German prosecutors, police and press continue to denounce and investigate an unending plague of 'Nazi salute' incidents, in a totally healthy and non-hysterical campaign to finally stamp out fascism

Not a Nazi salute, according to the regime fact-checkers and fascism experts at Correctiv.

Once upon a time, the spectre that haunted Europe was communism, but today that spectre is the stiffly extended arm raised to an angle of 45 degrees. Sometimes I cannot sleep at night, so much does the anxiety gnaw at me that a political extremist might be sticking his arm into the air and hailing victory. It is the stuff of nightmares, and the very idea should make you intensely afraid, because nothing conveys confidence in your political beliefs and moral convictions as much as hyperventilating that somebody, somewhere might be mimicking – even by accident! – the signature gesture of a political party that has been defunct for nearly four generations now.

The German economy may be caught in an indefinite downward spiral, we may be unable to practice even the most basic border security, stabbings and gang rapes may be on the rise, and the Interior Minister may be unilaterally banning entire newspapers, but at least we can take heart in the fact that our cultural police are sparing no effort to combat that perennial plague of fascist saluting:

The Saarland police have opened an investigation into the Austrian right-wing extremist Martin Sellner. The police in Saarbrücken announced that they are investigating him on suspicion of using symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organisations. Sellner is said to have publicly offered a Hitler salute in the Saarland state capital.

The prominent Austrian extremist was in Saarbrücken on Thursday evening to present a book he had written. The event was private and the group Omas gegen Rechts [“Grandmothers against the Right”] organised a demonstration against it. According to the police, Sellner went to this counter-demonstration and “provocatively” promoted his book there.

The police added that he was filmed and photographed by several people. Some of these recordings were subsequently given to the police with the comment that they showed Sellner giving a Hitler salute. The few videos of Sellner in Saarbrücken that could be seen on Platform X, however, do not show a Hitler salute.

That conclusion seems overhasty to me. In this photo, for example, we see that Sellner is very clearly raising both of his arms.

Even more damning, Sellner’s enemies in the Saarland Pirate Party have posted helpful video of this dangerous right-wing extremist’s appearance, which confirms that he made this gesture not once, but multiple times. You might object that these movements in no way resemble a Nazi salute, but that would be very naive of you. A recent court decision clarifies that raising the left arm also qualifies as a Nazi salute for purposes of the German criminal code, and so it as least possible that Sellner is guilty of offering multiple Nazi salutes with both halves of his body simultaneously. I for one am very happy that the police are spending their precious resources investigating this urgent matter, and I long for the day when courts finally clarify that it is bluntly illegal for anybody to raise his arms above his waist in public at all. The risk of an accidental Nazi salute is just too great.

If only the Sellner Incident were an isolated case. Alas, it is not: Alternative für Deutschland are hard at work lacing their political campaigns with cryptic images alluding to this darkly powerful magical gesture. A mere six months after police investigated AfD offices in Berlin-Pankow for their apparently fascist inflatable snowman, who may not have been merely waving but actually heiling Hitler …

… we find ourselves confronted by the wholly new atrocity of this AfD campaign poster:

From Der Spiegel:

The image on an AfD poster from Frankfurt an der Oder is at the very least misleading: it is a photo of a happy-looking family. In the foreground, three blonde children are sitting on a sofa.

Happy-looking family: borderline Nazi. Blonde children: pretty explicitly Nazi. But it gets worse:

Behind them stand a man and a woman, each with one arm outstretched and slightly raised. Their fingertips meet in the centre of the picture. “We protect your children” is written in large letters above the photo. The arms could symbolise a protective roof over the little ones. Or they could mean something else entirely.

Yes. They could mean Nazis, that’s how serious this is.

A politician from the Left Party has filed a criminal complaint, probably because she interpreted the gesture as a Hitler salute. Now the public prosecutor's office has intervened. A spokeswoman … said that the investigating authority was currently looking into whether there is an initial suspicion of a criminal offence.

The district chairwoman of the Frankfurt Left Party, Anja Kreisel, called the AfD election poster “a deliberate provocation that pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable.” The pose evokes associations with forbidden gestures and possibly constitutes the criminal offence of using the symbols of unconstitutional organisations, said Kreisel, who is standing for election to the state parliament on 22 September. “It is alarming and unacceptable that right-wing populist forces are deliberately working to damage the image of our city,” the left-wing politician said.

It is even more “alarming and unacceptable” than Ms. Kreisel imagines. That picture on the AfD poster turns out to be a stock photo …

… which our evil scheming AfD poster artists have printed in mirror image. That might seem exculpatory, but as the crack journalists at the Märkische Onlinezeitung point out, it is the opposite! “In the original … the man’s left arm … is fully extended, while the woman’s right arm is bent. The AfD inverts the image so that the man’s right arm is fully extended.”

By mirroring the image, in other words, the AfD have made the man’s gesture more Nazifically correct, as of course the Hitler salute was a gesture of the right arm. That is damning indeed, and once again I am relieved that prosecutors are investigating this grave incident. And please, dear reader, do not quibble with this compelling analysis by zooming in on the image and disputing whether the man’s left arm is actually fully extended.

All that matters is that it maybe seems to be fully extended if you look at it in passing. The devious genius of the AfD – the sheer lengths to which they will go to smuggle hidden Nazi gestures into their electoral campaigns – is simply unmatched.

Now, two simultaneous Nazi salute controversies is two too many, but if you think that’s the extent of the right-wing menace in Germany, you’re sadly deluded. As I type these words, the German reality television star and schlager artist Melanie Müller is on trial in Leipzig for raising her right arm multiple times at an Oktoberfest performance in 2022. This dreadful moment was captured in a blurry cellphone video; trembling, I provide these horrifying video grabs:

Müller has defended herself pitiably, explaining that the movement was part of a typical “Zicke Zacke” dance routine she has also performed on other occasions. I hope you’ll see that this cannot matter at all, because she was performing before a motorcycle club called the “Eastside Rowdys” who have “links to the far-right scene,” and because people in the audience shouted very untoward and highly illegal things like “Heil Hitler” and “Sieg Heil” while Müller raised her hand.

From the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:

The public prosecutor accuses the 36-year-old singer of using symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organisations and possession of narcotics. According to prosecutor Thomas Schmelzer, Müller is said to have performed at an Oktoberfest in Leipzig on the night of 18 September 2022. Several people shouted “Sieg Heil” at least five times and gave the Hitler salute.

Müller is … said to have raised her arm several times in succession … “Heil Hitler” shouts from the audience can also be heard on the available video files. Guests responded to Müller's “Zicke Zacke, Zicke Zacke” with shouts of “Heil, Heil, Heil” …

One of the videos shows her raising her right arm outstretched in the air on stage several times in quick succession. She chants the slogan "East, East, East Germany". The public prosecutor sees this as a Hitler salute. Müller’s defence lawyer Adrian Stahl speaks of a “neutral arm movement” that was intended to animate the audience. The slogan chanted by Müller is also sung by fans of the Dynamo Dresden football team.

It is not at all absurd and beneath the dignity of public prosecutors to investigate the ridiculous dance routines of Z-list television personalities, nor is there any chance that prosecutions like this will merely further invest tabu gestures with subversive power and meaning. This is a democracy, and in a democracy you cannot just have a heavily tattooed woman who bears a disturbing resemblance to the Bogdanoff twins raising her right arm and shouting “Zicke Zacke Zicke Zacke Zicke Zacke” while drunken men provoke her by intentionally misinterpreting her waves as Nazi salutes. It is plain to see what a grave threat all of this poses to our constitutional order.

Nor is it indicative of unwarranted political hysteria, that the press print story after story about random drunken people offering Nazi salutes and shouting “Sieg Heil” at every last football screening and Abitur party. I for one am always heartened to read about all the good Germans who eagerly call the police whenever they witness such crimes:

Hitler salute and Nazi slogans at public screening

A woman is said to have given the Hitler salute several times during the public viewing of the European Championship round of 16 final between Germany and Denmark in Munich. The 44-year-old woman also sang a verse of the German anthem with incitement to hatred, the police announced on Wednesday. When another guest noticed this, he informed the officers. They arrested the woman …

A good two hours later on Saturday evening, there was another incident in a pub in the historic city centre: A 58-year-old man from the Weilheim-Schongau district is also said to have given the Hitler salute there. Here too, other guests reportedly called the police. The 44-year-old woman and the 58-year-old man now have to answer for using anti-constitutional gestures.

There were also incidents in Heilbronn surrounding the match. Several people are said to have shouted “Sieg Heil” during the broadcast of the round of 16 match in a beer garden in Heimbronn, the police announced on Wednesday. It is still unclear how many people were involved. The police have opened investigations.

It goes on and on; there are dozens and dozens of stories like this. On 12 July we heard about the Dresden police officer who got drunk at a party and offered the Nazi salute while dancing to that notorious fascist anthem, L’Amours Toujours. The police chief Lutz Rodig regretted that the officers present at the party had “squandered public trust, which is indispensable for our role as guarantor of democracy.” Two weeks later there were the men who shouted Nazi slogans and gave Nazi salutes at a public festival in Eging am See, near Passau. A day later there was the twenty year-old in Schwerin who got caught offering the Nazi salute, shortly after local authorities discovered swastika graffiti in a cemetery and on a local shop.

Even childcare centres are emerging as dens of right-wing extremism here in the most democratic Germany of all time:

What should be done when children in a primary school nursery form swastikas out of stones, give the Hitler salute or sing a song with racist slogans? After such incidents in Pirna, Saxony, became known on Wednesday, state politicians offered their first reactions ..

Nobody should dismiss the incident “as a trifle or a silly boy's prank,” wrote Left Party politician Luise Neuhaus-Wartenberg … the education policy spokesperson for the Left Party parliamentary group in the Dresden state parliament, the impression that the use of Nazi symbolism is unproblematic should not be allowed to become entrenched.

According to the Sächsische Zeitung, it had previously emerged that four children between nine and eleven years of age had made swastikas out of bricks and pebbles at the Am Friedenspark primary school nursery in Pirna. The children had also offered the Hitler salute. The incident took place on 5 July.

The staff at the day care centre … informed the police, who opened an investigation into the use of unconstitutional symbols. According to the police, the public prosecutor's office will decide on the next steps, as the children are not yet old enough to be criminally responsible.

A few days earlier, the song “L’Amour toujours” by Gigi D’Agostino had allegedly been played in a group room at the day-care centre; children had sung the slogan “Foreigners out” to it. The song was added to the playlist by a trainee at the request of the children. An educator was not in the room; the trainee was suspended.

All of this is just totally healthy and normal. I’m quite sure that nothing bad will come of sending the police to investigate literal children for their political misdeeds. You can never stamp out fascist tendencies soon enough.