There has been quite a lot of attention and activity over Merkel’s supplication to Erdogan over some highly typical media criticism, and well deserved at that, of Turkish policies concerning both internal matters and matters that affect the safety, rights and freedoms of Europeans.
Most of the attention is over a fairly annoying and left leaning TV comic named Böhmermann, who wrote a poem mocking Erdogan’s sexuality, and suggesting he would prefer to share a straw bed with a sheep than a mattress with one of his lady friends.
His poem, which was scrubbed from the internet as much as possible, but managed to find its way on to The Rebel’s servers, was even read out loud the other day by a member of the German Parliament.
The Merkel-party MP did not read it as a show of solidarity with European freedom of speech, especially freedom to mock political authority, the sole purpose of that right along with mocking religious authority, but to show why Erdogan is right to be offended and why this comic should be jailed.
Now lets look at this same TV show that Böhmermann works for, doing a treatment of neighboring Poland:
An excerpt from some media on fashionable views of the Polish leadership.
A parade float in the city of Düsseldorf showing the leader of Poland’s ruling party as a dictator has caused shock in Warsaw. The depiction shows “contempt for Poland,” said the country’s foreign minister.
Germany’s famous Carnival Monday parades may be over on Tuesday, but the controversy many of them were courting was not. While several float makers remained under local police investigation for inciting racial hatred, one parade float from the city of Düsseldorf was causing an international outcry.
The creation in question depicts the leader of Poland’s ruling right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS), Jaroslaw Kaczynski, as a dictator in military uniform with out booted foot on the head of a woman symbolizing his prostrate nation.
Some rather harsh depictions and illustrations of Poland. A nation that, well I think its safe to say, has some negative history with Germany in the not too distant past.
If one has even a quick look over these cases, there is at least the possibility that what we are seeing can be defined in one word.
Dhimmitude.
Thanks for the help Egri Nok.
Yes and No
It is not only the dhiminitude.
Germany has a lot of business interests in Poland and PO (the previous ruling party) was very much pro- UE and very much pro-Germany. Some of them put interests of EU and interest of Germany above interest of Polish people. Present government is somewhat different, it does not support wholeheartedly EU and it does want to make Polish business & Polish firms less dependent on German business interests. Also the present government is patriotic, does not equal patriots to uneducated, poor, stupid, old people as did the previous government. Finally, Germans has a lot of business deals with Russia. some of them even break the EU law. That taken together means that German government (and so the media and do some of Germans) are opposed to the present Polish government and are doing things to change and/or undermine it.