2024-05-12 18:29:43
After the attack on the Dresden SPD politician Matthias Ecke, there are calls for special laws to protect elected officials. A dangerous wrong turn.
Whether at an Islamist demonstration in Hamburg or after excessive violence against election campaigners: for some time now, the incumbent Federal Minister of the Interior has been reminding people of the good old jukebox in her knee-jerk reactions. You throw a coin into the top and Nancy “Wurlitzer” Faeser automatically puts on the same single: The state won’t accept this, the state won’t accept it, the state will do it with all its might… Recently, the highest phraseology of the… An alert journalist from the “Stern” responded to the federal government and reminded us of something that actually goes without saying: “Ms. Faeser, you are the state!”
The entire helplessness of politics in the face of the obvious brutalization and radicalization of this society is crystallized in the empty words of the minister responsible for internal security. As ultimately in all the expressions of dismay that were dutifully expressed in the last few days from the Federal President in Bellevue Palace to the last local politician in Zappendorf and Tauberbischofsheim.
Serious bodily harm carries sufficient penalties
Now, after the brutal attack on the SPD politician Matthias Ecke, the federal and state interior ministers got together and came up with the idea of calling for stricter laws for attacks on politicians. Nancy Faeser has promised to talk to her cabinet colleague Marco Buschmann about it. This hasty reference shows that the lawyer knows exactly what her colleague, the Minister of Justice, thinks: nothing.
And rightly so. Because this proposal for a “Lex politicus” is not only helpless, but useless and harmful. Section 226 of the Criminal Code stipulates a penalty of up to ten years in prison for serious bodily harm. And this paragraph applies equally to all people in accordance with the principle of equality in the Basic Law: And with this punishment it protects all potential victims equally. Be it a politician, a bus driver or a master butcher.
If, in this heated and irritable mood, politicians now build even higher criminal protection fences around themselves, then it looks like a “gated community”, like a specially isolated space for a special species. However, this impression must not arise under any circumstances. Because, to complement the “Stern” colleague, not only Nancy Faeser is the state, but we are all the state, equally. In a representative democracy, politicians have a special role for a limited period of time. But they are not allowed to have any special rights.
Which would really help
Two things would really help instead. First: The laws must be applied faster and more consistently. Anyone who kicks the bones of someone’s face today, in this case a politician, must have received their appropriate punishment the following week. Otherwise, such perpetrators will only laugh at the rule of law.
And secondly, this sounds a bit technical: the so-called social networks, which are in fact largely anti-social networks, communication cesspools, must, like other media, be subject to press law. Just as every text in a newspaper or a news portal, right down to the published letters to readers, is the responsibility of the editor-in-chief and he or she is ultimately liable for it (VisdP, responsible in the sense of press law), so must Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg or her governor in this country can be personally prosecuted for every single criminally relevant hate and inflammatory post.
The kicks to the facial bones of a politician lying on the ground have their origins in the brutalized and depraved communication culture in these sewers. The masses of dirt and filth can only be dealt with using this liability principle, which has been tried and tested in press law.