I arrived at Hamburg main station, tracks 13+14 - just where over a week ago, a mentally ill German woman injured 15 in a brutal knife attack, some severely. She was stopped by two men: a young refugee from Syria and a man from Chechnya. The press quickly dropped the case.
That had not at all been the case when a similarly ill man, but a refugee, killed two in Bavaria. For weeks, up to our elections, this tragic event was heavily exploited to push anti-migrant politics.
Honesty, and humanity.
Germans don't need Putin to be structurally racist. We can do that on our own.
(of course, I wont deny that there are disinformation campaigns by Russia. But overemphasizing them shifts the focus away from the responsibility of media and politicians).
Your response strikes me as slightly aggressive. Maybe you didn't read the second paragraph of my post?
Again: Of course, there is RT and bot-networks, of course the Russian government supports fascist networking all over the world, and Russia is interfering from the right and through populist internet spaces into media and politics. In some
You do understand that politics are a huge ship with many groups of interest pushing into different directions at different levers?
But I am really tired of the 'it's all because of Russia' analysis. Yes, a bunch of AfD-politicians are on Putin's payroll (not to forget Schröder & possibly Kretschmer), and this might have a moderate political influence.
But structural racism is a deeply entrenched system of cutural values and beliefs. How else do you explain the actions of liberal politicians, bureaucrats and institutions on these topics?
ARD and the major newspapers are definitely not *directly* controlled by RT, but the impressive media dynamics following the attack in Solingen compared to the recent one in Hamburg stands no comparison.
Are Merz, Spahn, Lindner and Dobrindt in reality nice guys, but spew out racist shit when Moscow tells them so?
I would make a bet with you.
Putin is an autocratic asshole and has to some extent influence in the world.
But:
- Putin is not the reason neocolonialism and Fortress Europe exist. That fossil capitalism destroys our planet and creates existential fears.
- Putin is not behind SiliconValley TechBro-Fascism (although some of the dudes might have read posts from russian fash trolls)
- Putin is not behind everything we don't like. The world is more complex than this.
Also, to put Putin's 500 millions (which we both agree that this should not happen) into context: public media funding in the EU stands currently at 22 billion € (https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/european-media-industry-outlook). Also, think that players like the Bertelsmann foundation (70 million) or Konrad Adenauer Stiftung's (200 million) and many others finance with a share of their budget media programs in and outside the EU.
Putin's government is extremely efficient in infecting public discourses with really bad shit in order to destabilize societies they consider as adversaries. I just don't think they are responsible for all evil in the world and that it happens easily to overlook other structures..
I admit that your background makes that you have more first-hand experience about Russian interference than me. But I know also a thing or two about German society. And believe me: Germans were already racists before Putin was President.
Sure, we won't be able to discern exactly how many percentage points of AfD votes are generated by RT networks.
It is interesting though, that we two are discussing so fervently, when you just wanted to point out that Russian interference sucks and supports the rise of rightwing parties and I just wanted to point out that there is a lot of racism deeply rooted in Germany. Maybe our views are somehow compatible but we see differing proportions of each factor?
Finally, I invite you to work on your classification of Left & Right-wing. There are also more dimensions and we need to be careful to distance ourselves from ideas likethe horseshoe theory, promoted by the German Verfassungsschutz (and I hope you agree that they are not ... very .. neutral).
https://www.volksverpetzer.de/analyse/hufeisentheorie/
Wolfgang Lucht
Kristian Kiehling
Earthworm 🐌