SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert has deactivated his Twitter profile. The discussions at the short message service “and also the way in which society is represented there or is absolutely not represented at all” led to “false conclusions and errors in political decisions,” said Kühnert in a video call with the editorial network Germany. At least he’s found that if he spends too much time on Twitter, he has a distorted perception of reality.
He has practically not used the account in the past few months, said Kühnert on Monday in an interview with the editorial network Germany. “Then you just have to draw the conclusion for yourself at some point and say: This doesn’t seem to be the right medium for sending and receiving, especially for my political work.” That’s why he deactivated the account.
“This account does not exist”
Kühnert had almost 370,000 followers on Twitter. His profile was no longer available on Monday. “This account does not exist,” said the short message service. His Instagram profile with a good 93,000 followers was still online on Monday.
In a live conversation with party leader Lars Klingbeil on Instagram on Monday evening, Kühnert said the decision to leave Twitter is unlikely to be permanent. The stumbling block to deactivating the Twitter account on Monday of all days was the reaction to an interview, the statements of which were sometimes spread in an alienated way. “That was just too stupid for me today,” said Kühnert. It is not to be understood as a political statement against social networks or the like.
Kühnert was criticized for statements made on Monday morning. On the broadcasters RTL and ntv, he expressed reservations about demands for deliveries of German battle tanks to Ukraine. “These statements that we don’t want to be gradually drawn into the war, that we don’t want to encourage Russia to act completely irrationally in the end and attack completely different states, that’s no small thing.” That’s an important aspect, which must be considered with “every hot heart”.
