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Publicist Carolin Emcke: Accusation of anti-Semitism because of an alleged comparison
Photo: Arno Burgi / picture alliance / dpa
The publicist Carolin Emcke spoke for about seven minutes on Friday at the virtual party conference of the Greens about agitation and intentional distortion of reality on the Internet by populists. She had preceded the speech with the sentence that "a new explanation" was needed. Because agitation, right-wing misinformation and anti-scientific thinking are gaining more and more influence, with calculation on the part of the populists: "The social division that they claim to regret is their deepest political longing."
In one sentence she said “Jews” and “climate protectors” - and now reaps an orchestrated shit storm: On Saturday morning, the Springer tabloid “Bild” accused her of comparing “climate researchers with persecuted Jews”. Shortly after noon, the "world" followed with the same thesis. By this time, the (just) popular anger had long been boiling on Twitter and other so-called social media.
On the Twitter channel of “Bild”, Emcke, who was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 2016, was described as a “complete idiot”, as a “Holocaust defender” and “completely balla-balla”.
The Greens, at whose party congress she spoke, are "the most radical party" of all and have to be "monitored by the protection of the constitution."
The party and its guest speaker were repeatedly accused of being anti-Semitic on Saturday.
The »Bild« social media team did not intervene in this »discussion«.
But what exactly did Emcke say?
For example this:
“It is time to finally ask the question of the connection between democracy and truth.
It is time for us to admit: A public that is fragmented in social media and charged with disinformation and resentment is touching the legitimizing core of a democracy.
(...) But in the present, public communication has in fact been privatized and transferred to the unfiltered power of the platform economy, which has no interest in distinguishing between right and wrong. "
In her speech, she wanted to present the political calculation in the disinformation:
“The object at which the indignant protest is directed is as interchangeable as it is willful.
(...) We will see that in the election campaign.
We will see manipulation and lies.
(...) It will not matter which people or which parties it hits. "Because it will hit" everyone in our democracy
".
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Shortly afterwards come the sentences that »Bild« now declares to be »scandal at the Green Party Congress«:
»The radical hostility towards science, the cynical exploitation of social insecurity, the populist mobilization and the readiness for resentment and violence will remain.
There will certainly be talk of the elite again.
And then presumably it will not be the Jews and cosmopolitans, not the feminists or the virologists, who are warned against, but the climate researchers. "
"I beg your pardon," asked "Bild" in the article about the speech: "There is just as much agitation against climate researchers as it was once (and still today) against Jews?"
You could read it like that, but only if you remove the last two sentences from their context.
Then Emcke's argumentation would be at least "tasteless," as "Bild" finds.
This was promptly followed by individual voices from other parties: "The suffering of many persecuted, murdered and marginalized Jews, anti-Semitism is being exploited here for the climate issue, and climate researchers are being stigmatized?" Asked Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner, CDU, on Twitter on Saturday afternoon and linked to it a 14-second passage from the speech: "I can't believe it."
"Carolin Emcke is above any suspicion of anti-Semitism"
She probably doesn't have to, if one can believe Michael Kellner, the political federal manager of the Greens: "Carolin Emcke is above any suspicion of anti-Semitism and in her speech she uncovered the logic of demagogy."
In fact, Emcke in no way compares the persecution of the Jews or the virulent anti-Semitism with criticism of climate researchers.
It shows that misinformation will hit everyone, especially in the election campaign: the object "on which the indignant protest is directed is as interchangeable as it is willful."
She then lists Jews, cosmopolitans, feminists and virologists as exemplary targets of wanton protests of the past.
And in relation to the upcoming election campaign of the Greens, climate researchers would then be the target of such campaign-like misinformation.
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The poet and publicist Max Czollek explained on Twitter: “Logically, nobody is equated with climate researchers here, not even the Jews.
Instead, Emcke emphasizes that conjunctions of certain assignments and fear constellations exist.
And who would know that better than the ›Bild‹ newspaper? «
What Emcke described in her speech is a well-known phenomenon: »The idea that an elite of Jews, women, climate scientists and virologists rule the world is an integral part of the new right ideology.
Naming this is not a relativization of the Holocaust, but an important lesson in intersectionality. "
Carolin Emcke, who worked for SPIEGEL from 1998 to 2006, among other things, does not want to comment on the one-sided debate about her speech, as her agency told SPIEGEL on request: “Anyone who takes the trouble, the whole Watching speech knows how to classify the content. "
We document her complete, unabridged speech in the video included above.
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