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Green youth spokeswoman Heinrich: "Maximum stupid and inappropriate."
Photo:
Bodo Schackow / dpa
Sarah-Lee Heinrich is just twenty years old.
The newly elected spokeswoman for the Green Youth has seen a lot in her very short political career.
An angry shit storm on Twitter, for example.
Her name has been trending as a hashtag since yesterday, #sarahleeheinrich.
She is accused of the content of old tweets.
It's not just any old tweets.
Some of Heinrich's statements and comments are openly anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist.
In 2015, the teenager apparently thought it was wise or funny to post the following sentence: "Words that I use too often: - Same - Heil".
In another tweet, she used the expression "Tunten" as an insult, once she wrote, twice, in capital letters: "Cunt".
At that time she was, according to her own statement, "13, 14 years old."
"Sins of youth," say some who defend them.
Others think: "You can hear that in every schoolyard".
If you enter the search terms "When I was 14 ..." on Twitter, you will find out what seems to be normal at this age.
Among other things, people talk about the fact that swastikas were painted on the school desks in class and that "gay" was used as a swear word.
Sure, teenagers want to impress their peers, and often it doesn't matter who gets hurt in the process. But teenagers are especially anti-Semitic when society lets them. Statements like those of Sarah-Lee Heinrich have to be contradicted - analogously in the school yard as well as in the digital world on Twitter. The fact that the spokeswoman for the Green Youth apparently found what she said as normal as a youth is reflected above all in our society.
Anti-Semitism, homophobia, racism, everything somehow normal in Germany, and even more normal under 14-year-olds.
It is precisely in this normality that lies the scandal, which cannot surprise anyone who has ever listened to people who do not belong to the white, Christian majority society.
For example, anyone who read the news in the last week found out about the Jewish musician Gil Ofarim, who, he says, was not allowed to check into his hotel because he wore a Star of David on his chain.
His statements were followed by outrage and protest.
Good this way.
Shit storms are a distraction from the real problem
It is difficult to reconstruct whether someone contradicted Heinrich's remarks, which she blew into the wide world of the Internet as a teenager, on Twitter.
Or in the school yard.
Somebody should have done it.
At the moment, however, the loudest voices are those who defend otherwise anti-Semitic, racist or sexist statements down to the blood.
Those who like to rail against the »Cancel Culture«.
The campaign against Heinrich, including racist insults and death threats, is kindly supported by an algorithm that has no feelings but loves anger and indignation.
Shit storms are not a contradiction, but a distraction from the real problem.
If teenagers still grow up today in a world in which it is normal to ostracize people, to abuse them, to discredit whole groups of people, then they must not be able to rest on this "normality".
You have to learn differently.
The aim of contradiction is, among other things, to give impetus to unlearn things.
Happy is someone who learns these important lessons at the age of 14.
Bad luck if you only learn to resist anti-Semitism as an adult.
It would be terrible if you never learned it.
However, progress and learning processes are made more difficult in a society in which young people in particular are motivated to record all their thoughts online.
How can they grow when the old self is permanently online, visible to users, retweetable and condemnable?
Statements by a 14-year-old often say little about the person she will become.
And a lot about the world in which she grew up.
