The police are investigating users of the Telegram messenger service after death threats against Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig (SPD) and her Saxon colleague Michael Kretschmer (CDU) had become public. As research for tagesschau.de suggests, the calls for murder are not isolated cases. Since mid-November, calls to kill people from politics, science, medicine, authorities and the media have been made daily on Telegram. In the examined chat rooms alone, the reporters came across over 250 of them.
The publicly known personalities are often desired “a gallows, a guillotine or a rope”, has shown the evaluation of secret and open Telegram chat groups. “Kretschmer and his mercenaries should be executed for high treason against the people!”, The Tagesschau brings an example in incorrect German. In another chat on December 21, a user asked whether he could “shoot” Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP). A Bundeswehr soldier said he wanted to distribute corpses over fields.
Sharp increase in death threats
The journalists assume that their findings are only the tip of the iceberg. Telegram cannot be completely searched. You can only research in the channels and chat groups in which you are a member. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and his predecessor Jens Spahn (CDU), Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) and the new CDU leader Friedrich Merz are also victims of “unrestrained calls for violence”.
According to the analysis, the calls for killing, which are often used under the presumed real names, have increased sharply since mid-November, i.e. parallel to the start of the intensified debate about compulsory vaccination in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. More than a third of the hate comments took place in two large Telegram chat rooms, in which followers of Q-Anon, so-called lateral thinkers and other conspiracy stories exchanged ideas. The mood there is particularly aggressive. The “Soldiers & Reservists” group also attracts attention through frequent calls for killing.
According to the report, the focus is not only on politicians and doctors, but also on science journalists who advocate mandatory vaccination. There are also threats, particularly against the public broadcasters and their buildings, which are denigrated as “propaganda shops”. The political scientist Josef Holnburger from the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMas) warned of impending dangers: “People with a conspiratorial ideological view of the world are more willing to use violence.” There are seldom contradictions in the scene, “also because one wants to convey the image of a uniform movement”.
Hostility has become commonplace
The German Association of Journalists (DJV) called on Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) to take “tough and determined action against the senders of calls for murder and violence” on Telegram. Journalists experienced “the hostility from the camp of vaccination opponents and corona deniers every day,” emphasized the DJV federal chairman Frank Überall. The calls for murder showed that the hatred of press representatives no longer knows any boundaries. Faeser must follow up on her announcement that she will take decisive action against extremism.
Saxony’s Interior Minister Roland Wöller (CDU) was “appalled” on Twitter in view of the increasing radicalization via messenger servicesthat Federal Justice Minister Buschmann is of the opinion that no new laws are needed and only the existing ones have to be applied.
The liberal had previously stated that, in his view, Telegram fell under the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) promoted by the grand coalition and that obviously criminal content had to be deleted within 24 hours in this country. He advocated creating a common European legal framework against hatred and agitation with the planned Digital Services Act (DSA). Local politicians have been calling for stricter action against criminal content on Telegram since mid-December. Regulating the largely uncooperative service, which is officially based in Dubai, is not easy, however, since relevant measures are likely to result in massive collateral damage. ^
(jk)