I spent the weekend in Sachsen-Anhalt on slam tour, and I pretty much would’ve had the best time of my life if it hadn’t been for this one teeny-tiny, weeny-winy Holocaust faux pas I made when slightly drunk on Saturday night.
What happened was, first of all we listened to some German hip hop, and that always makes my thighs hurt from cringing so much. It sounds silly. They sound silly. They don’t sound hard. They sound silly. They sound like silly-billies. All that silly stuff they say, “blah-blah-blah, blah-blah-blah.”
To German ears, it sounds all ghetto and gangster and frauenfeindlich and stuff. But to us, you know, it just sounds SILLY. That’s all. It’s a bit embarrassing, really. I just really think they shouldn’t do that anymore. They should stop. They can still prance about on their skateboards and that. But they shouldn’t rap and stuff. They just shouldn’t. They’re just embarrassing themselves. It’s just… silly. My thighs have Muskelkater. That’s how much I was cringing. My thighs look like Cindy Crawford’s.
Then you know what happened? They started slagging off some rap star, a kid called Sammy Deluxe. Apparently he’s half-Black, and I know you’re not actually meant to say half-Black in English anymore, but that’s what they called him, I think it’s not racist in German, halbschwarz. And they kept on going on about him complaining about Germany being a racist country.
“I just don’t think it’s right,” one kid goes. “I just don’t think it’s right. Sammy Deluxe is a Farbiger – and he has lived as a Farbiger in Germany – and this country has made him rich. And then he turns around and claims it’s a racist country. It’s really unfair and downright shameless of him.”
I mean, I just think that point is basically about as silly as German hip hop. Like, imagine if I had three million quid in my bank and suddenly the country I lived in decided to legalize paedophilia. I wouldn’t be allowed to say anything? I’d have to be like: ‘Oh, such a pity you’ve decided to legalize paedophilia, however, unfortunately, due to all the lovely wonga I have stashed away in my bank account, I’ll not be making a comment on my opinion of your paedophilia-legalization decision.”
Also, it’s something that only ever gets said about ethnic minorities, women or working-class people who make money. You’ve made your money, now shut the fuck up, you ungrateful cunt, so nach dem unterbewussten Motto, I reckon. Old, rich, white men are allowed to say whatever the fuck they want about whatever the fuck they like. It’s only Sammy Deluxe-types who are meant to accept the cash gratefully; smiling and nodding enthusiastically like Miss World contestants, before shuffling obediently off of the stage.
So then I said – FOR A JOKE, it was meant to be a joke, it was meant to be funny, okay, it probably wasn’t funny, okay, it wasn’t funny, but FUCK, it was meant to be a JOKE – I said, for a joke: “Yeah, probably, but you guys really shouldn’t have done the Holocaust.”
Fuck, man. BIG mistake. They all started howling and sobbing and banging their heads against the wall, like Pale-fucking-stinians or something. They started talking about their history lessons in school. God, they were traumatized by their history lessons in school. I think they would’ve been less traumatized if their history teachers had actually just raped them in the arses with blunt objects.
Get this: they had to do the “Third Reich” in Year 7, 10 and then again in Year 12! Fucking hell, were they one traumatized bunch of kids. Seriously man, the way they were talking, you’d think the real victims of the Holocaust weren’t the Jews in the fucking gas chambers, but all the 12-year-old German kids who get made to watch too many Holocaust videos in history lessons.
“Look, Germany is a racist country,” I said. “Sammy Deluxe is right. You’re so busy thinking about the Holocaust that you totally miss the point. You guys don’t have that much more Holocaust guilt than people in the UK have colonialism guilt, and the bit more that you have is okay, coz the Holocaust was really, really crap. But let’s not even talk about the Holocaust. Let’s say the Holocaust never happened. Just imagine. Even if you hadn’t done the Holocaust, you’re still a racist country. Germany is a racist country. It’s not, like, a provocative statement. England and America are also racist countries, you’re slightly worse.”
“If we’re so racist,” said one kid, “why would we let you, as a foreigner, take part in poetry slams?”
I didn’t say anything to that. Secretly I was thinking: fuck. Only a German would cite the lack of a specific Ausländerverbot at poetry slams as evidence of not being racist. Secretly I was sarcastically thinking: “How can you say we’re Nazis? We don’t make you live in ghettoes anymore!”
But I didn’t say that. I was trying to rescue the situation.
“Let’s change the subject!” I suggested brightly. “Let’s talk about rape instead. I also think all men are rapists, by the way.”
But that didn’t go down too well, either.
