He Calls It “Bullshit,” but the Finger Points Back at Conspiracy Theorist Peter Hahne

Last Sunday, Peter Hahne stood on Greifswald’s market square and asked: “Can we still be saved?” After that afternoon, the question could just as easily be turned around. How far can a speaker move away from verifiable facts before his audience finally stops applauding?

We counted around 170 people in front of the speaker, with about 140 on the other side. Police later said there were up to 600 people at the event at its peak and up to 200 at the registered counterprotest. That figure of 600 does not match what the market square looked like, and the police statement does not explain how that number was reached. After the counterprotest ended, police also allowed a spontaneous demonstration with around 150 people at times.

The scale of the operation was striking for so few people. Police lines separated the groups, vehicles were used as barriers. At around 4:00 PM, a 37-year-old woman was removed from the spontaneous demonstration using direct force and was later taken into preventive custody, something police themselves confirm. At around 5:35 PM, we witnessed a second person being taken away outside the Volksbank at the end of the square, an incident that does not appear in the published police account. Even so, police later said that the overwhelming majority of all gatherings had remained peaceful and that an orderly course had been guaranteed at all times.

That matters because Hahne gave his audience a very different feeling. He thanked the police and said that he and his listeners had been afraid of being attacked by the counterprotesters. Absolutely ridiculous. We were there and saw no attack, and police reported none either. There was protest, shouting, banners, two groups facing each other. Turning that into an imminent attack was a preview of everything that followed: something real was loaded up with fear until it fit the story.

Even the circumstances around the event had to be used for that. According to Hahne, the city of Greifswald had not provided electricity for the event, which is why he thanked a sponsor for supplying a diesel generator. Shortly afterward, he said people were being “bullshitted” with the word “climate change.” It was one of his favorite words, and it became increasingly hard to ignore who on that market square was bullshitting whom. You could have mistaken the whole scene for satire, but it was not.

Nine out of ten wildfires, Hahne claimed, were caused by arson. The official numbers say something completely different. In 2025, Germany recorded 1,175 wildfires. In around 46 percent of cases, the cause remained unknown, while around 27 percent were caused by negligence. Barely one in five fires was believed to have been deliberately set, not nine out of ten, not even close. Germany’s Federal Environment Agency also stresses that while humans are often the immediate ignition source, climate and weather determine how vulnerable a forest is to fire and how a blaze spreads. Heat and drought do not disappear from the equation just because a human is holding the match. And this, of all people, was the man accusing others of “bullshitting” people about climate change. You did not have to look very hard for the irony.

Hahne also claimed that millions of women had suffered miscarriages because of the Covid vaccine. That story has been debunked for years, it is based on a false interpretation of a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a fact-check confirmed that again after the Greifswald appearance. Then it was the bakeries’ turn. “There used to be 55,000 bakeries, and now only 5,600 are left,” he shouted. That sounds devastating only as long as you leave out the fact that the roughly 55,000 businesses date back to West Germany in the 1960s. In 2025, the German Bakers’ Confederation still counted 8,659 businesses. Half a century lies between his starting figure and today, and he squeezed all of it into one sentence about imminent collapse.

Hospitals and nursing homes had to serve the purpose too. Old and sick people were lying there without air conditioning, Hahne claimed. It is true that many facilities have a serious problem during heat waves, but the absolute claim is false: around one-third of hospitals have air-conditioned rooms. A real problem was inflated again until only the desired picture remained. Then came the flooding. A flood in 1428 had been worse than the 2021 disaster in the Ahr Valley, Hahne said, according to what we heard. But there is no evidence in the relevant historical overviews for a major Ahr disaster in 1428. The Ahr floods of 1804, when 63 people died, and 1910, with more than 50 deaths, are documented and studied. He was not even pitting a real historic flood against 2021, just a year with no source behind it.

Then came an “elite” that supposedly had babies made to order. No serious discussion of genetic medicine, no explanation of what technology he was even talking about, the word “elite” and a designer baby are enough when a sentence is only supposed to trigger a feeling. Hahne repeatedly said people should be paraded around in handcuffs. In this kind of language, opponents are already in irons before any suspicion has even been examined, the image begins with the restraints.

In between, Peter Hahne spent plenty of time talking about Peter Hahne. He repeatedly brought up his years in public broadcasting, who he had interviewed and who he had known. It was striking how the man railing against “the media” drew his credibility from decades spent right in the middle of public broadcasting. That world was bad when he was talking about the media, excellent whenever Hahne wanted to prove how important Hahne once was. A news magazine got its turn too: he mocked its cover featuring AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund as “Germany’s most dangerous man” and sneered at the 7.10 euros the issue cost. At the microphone, a warning was turned into advertising for the man the magazine was supposed to be warning about.

He did not stop at hints. Several times, he urged his audience to go vote on September 20, and from the context it was impossible to miss which party stood to benefit. The state election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is taking place on that very September 20. Just days earlier, Hahne had told a sympathetic outlet that he wanted to “deliver facts,” but not engage in party campaigning. An appearance that tears into the competition and drills the election date into the audience can only be understood politically afterward, including his rejection of the firewall against the AfD. Then he delivered a punchline at his own expense. He promoted Sahra Wagenknecht and announced that she would appear in Stralsund on September 12. The calendar of BSW Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania says September 9, 7:00 PM on the Alter Markt, with an earlier appearance at 5:00 PM in Neubrandenburg. Even with a date anyone can check in seconds, he was off by three days. Not a world-shattering falsehood, and that is exactly why it is so telling.

At the end came the books, of course they did. Hahne promoted his own works and put the value of a full set at around 300 euros. For almost two hours, Germany had been talked into the ground, then the cash register opened. The book table belongs to this performance, because Hahne sells more than paper. He sells the explanation for why the world supposedly looks exactly the way his audience already wants to see it. That may also explain the applause. Maybe 170 people stood on his side, around 140 on the other. Not all of them cheered, but enough did. They applauded when he lashed out and laughed at his insults. Claims that collapse under the simplest official statistics were simply accepted.

170 people are not a mass movement, but they are enough for a disturbing picture. The force of speeches like this does not begin only when thousands show up. It begins where a line sounds better than the evidence, where a wrong date no longer matters. And where wildfires simply become arson because it fits the story. Hahne repeatedly called what other people say “bullshit.” Keep the word, just turn it around. If someone serves his audience false wildfire numbers, conjures up an unsubstantiated flood and cannot even get the date of his own promoted event right, then the problem is not with the people who open the sources afterward. The problem is standing on the podium, with a microphone and a diesel generator. And at the end, with his books.