“Today Show” caused outrage |
ZDF program compares Musk with Goebbels
This joke causes outrage!
The editors of the public satirical program “heute-show” (ZDF) compared billionaire and Twitter owner Elon Musk (51) with Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. In a photo montage, Musk can be seen in a brown shirt and holding his cell phone. “Want the full tweet?” Musk asks. In the associated tweet, the “heute-show” continues: “Thanks to Elon Musk, everyone can now say everything on Twitter again! Total freedom of speech!”
The allusion is clear: “Do you want total war?” is one of the most famous sentences by Nazi propagandist Goebbels, he said it in his “Sportpalast Speech” in 1943. The presentation of the photo montage also leaves no questions unanswered: Behind Musk a riot can be seen, flags are waving – instead of a swastika, the Twitter logo, a bird, can be seen.
Moderator Oliver Which (56)
Does the German satire show go too far here? YES, say Union politicians.
︎ The CSU member of the Bundestag Florian Hahn (48): “No matter how you feel about Elon Musk, but this public law Nazi comparison is just tasteless and clearly goes too far.” Hahn said to BILD: “In Germany you should know better, especially as a royalty-funded medium.”
︎ The CDU MP Christoph de Vries (47) explains: “It’s anything but funny. You don’t have to agree with Musk’s commitment to freedom of expression, but a comparison to Nazism, where people were killed for dissenting opinions, is completely wrong – even for a satirical show.”
︎ Anna Staroselski (26), President of the Jewish Student Union Germany, also criticizes the public broadcast. She told BILD that such comparisons “play down the unprecedented crimes against humanity committed by National Socialism”. Public service broadcasting thus contributes “to the social legitimacy of Holocaust trivialisation”.
Staroselski continued: “You don’t have to like Musk’s Twitter takeover, but comparing his efforts to stand up for freedom of expression to a regime that punishes disagreeable opinions with death is not only oblivious to history, but shabby.”
Musk triggered a lot of debate with his Twitter purchase, describing himself as a “free speech absolutist”, i.e. an advocate of absolute freedom of expression. At the time this article was published, the editors of the “heute-show” had not yet responded to a BILD inquiry about the background to the meme.