§ It seems that all ideas suspected of being "populist" --
or simply those ideas without the blessing of the elites -- will now be banned
in Germany. This restriction applies to criticism of the government (especially
regarding immigration and energy policies), of the EU, of Islam, of government
officials and of the media.
§ As in communist dictatorships, the more obvious the failings of
the government, the more aggressively the establishment attacks those who speak
out about them.
§ Large companies such as Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile), BMW, Mercedes-Benz
and the supermarket chain REWE obeyed straightaway and promised to place
Breitbart on the blacklist immediately, and never to advertise there again.
§ A plucky little pizza delivery service responded to the
blacklisting demand by declaring that it was "not the morality
police". The company was denounced by Der Spiegel as
"inept", and after "protests from customers", it ended up
capitulating, as the newspaper reported with much satisfaction.
The elites and intellectuals are
apparently now counted among the German minorities in need of protection.
Toward the end of last year, Germany
experienced a previously unheard-of boycott campaign – funded by the German
government, no less -- against several websites, such as the popular "Axis
of Good" ("Achse des Guten"). The website, critical
of the government, was suddenly accused of "right-wing populism".
The German government's efforts at
thought control seem to have begun with the victory of Donald J. Trump in the
US presidential election -- that seems to set the "establishment"
off. Germany's foreign minister and the probable future federal president,
Frank-Walter Steinmeier -- one of the first to travel to Iran
after the removal of sanctions there to kowtow to the Ayatollahs -- called
America's future president a "hate preacher".
Germany's newspapers were suddenly
littered with apocalyptic predictions and anti-American fulminations.
For hard-core Trump-haters, however, a
witch hunt by itself is insufficient; they want activism! Since November,
Germany's left-wing parties have had a strong increase in membership, as reported by Der Spiegel.
At the same time, the federal government evidently decided, at least regarding
the federal elections taking place in 2017, that it would no longer count on
journalists' self-censorship. The German government, instead of merely hoping
that newspapers would voluntarily -- or under pressure from the Press Council
-- refrain from criticising the government's immigration policies, decided that
it, itself, would inaugurate censorship.
The Federal Government's "Ministry
of Truth"
To this effect, as reported by Der Spiegel,
the Federal Interior Ministry, intends to set up a "Defense Center against
Disinformation ("Abwehrzentrum gegen Desinformation") in the
fight against "fake news on social networks". "Abwehr"
-- the name of Nazi Germany's military intelligence agency -- is apparently
meant to demonstrate the government's seriousness regarding the matter.
"It sounds like the Ministry of
Truth, 'Minitrue,' from George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984", wrote even the
left-leaning daily, Frankfurter Rundschau.
Frank Überall, national head of the
German Association of Journalists (DJV), bluntly stated: "This smells like
censorship."
It seems that all ideas suspected of
being "populist" -- or simply those ideas without the blessing of the
elites – will now be banned in Germany. This restriction applies to criticism
of the government (especially regarding immigration and energy policies), of
the EU, of Islam, of government officials and of the media.
The Federal Agency for Political
Education -- the information agency of the Interior Ministry – is quite open about it:
"Anti-elitism", "anti-intellectualism",
"anti-politics" and "hostility toward institutions" are the
"key characteristics of populism".
"Fat, Stupid White Men"
Toward the end of 2016, one of the biggest German media scandals
in recent memory erupted when Gerald Hensel, undoubtedly a member of Germany's
elite, tried to introduce a new form of internet censorship with the help of a
team of media agencies and political players. Until recently, Hensel was
"Director of Strategy" at Scholz & Friends, one of Germany's two big
advertising agencies. The firm counts among its clients multinational
corporations such as General Motors, the German federal government and the
European Commission; so one might say the company is close to the state.
Apparently in anger over Trump's election
victory, Hensel demanded:
"Let us freeze the cash flow of the right-wing extremist media!" He
had previously written a strategy brief declaring
debate to be useless; instead, the political enemy -- the "populists"
– needed to be fought, even with questionable methods:
"The liberal center must, especially
in these new digital and information-based wars, take off the kid gloves. We
have to turn the tables and learn about populism, particularly on the Internet...
Thus, we have to respond in a more wide-spread digital manner and with
explicitly less sympathy to those people who want to force their own future on
us -- and do this long before the next federal election... Political
storytelling, targeting the political enemy, influencers, forums,
rumours..."
"Measures," he added, have to
be taken against the "new right" – measures that:
"are 'Below the Line' and also
digital. We need 'good' troll factories in our fight against Frauke Petry,
Beatrix von Storch, Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen and the fat stupid white men
behind them. Ideally, as quickly as possible. Starting in 2017, they will
continue to dismantle the EU and thus our future and that of our
children."
Advertising Agency as Thought Police
Toward the end of November, Hensel
appealed to his colleagues in various advertising agencies, under the banner of
"no money for the right",
to boycott all those who fit the description of his bogeyman -- because they
were "hostile towards the EU," or because they might even harbour
sympathies for Donald Trump. He was jumping on a bandwagon. A witch hunt was
already under way against the American website Breitbart, due to the closeness
of its former executive chair, Steve Bannon, to Donald Trump. Without providing
any kind of proof, countless German newspapers and broadcasters claimed that Breitbart
was "racist", "sexist", "xenophobic",
"anti-Semitic" and "Islamophobic", and a "hate
site". The state-owned German television station ARD described Breitbart as
an "ultra right-wing" platform for "white supremacy". Other
journalists followed suit.
Those Not Reading Newspapers are Suspect
Hensel went one step farther. In the
style of a prosecutor during the Inquisition, he called to break the
"dominance of right-wing micro media". He seems to consider particularly
dangerous and subversive, anyone who reads articles that do not originate from
one of Germany's media empires:
"While I may satisfy my thirst for
information with my subscriptions to ZEIT or Le Mode Diplomatique,
the brave new-right freedom-fighter likes to stay informed via online media
such as the Axis of Good or Breitbart News."
This alone raises several suspicions.
Hensel, whose website (which since December can only be accessed with a
password) is graced by the display of a Soviet red star,
likes to eliminate his opponents swiftly. Breitbart, for example, is deemed
fascist ("salon-fascists"). Why? Because the blog -- and here he,
supposedly for simplicity's sake, quotes an article from the Süddeutsche
Zeitung -- "covers all the topics of German right-wing populism";
Breitbart reports about "the migrant and refugee policies of the German
federal government, as well as of supposed criminal acts conducted by migrants
and Islamic activities."
Hensel's solution? Boycott!
"There is freedom of speech in my
stupid little world. Undoubtedly, websites such as Breitbart News and the Axis
of Good... are legal media. Nevertheless, one could ask brand names whether
they... are aware that their banner ads appear on these particular websites and
represent their brand there."
This type of "asking", of
course, roughly corresponds to the mafia "asking" the pizzeria owner
if he has fire insurance.
(Image
source for Hensel: Internet Archive screenshot)
|
Alliance for Censorship
Hensel also considerately provided
detailed instructions for his readers. Those employed by an enterprise
should check whether the websites that he deemed "right-wing" are
registered on a blacklist. Employees of advertising agencies should form a
team, with Hensel and other authoritarians, for internet censorship:
"If your career in a media agency
has propelled you a little higher up the hierarchy, you might be able to bring
up the topic at the next media get-together with colleagues. 2017 is an
election year. You, dearest colleagues, clearly have a part in determining who
receives our advertising dollars."
Hensel also suggests that consumers put
direct pressure on companies or approach them via social media, to dissuade
them from advertising on "hate publishers" and "destroyers of
the future".
This manifesto was only published on a
private blog -- one that barely anyone had ever heard of before. But the power
of which Hensel boasted -- the networks in the advertising agencies and
editorial offices -- is real. On Hensel's command, big newspapers and websites
reported on the operation with much sympathy, along with the hashtag
#NoMoneyForTheRight.
Companies Submit to Pressure
Large companies such as Deutsche Telekom
(T-Mobile), BMW, Mercedes-Benz and the supermarket chain REWE obeyed
straightaway, and promised to place "Breitbart" on the blacklist
immediately and never to advertise there again. Der Spiegel cited Hensel's "resistance" (!) and
pilloried one business that did not follow suit: A plucky little pizza delivery
service that responded to the blacklisting demand by declaring that it was
"not the morality police". The company was denounced by Der
Spiegel as "inept", and after "protests from
customers", it ended up capitulating, as the newspaper reported with much
satisfaction.
Breitbart will cope with missing out on a
few hundred dollars of advertising revenue from Germany. Hensel, however, was
successful in his attempt to motivate his ad agency colleagues against German
websites such as the Axis of Good. Within a few days, none of them advertised
there anymore. Advertising revenue, equally important for websites as it is for
newspapers, came to a halt. Hensel had achieved his goal.
State-Financed Boycott
For this campaign, Hensel also received
support from the group Network Against Nazis ("Netz
gegen Nazis"), which receives financing from by Germany's
federal government, the German Football Association and the newspaper Die
Zeit, and which, until recently, also counted Scholz & Friends among
its supporters. In the tried and true Orwellian fashion of calling things their
opposite, the definition of "Nazi", for Network Against Nazis,
encompasses anyone who is "Islamophobic" or
"hostile toward the media".
Shortly after Hensel's call for boycotts,
the Axis of Good was place on a list of "popular right-wing blogs" by
Network Against Nazis -- together with the liberal publisher Roland Tichy and
the evangelical civil rights activist Vera Lengsfeld (who is a thorn in the
side of communists, because she fought against the East Germany's dictatorship
in the 1980s). The Amadeu-Antonio Foundation, which runs the Network Against
Nazis website, receives almost a
million euros per year from the federal government. Not surprisingly, it
demonstrates its gratitude with character assassinations of critics of the
government.
"The Trend of Denouncing People as
Right-Wingers"
Within a short time, Hensel had put
together a kind of mafia, bent on economically ruining whoever rejected his
ideological commands, by using libel and slander to scare away
their customers.
As the Frankfurter Allgemeine daily
newspaper commented:
"It is very fashionable right now to
stigmatize people and denounce them as 'right-wing' if they do not share your
views. Companies want nothing to do with that label, and, as you can see on
Twitter, they quickly change direction if they are aggressively made aware that
they support the wrong side with their ads (which are often automatically
activated and run on the internet)."
In response to the boycott campaign
against it, the Axis of Good showed how a business can defend itself: the
editors raised a public alarm
about Hensel's campaign in a series of reports and commentaries. Thousands of
readers complained on the Facebook page of Hensel's employer, Scholz &
Friends, which, after its initial support, began
to distance itself from its
employee's campaign and finally severed ties with him.
According to Hensel's
version, his campaign was "so successful" that he wanted
to take his employer "out of the line of fire".
"My former employer and I became the
victims of a massive hate storm consisting of countless of tweets, emails and
comments on social media... This is a systematic campaign."
Propaganda Offensive ahead of the Federal
Election
Of course, it was Hensel himself who
initiated a systematic campaign, including dirty tricks, which were waged with
an eye to the government's apparent plans to consolidate the population
ideologically. As research by the Axis of Good has revealed, Hensel's boycott
operation was closely tied to the plans by the Federal Ministry of Family
Affairs to conduct an advertising campaign in support of an open-door
immigration policy in 2017. For this, an advertising agency was necessary, as reported in September by
an industry journal:
"As revealed by a Europe-wide
announcement, the Federal Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women
and Youth is looking for an agency to advertise the brand 'Living democracy!
Actively against right-wing extremism, violence and inhumanity'."
Ad agencies were invited to submit their
suggestions by the middle of December. The Axis of Good concluded:
"There is a suspicion that this
[boycott] operation was a hurried pilot project for the bid for the
million-euro project by Schwesig's Family Ministry. A free trial run for the
so-called 'advertising pitch'."
Regarding the question of how much
economic damage was caused to the Axis of Good by the boycott campaign, Henryk
M. Broder, the website's publisher, told Gatestone:
"It is significant, but how big it
really was, we will only know in a few months. After all, it is not the
companies themselves that stopped advertising, but the agencies. The damage for
Scholz & Friends could be even bigger, but they do not talk about it."
The Hamburger Abendblatt daily referred to Hensel's campaign
as an "attack on the freedom of the press," adding: "It seems as
if the shot from the activists backfired."
As in communist dictatorships, the more
obvious the failings of the government, the more aggressively the establishment
attacks those who speak out about them.
Stefan Frank, a journalist and writer, is
based in Germany.
