Lars Klingbeil (SPD), and the virtual “Sieg Heil” from Borna, Görlitz and Hildburghausen

In Berlin, Lars Klingbeil now also spoke of “loud shouts of Sieg Heil”, under which people celebrated and rioted in Borna and elsewhere on New Year’s Eve. The existence of these shouts is anything but certain, as a TE investigation revealed. The SPD chairman does not care. The main thing is that the danger comes from the “far right.

For Lars Klingbeil, it is clear where the greatest dangers to democracy lurk. Certainly not in Berlin, which is being discussed in exemplary fashion by his party colleague Franziska Giffey. But in Saxony and Thuringia, where on New Year’s Eve there were riots with “loud shouts of Sieg Heil. Klingbeil now claimed this at a press conference – somewhere other than Berlin – contrary to the facts and without consulting the local authorities. It is to be assumed in view of the fact-free lecture of the party chairman. He will have hurriedly collected a few newspaper reports in order to knit together a counter-story on migrant violence in German cities – and to pillory a few cities in Saxony and Thuringia in the process.

TE had already learned on Monday through its own research and an inquiry at the Leipzig police department that the classification of the Borna New Year’s Eve incidents as right-wing extremist is rather far-fetched. They were riots of medium scale – especially in comparison with hot spots like Neukölln. The “suspicious facts” that are supposed to point to a right-wing orientation are pretty thin in Borna. According to press reports, two 19-year-old Germans were identified as suspects, which rather points to youthful wantonness.

In Berlin, Klingbeil repeated it mantra-like: “The greatest danger to democracy comes from the far right.” Whether we’re talking about Brazil or Borna in Saxony doesn’t really matter. The circumstances will already be comparable somehow, at least from an SPD perspective. Klingbeil started with Brazil and the “coup” by Bolsonaro supporters when he commented on current issues on Monday, with Berlin’s governing mayor next to him.

However, Franziska Giffey is no longer taken entirely in her stride by her former patron, Neukölln legend Heinz Buschkowsky (also still an SPD member) – especially because of her stalling response to Berlin’s New Year’s Eve. And the SPD chairman also had to address this current topic, albeit reluctantly. Who wants to talk about more than 3,000 successful (plus just as many aborted) emergency calls in a city that has now been co-governed by Social Democrats for decades? Party colleague Giffey had supposedly found just the right words to say about it – after the fact. For the frontline city of Berlin, Klingbeil thinks a middle course is appropriate: “solution-oriented answers,” somewhere between a hard hand and an outstretched hand for the perpetrators, many of whom came from Islamic countries – even if the Berlin police have since had to change the way they count, losing two-thirds of the suspects.

Shortly thereafter, however, Klingbeil addresses what other groups in the country still lack to perfection from the SPD’s point of view. For example, he says, the CDU/CSU is caught up in “confused Berlin bashing” and makes “absurd motions about first names.” And then Klingbeil claims that conservatives in the country are loudly silent when it comes to Borna and two other places in Saxony and Thuringia, where “right-wing extremists” have risen up and attacked “security forces with loud Sieg Heil shouts.” Apart from Borna, the roughly identical incident is also said to have taken place in Görlitz and Hildburghausen, Klingbeil said.

But this is too simple a recipe that only works in the Berlin bubble. It is a downright scandalous way of instrumentalizing the reality of life for party purposes without even taking a close look. Take an isolated incident in a Saxon or Thuringian city and scandalize it using the well-worn vocabulary of “right-wing extremism” and “Sieg Heil”. The Social Democrats will already understand what is meant. No matter, what really happened and under what circumstances.

The outstretched hand of the SPD does not apply to everyone

The only evidence of right-wing ideas available to the Leipzig police so far are two online comments, one of which came from a campaign worker for the SPD mayor of Borna and has since been deleted again. Only in this comment was there talk in one formulation of certain “idiots” who had nothing better to do on New Year’s Eve “than march through the city with ‘Victory…’ and firecrackers”. It remains unclear whether the whole thing happened now or at some other time, whether these shouts of “Sieg-Heil” really existed or whether they are just the author’s imagination.

Actually, the commentator was asking for more camera surveillance, which would provide better information about such incidents. This is not a reliable source, neither from a journalistic nor a police point of view – which did not stop some media from picking up the initial T-online report and continuing to spin it until it was Lars Klingbeil’s turn. The ski masks mentioned by another user hardly add anything tangible to the events and also remain unsubstantiated. It remains with a gathering of perhaps 200 people on the Borna marketplace, of which currently two, perhaps three are considered suspects.

So far, there are no more detailed reports from Görlitz and Hildburghausen that point to any “right-wing” orientation on the part of the persons who have become conspicuous there. Klingbeil is simply sucking this out of his fingers. Here, too, he will not have called anywhere and checked the “information” he has fantasized together. Nothing supports his thesis that the greatest danger to democracy lives in Borna, Görlitz or Hildburghausen and comes from the “far right.

What becomes clear is the deep alienation between the SPD and the people in Borna and Hildburghausen, perhaps in Saxony and Thuringia in general. It is a pity about the democratic discourse, also about the middle way. The outstretched hand of the SPD does not apply to everyone, or at least it does not seem to apply to all German citizens.