Cancel culture moves forward in Germany

The cancel culture is now in full bloom in Germany. Almost at the same time as the news of the immediate dismissal of the professional basketball player Yoshiko Saiboo after his participation in the Berlin demonstration against government restrictions for the coronavirus and shortly after the deletion of a contribution by cabaret artist Dieter Nuhr by the German Research Foundation due to his criticism of Friday for Future. Now the the young Viennese cabaret artist Lisa Eckhart was also caught by the cancel mob. Her case, like that of Nuhr, the verdict is not based on an act or statement, but in anticipation of her performance.

Eckhart was dismissed from the Hamburg Literature Festival on the official grounds that "there could be protests from the left". Eckhart's appearance was thus canceled in anticipatory obedience to possible criticism of the the left. The mob has already achieved its goal before it even takes action in a specific case. The fear they have spread so far is enough as a threat and warning example. What a victory of the lack of freedom!

Eckhart had been accused of anti-Semitism a few weeks ago. One passage in her 2018 program was particularly criticized when she said in connection with the #Metoo movement, which focused on film producer Harvey Weinstein: "The most disappointing thing about it is the Jews, we always used to argue against the accusation, they are only interested in money, and now suddenly comes out, that they really are not interested in money, they are concerned with women, and therefore they need the money.” The anti-Semitism commissioner of the German federal government, Felix Klein, described Eckhart's sentences from 2018 as "tasteless and worthy of criticism".

A Taz columnist, for example, who recently gained undeserved prominence because she wanted to see police officers put on the dump, announced to the cancel mob in May with these words that Eckhart was the enemy: “Her name sounds like the irrelevant Alman [pejorative term used against Germans] classmate with exaggerated self-awareness from the past. Loaded with high school bully energy, she has the necessary pretty privilege to get away with the styles from the beginning of the last decade and privilege." And further: "A little trivialization of sexual violence here, a chunk of anti-Semitism there, a little bit of racism in between and all of that in the singsong of the German-language poetry slam that disgusted me in 2013."

Hatred and agitation does not applies with Taz.

What else can be said in the Eckhart case has meanwhile been said by Dieter Nuhr on Facebook:

"What a scandal! The protest mob on the street decides who is allowed to practice their art here with us.
...
The left and right mob apparently now want art that follows their own ideologies true to the line. If you don't fit in there, you'll be muzzled. The performance ban is a clear decision against artistic freedom. The flimsy justification of anti-Semitism is supposed to morally underpin the whole thing. But Lisa Eckart is not an anti-Semite. It's just not enough left. The accusation of anti-Semitism is merely the perfidious attempt to discredit a person who thinks politically suspiciously independently.
Nowadays, people are no longer afraid of totalitarian measures such as a ban on performing. This must be counteracted. The cancellation makes me stunned."

Source: Tichys Einblick