“It’s a little bit like in the 1930s,” declared Wolfram Weimer on a podcast. Weimer is a far-right culture warrior with a side hustle as Germany’s state secretary for culture. Now, many people see frightening parallels to the 1930s, with a far-right party riding the crest of a xenophobic wave. But Weimer, an ideological forerunner of Germany’s Rechtsruck, or shift to the right, was referring to something completely different.
“We have a situation where Jews in Germany—especially those who are…in the cultural sector—are afraid.” He mentioned Jewish DJs who couldn’t get gigs. “Why? Because you’re Jewish. That is pure antisemitism, and they experience this all the time.”
Is this true? Are Jewish DJs getting cancelled? Weimer has made this claim before—and as the left-wing newspaper nd showed in an investigation, he could not name a single Jewish artist who has faced a boycott.
Is This True?
I reached out to Weimer’s office to ask which specific DJs he was referring to. A speaker replied that they do not keep statistics, but there are “numerous reports.” They suggested I reach out to the Israeli ambassador, with whom Weimer recently met.
This is already a bit confusing: Does Ron Prosor represent Jewish DJs? Isn’t conflating Israel and Jewish people a clear case of antisemitism according to the IHRA definition?
I asked them to send me a few of these “numerous reports,” and they sent the same bizarre examples they had used in the past, such as the call to boycott the club ://about blank—a German, non-Jewish institution—for its pro-genocide stance. (It’s worth noting that ://about blank announced an event on antisemitism with zero Jewish speakers, and proceeded to deny Jewish activists entry.)
In other words, it appears the state minister has zero examples of the very specific claims he has been making. There are boycotts related to Israel’s genocide—but “because you are Jewish” seems to be Weimer’s invention.
The Munich Philharmonic Orchestra was disinvited from a Belgian music festival because of the Israeli conductor Lahav Shani. But besides the fact that Shani does not appear to be a DJ, this decision was not because he is Jewish, but rather because he supports the Israeli army while it carries out a genocide. As festival organizers wrote: “We are unable to provide sufficient clarity about his attitude to the genocidal regime.”
The Munich Philharmonic should be familiar with this: In 2022, they fired their Russian conductor Valery Gergiev for not distancing himself from Russia’s war in Ukraine. Was that an example of anti-Russian or anti-Slavic racism? Or was it a political decision?
As far as I can tell, Weimer’s whole story appears to be what Germans call a Zeitungsente or “newspaper duck,” otherwise known as fake news. Weimer’s speaker emphasized that he finds this made-up story “worrying and completely unacceptable.”
Actual Cancellations
There have been numerous, well-reported cancellations of Jewish artists and intellectuals in Germany. In every case, it has not been because they are Jewish, but rather because they have publicly criticized Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Germany’s support for it. Nancy Fraser was fired by a German university; Candice Breitz had an art show cancelled; Masha Gessen had a ceremony for a literary prize scrapped; Yuval Carraso was beaten up by police. The list could go on and on.
In the podcast, Weimer took a moment to attack yet another Jewish leftist, and accused Karl Marx of antisemitism—deeply strange coming from an admirer of proto-Nazi philosopher Oswald Spengler’s theories of European decline. German nationalists like to imagine Jews as a homogenous group with centralized leadership—that’s why Weimer treats Prosor as the representative of the Jewish people. If all Jews are part of a Zionist collective, then opposing Zionism must be antisemitic.
At the Emmys last Sunday, the culture official could have seen an example of the diversity of views in the Jewish community when the actress Hannah Einbinder called out “Free Palestine!” She later explained:
“I feel like it is my obligation as a Jewish person to distinguish Jews from the State of Israel, because our religion and our culture is such an important and long standing institution that is really separate to this sort of ethno-nationalist state.”
As Haaretz put it, Einbinder is the “voice of a generation” of Jewish people who are breaking with Zionism (and thus joining a long tradition of Jewish anti-Zionism). In Germany, she would face a government boycott—all in the name of “fighting antisemitism,” of course.
I am still waiting to hear back from Weimer whether the boycotts against leftist Jews are “worrying and completely unacceptable.”
Springer’s Antisemitism
Before joining the government, Weimer had a long career as a journalist at right-wing publications, including those of the Axel Springer Company. The podcast in question was hosted by Paul Ronzheimer of BILD, a Springer tabloid. What is Springer’s record on antisemitism?
Axel Springer, before he became the Caesar of West Germany’s yellow journalism, worked as a small cog in Joseph Goebbel’s propaganda machine, and joined the National Socialist Motor Corps. Years after fascism had been defeated, Springer married a daughter of Werner Lorenz, one of the top officials of the SS in charge of ethnic cleansing of Eastern Europe—he just really wanted a war criminal in the family. Springer’s newspapers campaigned in defense of Nazi war criminals like Hans Globke.
Springer’s fanatical support for Zionism is often presented as a repudiation of his earlier Nazi convictions. In truth, however, the SS itself was fascinated by a Jewish movement that shared their goal of making Germany Jew-free. Springer was continuing a long tradition of antisemitic support for Zionism and Israel—the “philosemite” wanted Jews to be far away.
The German Right has long associated Jews with the universalist and internationalist ideas they despise. The attempts to erase and suppress all non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Jewish voices are nothing new. Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and Primo Levi all faced persecution—and they would not be allowed to speak at German universities today due to their views on Israel. But now, the German government frames this as “fighting antisemitism” and protecting non-existent Jewish DJs.
Red Flag is a weekly opinion column on Berlin politics that Nathaniel has been writing since 2020. After moving through different homes, it now appears at The Left Berlin.
