Sore Limbs Cannot be Cured by Lavender Water

by PFS on May 11, 2026

Sore Limbs Cannot be Cured by Lavender Water

Andreas Tank¹

May 11, 2026

In 2026, basically every country has their evil right-wing boogey man. Some countries, like the United States with Donald Trump, are already governed by the political right. Germany is not and has not yet been under a right-wing government. The AfD (Alternative for Deutschland) is the right-wing party but the guy who is considered to pull the strings behind the curtains did not even make his way to the politics on the federal level but is the head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia. His name is Björn Höcke and he was recently invited to a big German podcast where he talked 4 and a half hours about his past as a history teacher and his political world view.² This podcast episode, which is currently above 4 million views on YouTube, produced a huge meltdown all over German social media. Everyone in the mainstream media was shocked that this podcast could be aired without a certain classification by an expert—in other words: without left-wing censorship. Of course, nobody cried for censorship when the head of the leftist party was on the same podcast. The desperation was so big, that a few days later, three of the biggest left-wing parties (SPD – Social Democrats, Grüne – Green Party and Linke – Leftists) of Germany and with them a lot of politicians announced that they will leave X (formally Twitter) for good. Their plan is not yet obvious but a good prediction is, that most of them switch to bluesky—a twitter fork—now and after the launch of W Social—a bluesky fork, introduced by the WEF in 2026 and currently in its beta phase—they will have their officially state-owned social media.

The AfD is leading in current polls on the federal level and the next vote on a state level will be on September 6^th 2026 in Saxony-Anhalt where the AfD has already about 40% of the votes and might appoint the Prime Minister. This might be the beginning of a huge change in another direction of politics in Europe.

It goes without saying, that without Germany, there won’t be a European Union because Germany is the pay master for the EU. And the crises, caused by all other parties except the AfD (especially the CDU under Angela Merkel), are getting big enough for the a-political tax payer to notice. Before the AfD was even founded in 2013, the book “Germany is abolishing itself” (Deutschland schafft sich ab) by the Social Democrat politican and head of the German Bundesbank Thilo Sarrazin had a huge public impact, where he explained in great detail the demographic problem of declining birth rates and large immigration. 2011 Angela Merkel decided on the dismantling of nuclear energy because of the event in Fukushima, although Germany has the safest nuclear power plants in the world and no tsunamis but the Green party was getting stronger and they had started as anti-nuclear movement. In 2015, Angela Merkel opened the borders to migrants by saying the famous slogan “Wir schaffen das” (We will make it) and in 2020 all parties together demanded stricter lockdown and vaccine rules. The AfD stood up against all these politics and the opposing forces of the mainstream and state media which causes Björn Höcke to call all other parties “cartel parties.”

Now, let me do a deep dive into Björn Höckes statements in the podcast of Ben Ungeskripted. Höcke was at first a teacher in a deprived school where most of the students could hardly speak German before he switched to a school where he could teach history and sports on a more privileged level. He mentions that family members of him were citizens of Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, who starved to death when the red army conquered the city. He explains in detail how this view has formed his mind that there has been evil on both sides in world war two and that he is not willing to accept that Germany must take guilt on everything that happened. Höcke already released a book about himself in 2018 (“Nie zweimal in denselben Fluss”—not twice in the same river—a reference to Heraclitus which reveals Höckes affinity to mystical dialectics). The book is in an interview format and his interview partner mentions the statement of Hegel “Sore limbs cannot be cured by lavender water”. Höcke is pretty certainly educated enough on history to know that Hegel meant with this sentence, that the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation cannot be reformed gradually but needs radical change. At that time (around 1801/02) Germany was attacked several times by France and militarily weakened, which caused most of the Germans at that time to be in favor of a more centralized government. The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which was abolished in 1806, was in strong favor of the liberals (liberal in the classical European sense) because the state was weak which of course made Germany wealthy and prosperous but even Goethe admitted that they needed the military strength against outside enemies. However, there are two critical points, that puts this into a new perspective in 2026.

First, the communication systems 200 years ago were slow which gave centralized systems a huge advantage but this technical disadvantage has vanished with telegraphs, phones and the internet. “The Sovereign Individual”³

already made predictions in 1999 on how the world would change, empires would crumble and decentralized nations would reappear due to faster communication techniques. The second insight are the improvements of weapons in the last century. Manpower is not anymore the decisive factor in war as it was 200 years ago. Even though Höcke is certainly not a libertarian and not even that much into revisionist history to get the nuances between democratic and monarchic wars,⁴ he is most definitely aware of the tendencies of centralization of the European Union which he strongly opposes. In a press conference, he stated that Germany is no longer a sovereign nation. “We gave our ability to defend ourselves to the NATO, we gave our sovereignty about finances to the ECB, we gave our economic sovereignty to the EU, we gave our health sovereignty to the WHO.”⁵ When (not if) Höcke will start to play a major role in German politics, we can expect him to reverse the centralization tendencies. Höcke is interested in a sovereign Germany, not in a takeover of the European Union under German rule. He also is not focused on a career in politics with a fixed income and a permanent position. 10 years ago, Höcke was a complete economic illiterate who spoke of turbo-capitalism in Africa and neoliberalism in Germany and how this somehow influenced all the bad decisions in politics. In his book, his interview partner asked him, if he is an anti-capitalist and if liberalism is the reason for all the negative impacts and Höcke answered ambiguously with a third position. In the spectrum, Hoppe laid down in “A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism”⁶ Höcke would certainly find himself in The Socialism of Conservatism. When he was campaigning in Thuringia between the candidate of the CDU Mario Vogt and the leftist candidate Bodo Ramelow, he was asked about the German energy crisis (a quite confusing questioner asked him if he wants private nuclear power plants) and Höcke answered that the market must take care of that and he does want as little political influence as possible.⁷ Another time, he was asked about libertarian topics and he said that he has read some libertarian literature, although he unfortunately did not go into further detail.

Now, it’s hard to tell if Höcke can be influenced by ideas like the Europe of a thousand Liechtensteins. He certainly still holds the nation state in its highest regard but he is in favor of decentralization and from my point of view, this is better than a president who calls himself a libertarian and even an anarcho-capitalist but conserves the central bank, quadruples the money supply and makes himself even more vulnerable towards the United States and Israel. At this point, it is more the libertarian leaning people of Germany who like to hear the right words but don’t care that much about political content. I am interested in seeing the AfD party leaving the European Union (Dexit)⁸ which will most definitely destroy the EU, the privatization of defense (the essay of Hoppe, which was based on Gustave de Molinaris “The Production of Security” which was translated and published in German by Tomasz M. Froelich, a politician of the AfD who currently has a position at the European parliament),⁹ the adherence to cash and the potential of Bitcoin¹⁰ (a proposal of AfD politician Dirk Brandes) and the abolition of the state broadcasting.

Most of the AfD voters and right-wing people in Germany are interested in anti-immigration politics and they see this as a form of a strong authoritarian state instead of simply reparations for the tax payer. Höcke, in the podcast with Ben Ungeskripted, mentions that he realizes that the welfare state is responsible for most of the problems, although you can assume that he only wants to get rid of the welfare state for migrants, not for Germans. Libertarians on the other side want politicians like Milei calling themselves libertarians and capitalists, praising the free market and as long as they can sell books with similar content, they don’t care if nothing really changes because the politician is not even interested in decentralization or taking back sovereignty. So the question of the future, like already presented by Hoppe in “Getting Libertarianism Right,”¹¹ is if the Right can take economic advise from libertarians and if libertarians can become a little bit more conservative (instead of blindly anti-authoritarian). At the end of the day it is important what is done, not what politicians say. If you call yourself a liberal in the classical sense and cut back the state, this is a step in the right direction. If you call yourself a liberal in the social democratic sense and you make more egalitarian politics and affirmative action laws, this is a step in the wrong direction. Höcke likes these polylogisms, Milei does not. But Milei lied through his teeth. If Höcke will accomplish libertarian goals like decentralization but at the same time calls himself an anti-capitalist and against liberalism … well, I’ll go with the action instead of the words. At least he is a radical and not a gradualist, since German crises are far too big for small reforms and sore limbs cannot be cured by lavender water.