“All AfDler belong in the gas chamber” – a woman from Linden wrote on Twitter two years ago. Now she is running as a left-wing politician for the city parliament. That triggers a shit storm.
The internet does not forget. Bianca Deubel, who is running for the Left Party in the local elections in Linden, is currently feeling this – in the form of a nationwide shit storm.
Above all, the AfD is currently drawing attention to two-year-old statements by Deubel in social networks. “There should be slaps” and “The Deubel-Linke has not yet gotten enough pissed off”, AfD sympathizers reply in comments. The Giessen district court dealt with the statements of the Lindenerin, Twitter has blocked her account to this day.
Left-wing politician from Linden in the Gießen district via Twitter: “All AfDlers belong in the gas chamber”
The trigger for the reactions are statements by Deubels on Christmas Day 2018. The 47-year-old Lindenerin was sitting in front of her computer and clicking through pages of AfD politicians in social networks. When she reads statements on Twitter by the speaker of the AfD Heidelberg, who criticized the Christmas messages of the two large churches, Deubel replied with a momentous sentence: “All AfD members belong in the gas chamber.”
On the same day, she also wrote to former Bundestag politician Erika Steinbach, the chairwoman of the Desiderius Erasmus Foundation founded by the AfD, on Twitter. Deubel replies to a public Christmas greeting from Steinbach: “I’m already looking forward to dancing on her grave.”
One afternoon in February 2021. Deubel, who works as a freelance teacher for German as a foreign language, is at home. The phone is off, she has withdrawn. “It’s starting to bother me again,” she says. Shortly after her tweets in late 2018, she suffered from nightly telephone terror for three months. Now fear return. “When I’m outside, I take care and look around.” She is shocked by the reactions to what she says. “I’m a tiny little girl,” says Deubel. “And they make such a riot.”
Gießen district: Left-wing politician is running for the Linden city parliament and distances herself from the tweet
Naivety speaks from her sentences when she says that she did not expect her two-year-old tweets to boil up again against the background of her candidacy for the Linden city parliament. “A colleague told me that I’m the talk of the town. That’s not nice.”
Meanwhile, Deubel admits that her statements can be understood as inflammatory and as a call to violence. “I distance myself from that,” she says. “I do not wish any AfD voter death.” She made the statements as a citizen, “which was very upset.”
She was misunderstood, emphasizes the Lindenerin. The spokesman for the AfD Heidelberg complained about warnings from the churches against right-wing populism, she explains. “The fact that a politician wants to dictate to the churches what they have to preach reminded me of the” Gleichschaltung “under National Socialism.” All she wanted to say was that AfD politicians had memorials for the victims of National Socialism and thus also former gas chambers for historical education should visit in previous extermination camps. “I would put that more clearly today.”
Linden: Left-wing politician from the Gießen district recommends AfD people to visit a concentration camp memorial
Deubel also put forward this classification in court proceedings through her lawyer. After her statement to the Heidelberg AfD spokesman, there was a charge of incitement to hatred, and the public prosecutor in Gießen applied for a penalty order of 90 daily rates. The Gießen district court, Deubel and the public prosecutor’s office agreed in November of last year to discontinue the proceedings without any conditions. A spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office said that the consent was given because the Linden woman has no criminal record and the act was long ago at the time of the suspension. In addition, explains the spokesman, Deubel’s sentence could have been understood to mean “that a visit to a concentration camp memorial is recommended for educational reasons.”
Deubel’s statements to Steinbach had no legal consequences. She only took up and quoted a similar statement by an AfD member, explains the Lindenerin. After such statements on the part of the AfD, there is seldom an outcry from society, she laments.
Shitstorm because of Twitter statement: Woman as Linden in the Gießen district was not in the Left Party at the time
She has not yet found the right way to deal with her statements at the time, says Deubel. “I don’t want to add more fuel to the fire. But I don’t want to bury my head in the sand either. ”When she saw the statements on Twitter, she hadn’t thought of working on a local political level. Only a few months ago she joined the Left Party, the Left is running for the first time for the city parliament in Linden. “I’m sorry for my party comrades,” says Deubel. “I have a guilty conscience.” Despite all the turmoil, she will not withdraw her candidacy.
Incidentally, the AfD is also running for the first time in the local elections in Linden. Should Deubel get into the city parliament, there would be a high probability that she would also meet AfD politicians. When asked how she would react to statements by the AfD, Deubel paused for a moment. Then she says: “Then I will have to come to terms with it and react appropriately.” She wants to avoid provocations. Deubel adds: “This is a learning task for me.”
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