Jan Fleischhauer: “Nuclear weapons on Zurich” – the police are already investigating against me
The FOCUS column by Jan Fleischhauer: “Nuclear weapons on Zurich” – that’s why the police are now investigating me
The columnist has received notification from the police that he is under investigation for a comment. Reason for him to think about louder and less louder means in the battle of opinions.
I have mail from the police to get. The crime department 4 in Munich wrote to me to say that I am listed there as a suspect. I am charged with an offense under Section 140 of the Criminal Code: rewarding and condoning crimes.
The letter lists September 24 as the time of the crime, time: 12:02 p.m. At that point I would have on twitter left the following comment: “Nuclear weapons on Zurich!” Useless to deny, that’s what I wrote. Three words, no more. Still, I’m in trouble now.
You can find Jan Fleischhauer’s column every Saturday in FOCUS Magazine
Also in the new issue:
+ The crisis and its chancellor – an interview with Olaf Scholz
+ Sheep in wolf’s clothing: How dangerous is Björn Höcke?
+ The best wines of 2022 – selected by the FOCUS jury
Click here for the current magazine
I’ve written completely different things. I made fun of the Italians, which gave me a reprimand of the Italian brought in ambassadors. I have die Fifa called a criminal organization and Friedrich Merz a sausage. From the point of view of a lawyer, both presumably meet the criteria of insult.
In contrast, “nuclear weapons on Zurich!” is successfully harmless. Especially since it was a mocking reply to a tweet by my well-known Roger Köppel, editor of the Swiss “Weltwoche” and one of the biggest critics of the arms build-up in Ukraine, who, fearing a nuclear war, was ready to start negotiations with Wladimir Putin called. You Swiss cowards, I wanted to say: It’s not always about you.
Where it goes too far, freedom is just beginning
I was offered several options by the police. I can admit the crime. I can hire a lawyer. A termination of the proceedings would also be conceivable against payment of a monetary condition. I also thought about how to react.
In my case, there is no preparation for a crime, the columnist’s arm doesn’t reach that far. If I could talk about the use of nuclear weapons areas, I would immediately open up completely different pages. Approval under Section 140 of the Criminal Code remains.
Do you condone genocide if you Russian President recommends dropping an atomic bomb on Zurich? Nuclear weapons should of course be rejected as a matter of principle, there is no question about that. A tactical mini-bomb over the Zürise would also have advantages: the black money problem would be solved in one fell swoop. I know, I know I should stop these jokes. As you can see, the Swiss are even less fun than the Italians.
Where are the limits of freedom of speech? As the cabaret artist Werner Finck once said, freedom only begins where things go too far. That pretty much agrees with my opinion.
Subscribe to Fleischhauer’s newsletter here!
Read Jan Fleischhauer’s weekly column before it appears on the FOCUS-Online homepage. Plus: video comments by the FOCUS columnist on current topics.
My tolerance is correspondingly high. For example, I have never asked to stop employing someone because they talked nonsense. I’ve never reported a person either. Believe me, I don’t just get praise and encouragement. Nevertheless, it would not occur to me to sue for an insult or an insult. Where is this supposed to lead? You make yourself look ridiculous.
Should we be more upset in awakened Germany?
Should you be more excited? This is not only a personal question, it is also a strategic one. In a certain milieu, it has become common practice to perform St. Vitus dances even for the smallest misconduct. That’s foreign to me. But those who accept everything with equanimity, even the most outrageous things, may fall behind in the political debate.
Here’s a case that got me thinking. Two weeks ago, the historian Andreas Rödder invited to a conference Berlin. “Wokes Germany – Identity Politics as a Threat to Our Freedom” is the somewhat unwieldy title. The focus is on the new culture of sensitivity, advocating more discrimination against discriminatory views in the name of fighting discrimination.
Rödder is not only a respected scientist, he is also the chairman the CDU-Core Values Commission. Even the guests invited as speakers had not attracted attention in the past with radical statements. Former CDU family minister Kristina Schröder was there, as was cabaret artist Dieter Nuhr and psychologist Ahmad Mansour, who had just been awarded the Federal Cross of Merit. It doesn’t get much more medium, I would say.
CHIP – Saving electricity made easy – PDF
Energy has never been as expensive as it is now. But instead of panicking, you should calmly check potential savings at home. As our guide shows, there are many of them.
Four days after the end of the conference, the Green member of the Bundestag Marlene Schönberger wrote on Twitter that the conference had given space to anti-Semitic conspiracy stories. How did she get there? At one point Kristina Schröder had used the word “minority”. A minority owns the means of cultural production in the media and universities, these were Schröder’s words. The comedian Dieter Nuhr speaks of a powerful elite that tries to control things in their senses.
Dreadlocks as exploitation, gender as progress?
Whoever reads the statements made by Schröder and Nuhr in the context of the event immediately recognizes that they mean the small group of academically educated people who see themselves as pioneers of the new. When they talk about the elite, they are talking about people who consider dreadlocks to be exploitation, gender to be progress and justice to be a question of sparing citizen income. There can be no talk of anti-Semitism, unless one regards criticism of the elite as fundamentally anti-Semitic. But then you have to cash in on 150 years of anti-capitalist theory building.
What is the purpose of a Green MEP with such an accusation? Does she really believe that anti-Semitic clichés are now being attached to the CDU? Or does she only say that to initial a blow to the political opponent? I bet the latter. You throw a dirt pebble into the water and are happy when it makes circles.
Obscure climate rescue shack for the purpose of relieving conscience
The famous editor-in-chief of the “Spiegel”, Melanie Amann, found the accusation so perceptive that she immediately took it up and forwarded it by retweet. In the next turn, the congress in Berlin becomes an assembly of people who prepare the ground for the new fascism. That was more or less clear in a contribution to “Zeit Online” by the former “Spiegel” columnist Georg Diez, who now works for the New Institute in Hamburg works, a somewhat obscure climate rescue shack, which the former shipowner Erck Rickmers affords to relieve his conscience.
How should one deal with such an accusation? An acquaintance, whose judgment I value, said: wrong. That was so ridiculous that it wasn’t even worth answering. I’ve come to the conclusion that sometimes you have to defend yourself. Whoever accepts everything without objection because he thinks the accusations are too absurd, will at some point go down the wrong path.
The limits of what can be said can also be shifted in this way: First you are a respected scientist. Then you are suddenly considered “controversial”, as the popular word of suspicion is called. At some point people say: “Can you actually invite him? In ‘Zeit’ it was said that the border to fascism was fluid.”
Unmistakable sense of duplicity and falsehood
There are people who think freedom of speech is rubbish. Unfortunately, you have to say it so clearly. You would never say it yourself. They would say that freedom of expression should be reserved for people who contribute to the progress of society, i.e. people like themselves.
Should we therefore proceed to copy the method? I would decide against that. It’s not just the small elite that lives off suspicion. There is also a large number of people who have an unerring sense of duplicity and falsehood, and who despise nothing more than they do.
About the author
The readers love him or hate him, Jan Fleischhauer is indifferent to the least. You only have to look at the comments on his columns to get an idea of how much people are moved by what he writes. He was at SPIEGEL for 30 years, and at the beginning of August 2019 he switched to FOCUS as a columnist.
Fleischhauer himself sees his task as supporting a world view that he believes IS underrepresented in the German media. Also in case of doubt against the herd instinct, commonplaces and thought templates. His texts are always amusing – perhaps it is this fact that provokes his opponents the most.
You can write to our author: by email to [email protected] or on Twitter @janfleischhauer.