Satire or overstepping boundaries? The debate over El Hotzo’s Trump tweet serves as a welcome argument for right-wing parties to oppose the ÖRR.
El Hotzo is still allowed to tweet Photo: Manfred Segerer/imago
Satire can do anything. But of course it doesn’t answer the question of where the boundaries lie between opinions, bad jokes and the relativization of violence. At least that is the conclusion you draw when you look at it Debate about El Hotzoreal name Sebastian Hotz, and his now deleted tweet about the assassination attempt on Trump. And it turns out that Reichelt and Co., in order to further fuel the hatred against public broadcasting, are happy to ignore their own principles in order to make the unspeakable visible.
Hotz, a satirist and author, posted “the last bus” on July 14, with two crossed hands, “Donald Trump” and “just missed it.” Another tweet read: “I absolutely love it when fascists die.” Criticism quickly grew louder, Hotz deleted the tweet, screenshots of the post were shared, as politicians Wolfgang Kubicki was furious. So far, so internet.
Julian Reichelt, former Bild boss and Nius founder, also jumped on the wave of indignation. The criticism quickly turned into a campaign, driven by Reichelt’s platform Nius and Reichelt himself. The coercively financed ARD and ZDF tolerated and carried out calls for violence against politicians, according to Reichelt’s claim.
The result: ARD dismissed Hotz from his duties as presenter “Theoretically cool” on the RBB station Radio FritzThe accusation Sebastian Hotz faced: contempt for humanity and celebrating attempted murder.
Right-wing culture war
It is valid to question Hotz’s statements, to criticize them and to demand consequences. The question remains: Is Julian Reichelt, of all people, a professional humanist, a supporter of women and a guardian of differentiated discourse, the best man when it comes to upholding German media ethics? This remains doubtful, at least in view of his activities with Nius.
It was not the first time that Nius tried to shame someone with statements on social media. Most recently, the BR journalist Alexander Nabert, whose anti-German expression “Germany, you worthless piece of shit”, which he had been tweeting for years, was exhumed. The right-wing culture war is also a right-wing media strategy. The wrong post in the wrong place: a blow, the beginning of a new blow against the hated public broadcaster.
Simply asking what values you want to represent as a public broadcaster – and these must surely be universalist – without also asking who will dictate the extent to which they are implemented and what purposes they should serve, becomes a pluralist one and publicly funded media outlets are not fair.
Will Musk pay legal fees?
Julian Reichelt would have known that losing a job due to gross misconduct is not the end of the road. This is not the case for El Hotzo, who continues to tweet happily and continues to have it his podcast.
Elon Musk – he owns news service X, so he’s been doing something with media for a while – also got involved in the debate. The Trump supporter recently wrote on X: “Someone who wishes Donald Trump and me dead is paid by the German government?”
Apart from the fact that the construction of the public broadcaster seems to be something completely new for Musk, since it is paid for through license fees and not directly from Scholz’s hand, one might think of Musk at this point. his tweet of August 6, 23 remember: “If you have been treated unfairly by your employer because you posted or liked something on this platform, we will reimburse your legal costs.”