1y ago

Germany’s first African-born MP to stand down after racist abuse

www.theguardian.com

The first African-born MP to enter the German parliament has announced he will not be standing in next year’s federal election, weeks after he revealed the hate mail, including racist slurs and death threats, he and his staff had received.

Karamba Diaby, 62, who entered the Bundestag in 2013 in a moment hailed as historic by equality campaigners, said he wanted to spend more time with his family and to make room for younger politicians.

Diaby said the racist slurs and death threats were “not the main reasons” for his decision, having frequently emphasised he would not be cowed by threats. But they are widely believed they have played a part.

He has increasingly faced racist abuse in recent years. His constituency office in Halle, Saxony Anhalt, has been an arson target, and has had bullets fired through the window. Some staff have faced blackmail attempts to stop them working for him and have been subjected to and threats, Diaby said.

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1y ago

Germany’s first African-born MP to stand down after racist abuse

www.theguardian.com /world/article/2024/jul/03/germanys-first-africa-born-mp-to-stand-down-after-racist-abuse

69 comments

This guy has been living in East Germany since fucking 1985. It saddens me to read this. Fuck the AfD.
- Fuck the AfD Voters...I've been destroying years of friendships, because it turns out they voted AfD. I'm sick and tired of these fuckers enabling these clowns. This is definitely not my Germany anymore.
  
  The friendship purge hurts.. it's tough to see that people you knew for years are lost like that.
  I also feel kind of helpless with the current political climate. I don't get why people are so hateful and stupid otherwise they would see right through the BS Höcke et al are making up all the time >.<
  
  I totally sympathize. A lot of us Americans had to do the same thing back in 2016. I cut off contact with a lot of people and have never gotten back in touch.
  
  Keeping these friendships going could combat their radicalization, but I'm not faulting you, I also cancelled friendships over this.
- Fuck yes.
  
  do you need to condescendingly question other people's freedom of expression? if you pearl clutch over seeing a comment which says 'fuck', maybe the internet is a little much for you to handle.
Nazis gonna nazi. Shameful.
- In Germany? I thought they got rid of those.......like........a while ago.
  
  After the war most Nazis were allowed to keep working in government (and elsewhere) cause who else knew how to run the country?
  And it’s less they got rid of them, and more others came over and kicked their arse forcing them to “get rid of them”.
  
  Nah, they just went into hiding and it took them 80 years to become openly active again. Like, OPEN-open. Dude still tries to hide it behind a fig leaf but court dismissed all his lawsuits against people calling him a facist and a nazi, because "facist" and "nazi" aren't insults against him, they just accurately describe his political and ideological views.
  People rush the party that houses him en masse. And as you can imagine, dude's not the only Nazi in that party. But people are too retarded to see the overlap even when it hits them in the face. Like, low income morons vote for the party whose declared goal it is to reduce social security. Might as well be a sheep voting for the wolf. Fucktards.
- Hey Germany...can you wait until we (the US) are not on the nazi side before doing the whole "lose a world war" thing again?
  
  Dude, the US is the world's biggest terrorist nation and has been for over a hunndred years. Who do you think inspired the nazis? Name three democratically elected governments the US has couped in favour of a tyrant that was happy to sell out his country to US interests in favour of power.
definitely related to the AfD's recent success during the EU election
His constituency office in Halle, Saxony Anhalt, has been an arson target, and has had bullets fired through the window.
Weird that this doesn’t come up until the 10th paragraph of the article.
- It says it right underneath the title.
  
  That means an editor decided to draw attention to it. The journalist still buried it deep in the article.
  
  For context the shots fired on his office were in 2020 and the arson was last year, while that is awful I wouldn't try to frame them too much as the cause for his retirement.
This is just sad, will things ever change?
- Only if we do a better job teaching our kids to not grow up to be nazis, racists, or easy marks for manipulate dishonest politicians.
- I don't think so. There are so many fronts on the war on bigotry and little progress has been made in 100 years. This feels like an innate property of human beings and humans will always be easy to manipulate to make them hate those that look a little different. About the only practical thing that might help is we criminalise bigotry that might damp it down a lot but people will still behave in bigoted ways they can get away with.
- It's Germany... probably not.
While I applaud him for wanting to make room for younger politicians, I'm sure the death threats, arson attacks and bullets were greater factors. This world sucks.
Germany needs more black politicians
- Nigeria needs more white politicians
  
  If there are white people living in Nigeria who experience socioeconomic disparities based on their race, then yes. That’s whats meant by “representative” in political bodies, in some sense
  
  There have been couple of non-Western countries with politicians who are not part of local majority group. There is a white Australian who is like a governor or mayor in Papua New Guinea. Peru infamously had a dictator of Japanese-ancestry. So you get these kinds of things. If a white person wants to become an MP in India, go for it.
- Because their one black representative got bullied out. Meanwhile a white woman was PM for a long time (Merkel)
  
  Them too.
  Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
  
  What about black disabled women?
In case anyone is curious, there's also Aramand Zorn, SPD (just like Diaby), Awet Tesfaiesus, Greens, and Harald Weyel, AfD, of all parties. Also happens to be the only native-born German.
Diaby is member of the SPD, their left wing on top of that which makes him a target for Nazis in the first place and his skin colour of course isn't helping. Neither is his constituency being in the east though do note that he didn't get into the Bundestag over the party list, he won a FPTP seat.
Sad he faced so much racism. I understand why he is doing this.
I often wish people in these situations tough it out, because of they don't, who will make the difference? Stepping down gets you one news article and then everyone forgets.
I respect his choice though, and it's another kind of heroic to put yourself and your family's safety first.
Normal European behavior
- Not a racist bone amongst them, until you start talking about immigration or Travelers.
  Or they actually see a black person.
  
  There are almost 30 different countries in Europe. They also have quite different cultures and policies around immigration (for example).
  Who are you talking about, specifically?
  
  Wait until you hear their thoughts on Gypsies!
  
  Don't you get it? This one was one of the good ones. /s

69 comments