Nazis Raus: Ja, bitte

located:	Germany
editor:	Gurmeet Singh

Twitter controversies aren't real controversies. A famous person using a clumsy or politically incorrect choice of words to express themselves is bad, but it's not say, foreign interference in elections. Nevertheless, our media like to focus on Social Media controversies for a number of reasons: the people at the centre of them are often well-known, the backlash is normally quite severe from other twitter users, and if there's enough outrage, the person at the centre of it will be forced to apologise, or could even lose their job. It's all very dependent on the situation, and often never really particularly interesting.

So why now write about 'Nazis Raus' (Nazis Out)? Nicole Diekmann, a German journalist wrote the simple two word post on the 1st January, echoing a decades-old anti-fascist slogan (there is some debate as to whether it mimics the racist 'auslaender raus' or the other way around). After all, it is an acceptable slogan, does not say anything truly controversial (to say in Germany that you would like Nazis to not hang around is not exactly going out on a limb in your beliefs), and so isn't exactly newsworthy (Germany is in a technical recession right now, so there literally are bigger problems to think about).

Nevertheless, Diekmann was subject to a barrage of tweets, posts, blogs and reports (on some less than reputable news sites) which denounced and threatened her. Her safety was being brought into debate. Racists, Nazis, and even so-called 'moderate, centrist' writers have commented that she should be everything from fired, to assaulted, to raped, to killed. She was called a race-traitor, a German-traitor, a Europe-traitor (of course, thereby implying that to be white, German or European, one must also be a Nazi...)

Diekmann was also vigorously defended, both on social and in traditional media. Many outlets sprung to her defence, saying that she had indeed said nothing controversial, and that 'Nazis Raus' deserves everyone's support. The hashtag #Nazisraus was trending within the hour.

However, the controversy is important to take note for several reasons:

It is still very difficult for a woman to express herself freely (I doubt a man would have been threatened with rape online).
The threat of violence from fascists should be taken seriously, even online, as it is their principle means of achieving and maintaining power (the murder of the British MP Jo Cox in 2016 was committed by a fascist, who had a previous history of online abuse).
The AfD and other so-called 'acceptable' racists are doing everything they can to erase the stigma from German atrocity ("The word 'Nazi' has long been a catch-all term for everything and everyone who doesn't belong to the left-wing mainstream," tweeted Götz Frömming, a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany).
Normally, twitter debates are not really all that significant, but when they are live, affect people's consciousness about sensitive issues, and/ or seek to alter the terms of debate (trying to push the idea that 'Nazi' or 'racist' are meaningless terms, for e.g.) then there needs to be a serious evaluation of how we handle social media.

Right now, analysts are obsessed with the idea of 'fake news', and Russian bots. Contrary to being complicated, these things are actually very easy to think about: they exist, and there are things we can do about them, namely educating people about how to identify fake news, forcing social media sites to be more vigilant and active in identifying malicious behaviour (which they currently do not, or like Facebook, outsource to people in developing countries), simply encourage people to turn off social media every day, and also break the cycle of clicks and 'crazy news' which is how social media makes its money. What is much more difficult to think about, is how to ensure people don't escalate from being a mere ranter online, to picking up a gun.

Nazis Raus. Yes Please.

Call to Action

Berliners: raise your voice against racism and in support of tolerance