25. FEBRUAR 2025

Paradigm shift gigantica

Hej (here will be your name),

Anyone who watched U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference was likely left, as I was, with the unsettling sense of witnessing history in the making. Is America abandoning the very values we once held in common? Is Donald Trump closer to Vladimir Putin than to us? And is this the real turning point unfolding before our eyes? The U.S. is sidelining Europe. Eighty years after World War II, the moment has come for Europe to step out of America's shadow.

Security policy, the war in Ukraine, transatlantic relations—Vance barely touched on any of these. "The most pressing threat to Europe, in my view, is neither Russia, nor China, nor any external power." The real threat, he argued, comes from within. What followed was a speech in which Vance accused Europeans of fundamentally misunderstanding democracy. Two worlds clashed: the American libertarian notion of free speech and the European liberal one.

Did Elon Musk send J.D. Vance as a message because we, as Europeans, dare to regulate American platforms with the Digital Services Act? Because we refuse to let hate, incitement, and disinformation—tools that famously helped Trump win the election—go unchallenged in Europe? Because we are unwilling to hand over our information spaces to extremists and fascists?

The truth is, the AfD, which Vance highlighted in his speech and which Musk openly courted during the election campaign, is ideologically closer to the American Republicans than to the rest of our political system. They share the U.S. Republican ideology of libertarian, protectionist, and racist neoliberalism.

Meanwhile, Americans are growing increasingly anxious that their propaganda machines—Elon’s X chief among them—might be shut down in the EU. Perhaps it’s time to let that happen. After all, the EU is the world's third-largest economic power, after the U.S. and China. And for far too long, we have allowed American (social media) platforms walk all over us—platforms whose submission to Trump after the U.S. election laid bare the fundamental crisis of our digital public sphere like never before.

J.D. Vance was right about one thing: he accused us as Europeans of having no vision for the future. Friedrich Merz, the new German government and the EU have huge emancipation tasks ahead of them. Not only must the military security architecture of Europeans be completely rethought, but our information spaces, the lifelines of democracy, must also become independent of US corporations and their libertarian business models - that would be a vision.

With the Alliance for a Resilient Information Society, which we are currently establishing together with betterplace lab, Correctiv, Publix and others, we are attempting to lay the intellectual foundations for a holistic information, digital and media policy from within civil society. A policy paper will be published in mid-March, which we will of course also share with you here.

Sincerely
Alexander Chief Impact Officer

Alliance for the resilient information society

Since October, futur eins has been an alliance partner in the Alliance for the Resilient Information Society, which was launched by the betterplace lab together with Correctiv, Publix, the Bucerius Lab of the Zeit-Stiftung and More in Common. In the meantime, SpreuXWeizen, Das Nettz, and Faktor D have also joined. The betterplace lab's blog post provides a teaser of exactly what the unwieldy term “resilient information society” means. You'll get the deep dive in mid-March when the paper is published.

On March 13, 2025, we invite all interested parties to the public launch of the alliance at Publix. From 6.30 pm, we will be discussing with Markus Beckedahl (Netzpolitik), Martin Fehrensen (Social Media Watchblog), Christiane Hoffmann (spokesperson for the German government) and Laura Krause (More in Common) under the title “Discourse instead of destruction: How do we become a resilient information society?”

On March 14, the Alliance is hosting an all-day, closed event with experts from politics, civil society, journalism, science and business to launch the future process. We want to look into the future together and use futurology methods to backcast what needs to happen by 2050 to make the resilient information society - which is still a utopia - a reality.

New year began with 1st Future Council meeting in the engine room

The new year got off to a highly motivating start for us with the first meeting of the futur eins Future Council. Under the motto Utopia Knytkalas (a kind of potluck as a conference), we discussed social utopias, despite - and especially at the start of - the year 2025, with the impressions of the US elections breathing down our necks.

In the Maschinenraum at Berlin's Zionskirchplatz, we used the day not only to get to know each other, but also to try out “Gelöst oder gequetscht” - our favorite format in constructive journalism - on stage for the first time. We also discussed fundraising strategies with the Future Council and critically examined and reconsidered futur eins' topics - for a coherent overall strategy.

Our intersectoral advisory board brings together brilliant minds from politics, media, business, and civil society. Among those who have participated are: Frederik Fischer (Chairman of the Future Council), Aline Lüllmann (taz), Gergana Baeva (Media Policy Officer of Bündnis90/DieGrünen), Melanie Stein (Wir sind der Osten), Christoph Zeiher (dpa), Sabine Frank (Google), Wolfgang Kerler (1E9), Ranty Islam (Media University), Steffi Kim (KIMKOM), Johanna Famulok (Strategic NGO Communication), Nataly Bleuel (Journalist & Trauma Therapist), Franziska Teubert (Federal Association of German Start-Ups) and many more.

futur eins in the media

Alexander Sängerlaub spoke to the Süddeutsche Zeitung about disinformation campaigns for the Bundestag elections. The article “How lies mislead voters” deals with “the classics”: a lack of information and news literacy, Russian disinformation and AfD propaganda. (Article behind Paywall)

Disinformation is a global issue. The Australian news platform SBS also spoke with Alexander about climate-related disinformation and how, in Germany, the AfD—a party that, like the U.S. Republicans, denies human-caused climate change—entered the Bundestag with 20.8% of the vote.

What We're Currently Reading: Patrick J. Deneen – Why Liberalism Failed

Has Liberalism Failed?That’s the central argument of Patrick J. Deneen, the conservative U.S. political scientist and intellectual mentor of J.D. Vance, who also appeared on the ZDF program Precht.

In Why Liberalism Failed, Deneen contends that liberalism hasn’t collapsed due to external enemies or unfortunate circumstances—it has failed precisely because it operates as intended. Both progressive and conservative strands of liberalism are built on an excessive emphasis on individualism and the pursuit of personal autonomy, which, over time, erodes communal values, institutions, and social bonds.

Deneen identifies three main problems:

1. Liberalism undermines its own foundations
   By prioritizing individual freedom and detaching from traditions, liberalism leads to the breakdown of social norms and institutions that once provided stability.

2. It fosters economic and cultural inequality
   While liberalism promises prosperity, it benefits elites, weakens local communities, and increases social isolation, particularly in its modern libertarian, neoliberal economic form.

3. It depletes both people and nature
   The relentless pursuit of freedom and technological progress results in environmental destruction and an alienated, restless society.

Ultimately, Deneen does not advocate for a return to old systems but rather calls for a new way of thinking: local, community-centered structures and a political approach that puts human well-being back at the core.

Conclusion: Liberalism hasn’t simply “failed”—it was programmed for self-destruction from the very beginning.

Have you made it this far?

You're amazing and we're delighted. Thank you! We welcome criticism, suggestions, a ❤️oder other impulses (e.g. to info@futureins.org) of any kind. You can even give us a call: +49 171 206 2568.

futur eins
over and out 🚀