Udo Ulfkotte: Was a Nationalist Journalist Murdered in Germany?

Occupied Germany and Ireland’s Alternative Timeline

Think of the following alternative historical timeline. 

In the 1970s the conflict in Northern Ireland spills over into the 26-county state with the Provisional IRA seizing effective control of the Republic as the Leinster House regime collapses. The worst nightmares of the southern elite transpire as republican passions are inflamed and violence once confined to Derry and Belfast reaches into the very heart of Dublin.

Following a doomed attempt to create an Irish Cuba, the provisional junta in Dublin is toppled by a British-led NATO invasion aided by disgruntled anti-IRA elements of the Irish Army, ending with a pro-British puppet government erected and permanent UK military installations placed around the country.

Irish towns are in ruins after months of fighting with London effectively bringing the Republic back into the Union in all but name. In the North, Orange rule is reaffirmed, this time through the sectarian cleansing of Catholics, giving the statelet a firm bloodsoaked unionist majority.

While in our own timeline anti-republican Brahmins like Conor Cruise O’Brien dreamed of purging any iota of nationalism from the educational curriculum, in this alternative world it is actually done. Irish is dropped from the curriculum, as well as any positive mention of republicanism, Ireland before the invasion is written off culturally as a backward Catholic state, after a few years it even joins NATO.

Journalism is also reshaped by the invasion with the Irish Times, RTÉ and any news outlet forced to apply for licences from the British Army before they can begin publication again this time under the strict eye of British intelligence. A type of Section 31 on steroids is enacted with any trace of nationalist sympathies or even critics of the British army marginalised to the point of criminal prosecution. While dissident republican groups exist under the radar, Sinn Féin is proscribed.

By the year 2020 and with the wartime turmoil cleaned up, Ireland is a firm participant in the EU, NATO and even the Commonwealth, outwardly a normal liberal democracy facing out onto the North Atlantic. While British security and intelligence personnel operate unmolested, Ireland and her citizenry trundle along thinking themselves to be free participants in an open society. It is of course all an illusion to an honest observer with the entirety of civic society living a lie under informal occupation.

Half a century on from the invasion, the world of Irish journalism and politics is still very much under the British yoke, even if military patrols are less prominent on the streets. A perpetual pro-British leadership caste is created through an ecosystem of universities, journalistic clubs and political think tanks, with politicians groomed from their early schooling to support the now decades-old occupation.

Journalism functions normally but with the obligatory blessing of British intelligence mandatory before reporters even reach the mainstream. Writers if they wish to advance their careers know who to kowtow to and never to cross certain lines.

The feasibility of this timeline is debatable, but it somewhat captures the contemporaneous nature of the post-1945 German state under American hegemony. One thing that has to be emphasised again and again is that the German state is just a vassal of the Washington government, despite its predominant role in the EU. 

In Germany, the land of Gutenberg, the so-called press is little more than a deputised press office for NATO, and by extension the Washington regime and the liberal ideology that it acts as a fountainhead to. From Der Spiegel to Die Welt, modern German media has its genesis in the rubble of the Second World War, where publications were founded for and sometimes by the occupying Allied forces. Each outlet had to apply to get a licence from the Allied command to operate, no different than the Soviet bloc. 75 years on and the modern German press pack follows in this lineage through the Cold War and into Merkel’s multicultural Germany.

The dirty secret of Berlin, like the preceding West German administration, is that it is the mirror image of the deposed GDR, in the sense of merely being a satellite state for foreign powers. Germany is not an independent country, and the powers that be are eager to stamp out any trace of residual national self-assertion as demographics alter on the back of mass immigration. Real German autonomy was liquidated post-1945, with what passes itself off as the German state today just a vestigial Americanised appendage. 

America has an open military presence in the nation, with Germans just left to grumble as the NSA and CIA operate with impunity, bugging the phones of Angela Merkel and other officials. The country’s main opposition party, the AfD, undergoes routine and overt state harassment from the Bundesnachrichtendienst security forces, effectively acting as a sister organisation to the CIA. 

Against this tide of anti-national conformism is the story of Udo Ulfkotte, his life in journalism and Pauline conversion from the comfy life of an establishment operator to patriotic recusant. It is a story which has barely entered the airwaves in Germany and is largely unknown in the English-speaking world, blowing a hole in the narrative of the open society mythos that Western societies gloat of.

Udo Ulkotte : ‘Alpha Journalist’ to National Dissident

For the first 40 years of his life the German journalist Udo Ulkotte led a rather conventional albeit successful life as a correspondent for numerous titles, the right leaning Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) chief among them where he acted as assistant editor. Following completing a PhD in Middle Eastern studies at the University of Freiburg, Ulfkotte spent 12 years as a foreign correspondent in mainly the Middle East before settling more on domestic affairs in Germany.

Reporting from war zones from Kurdistan to Afghanistan, he was a regular for the FAZ and other magazines as well, playing an active part in centrist politics through his affiliation with the CDU linked Konrad Adenauer Foundation he also enjoyed lecturer positions.

So far so good, and nothing out of the ordinary. By the early 2000s Ulfkotte looked set to be just another face and Twitter handle in the nation’s grey journalistic clergy, potentially with a route into politics after enough time. This began to change in the mid 2000s, as Ulfkotte began to stray more and more from the established orthodoxy on matters of Russia, immigration and Germany’s relationship with the United States, before leaving the FAZ all together by 2004.

He proceeded to found an independent magazine,  “Whistleblowers”, where he documented stories otherwise forgotten by the German fourth estate. Almost immediately after his departure from FAZ, his apartment was raided by German police, and his computer confiscated with the excuse of threats to national security being given. It was the first of many raids and constant harassment received by Ulfkotte by German authorities.

In the years following, he would document the corruption within German journalism he witnessed as well as abuses in the asylum industry. In an article titled ‘The World Upside Down’, he chronicled the infiltration of Germany by Islamist organisation assisted by Gulf money, as well as inadequcies in the asylum process.

Increasingly he would burn bridges with his former liberal masters and enter the fray of nationalist politics, active in the early PEGIDA movement and a firm critic of immigration and what he alleged was media whitewashing on the matter. Publishing numerous books on the threats of Islamism in Germany and the recklessness of the German elite, he slotted himself among the German Neue Rechte scene attempting at one stage to run for office on a nationalist ticket.

In 2017 he put pen to paper on his career in journalism with the book ‘Gekaufte Journalisten’ (Bought Journalists) summarising his experiences of media manipulation and nepotism within the industry. At its most charitable, German journalism to him is essentialy prostitution in print, working directly in the pay of a nexus of business and political elites directing Germany down the tubes of globalism and mass immigration.

‘Two out of three journalists in German-speaking countries are corrupt – and find it quite normal’ he writes painting a picture of the industry acting as little more than a CIA backed cartel. Through various keystone organisations (Aspen Institute, Marshall Fund, Bilderberg Group as well as the European Council of Foreign relations) marching orders are given to a compliant media on what to report.

These media functionaries are what Ulfkotte labels ‘alpha journalists,’ recruited informally through an intelligence network and making opulent livings in the process. It is a role that Ulfkotte himself played having been recruited from college and performing his duties hand in hand with intelligence agencies.

His experiences recount a world of wine dinners, foreign junkets and CIA affiliated think tanks giving instruction to writers, even writing stories for them. To his shame, on various occasions he simply signed his name to stories written by spooks framing the Gadaffi regime for running secret weapons programmes as well as promoting anti-Russian hysteria. Towards the end of his career, the pace of anti-Russian propagandising increased, with zero rapprochement being considered by his paymasters who desired nothing but conflict with the Kremlin.

One of the keystone groups in this powerweb is the German Marshall fund, which along with American Embassy, regularly funds and coordinates the media narrative under the guise of securing German-American cooperation. Founded and funded by the lobbyist Guido Goldmann, its fingerprints are almost everywhere in German journalism and politics.

Those dismissive of the role of the financier George Soros will be interested to learn of the prominence the Soros backed European Council of Foreign Relations plays in policy formation, something Ulfkotte experienced first hand. The so-called ‘overthrowing machine’ of Soros, used to mobilise rent a mobs for use in CIA backed regime changes, is no myth as commonly scoffed at by some. In a 2014 interview, Ulfkotte stated how Soros was part and parcel of the political regime in Germany, and essential to efforts expanding American hegemony in Eastern and Central Europe.

Similarly the Atlantic Bridge organisation plays a salient role in maintaining German obedience towards Washington, working regularly under the wing of the CIA to foster a new generation of German sycophants. The Washington Post similarly is described by Ulfkotte as being little more than a CIA front where German journalists sow disinfo against Russia in particular, using material which is often scripted directly by intelligence agencies.

From providing warped coverage on gas attacks in Iraq and covering up German companies profiting off it, to working with oil companies to hide environmental abuses and give ‘lubricated coverage’ to corruption Ulfkotte lived a cynical life. Along with lavish trips abroad and a respectable salary, Ulfkotte also made a killing through the lecturing circuit

As a foreign correspondent he was chauffeured around Gulf capitals and given privy intelligence files on the basis he would provide pro-NATO coverage. A theme of his career, and allegedly the majority of senior German journalists, was the unofficial bribes given so as to secure positive coverage. Sometimes manifesting itself in overt gifts or positions in think tanks or academia, it ensures a well oiled and sycophantic media machine at Washtington’s beck and call. Ulfkotte makes it clear that anyone in a position of power in German journalism attained that position through this incestrous system of selection.

For example, in 1996, Ulfkotte was accused by human rights groups of covering up environmental damage in the Nigerian Delta by the Shell Oil corporation. At the time Ulfkotte was receiving patronage from the oil giant in the form of concealed sponsorship.

A staple of the diet of any so-called conspiracy theorist, the role of the Trilateral Commission is also examined, of which Ulfkotte was a regular attendee before his fall from grace. Recalling chauffeur driven journeys to exclusive hotels in the Italian Alps, Ulfkotte states that the Yugoslavian wars were planned well in advance, judging by meetings he attended.

Another feature in the system is the self aggrandising awards given annually to journalists for services rendered, made ironic by the fact they are in fact serving the system rather than challenging it.

A regular technique frequently employed by the business lobby is the purchasing of sympathetic articles in German titles with what is euphemistically called ‘auxiliary income’ provided to journalists and publications for services rendered.

Ulfkotte’s sympathy towards this dispensation wore thin when asked to orchestrate a smear campaign against a wayward CDU politician, framing him as an adulterer. Smear attacks are a regular tactic of the regime, and were used against the left leaning Thilo Sarrazin when he objected to mass immigration into Germany.

For his troubles denouncing the German regime and former colleagues, Ulkotte earned himself the attention of the intelligence agencies who raided his house on multiple occasions, beginning with his Dresden flat in 2004. His work went largely uncommented on in the media arena, even experiencing problems with publication and translation but regardless sold well. Earlier on in his career some of his earlier books were taken off the shelves by publishers following legal threats.

Where he was mentioned it is with derision as little more than a conspiracy theorist, latent fascist, as well as a Kremlin propagandist. It is very hard for the German elite to write off Ulfkotte, who earned his stripes as one of their own, and far from being a rambling conspiracy theorist, his writings are based off of his first hand accounts at the coalface of journalism.

Ulfkotte is not the only one to portray this shoddy clientelism between journalism and the transatlantic lobby, with the journalist Uwe Kruger similarly mapping out the quiet networks which move German life and their corruption of journalism.  In 2009, the historian Alan Axelrod published ‘Selling the War’, highlighting the historic influence that American intelligence agencies and third party groups had on journalism in Europe from Woodrow Wilson right up until the Afghan War. In 2006 Wikileaks published the hidden findings of the Schaefer report detailing the extensive relationship German journalists had with the security forces.

Ulkotte’s Potential Martyrdom and Relevance to Ireland

Udo Ulfkotte was found dead of a sudden heart attack in January of 2017 at the time he was not known to be suffering any major health issues. The writer Jonas Schneider gathered considerable evidence as to the author’s murder, pointing to very clear ambiguties in the autopsy as well as existing threats to Ulfkotte’s life.

While not definitive, it at least makes a reasonable case as to the presence of foul play. Personally, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and a rogue journalist turning up dead suddenly may not necessarily  involve murder. 57 year olds very often have sudden heart attacks and after pursuing the evidence there appears to be no clear smoking gun.

That being said, who really doubts the fact that the vast conspiracy ruling would be willing to murder a journalist? As the death of the journalist Gary Webb who famously died of two gunshots to the head after exposing the drug running operations of the CIA attests, problematic journalists have a habit of disappearing all of a sudden.

In Ireland, while liberalism was embedded after 50 years of cultural subversion rather than by force of arms like Germany, Ulkotte’s words are potentially no less applicable. As an undergrad, I have witnessed the same conveyor belt from student journalism and campus politics right into the same think tank-media complex that the recently deceased journalist warded against. It should also be remembered that intelligence agencies are never more than one degree of separation removed from any of these outlets, however informal.

In the place of the Aspen Institute of the Marshall Fund, we have the europhile IIEA and various forums promoting British and American interests in Ireland. It is no major secret that British intelligence is in operation on both sides of the border, with Village Magazine doing Trojan work recently unearthing media manipulation during the Troubles. Similarly the journalist Tim Pat Coogan in his history of the conflict recounts the relationship between certain journalists and British intelligence agencies massaging narratives.

Udo Ulkfotte could have lived a comfortable life opting for the security of working under the bosom of the occupational forces in Germany. Instead he may very well have shortened his life in the pursuit of truth and to live according to his moral compass. The vast informal machine of think tanks and civic society organisations which he shone a light on appears for now to have outlived him, but in the decades to come may come face to fact with opponents impossible to stop.