“The fear of a nuclear war now controls thinking”

Wolfgang Müller was a relatively unknown musician. Then he wrote the text of the hour for the debate about arms deliveries and the impending nuclear war.

Demonstration of power in Moscow: Russia’s army practices for the parade on May 9th. Then the Russians celebrate victory over Nazi Germany.

Yuri Kochetkov / EPO

Germany is trembling at the prospect of nuclear war – and its intellectuals are arguing on talk shows and open letters about whether heavy weapons should be supplied to the Ukrainians and whether this might provoke Putin. In the middle of the heated discussions there is also a previously unknown 47-year-old man: Wolfgang Müller, a musician from Hamburg.

Müller has a website for his music, but occasionally he also publishes political texts on it. He registered on Twitter at the beginning of the month, and he had sixteen followers at the time he sat down to write a text again: a replica of what was published in Emma magazine open letter to Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

In this, intellectuals, led by “Emma” editor Alice Schwarzer, called on the Chancellor not to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine. Otherwise the next nuclear war is imminent. And then both Germany and Ukraine share responsibility for that.

Müller finds this a shabby attitude. As with rape allegations, where the women are blamed for wearing a skirt that is too short, here a perpetrator-victim reversal takes place: He sits down and begins to write. Only one hour, then he puts it text to his website, post the link on Twitter and go to bed. 24 hours later, Müller has 6,000 followers, the “Spiegel” has taken over the text and thus reached hundreds of thousands of readers.

Why did the lyrics of a musician without any political or military strategic expertise to speak of trigger such a resonance with so many people? Phone call to Wolfgang Müller in Hamburg.

Mr. Müller, do you read “Emma”?

Miller: No, not really, I have long found many of Alice Schwarzer’s positions problematic. I didn’t really notice the open letter at first either. When I read it, I almost fell off my chair.

How so?

Whether this attitude, with which self-righteous, intolerable arrogance was suggested to the Ukrainians to destroy themselves. The fact that someone, sitting on his warm sofa in Berlin-Kreuzberg, dares to explain to people who are being raped or shot that they are not allowed to defend themselves – that cannot be surpassed in terms of patheticness. And then to blame them for a possible nuclear war.

You grew up in Hessen near a military base. Your response begins by describing how, as a child, you lived every day with the fear of an impending nuclear war. When the practice sirens sounded, you’d have raced home on your bike, soaked in fear.

I was born in 1975, this fear of a nuclear strike was always very present in my mind until the end of the Cold War.

Did you find a way to deal with it back then?

Fear has always been and still is a big issue in my life. I have an anxiety disorder, have panic attacks. I’m actually afraid every day of being destroyed.

That may sound cynical, but does this experience help in the current situation?

That’s not cynical at all. The fear of death that one feels during a panic attack is not appropriate to the situation. The body reacts to an external cause, a trigger that is connected in the wrong way, and releases messenger substances as if life were actually threatened. If you have to live with it, you learn that fear is actually a bottomless pit. There is never enough security in such a moment to allay the fear of death. You get smaller and smaller, curl up more and more, it’s a self-reinforcing system. Fear paralyzes and blocks.

How do you get out?

You have to decouple that from yourself. Of course there are forms of therapy, you can meditate, do something haptic. But first of all you have to realize that you are controlled by fear. And then decouple the fear from yourself. When I have a panic attack, I try to remind myself: My body is afraid, not me.

Is the open letter in “Emma”, i.e. the attitude behind it, comparable to a panic attack?

One could perhaps say that the letter came out of a panic attack. At least the discussion runs as irrationally as during an anxiety attack.

The threat of a nuclear strike is indeed real.

I agree. But the debate is unreflected. Take the argument that by supplying heavy weapons we provoke Putin. Even if that is the case – the heavy weapons are already being supplied by other countries, Great Britain, France. If Putin now starts a nuclear war, will he exclude Germany because it was the only country that didn’t supply tanks? And are we spared from the radioactive cloud because of that? That’s not rational.

Why is the debate so irrational?

It seems as if this fear of a possible nuclear war now directs thinking and mixes with people’s beliefs. We can also ask ourselves what would happen now if there was no threat of nuclear weapons: Would the Ukrainians then be asked to give themselves up? Would people then also hesitate to supply heavy weapons?

Wolfgang Mueller.

They advocate that we admit to ourselves that we are simply afraid. But that still doesn’t solve the problem.

No of course not. First of all, it’s perfectly okay to be afraid. As a nation, we can also come to the conclusion that our fear is so great that we don’t want to do anything and just watch. But now we construct the moral argument that other people should die for us because otherwise it would be too dangerous for the rest of the world. You just took a wrong turn there.

Have you talked to your parents about it, to whom this fear must seem like déjà vu?

They see it very fatalistically. They’ve actually returned to the same attitude they had in the 1980s: if it happens, it happens, in a certain sense it’s not in our hands.

The authors of the open letter see it differently. They say we can placate Russia.

I’m not a military strategist, but one has to be clear: we don’t have nuclear weapons, so we can’t threaten them with them. That means: If there is a nuclear strike, it is solely because Russia decides it. If one lousy tank is enough to start a nuclear war, that’s not our responsibility.

Russia continues to test nuclear missiles during the war with Ukraine.  At the launch of the Saramat missile, Russia's ruler Vladimir Putin said the Saramat would make Russia's enemies pause and think.

Russia continues to test nuclear missiles during the war with Ukraine. At the launch of the Saramat missile, Russia’s ruler Vladimir Putin said the Saramat would make Russia’s enemies pause and think.

AP

Fatalism as a solution?

Fear is easier to bear when you accept that certain things are not controllable. I can only torment myself when I think I still have this or that option. But Putin’s threat is so unpredictable that there’s really not much we can do to remove it. This time it’s a tank to be delivered to Ukraine. The next time he threatens a nuclear attack if we stop buying the oil in Russia. Ever since it was founded, Israel has had to live with the constant threat of annihilation. We may have to learn to live with that. The opposite happens with the letter.

As?

We try to eliminate the cause of the threat through any decisions, but that is not in our power. But the letter is shabby for an entirely different reason.

Shabby?

In it, the authors make their own fear the norm. They present their conclusion as the morally correct solution and thus conceal the fact that they have reversed the perpetrator-victim logic. One can lose the moral compass situationally out of fear. But don’t start turning south into north out of fear. It makes a difference whether I say: “I’m a pacifist.” Or: “I would like to defend myself, but I don’t dare.” It is only when we identify these attitudes that we can actually decide who we really want to be.

How pacifist are you yourself?

I never saw myself as a pacifist. If you are a victim, peacefulness does not protect you from being attacked. I believe that as long as there are guns everywhere, a solid defense capability is the basis for peace. I’m not a friend of war, not at all, but it needs that deterrence. And I also find the saving of the Bundeswehr and resting on the NATO partners unbearable.

Is that an attitude that is widespread in your environment in Hamburg as a musician?

I don’t know, but I’m not a classic leftist. I would describe myself as a conservative leftist. I think Robert Habeck is fantastic, because he has integrity, and I would have liked him as chancellor, Annalena Baerbock is also doing an excellent job. But my position in politics is not really reflected in a party at the moment.

Were you surprised by the response to your text?

For sure. In the first few days I received up to a hundred emails per hour. Luckily 95 percent positive. But this debate is actually over for me, I don’t have any further expertise and don’t have to get involved any further. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Like the guy on the subway with the guitar who gets filmed by someone and then Taylor Swift shares it on Instagram. That’s my fifteen minutes now.

You are looking for synonyms in one of your songs. “A new word for hope,” a new word for courage, you sing. Do you have a new word for fear?

I haven’t thought about that yet. The first term that would come to mind would be self-defense. First of all, fear is a good thing. But you have to keep correcting them, otherwise you’re just in escape mode and looking for protection. Finding the balance is probably a big task in life for everyone.

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