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Police escort for the 2014 national team in Berlin
Photo: sportfotodienst / Stefan Zeitz / IMAGO
Tomorrow the national soccer team against Holland may wear the colors of bisexuality, i.e. this pink-purple camisole. “Why not?” I would say, I wouldn’t have thought the DFB could have such a cool social show. The main thing is that the team plays like they did against France.
In addition, the DFB suddenly sold 70 years of traditional partnership with the three stripes of Adidas to another American supplier. “So what?” I would say here too, it’s not nice, but stupid’s little brother is nice. In any case, the two red-green federal ministers who indignantly preach locational patriotism should not be taken seriously: What is location-patriotic about green degrowth fantasies or left-wing welfare state bureaucratism? On the populism scale there were at least seven Söder.
But while we're on the subject of patriotism: If almost everything is now going on around the national team, from warm pink-purple to ice-cold market power - why shouldn't police officers in Berlin be allowed to display black, red and gold as flags on their patrol cars during the European Championships? for example or as a stripe on the cheek? I bet if the police put that pink and purple thing on the antenna there would be less stress with the authorities. Rainbow always works.
Oh, the German flag, I hear myself sigh. I thought we were further along.
“Mobbing, agitating, threatening: Is hatred becoming socially acceptable?” was the title of a Sunday evening talk show on ARD – but not eight weeks ago, but eight years ago, when Günther Jauch was still presenting. Björn Höcke sat in the group and right at the beginning took a black, red and gold German flag out of his pocket to drape it on the back of his chair like a trophy. I still remember sitting in front of the TV and thinking: Who's going to take it away from this guy, it's not his flag, it's all of our flags, hello? The “Welt” wrote in its review of the program at the time: “When the flag is spread over the back of Höcke’s chair, silence spreads across the studio. Awkward silence.”
Embarrassed silence, that's it: for this state and the local government of its dysfunctional capital, said police officers are allowed to hold the line. But they are not allowed to show its most noble symbol, not even for the harmless joy of football. Because they are “committed to neutrality,” as the police chief said in all seriousness. With so many guests from abroad, the German police have to be “absolutely impartial.”
For my part, I think that German police officers in a German patrol car would somehow be recognized as German, and that they would not be required to keep their fingers crossed for all other participating countries in an "absolutely neutral" manner just as firmly as they do for their own team. But of course "Reich citizens" could take offense, in whose world Germany and the police do not even exist, which is why they would rather stick to the Reich war flag than the colors of the Hambach Festival.
Those in charge really have to think about everything these days, of course, but is it actually bodily harm if guests from all over the world are laughing sick about us in three months? Does no one notice how incongruous this form of officially administered national neutrality is in a time that asks almost daily about attitudes, beliefs or a “statement”? It also goes against the mood of society as a whole: In a country whose politics currently don't give its citizens and police officers much to be happy about, there is now a police ban on cheering if the joy wants to be expressed in a flag. At the same time, the same governments and authorities are striving to integrate millions of foreigners who have come to the country as immigrants, asylum seekers or war refugees. The less well-intentioned among them will quickly stop assuming that this state is self-respecting and should be better respected if we prohibit the most visible representatives of this state from displaying this state's most famous symbol at a football party. This is politics of the systemically disturbing kind that the AfD or Sahra Wagenknecht brings to voters.
The otherwise highly revered "taz" writes in all seriousness: "In times when the AfD has chosen the German flag as an identification symbol and people automatically associate it with right-wing extremist ideas, there should be no visual doubt about the neutrality of the Berlin police." How please? Because the AfD is largely right-wing extremist, will Black-Red-Gold become infected upon contact with it and just as brown and sick? Do you still have them all?
Which brings us back to Björn Höcke eight years ago and the question: Who does this flag belong to? My answer: probably to those who take them in a cheerful calm and don't let them be taken away. In my world, that should be the Democrats, not the others. And until there is individual evidence to the contrary, I consider every police officer in Germany to be a democrat.