on "not overreacting" that it barely notices the return of old patterns. That hesitates where it should act and debates where it should contradict. Resistance is rational, the danger emotional. And rationality always loses when emotion has learned to disguise itself as truth.

Perhaps that is precisely the problem: people have learned to recognize disinformation but not to fight it. There are tools but no stance. Democracy is on the defensive not because its opponents are stronger but because it has grown arrogant. Höcke knows that. And he uses this fatigue like a vacuum.

His texts are not calls for insurrection - they are tests, testing how far one can go before anyone reacts. Every sentence a probe. Every post an attempt to shift trust in institutions just a bit further. The state of emergency he speaks of is already here. Just not where he claims it to be. It takes place in the mind - as a permanent readiness to believe the lie because it is easier than the truth. And perhaps that is the real state of emergency of our time: a society that has grown accustomed to doubt until it mistakes it for thinking.