The city made preparations: far and wide in the surroundings of the Munich Reithalle, staggered units of partly made up of heavily armed police officers were posted that made it perfectly clear to any visitor that no racket would be tolerated today. The conference hall itself was cordoned off and the visitors had to pass through the usual forced single-file access ways — after twice having to endure a body check.

(Text: Yorck Tomkyle / Photos: Roland Heinrich / Translation: Anders Denken)

A crowd stood outside made up partly of foreign television teams, reporters hounded a few individual visitors for a statement. A small group of protesters also showed up, banners inflamed racism, and it was announced on flyers that the discovery of a Nazi gene had been discovered. What was all this about? Had the living dead returned?

No, the matter with the incriminating pre-show was simply that of a book presentation that due to the waves it caused had been turned into an issue in the past few weeks which had been transformed into a discussion. Münchner Literaturhaus proudly presents: Thilo Sarrazin is rocking the house tonight! Sad that in this country a legitimate opinion must be protected with so much effort.

After the room had been filled down to the last chair, there was tense expectation. Among the public sat a varied assortment of old and young education citizens from Munich. Among the audience, individuals like Jan Fleischhauer could be found, who this time wouldn’t deliver something from “Unter Linken.”

Then he came to the podium, stood board straight in the center and presented a light bow. His body language at the moment reminded one of a Prussian officer — keep composure. The applause fell like thunder for his two partners in the discussion — Gabor Steingart, ex-Spiegel and now Handelsblatt reporter, and the Munich sociology professor Amin Nassehi.

After that it fell to each one after the other to make his position known, and then the Bevarian Radio moderator gave the mike to Sarrazin after he had asked him not to let the evening be made into a court trial.

Sarrazin described how in the past few weeks he had passed through “public purgatory” without ever making himself into a victim. With a pinch of his own sarcasm, however, he asked how it “was possible that 100% of the political and 70% of the media caste could condemn his book before anybody even had the opportunity to read it. As an example, he mentioned Angela Merkel’s remark that the book was “not helpful” and asked himself what she should have meant by that. “Does it fail to help her personally or her party, and in what way would it help her then?”

Ultimately he described how the massive reactions by the public had amazed and even changed him, and ended with the words that the book he had written out of concern for his country would now show its correctness after all of this.

After this statement, Gabor, who was invited as the representative for the left-wing liberal mainstream media, came to the mike. He took hardly any position on the facts in the book. He limited himself for the most part to the usual moralization and denial of the living reality of many people in this land. His unmatched and outright drastic rejection of Sarrazin’s views culiminated in a completely shocking declaration that must also have originated with Claudia Roth, “So, Mr. Sarrazin, we’re not talking about people!”

The first booh calls for the evening sounded, and the moderator asked Nassehi for his position. In him it was assumed that an educated opponent of Sarrazin’s themes had been invited, and he began to suggest right away that he had no understanding of the material and therefore drew completely erroneous conclusions. Nassehi unfolds his arguments with such unbridled arrogance that somebody from the audience shouted out “schoolmaster.”

Right away, he lets himself get carried away and, turning to the audience, he says, “Yes, exactly, that’s why I’m here; to teach you all something and to tell you what is correct.” Also in the further process of things, he fell upon unpleasant audience insults, for example when he suggested that he had read no books.

A lively discussion then followed that constantly made for strong reactions by the audience. The first impression was that an unfair arrangement of debaters had been carried out, but that idea evaporated quickly.

At first sight, Sarrazin acted sometimes really pitifully and with rhetorical awkwardness — however, the audience could recognize very quickly that this impression was deceptive. He was in no way ready to let himself be lured into the trap set for him, nor would he give up even an inch of ground. He easily, even coolly, countered every accusation of the opponents and didn’t let things come to polemics. He was able to captivate the audience with better knowledge of the facts and rationale, and it became increasingly clear why the establishment has such great fear of this man: He’s right. And he knows it.

Even Nazi-clubs that were pulled out by the — not so neutral — moderator Bogdahn were fended off: whether the applause from the ranks of the NPD would cause him to become pensive was something that Bogdahn wanted to know. And the calm reply was, “Even you know, that if an NPD man would tell me the sun is shining, I wouldn’t say it’s raining when that isn’t true just because an NPD man told me that.”

While Nassehi increasely attempted to minimalize the problem, Steingart wavered back and forth between being the insulted victim (“I have already said everything there is to say about this subject.”) and the banner of Zeitgeist waving in the wind (“The politicians do indeed need to be accused of failures.” — with an interjection of “and the media, too” was deliberately overheard.)

The atmosphere in the the conference hall heated up more and more because there was the perception that there should indeed be a court trial here, that increasingly toppled because the “delinquent” on his part forced the judges between a rock and a hard place. Whistlilng and calls of booh were heard more and more in the direction of Steingart and Nassehi — being well noticed not by the Left, but by the citizens being educated.

When the discussion was ended at some time — due to time constraints — everyone knew that there was a clear victory of points, if not a KO victory for Sarrazin, indeed. While he calmly endured the signing of books and giving of interviews at the podium, his opponents quietly and unobservedly disappeared from the conference hall.

This evening was the hand writing on the wall.

The city made preparations: far and wide in the surroundings of the Munich Reithalle, staggered units of partly made up of heavily armed police officers were posted that made it perfectly clear to any visitor that no racket would be tolerated today. The conference hall itself was cordoned off and the visitors had to ...

Guest, 05. Oct 2010 |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | post a comment    
Kategorie: Freedom of speech, Germany;

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