The EU is working at full speed to complete its online surveillance-and-informant network. By the end of the year, all EU member states are required to present so-called “Trusted Flaggers” — institutions tasked with identifying “problematic” content — to Brussels for accreditation. Politicians from Germany’s Christian Democratic Union appear especially eager.

Hendrik Wüst, CDU politician and Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, is a child of the current zeitgeist. As the leader of Germany’s most populous state, he views it as his mission not merely to preach the dominant ideology of the CO₂-neutral society, but to enforce it rigorously. Together with his Green coalition partner, he works tirelessly to transform what was once Europe’s industrial heartland into an economic wasteland, perfectly aligned with the ideological fantasies of Brussels’ chief engineers.

Out with nuclear power, end coal-fired electricity — NRW must become “green.” And Wüst celebrates the coming economic collapse, soon to crown himself the king of debt, presiding over his own Rust Belt and mass unemployment. This disaster will secure him a special place in the history of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Censorship and Opinion Management

But this is only one side of Wüst’s political mission. The Münsterland native naturally also embraces the zeitgeist-approved fight against “hate and incitement” — that political doctrine used to suppress unwelcome opposition through moralizing poison darts, censorship, and the quiet threat of consequences. Wüst is the ideal politician of our time: ideologically flexible to the point of eco-socialist maximum contortion.

To give his convictions material force, Wüst pushed early for the use of so-called “Trusted Flaggers” — institutions that scan online content for political cleanliness. His favorite: So Done GmbH, a private software outfit that has not yet received official flagger status but has previously been contracted by politicians such as Robert Habeck to hunt down critics.

Wüst repeatedly promoted the company in the past but was forced by attorney Joachim Steinhöfel to sign a cease-and-desist declaration. The principle of neutrality apparently still applies — even for the Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia.

A Seamless Spy Network

Wüst and his allies pursue a single goal: to close every remaining gap so that critical commentary on climate policy, the war in Ukraine, or future pandemic waves can be detected and sanctioned.

By year’s end, all EU member states must identify and submit such informant institutions for approval. Brussels alone decides who gets accredited, ensuring no ideological outliers slip into the network.

Germany’s list of Trusted Flaggers already includes groups like REspect! (Youth Foundation Baden-Württemberg), HateAid gGmbH, and the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (vzbv).

It can be assumed that many public administrations will gladly offer themselves for this new opinion-policing ecosystem — a sort of taxpayer-funded employment program for bored bureaucrats convinced they’re defending democracy.

One for All

Wüst stands merely as a symbol of the current political zeitgeist, a pars pro toto in a sea of uniformity. Yet precisely because he is Minister President of the country’s most populous state, he becomes a pivotal figure in the fight against citizens’ sovereignty and free speech.

This fight has progressed so far that even private companies — like So Done — have discovered mass surveillance and content-scanning as a lucrative business model. Naturally, as so often today, publicly subsidized: financed with the very money taken from citizens to fund the surveillance apparatus that subsequently treats them all as suspects. One would laugh if it weren’t so sad — and so dangerous.

The Digital Block Warden

The practice of Trusted Flaggers evokes unpleasant memories of the East German “Blockwart” — the visible tip of a system wrapped in an invisible net of Stasi informants. Today the Orwellian state is taking shape: a visible leadership class cloaking its attack on civil liberties in soft democratic rhetoric, and a steadily growing pressure on critics, combined with a silent threat of consequences if one strays outside the permitted political corridor.

The silenced citizen — always the ideal of every authoritarian system.

The surveillance apparatus is long past its beta phase. In the second quarter of 2025 alone, 29 million online posts were registered under the Digital Services Act (DSA) as deleted or restricted in visibility. All this through the work of Europe’s Trusted Flaggers.

The Digital Prison

The Trusted Flagger system — baked into Brussels’ DSA and coordinated in Germany by the Federal Network Agency — will unleash its full destructive force the moment Brussels succeeds in establishing absolute control over the monetary system.

Should the bureaucrats manage — still technologically and intellectually questionable — to use a digital euro to fully centralize, monitor, and algorithmically control all transactions, we would face the fusion of potential offense and instant punishment.

How quickly could the financial lifeline of bloggers, journalists, and freethinkers be shut off? What still requires court rulings, administrative procedures, or compliant banks could soon be a single back-end click.

Brussels’ power seems more advanced than we realize. All member states have obediently submitted to this directive. A loud opposition is nowhere to be found. And so the only real counterweight remains the United States, which — for economic and ideological reasons — resists the EU’s censorship regime, its DSA, and its chat-control ambitions.

For the free individual, only one hope remains in the fight against the EU Politburo: the government of Donald Trump and the possibility that America remembers its European roots.

A Pathetic Kowtow to the Surveillance State

The ultimate conclusion for any freedom-loving individual: the fact that a company like So Done GmbH is celebrated as a start-up and held up as an example of German technological competence is the most pathetic kowtow imaginable to the rising totalitarianism.

Like a loaded gun, the political class presses the destructive potential of digital technology against the temples of the sovereign citizen.

Europe stands on the brink of civilizational collapse — exposed here as a vulgar form of corporatism, a grotesque collaboration between private industry and the state. The eco-socialist surveillance regime is the antithesis of European civilization, a bastard child of the 20th-century totalitarianisms.
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Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/ Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.