Good night, Mainzelmännchen: How ZDF sends fascism into the nursery#
There are those moments in the German media landscape when you inevitably wonder whether the editors-in-chief are actually sniffing the glue collectively. The Second German Television recently did an editorial balancing act, in which they not only tore the moral ties, but also broke the entire journalistic backbone. The protagonists of this absurd play: an antifascist musician, a right-wing extremist politician and the defenseless target group of eight- to twelve-year-old children.
Cancel Culture for Beginners: Danger Dan Must Stay Out#
Let's start with the actually harmless part of the story, the late evening program. There, in the established satirical show "Die Anstalt", the musician Danger Dan was to present his latest song "Keine Angst", a piece that explicitly deals with the resistance against right-wing extremism. But just a short time ago, the management of the Mainz broadcaster obviously got cold feet. An alleged call for violence was detected in the anti-fascist lines and the artist and his pianist Igor Levit were unceremoniously invited back.
In the case of fee-financed broadcasting, the freedom of the arts apparently comes to an end precisely when it comes to positioning itself clearly and unambiguously against the right. Danger Dan himself rightly called the process a scandalous encroachment on artistic freedom and accused the ZDF director of simply censoring anti-fascist songs. You have to let this absurdity melt away on your tongue: Sending a song against Nazis to mature adults after 10 pm is too sensitive for the station. This could worry concerned citizens.
AfD propaganda between children's news and cartoon#
But what does the public service daily program look like when the really vulnerable target group sits unsuspectingly in front of the screens? Appearance: Ulrich Siegmund. This gentleman acts as chairman of the AfD faction in Saxony-Anhalt. On the historical and factual classification: This specific state association of the AfD is officially classified by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and with a letter and seal as a confirmed right-wing extremist. And what does ZDF do? It is precisely this figurehead of the securely right-wing extremist scene in the context of the children's news "logo!" that the microphone is completely unabashed and without critical classification.
So while you save adult viewers a song about moral courage, Mr. Siegmund is allowed to spread his völkisch fever dreams in front of hundreds of thousands of primary school students. His unchallenged key message to the children: Your friends with a migration background should better be segregated into separate school classes, because they will go "home" anyway.
The geographic insolvency of the ethnic ideology#
Let's let this mental thin shit sink in for a second. Where exactly should these children go "home"? To Herne-Wanne? To Castrop-Rauxel? Back to Berlin-Neukölln? The absolute majority of these children were born here in Germany. They speak German, they have a German passport, and their damn “home” is exactly the schoolyard where they play with their friends.
Spitting in the face of these children in a supposedly educational format and explaining to them that they are only tolerated guests on call here is not just factual. It is perfidious, malicious and, in its blatant demand for ethnic segregation in primary schools, head-on violates the prohibition of discrimination in our Basic Law.
The Broken Compass of Public Law#
So let's summarize this journalistic total failure: an artist who opposes fascism in the tradition of democratic enlightenment is censored from the adult program because his words could allegedly be too "dangerous". The top politician of a far-right state association, on the other hand, is allowed to explain to elementary school students at prime time that school apartheid would actually be a pretty fine thing.
Anyone who uninvites anti-fascist art and at the same time rolls out the brown carpet directly into the nursery has not only lost his moral compass, but also shattered it in a public way. Those who make such editorial decisions no longer need enemies of democracy – they can easily dismantle the defensive society from their own broadcasting headquarters in Mainz.