Cathrin Kahlweit, longtime correspondent for the Süddeutsche Zeitung in London, Vienna, and Kyiv, advocates for a foreign and security policy buildup against internal and external enemies. In her speech at the opening of the European Tolerance Talks 2025 in the Carinthian mountain village of Fresach, the former peace activist emphasized the need to defend the democratic achievements of the post-war era by all means. “If the rule of law no longer functions, citizens’ trust in the state, the economy, and the future will disappear, and in the end, everyone, elites and ordinary citizens, will remain victims of the arbitrary power of a fickle absolutism,” the journalist emphasized. This message also goes to those business representatives in Austria who believed and believe that they can make a fortune by using right-wing extremists as their agents, regardless of whether they wish to interpret the rule of law according to their own taste or destroy it. There is currently a debate in the US about whether Trump is a fascist, a paternalist, or the head of an oligopoly. According to Kahlweit, however, all democracy researchers agree on one thing: their shock that Americans are so openly and naively handing over their country to a man and his clique who want to erase 250 years of history, change the American narrative, roll back achievements, and curtail freedoms. Fight for peace and freedom But there is resistance, even if we are not supposed to see it. We must fight for freedom, even if that, in turn, may mean rearmament, deterrence, and military means. Who should know this better than a descendant of the Nazi state liberated by the Allies? And she says this deliberately in a country that clings to neutrality like a straw, as if clinging to the straw of constitutional neutrality would not mean that one would perish in the raging torrent of external aggression. The message continues on pressetext
