Anton Hofreiter and the price of gasoline – the fact check

An article from 2012 suggests that Green Party politician Anton Hofreiter made a false claim. No, petrol prices do not have to go up to “at least 6-7 euros”.

The claim is currently circulating again that Green Party politician Anton Hofreiter actually said that gasoline prices “have to go up to at least 6-7 euros”. The archived post can be viewed here .

The claim is not true. reported on the alleged statement in 2017 . However, the origin is much older:

A preview image suggests that Hofreiter said the sentence “The price of gasoline must go up to at least 6-7 euros.” If you look at the link, there is a series of insults, sometimes of a general nature against all politicians, sometimes against the Greens in particular. Since they offer zero added value, they are not worth quoting here!

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Now you can like or dislike the Greens, you can find their environmental policy program good or not good - Anton Hofreiter certainly didn't say that the price of gasoline should go up to €6-7. The article itself neither provides a source nor can one be found elsewhere. And Anton Hofreiter doesn't know anything about it either.

Now where does the assumption come from?

The basis for this distorted article is probably a WELT article [ 1 ], which, however, dates back to 2012. This was titled “Gasoline is still too cheap,” and the article sometimes quotes from it without respecting copyright law. By the way, this article also uses the image without the manipulated quote. Here is the relevant passage:

Welt Online: So it's not entirely unrealistic that the price of gasoline will at some point amount to the equivalent of the five marks that the Greens once demanded.

Hofreiter: It's not that far yet. When the Greens voted, many people thought we wanted to harass drivers, and perhaps some Greens had that in mind. But the plan as such was to motivate the industry to develop economical and environmentally friendly cars and thus show technology paths that would keep driving affordable.

(from: WELT , by Matthias Kamann, Martin Lutz, published on February 23, 2012)

In WELT, Hofreiter criticizes the fact that the car industry is still not working sufficiently on alternative drive concepts and assumes that one reason for this is that the price of gasoline is probably still too cheap. He didn't ask for €6-7 there or anywhere else .

Origin of the fake quote: Halle Leaks

The content of Halle Leaks is mostly tailored specifically to the presentation of the teaser on Facebook; the corresponding article on the website is rather secondary and short. The Facebook preview already conveys everything that is to be said, which is also the goal. Conscious shortening and twisting is a common method at this point.

Of course you can also click on this preview on Facebook, which will load the Halle-Leaks website. On this, the quote image is repeated as a central element, which provides a very short text accompanying the graphic. This text usually presents a sentence quite similar to that taken from any media website. Often only a single sentence is taken out of context and interpreted and changed to create a quote. In order to understand the entire content and historical context, the source page must be visited. In other words: The understanding process takes place in 3 steps:

1. Manipulated quote as primary preview element.
2. Shortened presentation as a secondary element on the website, which is often no longer noticed.
3. The last element in the chain is a click on the source location, which is necessary to understand the content, but is no longer done by many readers due to the clearly striking presentation of the preview image.

The third step is usually the most important, as it makes it quite clear which statement was actually made and the discrepancy between the striking preview on Facebook and the real weight of the statement can be read.

Binary representation

There is only black or white, good or evil, right or wrong. The statements in the Facebook preview only know the extremes and deliberately want to present them that way. This happens simply through the high-contrast choice of white font on a black background. The content line is very simple and demagogic: The supposedly bad guys want to get the supposedly good guys.

Building false connections and changing the core statements

However, the core point of the quotations lies in the construction of interpreted connections. As already described, quotes or individual keywords are taken from real existing media publications, as was the case with Hofreiter, and transformed into a radicalized state with the help of a manipulative interpretation. A claim is quickly made that was not made that way, but there is widespread opinion that it could be so. This effect in turn reinforces the opinion without the quote even having to be correct.

Let's summarize

So the methodology is quite clear:

• shorten
• radicalize
• leave out
• interpret
• twist

This common thread runs through the topics of Halle leaks, which are generally treated in a very tendentious to radical way. “If you’re not for it, you’re against it.” This exact method is also used in the case of Anton Hofreiter. You could also simplify it on a meta level: Just because someone doesn't have a driver's license doesn't mean they immediately hate the automotive industry. In most cases, the image created by Halle-Leaks with the help of quote images is not only grossly incorrect, but also dangerously manipulative: individual aspects are deliberately taken away from their context, are replanted in a context rich in contrast and are radicalized in their representation, so that they... are no longer correct.

You might also be interested in: The quote from Franz Josef Strauss in the fact check

Further sources: dpa-factchecking
Article image: Shutterstock / By Antimon