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People say a ghost is going around Europe, the specter of the left mob. However, this alleged leftist mob seems to exist mainly in the minds of those who think that anti-fascism is "as bad" as fascism. While journalists, artists, activists, academics, and individuals today face a multitude of right-wing and right-wing extremist attacks, there are still some people who talk about left-wing or left-wing violence as the real problem at the moment. Although they may know that violent acts of links have declined significantly.
Germans love traditions, but sometimes they do not even know in what long-standing tradition they are. The trivialization of right-wing violence while asserting alleged at least as brutal left-wing violence is such a tradition in Germany. (It is not only German, of course, but representatives of the so-called horseshoe theory, according to which right-wing and left-wing extremists are equally threatening for democracies, can be found everywhere.)
The philosopher and author Dania Alasti writes in her book "Women of the November Revolution" about how "many riots, demonstrations and strikes from 1915 to 1918 were significantly supported by women" and how many of the protesting women are forgotten today. Interesting for the question of left and right-wing violence is her observation of the legal prosecution of political violence, to which she quotes an investigation of 1922:
"In his extensive research work ' Four Years of Political Murder,' the mathematician Emil Gumbel summed up all known cases of political murder (...) by left and right-wing groups in 1922 and compared the prosecution and the work-up: the comparison between the Bavarian Räterepublicans was frightening * A total of 616 years were sentenced to imprisonment, while the Kapp putschists were imprisoned for a total of five years, his work can be understood as a meticulous critique of ideology, detailing how violent acts by right-wing associations were and how little they were prosecuted, while there was much less violence on the part of left-wing councils or insurgents, but they were severely prosecuted, at the same time (...) public awareness was wrong, left-wing violence was directly condemned, and right-wing violence met with evasive sentences became like: 'W I disapprove of political murder on every side. '"
This kind of shift from discourse, away from right-wing violence, we see today. People who point out in social networks, from which right journalists or anonymous accounts they are harassed or threatened, are accused, they would in turn "rush" against these people, inciting the "left mob", people their followers "to feed reproach them "- even though they simply name perpetrators or make attacks visible. By and large, that means: Do not resist and shut up when Nazis attack you, or you'll be as bad as they are. Or, as FDP politician Sebastian Czaja put it: "Anti-fascists are also fascists". Victim-victim reversal as from the textbook.
In doing so, what is considered to be "hate speech" is often simply a naming of states. If you defend people who defend right or right-wing extremists - whether out of ignorance or actual political motivation - by pointing out what they're doing, then you quickly hear defenses like, "Stop rushing against me!" or "you discredit me publicly!" It is often people who have no idea (or want to) what journalists or activists who report on right-wing extremism experience, and what actual agitation is: threats of violence, death threats, publication of private addresses or other private information, so-called enemy lists and calls to silence the person.
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This form of right-wing threat is on the rise, and those who claim that leftists are supposed to be just as bad are downplaying everything. It does not get any glamorous either because people often come up with only the G20 riots - or just Stalin - when they look for examples of allegedly so-common left violence, moving voluntarily or involuntarily into unsympathetic neighborhoods: rights are constantly searching for examples of supposedly left-wing threats in order to present oneself as a victim.
The NPD has just announced a demonstration against three journalists who are investigating right-wing extremist circles. Right-wing extremism expert Andreas Speit said on Deutschlandfunk that he feared that "sometimes some colleagues think so slightly: 'Yes, man, do I have to do this to myself when I report on the report, if it could have such consequences?' "
The cabaret artist Idil Baydar, who often addresses issues such as racism and other discrimination, was only able to give a speech in police protection a few days ago in Frankfurt, because she was repeatedly threatened with murder. At the same time, it is known that the armament of the right-wing and right-wing extremist scene continues with weapons. According to a report of the "Tagesspiegel", the protection of the constitution currently assumes that 750 right-wing extremists "have a [...] weapons permit".
In her acceptance speech for the Heinrich Böll Prize, writer Juli Zeh recently considered political commitment and its forms. Speaking about Greta Thunberg's speech to the United Nations, she said Thunberg "explicitly substitutes alleged policy failure (' How dare you? ') For constructive proposals" - as if Thunberg did not make permanent concrete proposals for a better climate policy. Toe, on the other hand, sees it as a commitment like this "can turn into the menacing, if it comes from the claim that the democratic system and its representatives are not (any more) able to meet the challenges of our time." What exactly should be "threatening"? At the same time, Zeh worried that Thea Dorn would not be able to voice her "light Fridays-for-future-critical stance" without being "roared from the podium" or that "AfD co-founder Bernd Lucke had been shouted down" tried to give a lecture at the University of Hamburg. "Meanwhile, both verbal and physical attacks on politicians are on the German agenda, whether they are from 'left' or 'right'." - How does it matter exactly, whether they are from left or right?
If left activists at a university at an event "buh!" If linguistic changes are proposed in gender studies, if students complain about texts containing racist concepts or theories, then there is always talk of a supposed hypersensitivity of this generation, which allegedly no longer wants to deal with "dissenters" and just want to hang out in safe spaces. It is basically a complete feature-art genre that addresses this supposed discourse refusal.
Now a few weeks ago at the University of Vienna, a student with a weapon was sitting in a physics lecture. A few days later, a knife was found in a check at the university, which he carried with him. Regarding Islamfeindlicher violent fantasies, which emanated from his account, he claimed according to the magazine "profil", his Twitter account had been hacked. Austrian media reported on the case, German media consistently ignored him. Why? And what would have happened if, for example, a weapon had been found in a student's lecture by AfD founder Lucke? One can only speculate, but probably something might have been going on.