An old sharepic is currently making the rounds again. It shows excerpts from a column by Deniz Yücel that “seem anti-German and anti-German” to users.

Deniz Yücel's 2011 column taken out of context

A sharepic shows two long paragraphs from a taz article from 2011.
Yes, Deniz Yücel writes provocative texts, but to understand the statement as a whole, the entire article is required.

We repeatedly receive isolated inquiries about a sharepic that shows an “anti-German and anti-German” column by the German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yücel.

Strictly speaking, it's about the following excerpt:

Screenshot mimikama.org
Screenshot mimikama.org

“…A space without people will soon emerge in the middle of Europe. But that's not a shame. Because the Germans only lose things that no one will miss.
But the imminent departure of the Germans is genocide at its best. A nation whose greatest contribution to the history of human civilization is to have given a name and face to absolute evil and, as Wolfgang Pohrt once wrote, to have made war the guardian and enforcer of humanity; a nation that has always stood out for its boundless self-pity, obtrusive know-it-all attitude and perpetual bad mood; a nation that knows dozens of expressions for the word “complain”, but has to borrow other people’s words for everything erotic because its own language only offers uptight, coarse or clinical vocabulary, so this joyless nation can happily pass away…

...Now that the end of Germany is a foregone conclusion, the question arises what to do with the space without people that will soon emerge in the middle of Europe: divide it between Poland and France? Parcel parcels and auction them off on eBay? Give to Palestinians, Tuvaluans, Kabyls and others in need? Allow it to become a local recreation area? Or would you rather turn it into a beet field? Doesn't matter. You can always find something better than Germany.”

The fact check

We already reported on this excerpt from the column in 2017. She is NOT fake . ( see here )

As colleague Rüdiger writes, the column itself dates back to 2011. The entire article can be read here. During his time at taz, Yücel wrote some things that were quite extreme in terms of content and yes, he is provocative with this statement. But this is also an obvious stylistic device in his contributions. Ultimately, a column is an opinionated commentary.

If you look closely, Yücel refers to demographic data and the German language - this isn't really apparent in the sharepic, as a lot was left out between the two paragraphs. The intention of the statement, which is only partially reflected in the picture, becomes clear when reading the entire article from which the quotes come.

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The title and leitmotif refer to Thilo Sarrazin's book “Germany Abolishes Itself ,” which was published the year before. Keeping this in mind, a context emerges in which this column article can be seen as a satirical reflection with the help of statistical data and an arbitrary selection of one-sided peculiarities of the German language and (pseudo) tradition.

Almost in pieces like Jean-Jacques Rousseau with his image of humanity as a civilizationally developed society, only even more blatant.

“Before moving to “Welt”, the German-Turkish journalist from Flörsheim in Hesse worked for the left-wing “Jungle World” and the “tageszeitung”.
In his “taz” columns he provoked people with statements like this: “The imminent departure of the Germans is the extinction of nations at its best.” A column in which Yücel wished the controversial SPD politician and author Thilo Sarrazin (“Germany is abolishing itself”) a stroke cost the “taz” significant compensation.” Source: Welt

Conclusion:

Opinions can be divided about the TAZ article from August 4, 2011. And that's exactly what you should: the intention of the article was to polarize, provoke and thus - ultimately - call for discussion.

However, putting the greatly shortened quote, as shown in the picture, out there on its own and thus opening the door to (mis)interpretation in all directions is extremely unsuitable when it comes to Yücel's general attitude to represent Germany.

Without the thematic context, the classification of the source, and the content-textual context in the article itself, the obvious satirical intention is not conveyed.


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )