The opinion editor at Die Welt has resigned after the conservative German newspaper printed an article from Elon Musk justifying his support for the hard-Right AfD.
Eva Marie Kogel said she handed in her resignation after the newspaper went to print on Friday.
No, really, well done there. Your paper prints something you don’t like then leave the newspaper.
More people should act on their ethics. Sure, sure, the ethics could be wrong and all that but standing up for them is novel in public life these days….
The Left = anyone with a differing opinion to us must be banned from airing it.
German media are even more detached from reality than ours.
Journalists generally simply refuse to believe that people vote AfD or might have a reason to do so.
For the last 30 years I have watched or listened to PresseClub on Jerry TV and wireless on Sundays. A group of journoes discuss topics of the day. They have different ones on every week and every bloody week, they miss the point staring them in the face or simply get it wrong. It is genuinely funny.
The woman was supposed to be an opinion editor. If you cannot bear to print a range of opinions, then you’re a failure
Imagine if the next German government is an AfD one. Unlikely to have an outright majority, but it would be funny watching the German media have a melt down.
No, Tim, this isn’t about “efficks”, it’s the German version of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Amusingly they are also very susceptible to original TDS at the same time.
salamander: « Imagine if the next German government is an AfD one. Unlikely to have an outright majority »
Amusingly, perhaps, as things stand the only way that there could be an AfD government is if they had an outright majority. Failing that, the other parties will come together with no coherent programme other than keeping the AfD’s “far-right”, “fascist” fingers off the levers of govt.
February will see a new coalition of CDU and Greens and FDP joining up and the bickering will resume.
BTW
Die Welt has always been soft-left.
I guess that counts as conservative these days.
Funny bit – in the US, the owner of the LA Times told the staff they couldn’t make a presidential endorsement. One of the prominent journos at the WaPo was, of course, livid and insisted that they should have all resigned. Shortly afterwards Bezos tells the WaPo that they can’t endorse either. Still waiting on the resignations there.
I’m guessing the German twat already had a replacement job lined up.
Curious, anybody here know what the AfD stands for that is “far right” and “fascist” in the minds of the Left?
I remember reading about Marine Le Pen or another Euro candidate who was described as “far right” and she was pretty much standard Euro moderate left on everything except mass immigration.
@ Esteban
AfD wants to limit immigration and give preference to indigenous (to Germany) people. This is at odds with Comintern plrinciples so it is deemed “far right”
TMB:
This, basically.
Germany is still in the phase where TPTB can and will try to maintain the Cordon Sanitaire against AfD at all costs.
It’ll take another election cycle to make even the most dense see that the “traditional parties” are actively trying to disenfranchise a large part of the population, at which point you’ll get a meltdown, with no guarantee which way it’ll go.
Here in Clogland that meltdown has already happened, giving sudden rise to BBB over the farmers’ protests, and the equally sudden rise of NSC over some pretty big scandals regarding… well… the equivalent of what you’re seeing in the UK now where there is no difference between Tories or Labour.
People having something else to vote for besides Wilders v/s The Rest Of The Usual Lot allowed them to vote with their feet, and did so in droves, giving rise to the current coalition over here.
Which is really the “new” kids v/s Timmermans and his EU “Green” Globalism.
Currently you haven’t that “out” in Germany for voters like you suddenly got here in Clogland.
It’s either AfD or one of the Usual Suspects.
There hasn’t been enough of a shakeup to give rise to a new non-eurocentric party that isn’t AfD to give people that would never vote AfD an option to actually walk.
So it’ll take another round of being Snubbed before AfD gets its chance, and even then will require a serious meltdown in the Establishment to actually succeed.
Pointing to Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, who has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka, he said: “Does that sound like Hitler to you?”,
Hitler? I hardly touched er.
They couldn’t even run an opinion column by a famous weirdo without some pompous squareheaded dick “rebutting” him:
The article was published with a rebuttal by Jan Philipp Burgard, Die Welt’s editor-in-chief, who stated that while Mr Musk’s diagnosis of Germany’s ills may be correct, his judgment that only AfD could save Germany was “fatally wrong”.
Mr Burgard called attention to AfD’s desire for rapprochement with Russia, with the party calling for a restoration of trade and lifting of sanctions on Moscow.
Yes, imagine if Germany still had access to energy and raw materials and a peaceful relationship with Russia. That would be terrible.
He also warned of AfD’s intention to appease Beijing and leave the European Union, deeming the latter a “catastrophe”.
Reeeee! Das ist der Heretickenverganschung! Wo bist mein dilator!
I have to wonder if this, and the various US presidential endorsement things were a cheap way of getting the headcount down.
Firing people is hard. Making them redundant requires a payout. Offending them to the point that they angrily quit costs nothing. And you’re likely to keep the more sensible rational types through this. People who really do the job because they have a mortgage.
@Otto
German media are even more detached from reality than ours.
Journalists generally simply refuse to believe that people vote AfD or might have a reason to do so.
For the last 30 years I have watched or listened to PresseClub on Jerry TV and wireless on Sundays. A group of journoes discuss topics of the day. They have different ones on every week and every bloody week, they miss the point staring them in the face or simply get it wrong. It is genuinely funny.
Three of four years ago I would have agreed with this, and I still think it’s partly true – most journalists appear to be idiots, or cowards, or cowardly idiots, in that they either don’t know they’re talking balls but have merely absorbed the balls by osmosis, or they know they’re talking balls but are frightened of ostracism or unemployment. But I now believe that the people are the top – editors, proprietors, senior types – are deeply involved in something sinister and receiving their marching orders from higher forces.
Esteban
Curious, anybody here know what the AfD stands for that is “far right” and “fascist” in the minds of the Left?
There are some quite nasty characters at the core of the AfD who advocate things like forced repatriation of anyone they deem as immigrants even if they’ve been naturalised and there is a fair bit of Hitler worship going on.
I stress that is just a minority, maybe 5%, from what I read, the vast majority are fed up with immigration and are on the right in that sense. The vast majority of their supporters are no different to Trump supporters in wanting an end to mass immigration and deportation of illegals and those who break the law.
Interested – But I now believe that the people are the top – editors, proprietors, senior types – are deeply involved in something sinister and receiving their marching orders from higher forces.
I first became aware of it in the 90’s, when I noticed how much of the media was devoted to deliberately massaging public opinion on everything from gays to immigration.
The cringe that manifests itself in Western countries where white people are made to feel like it’s illegitimate or racist to stand up for their own existence was very deliberately programmed through years of telly and films. TV is Wormtongue.
BiND: « There are some quite nasty characters at the core of the AfD »
Whom do you have in mind? Björn Höcke perhaps, the all-purpose AfD bête noire?
@Bloke in North Dorset – “wanting…deportation of…those who break the law”
While there may be some people who merely want that, it’s completely obvious that the vast majority are motivated by racism and xenophobia because they do not advocate deportation of those who break the law but only foreigners who break the law. Taken with the stated desire to deport other foreigners for other reasons, there cannot be any other rational explanation.
@ Charles
International Law does not facilitate a policy of deportation of lawbreakers from their native land to a foreign country except in the case of requests by a foreign country whose laws have (allegedly) been broken in order to face trial. Why should any foreign country accept a German citizen deported from Germany for a speeding offence or for armed robbery?
That the AfD does not campaign for the deportation of German citizens who have broken German laws is not evidence, let alone proof, of racism – it could, at most, be taken as supporting evidence (but not proof) for a claim of sanity.
Charles – it’s completely obvious that the vast majority are motivated by racism and xenophobia
Oh no!
Anyway,
eugyppius has something to say on the subject.
Eugyppius is worth reading today on the subject of Musk, Welt Am Sonntag and the AfD.
snap!
Euggypius said: This is very uncomfortable for an elite who larp as adult, serious and farsighted people, while advancing some of the craziest policies the West has ever seen.
That’s true, intit? The larp bit in particular. I laughed out loud when I read about Sir Keir Starmer’s seven pillars, four embrasures, three pediments and a pony “plan” for “growth”. Armando Iannucci nailed it years ago.
“We are in a prison drama. This is the fucking Shawshank Redemption, right. Only there’s more tunneling through shit, and no fucking redemption.”
TMB,
“ Whom do you have in mind? Björn Höcke perhaps, the all-purpose AfD bête noire?”
Yes, and those who encourage and tolerate him. They AfD would be better of without them in the same way Reform will be better off the nutters it is and is going to attract.
Charles,
I was talking about immigrants and thought it was implicit thats what I was referring to, so to be clear some in the AfD want to deport *immigrants* who break the law, even if they have been naturalised.
I imagine that the media is playing the same game with AfD that they have with President Trump and the MAGA movement.
Take a phrase out of context or make assumptions about what was meant.
Search through years of comments & find a few that were poorly phrased or tongue in cheek.
Pay a lot of attention to comments by someone at a rally who is not an official and not a public speaker, so their comments are phrased in a way that is unfortunate.
Just as an example, the media in the US thought that Trump holding a rally at Madison Square Garden required them to point out that there was a US Nazi party rally at MSG many decades ago. Of course, numerous Dems have used MSG, but that doesn’t require bringing up the Nazi bit.
For someone who speaks off the cuff as much as President Trump does its amazing how hard they have to stretch to find things to bitch about.
@BoND
It’s almost impossible for any party to identify prospectively people they don’t want as members. They need to vet carefully those who stand for election as their candidates, and Reform look like they may be tightening up in that area.
@TMB
“Great minds” 🙂
@Bloke on North Dorset – “AfD want to deport *immigrants* who break the law, even if they have been naturalised”
That makes it worse – it’s pretty much a textbook case of racism.