The GrandmaGate crisis in Germany is one of the more peculiar stories of our time, at least from a non-Teutonic perspective (see previous posts here and here).
Angry protesters have taken to the streets in Cologne to protest the production by state TV of a propaganda song using a children’s choir. What the demonstrators object to is that the idiotic song refers to Grandma as an “environmental pig”. They don’t like their grandmothers being insulted at taxpayers’ expense.
I’ve seen quite a few German propaganda videos over the years that are far more insulting to ordinary Germans than the Grandma song. This is especially true of taxpayer-funded propaganda promoting mass migration into Germany, which has turned German citizens, especially women, into victims of assault, rape, and murder, and made them afraid to go out at night or walk the street alone. Such propaganda would seem to be far more consequential in its effects, yet it has engendered no public response to match the intensity of the GrandmaGate protests.
I don’t understand the collective psyche of Germans at all. I observe these events, but they don’t make any sense.
And now we see Antifa taking to the streets in a counter-protest against the GrandmaGate demonstrators, and in far larger numbers. The leftists engaged in violent confrontation with the police as they attempted to teach a lesson to the “Nazis” who object to the Grandma video. Not wanting grandmothers to be labeled “pigs” is seen as evidence of right-wing extremism.
So this stuff just gets stranger and stranger.
Below are four videos about the latest GrandmaGate protests and the Antifa response. Many thanks to MissPiggy for the translations, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling.
Video #1 is a brief news report on the demonstration in Cologne by supporters of Grandma:
Video #2 shows counter-protesters clashing with the police and being arrested:
Video #3 shows a violent encounter between Antifa and the police:
Video #4 is a more detailed report on the demonstrators and their leftist attackers:
Video transcript #1:
00:00 | This afternoon hundreds of people gathered in Cologne to demonstrate. | |
00:04 | They were protesting the satirical video produced by WDR, in which a choir of children sing | |
00:08 | about their grandmothers being environmental pigs. A right-wing group called for demonstrations | |
00:12 | to protest against the taxpayer-funded public broadcasting. [Sign] My grandma was a rubble woman, | |
00:16 | not an environmental pig! —Approximately 50 protesters participated. | |
00:19 | The counter-protest organised by “Cologne Against the Right” had 1,500 participants. | |
00:23 | According to the police there were a few small clashes, | |
00:27 | seven police complaints filed, and one arrest. |
Video transcript #2:
00:00 | On the edge of the demonstration, there were physical clashes… | |
00:11 | …against the police as well. | |
00:25 | A man was found in possession of a knife | |
00:29 | Several police complaints were filed. —Please step back! | |
00:33 | Get back! —A demonstrator was arrested. | |
00:39 | Get back! |
Video transcript #3:
00:00 | Grandma-gate Demonstration — Police and Antifa Clash / Cologne / January 1 2020 | |
00:26 | We’re staying here. | |
00:52 | We just want to demonstrate and exercise our basic rights. Our human rights. | |
00:55 | And these kinds of people are trying to prevent it. | |
01:16 | Now the owner is coming towards us. He has a baton. | |
01:19 | We are peaceful, what are you? We are peaceful, what are you? | |
01:35 | German police, they are the fascists! German police, they are the fascists! |
Video transcript #4:
00:00 | In front of the WDR building in Cologne, approximately 60 people, according to police, | |
00:04 | were protesting against the public broadcasting service. | |
00:08 | There was also a counter-protest by labour unions, leftist groups, | |
00:11 | the Green Party and JUSOs [young social democrats]. They were marching | |
00:14 | under the banner of “Cologne Against the Right”. According to the police, hundreds participated, | |
00:18 | but the organizer claims 1,500 demonstrators participated. | |
00:21 | They were protesting for freedom of opinion and freedom of the press. | |
00:24 | They were also protesting in favor of the public service broadcasting. | |
00:27 | During the demonstration there were a few clashes with police. | |
00:30 | Four people were slightly injured. In another location, | |
00:34 | near the WDR building… —Always stay friendly. Stay friendly, OK? | |
00:39 | Don’t touch. Don’t touch me. —I don’t give a s***! —Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. | |
00:42 | —I haven’t touched you yet! If I do you’ll know it! —Come on! Get out of here! | |
00:47 | Go on, piss off! —Don’t touch. Police, please! Call the police! | |
00:53 | What!? Come on! What do you want!? Come on! | |
01:12 | Actually we wanted to have a demonstration without any violence. | |
01:17 | We managed to meet in front of this building. My friends and I came | |
01:23 | from the other side. We didn’t realize that it was the wrong side, | |
01:29 | and we wanted to come over here to you. That’s when it happened. | |
01:35 | An umbrella, someone attacked me with an umbrella. | |
01:40 | Now I have a cut. The police handled the situation with discipline. | |
01:46 | They encircled us, to protect us. | |
01:53 | Directly after that a police officer bandaged my wound. | |
01:56 | So I would like to say thank you to the police. |
Baron writes:
“I don’t understand the collective psyche of Germans at all. I observe these events, but they don’t make any sense…..taxpayer-funded propaganda promoting mass migration into Germany, which has turned German citizens, especially women, into victims of assault, rape, and murder, and made them afraid to go out at night or walk the street alone. Such propaganda would seem to be far more consequential in its effects, yet it has engendered no public response to match the intensity of the GrandmaGate protests..”
Really Baron? Let’s bring it much closer to your home, e.g. to Governor Janet Mills of Maine, with its 6,000 Somalis in Lewiston. Read the various quotes, they are as in Germany, watch that Third Rail of US politics, now:
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2020/01/02/the-way-life-should-be-maine-as-a-microcosm-of-jewish-activism/
I’m talking about not understanding the huge outrage over insulting Grandma compared with the much lower level of outrage at mass migration. Obviously I understand the reactions (or lack of them) to mass migration, and they have their analog here in the USA. But we have nothing analogous to GrandmaGate, which is mysterious to me.
You would be well-advised to read my words more closely.
In some ways it’s unique – the only issue I can think of where one group agitating against another is absolutely guaranteed to join that other group at some point, (in an irrevocable one-way process).
However hubris it seems tends to obscure irony among the woke.
As for young v old in the US (which is of course nothing new ito Commie oppressed/oppressor divide and conquers tactics) does not the ‘old’ white male patriarchy the ‘young’ left is attacking represent similar thinking, just absent a flashpoint, (so far) of a Greenie ‘grandma-gate’ incident?
Don’t worry, I don’t understand it either. Only possible hint I can offer from growing up in it is that there isn’t truly any sense of “we” in the German people. Everyone speaks for themselves, “we” only ever serves as rhethorical amplifier for political opinions. I want to venture as far as saying that there never was such a sense of community even in times of most excessive nationalism. The entire unification process, not just of recent times but throughout all historical epochs, only ever was artificial and implemented by ruling powers. It never was a grassroots kind of desire.
In this particular instance though, it seems to be rather the growing public anger about the undemocratically enacted and ruthlessly enforced TV tax while grossly getting lied to. We’ve been wondering when this would finally be going ballistic. Mind you, not that there is a non-left majority already but that demonstrations are building up at all is a kind of progress, and while they’re peaceful they get attacked by violent leftists, which in turn gets framed in the media as you-know-whose fault… This is not going to end well.
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pi-news.net%2F2020%2F01%2Faus-dem-protest-ist-ein-flaechenbrand-geworden%2F
For me personally I don’t see real uniqueness in this, where were the mass anglo-protests to the industrial scale mass rape that has been occurring in Britain for well over a decade from “Asian” grooming gangs? The one I know of that happened in Yorkshire was certainly not big, nothing like Pegida at least. People in the west these days are very detached from their environment and politically apathetic. I suppose in this case the propaganda just wasn’t subtle enough, “these people are seeking refuge” being much more appealing than “grandma is a pig”, who knows. Germany has been a police state for awhile now, just like Britain and Austra, needn’t look any further than the Ernst Zundel case, and that pre-dates mass immigration all the way back to the regulatory approach to speech the allied conquerors imposed all those years ago.
I’m more interested in the question: why has the political discourse in Germany changed so quickly? Why have its leaders seemingly gone thru a personality change? Wasn’t long ago people like Horst Seehofer were calling for an end to ALL muslim immigration, now he’s completely capitulated to mutti, and Angela was in hot water for her remarks on multi-culturalisms failure. Now? You can’t even get away with calling for “border checks” or an upper limit number. smh
bizarre
Reading thru again and your response to another comment I get what you’re saying a little better: why “rightful” outrage at this and not the other? Dunno, again, might just be less well disguised? Hard to believe anyone would fall for migrant propaganda either tho.
“where were the mass Anglo-protests to the industrial scale mass rape that has been occurring in Britain for well over a decade from “Asian” grooming gangs?”
Indeed.
An explosion doesn’t begin slowly however.
An even more dramatic example of this is France with the Yellow Vest protests. Huge protests against Macron, and why? Almost entirely because of high taxes and climate change schemes. Which are indeed bad, but you’d think the Muslim ghettos and mosques covering France from end to end would be a much bigger concern.
America is afflicted with a similar complex, especially where dogs are concerned. For example, the outrage over Michael Vick and his dogfighting ring vs pedophile rings among the rich and powerful, or the rape of actressess by the likes of Harvey Weinstein for many years before #MeToo finally got some traction. Anecdotally, it seems abuse of animals is seen as much more horrible and prosecuted more severely than abuse against children. When muslims become a larger share of the US population and their proclivity for abuse of animals, especially dogs becomes wider known it will be interesting to see if they are given a pass and their crimes minimized, hidden, or explained away due to their being the reigning group of the Victimhood Olympics.
» dogfighting ring vs pedophile rings«
Good point; reminds me of Parkinson’s law of triviality:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
It’s easy to have a strong opinion on simple things — in discussion groups on the web trivial topics often get the most comments.
In addition : 1) Germans have been taught now for more than 70 years how bad it is to be “racist” and 2) Germany has started to change since 2015.
I appreciate your bringing in Parkinson, who was a very underrated economist, social commentator, and incidental humorist. His point was that people focus on issues they can understand, even if the issue itself is trivial compared to the undebated article of the same bill. For example, if you had a bill giving the Federal Reserve complete power over exchange rates, which contained a rider including a subsidy for museums displaying steam-driven locomotives, you’d get more debate over the subsidies than the federal reserve powers, which no one understands anyway.
I would like to separate Weinstein’s offenses, which were carried out on adult actresses who had the choice of walking out rather than pursue an easy path to an acting career, from the offenses of the rape gangs, which specifically targeted physically vulnerable, very young girls.
I would rate my concern for helpless dogs as above my concern for ambitious young actresses able to walk out on their own, and below my concern for underaged, physically vulnerable English girls.
Truemmerfrauen was the name given to the women of Germany after WWII who cleared the streets of rubble and began the reconstruction of modern Germany. They are praised for their hard work, since it showed German resilience, and are taken as a positive indication of a better Germany. But some historians have noted that the women who receive such praise represent had also been part of Nazi Germany and may well have held Nazi views. They have long been the subject of much discussion in Germany, namely, as to whether or not these women are heroic rubble women or unreconstructed environmental sows.
@Hodges: And who would those “some historians” be, hmm? Working in or around the ADL or the SPLC and the like, on the D Lipstadt-D Goldhagen axis, with its own very definite agenda?
You know?: compassionate, vibrantly diverse (sic) immigration policy and a fragmentedly advantageous electorate afterwards?
Anyone who knows how the “discussion” of history gets controlled in Germany since the Weiszäcker speech of May 1985 is not surprised by the nature of the persons in control positions in German academe, by the way; as required, they can be imported from the USA.
I suggest you briefly quit the sanctimonious, moralising – I almost wanted to write, “Pentateuch Vengeful” – sermon and have a read of “The High Cost of Vengeance” (1949) by Freda Utley. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freda_Utley.
Still available on the Net for free, Zuckerberg/Brin/Page have not wiped it yet.
She has the marked advantage for GoV readers of being resolutely anti-Communist, and her book was written on the spot at the time, based on what she saw and whom she interviewed, , well before the current self-serving myths about the period 1945-1960 were spawned.
I think it’s time to lay the concept of the collective guilt of the German people for World War II at a rest. The activities of the concentration camps were kept secret, just because they were illegal by any law. If the Germans as a whole supported the Nazis, why did the Nazis never hold a free election after the election of 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor as a compromise, after getting something like 40% of the vote?
Obviously, a significant number of Germans participated in the atrocities, but most civilians were just trying to get along. Once Hitler consolidated the reins of power, there was no avenue to disengage from the German state, except emigration and conspiracy. The lifetime of conspirators was conspicuously short. Like the heroes of the White Rose resistance.
“I don’t understand the collective psyche of Germans at all. I observe these events, but they don’t make any sense.” Same with me, usually. Only the other way around 😉
But seriously, I think there are several reasons why this incident led to comparatively loud protests. Firstly, the propaganda for mass immigration says, that sort of immigration is wonderful, holding advantages for everyone. Obviously, that’s not true, though lots of people still have an incomprehensible wish to believe it to be true, but propaganda does NOT say, hey, it’s a good thing, all those knife attacks and all those girls being raped, why aren’t you happy about it.
The insult in the Umweltsau-song is much more open and direct. Another thing is, that the children in the choir are nice looking little ones, probably with well meaning parents, the kind of kids, you’d expect to give their grandparents selfmade gifts for Christmas, sit around the Christmas Tree and play “Ihr Kinderlein kommet” on their recorder flute. Instead, they are made to call their Grannies foul names, singing in their sweet voices. I’m not sure whether I get it right in English, but I’d say, alte Sau has the meaning of an old bitch, an old pervert or just a very dirty person. Apart from that, while everyone has to pay for German GEZ media, their programme – except the news programme which actually used to be of high quality until some years ago – is watched almost only by elderly people. It’s a bit as if your favourite newspaper called you, the Baron, a f***ing bastard directly in your face. In the primary school writing of your grandchild and a picture drawn with crayons next to it.
Lastly, elderly people mostly use more often sustainable products and live more environmentally friendly than their grandchildren, so accusing them of being „environmental pigs“ is, among everything else, not at all true. All in all, I find it not so surprising that people are upset about this.
Thank you for your detailed explanation, and for your patience with this non-Teuton!
I probably should emphasize that calling grandma an environmental Sau is not only a ridiculous slander, everyone knows it is, from personal experience – including the knuckleheads who penned the song, misused a group of innocent young girls and had them sing it.
And they forced us (everyone else) to support that.
» I’m not sure whether I get it right in English, but I’d say, alte Sau has the meaning of an old bitch, an old pervert or just a very dirty person.«
No, i think it’s far less drastic; here in rural Bavaria “Sau” replaces hochdeutsch “Schwein”; you have a “Saustall” (house where pigs are kept but also used to declare something a terrible mess) or a hunter might encounter “Sauen” (wild boars). When someone gets called “Umweltsau”
I would think the speaker wants to say that person does not care of environmental considerations, not the person is not decent — this case you would rather use “Schwein”. But then we have cultural differences even in traditional Germany …
Well, here in rural Hesse we use the word Sau, too, if we simply mean pigs or wild boars, and I also know what a Saustall is. But used against a person, Sau (even more so, alte Sau) is a very strong abusive word. After I’d read about the WDR choir, I tried to imagine calling my own Granny that, but couldn’t. It simply wouldn’t have occurred to me, not even as a “joke”. She certainly wouldn’t have found it funny. But, as you say, there are cultural differences even amongst ethnic Germans.
I don’t think the issue of insulting “grandmother” was important, just like the issue of the well-being of women is unimportant to feminists. It’s the standard issue of those who value their own culture versus the Utopian idealist cultural Marxists who wish to tear down the social fabric so it can be rebuilt (as a Marxist society).
Any time there is the least expression of traditional culture, the Utopians immediately gather to attack and destroy it. They are an example of what Michael Woodley of Menie terms “spiteful mutants”. By that, he describes animals who inherit a dysfunctional gene through mutation, which expresses itself by disrupting the normal social behavior of the group. It’s actually a whole article, or book, to explain why there has been such an explosion of dysfunctional Antifa followers, and so relatively few citizens willing to make some sort of defense of their traditional culture.
@Ronald B: concerning the wellbeing of women being unimportant to feminists.
This is generally untrue, but is true if you are thinking merely of career female politicians of various skin tone needing Third World migrant votes in still – Caucasian countries. And of the “anti-racist” female activists. These women relativise, downplay and ignore male immi-vader crime against indigenous and migrant women at all times.
But feminism is a broad church. The grand old “lady” (sic) of German feminism Alice Schwarzer is now opposed by the younger “anti racist” feminists because she has come out against Islam.
However, the fake news of “the gender wage gap” which has spread through the West, pushed often by female media scribblers describing themselves as feminist, shows that the (economic) wellbeing of women is indeed a concern of such people.
In this case, a real statistical gap in median earnings is attributed to male employer Evil rather than the actual reasons being mentioned (type of employment favoured by women e.g. kindergarten teaching with low salary ceiling versus civil engineering; time out for child-bearing, hence loss of seniority, etc. )
As has been said, if women were always cheaper to hire than men job for job, no men would be in the workforce, as employers would be hiring with an eye to their own wallets.
Secondly, the notion that Merkel or Macron or Biden or Warren want a “Marxist” society through their immi-vasion policies is Ayn Rand Right-libertarian tosh.
Because the pending 5G surveillance of immi-vader debt slaves to US and other banks, co-supervised by Gutmensch, fake left, non-executive directors/politicians, in the Margaret Atwoodian badlands of outer Paris, Sacramento or Düsseldorf is an outgrowth of GDP-preserving capitalism, not communism.
After all, those 30 year bonds have to be repaid to investors, both principal and interest.
Notwithstanding the fond beliefs of GoV writers.
If it is truly the case that the importation of foreigners is necessary to the repayment of 30 yr bonds and continued vulture capitalist hegemony, then why not bring in hardworking Chinese or Indian immigrants, or less skilled but culturally more compatible Latin American catholics instead of illiterate, lazy, and violent african savages and muslim rapists? This is a question I have yet to hear satisfactorily answered anywhere, and the reason why many believe the invasion has much more to do with white population replacement than repayment of bonds or economic ponzi schemes.
But in the period before Merkel’s border-ripping of 4.9.2015 there was indeed effort to attract Indian graduates to Germany. However, Indians speak English already, they would have to learn German, so it was noticeable how they preferred Canada, USA, NZ, UK., Australia.
That is why in 2000 the phrase Kinder statt Inder, children instead of Indians, was used in a controversy by a politician of what was to become Merkel’s obedient party, CDU, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_R%C3%BCttgers.
However, notice also the eager welcoming tone of the German Embassy website in New Delhi in English in 2020:
https://www.make-it-in-germany.com/en/.
The influx of Arabs and Africans, by contrast, will have more than one cause.
Bleeding out Syria’s educated to prevent Assad from rebuilding, on behalf of the USA and local master Israel is one; another is that aggregate Demand in an economy to preserve GDP growth/profits does not require education (did you notice how the argument of “helping Africa to help itself” and against “brain drain of clever Third Worlders to rich countries” has utterly disappeared since about 2005? )
GDP growth comes from private white flight gated village construction and IT sueveillance; private white flight schools; private Arab/African/Turkish security guard firms, etc.
Nobody stopping you financing this with 30 year bonds.
Yet the demand is not organic; illiterate goat molesters that neither speak German or have any interest in working except in amateur pharmaceutical sales or pimping do not contribute anything to the economy that is not destroyed elsewhere, and spend nothing except that which is either taken from the productive populace by force or conjured from 1’s and 0’s. At best, by creating more inflation it benefits the rentier class and the government, which can inflate away it’s debts at the expense of almost every citizen, who instead see higher prices for almost every commodity and service except AIDs infected African prostitutes.
It would have been far better economically and socially to just monetize the debt or drop several thousand euros into every bank account. As a policy, it seems like it could not have been better engineered to provoke the populace and create social instability.
Draining Syria of it’s educated population (did such a thing ever exist in the first place) through provoking mass invasion of Europe seems absolutely retarded. This could have been accomplished much easier while making a profit for the military industrial complex by simply buying weapons and delivering them to both sides of the conflict.