SYLT AND ATONION
A handful of wealth-spoiled rich kids wallow in their own protection and, with their boundless stupidity of filming and posting themselves Hitlering, make themselves into the pigs that are being driven through the village. Is the outrage justified?
By Bent-Erik Scholz
By Bent-Erik Scholz
In his books, the notorious American author Bret Easton Ellis constantly describes 1980s children of rich parents who sit in the Sunset Strip or the Hollywood Hills, stoned, drunk and coked up, in villas paid for by mom and dad, and live it up at their parents' expense, while the parents - business, jet-set life, cosmopolitans - are basically never at home. All of these children lose any sense of moderation. They are all highly potent teenagers, they all look fantastic, suntanned and well-built - they don't go to McDonald's, they eat filet mignon - they have sex, snort cocaine to wake up and swallow Quaaludes to go to sleep. They cannot love, neither others nor themselves, they are materialistic sociopaths whose purpose in life consists in maintaining their shell.
A video has been circulating online for a week now, showing a handful of well-dressed people, probably in their early 20s, loudly singing along to the now meme-turned-sentence "Germany for the Germans, foreigners out!", visibly drunk with joy at their own coolness and cleverness, it is the German-beer-loving pop-musician face that is gleaming with sweat and arrogance on the screen. This pseudo-gag for amateur sarcastic Germans is not new. It has been circulating for months. There they are, dancing in their designer clothes, in a classy-looking club on Sylt, radiating with full energy how cool they think they are. A young man puts two fingers of his left hand under his nose, a common gesture to indicate a Hitler moustache. His right arm is stretched out and pointing upwards.
The general internet public justifiably reacts to such blunt and stupid behavior with disgust. But This is not enough - while increasingly high-ranking politicians are joining the debate about the Sylt video, the impression is created that the stupid action of those who feel untouchable is being hyped up as a question of attitude. If you believe the moralists who are always showing solidarity, we are almost dealing with a right-wing extremist act on the scale of Rostock-Lichtenhagen. Nancy Faeser is demanding maximum penalties for the rich kids of Sylt.
The usual party hit "L'amour toujours" is already being banned from major events as a precautionary measure, while at the same time it is number 1 in the iTunes charts. The rock band Kraftklub and the rap group K.I.Z are announcing solidarity concerts - in 2020, K.I.Z were still rapping lines like "That's not an erection, it's a Hitler salute from the abdomen". The unruly island brats are becoming a symbol of right-wing terror and thus another platform for political influencers, pseudo-cabaret artists and other people who consider themselves good to happily give each other marks for their behavior with "good luck".
Is that appropriate? And is it appropriate to call these obviously highly spoiled young adults Nazis? Or are they not just a few aloof idiots who thought they were unassailable and therefore deserve a hearty slap in the face? The Hitler salute is quite rightly banned, it is right to punish it - it is right that the Sylt kids experience consequences for their actions. But the fact that a great new storm of litanies and symbolic acts is now brewing on the basis of their extremely stupid behavior is thought-provoking.
For decades, flirting with Nazi symbolism has been the ultimate provocation, and it is used for this purpose by those who demonstrably have nothing to do with the associated ideology. In the 70s, the Sex Pistols played a song called "Belsen Was A Gas", Sid Vicious caused a furore by wearing a swastika shirt. Nazi parody as shock value.
Up until ten years ago, we in this country also laughed heartily at the play with Nazi references. In Oliver Kalkofe's "WiXXer" films, which are still considered legendary today, Christoph Maria Herbst plays the character Alfons Hatler. One scene shows him in a tracksuit doing rhythmic gymnastics, during which he repeatedly throws his right arm in the air. For a long time, falling into an Austrian dumpling with a rolled R and a staccato rhythm was guaranteed to elicit a chuckle. Hitler had become a ghost that was repeatedly brought out of the closet to scare the audience, but also to amuse them.
Have we become more effeminate? Or do we have to acknowledge that times have changed in the sense that such slogans and derisive retrospectives on Nazi behavior are no longer possible with the same ease? After all, the zeitgeist of the last fifteen years has reminded us that the ideas of the Nazis are no longer only recited when it is a matter of making fun of them from a historical distance and refuting them. When Björn Höcke grins with relish after announcing that one must "sweat out" one's opponents, it is clear that this is no longer just a game.
It is good to recognize such tendencies. Here, however, the debate is sparked by a group of drunken young adults who have certainly done stupid things with potential criminal relevance - but I am sure that the motivation behind this stupid maneuver was more like "I do what I want, nobody can stop me, if necessary, daddy will pay the lawyers, hehe". These are people who are so oversaturated that being caught imitating Nazi symbols is one of the few things that could really endanger them. This is perhaps what makes it appealing. Is this a repulsive habitus and should people who behave like this be taught a lesson? Yes. But we also have to ask ourselves how proportionate the reaction to it is.
Universities are checking exmatriculations, employers are issuing notices of termination, real names and places of residence are floating around the Internet, Chancellors and ministers have spoken out, a huge wave of finger-pointing is flooding the North Sea island. Everyone is allowed to say how disgusting this all is, and everyone can derive their self-worth from feeling better compared to the "deplorables".
Marie von den Benken posts a picture with her top off at the stand with the hashtag #NacktGegenNazis. Meanwhile, the owners of the Pony bar on Sylt report death threats. There is really nothing to sugarcoat about what is shown in the video - but we as a society should ask ourselves whether it can be our goal to ensure that such missteps, no matter how wrong they are, potentially result in irreversible, lifelong damage. What the posh guys need is probably the reality check that their guardians have not been able to give them so far. It will be of little help to banish them from society.
The legal policy correspondent for the Tagesspiegel, Jost Müller-Neuhof, writes: "When it comes to right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism, a quick judgment is needed. That often works, but does it always work? [...] But what if no crimes were committed and the dismissals were unlawful? It doesn't matter, the verdict has been passed, we can look away. The snobs only have themselves to blame. If this is what the 'fight against right-wing extremism' looks like, you don't want to be involved in it."
Is this perhaps also about gloating? Finally, to take a smack out of the crown of those who have carried it with particular pride, the overpowering and overconfident who have allowed their pride to swallow them. This impulse is understandable, but whenever it breaks out in moral debates, we experience something questionable from a human perspective. The difference between criminal law and the judgment of the masses: criminal law not only allows rehabilitation - it provides for it. Public opinion is significantly less gracious when it comes to accepting purification.
The Sylt kids are easy prey, nothing is easier than loudly distancing yourself from them in order to rise above them while at the same time pushing them down. As tasteless as the shouted phrase and the dances may be - elevating them to a political issue perpetuates the same superficial celebration of symbols that already ensured that the protests against right-wing extremism At the beginning of the year, the news faded away without much of a response.
As with all similar discussions about such incidents, which are disgusting but, in the overall context, banal, we must ask ourselves the question of proportionality, especially in the context of what other news we miss in the meantime. After all, attention is a limited commodity; it is not for nothing that in the past unpopular political decisions were often made around the time of major sporting events, only to be drowned out by the media coverage.
So while Olaf Scholz describes such "slogans" as "disgusting" (only for his party to post an interpolation of this slogan a short time later as an advertisement for the European elections), NATO has called for Ukraine to be allowed to use Western weapons systems against targets in Russia. While we know exactly who the employers of some champagne cretins from an online video are, we can only speculate to this day about who the financiers of some politicians are who are currently aspiring to important positions in Europe. While we are elevating a handful of snobs to the symbol of Nazis, right-wing nationalist forces are actually forming everywhere and forging threatening alliances.
We must be careful with our terms. The term "Nazi" also stands for six million murdered Jews. A certain amount of sparing with this word would be appropriate so that it does not lose all its power through inflation when truly obscure figures once again grab positions of power in Germany.
05/31/24
*Bent-Erik Scholz works as a freelancer for RBB
A video has been circulating online for a week now, showing a handful of well-dressed people, probably in their early 20s, loudly singing along to the now meme-turned-sentence "Germany for the Germans, foreigners out!", visibly drunk with joy at their own coolness and cleverness, it is the German-beer-loving pop-musician face that is gleaming with sweat and arrogance on the screen. This pseudo-gag for amateur sarcastic Germans is not new. It has been circulating for months. There they are, dancing in their designer clothes, in a classy-looking club on Sylt, radiating with full energy how cool they think they are. A young man puts two fingers of his left hand under his nose, a common gesture to indicate a Hitler moustache. His right arm is stretched out and pointing upwards.
The general internet public justifiably reacts to such blunt and stupid behavior with disgust. But This is not enough - while increasingly high-ranking politicians are joining the debate about the Sylt video, the impression is created that the stupid action of those who feel untouchable is being hyped up as a question of attitude. If you believe the moralists who are always showing solidarity, we are almost dealing with a right-wing extremist act on the scale of Rostock-Lichtenhagen. Nancy Faeser is demanding maximum penalties for the rich kids of Sylt.
The usual party hit "L'amour toujours" is already being banned from major events as a precautionary measure, while at the same time it is number 1 in the iTunes charts. The rock band Kraftklub and the rap group K.I.Z are announcing solidarity concerts - in 2020, K.I.Z were still rapping lines like "That's not an erection, it's a Hitler salute from the abdomen". The unruly island brats are becoming a symbol of right-wing terror and thus another platform for political influencers, pseudo-cabaret artists and other people who consider themselves good to happily give each other marks for their behavior with "good luck".
Is that appropriate? And is it appropriate to call these obviously highly spoiled young adults Nazis? Or are they not just a few aloof idiots who thought they were unassailable and therefore deserve a hearty slap in the face? The Hitler salute is quite rightly banned, it is right to punish it - it is right that the Sylt kids experience consequences for their actions. But the fact that a great new storm of litanies and symbolic acts is now brewing on the basis of their extremely stupid behavior is thought-provoking.
For decades, flirting with Nazi symbolism has been the ultimate provocation, and it is used for this purpose by those who demonstrably have nothing to do with the associated ideology. In the 70s, the Sex Pistols played a song called "Belsen Was A Gas", Sid Vicious caused a furore by wearing a swastika shirt. Nazi parody as shock value.
Up until ten years ago, we in this country also laughed heartily at the play with Nazi references. In Oliver Kalkofe's "WiXXer" films, which are still considered legendary today, Christoph Maria Herbst plays the character Alfons Hatler. One scene shows him in a tracksuit doing rhythmic gymnastics, during which he repeatedly throws his right arm in the air. For a long time, falling into an Austrian dumpling with a rolled R and a staccato rhythm was guaranteed to elicit a chuckle. Hitler had become a ghost that was repeatedly brought out of the closet to scare the audience, but also to amuse them.
Have we become more effeminate? Or do we have to acknowledge that times have changed in the sense that such slogans and derisive retrospectives on Nazi behavior are no longer possible with the same ease? After all, the zeitgeist of the last fifteen years has reminded us that the ideas of the Nazis are no longer only recited when it is a matter of making fun of them from a historical distance and refuting them. When Björn Höcke grins with relish after announcing that one must "sweat out" one's opponents, it is clear that this is no longer just a game.
It is good to recognize such tendencies. Here, however, the debate is sparked by a group of drunken young adults who have certainly done stupid things with potential criminal relevance - but I am sure that the motivation behind this stupid maneuver was more like "I do what I want, nobody can stop me, if necessary, daddy will pay the lawyers, hehe". These are people who are so oversaturated that being caught imitating Nazi symbols is one of the few things that could really endanger them. This is perhaps what makes it appealing. Is this a repulsive habitus and should people who behave like this be taught a lesson? Yes. But we also have to ask ourselves how proportionate the reaction to it is.
Universities are checking exmatriculations, employers are issuing notices of termination, real names and places of residence are floating around the Internet, Chancellors and ministers have spoken out, a huge wave of finger-pointing is flooding the North Sea island. Everyone is allowed to say how disgusting this all is, and everyone can derive their self-worth from feeling better compared to the "deplorables".
Marie von den Benken posts a picture with her top off at the stand with the hashtag #NacktGegenNazis. Meanwhile, the owners of the Pony bar on Sylt report death threats. There is really nothing to sugarcoat about what is shown in the video - but we as a society should ask ourselves whether it can be our goal to ensure that such missteps, no matter how wrong they are, potentially result in irreversible, lifelong damage. What the posh guys need is probably the reality check that their guardians have not been able to give them so far. It will be of little help to banish them from society.
The legal policy correspondent for the Tagesspiegel, Jost Müller-Neuhof, writes: "When it comes to right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism, a quick judgment is needed. That often works, but does it always work? [...] But what if no crimes were committed and the dismissals were unlawful? It doesn't matter, the verdict has been passed, we can look away. The snobs only have themselves to blame. If this is what the 'fight against right-wing extremism' looks like, you don't want to be involved in it."
Is this perhaps also about gloating? Finally, to take a smack out of the crown of those who have carried it with particular pride, the overpowering and overconfident who have allowed their pride to swallow them. This impulse is understandable, but whenever it breaks out in moral debates, we experience something questionable from a human perspective. The difference between criminal law and the judgment of the masses: criminal law not only allows rehabilitation - it provides for it. Public opinion is significantly less gracious when it comes to accepting purification.
The Sylt kids are easy prey, nothing is easier than loudly distancing yourself from them in order to rise above them while at the same time pushing them down. As tasteless as the shouted phrase and the dances may be - elevating them to a political issue perpetuates the same superficial celebration of symbols that already ensured that the protests against right-wing extremism At the beginning of the year, the news faded away without much of a response.
As with all similar discussions about such incidents, which are disgusting but, in the overall context, banal, we must ask ourselves the question of proportionality, especially in the context of what other news we miss in the meantime. After all, attention is a limited commodity; it is not for nothing that in the past unpopular political decisions were often made around the time of major sporting events, only to be drowned out by the media coverage.
So while Olaf Scholz describes such "slogans" as "disgusting" (only for his party to post an interpolation of this slogan a short time later as an advertisement for the European elections), NATO has called for Ukraine to be allowed to use Western weapons systems against targets in Russia. While we know exactly who the employers of some champagne cretins from an online video are, we can only speculate to this day about who the financiers of some politicians are who are currently aspiring to important positions in Europe. While we are elevating a handful of snobs to the symbol of Nazis, right-wing nationalist forces are actually forming everywhere and forging threatening alliances.
We must be careful with our terms. The term "Nazi" also stands for six million murdered Jews. A certain amount of sparing with this word would be appropriate so that it does not lose all its power through inflation when truly obscure figures once again grab positions of power in Germany.
05/31/24
*Bent-Erik Scholz works as a freelancer for RBB
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