He likes hand-made speeches: Dieter Hallervorden will receive a Munich Carnival Prize in 2023.
Photo: dpa
Before they slip away completely in the media, because the time for television sketches seems to be over, just like that of political sketches in the Left Party, the joke actor Dieter Hallervorden and the entertainment politician Dr. Diether Dehm on a particularly popular tool in the German attention economy: criticizing Israel. Someone always finds that strong or weak or stupid or cowardly or brave or repulsive. Because supposedly you shouldn’t or you shouldn’t or you have to or you don’t want to or you can’t. Especially in Germany, people always say, no matter how or where you turn.
How do Hallervorden and Dehm do it? They write a kitsch poem together, name it “Gaza Gaza” (why not “Hyper Hyper”?) and publish it as a kitsch video on YouTube. Can war images with tanks, bulldozers, graves and a child being pulled out alive from rubble be tacky? Yes, if you accompany it with light, but still difficult music and let Hallervorden deliver it in the style of a concerned hand-made speech: “When people are driven away like animals, / with hunger and with drones, / this children’s cemetery will remain, / as a nightmare for generations.” And then an animated dove of peace takes off from Hallervorden’s hand.
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The whole thing is preceded by a short preface from Hallervorden: “Of course I also condemn the terror of Hamas.” But no humanism, no empathy without reservation: “Atrocities usually have antecedents and no person is born a terrorist.” Except that these “antecedents” are brought into the present through the video – which is also Hamas’ calculation: the massacres of October 7th will be displaced by the Gaza war. Because Jewish Israel is always to blame. And that’s why Hallervorden and Dehm have a full load of trigger words: “anti-Semitism”, “apartheid”, “genocide” – all in the form of a question, but the answer is clear in this video. “Gaza Gaza” would like to become a German folk song. And Diether Dehm, whom the new Wagenknecht party does not want, will speak on May 1st in Zeitz in Burgenland. André Poggenburg is also announced as a speaker there. He left the AfD almost five years ago because it was too lax for him.
PS: If you want a serious pacifist song for children and adults, listen to “What are wars for?” by Pascal Kravetz, then ten years old, and Udo Lindenberg from 1981 on YouTube. It begins like this: “No one wants to die / That It’s clear / Then what are wars for?”
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