Monday 30, October
German newspaper BILD publishes crackpot manifesto
Last weekend, more than 11,000 protesters took to the streets of Kreuzberg in a largely peaceful protest against the situation in Gaza. Yesterday, though, Germany’s famous tabloid paper BILD decided to print a manifesto in 50 points which, if you judged by this alone, would give you the idea that Berlin was in total anarchy. The picture which accompanies the article shows police clearing rubble from a burning street on Sonnenallee.
They write, “Our world is in chaos” and “Germany must now say NO! To anti-Semitism, to misanthropy, and to all those who say “No” to us.” The piece goes on to explicitly place the blame for this “chaos” on the “more than three million refugees, many of them from the Arab world” that Germany has taken in since 2015, going on to write “we do not want to change our way of life just because we have guests.”
For many international Berliners, there is some immediate bad news at point 4. “Anyone who wants to live here permanently must learn German.” Ach, Scheisse. While anyone who has noticed the intense German staring on the U-Bahn might want to take a look at point 6 “We don’t wear masks or veils; we look each other in the face”.
Ultimately, this so-called manifesto is mainly about the BILD posturing as defenders of liberal freedoms in order to make a bunch of racist insinuations about Arab immigrants. For some of the worst in that regard, see point 12: “Many Germans eat pork.” Point 28: “Women who have affairs are not ostracised, let alone beaten or stoned!” 47: “Germany has a heart for children. They are not beaten”
Point 9 of the manifesto reads: “We say please and thank you.” German poet and essayist Max Czollek questioned this explicitly on Twitter, writing “I’ll answer directly for all Berliners. Ciao, Germany!”
