{"id":60203,"date":"2026-07-24T02:07:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T02:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/60203\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T02:07:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T02:07:26","slug":"german-political-satire-show-die-anstalt-bows-to-censorship-in-its-100th-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/60203\/","title":{"rendered":"German political satire show Die Anstalt bows to censorship in its 100th edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the satirical programme Die Anstalt (The Mental Institute) first went on air in February 2014, it brought a breath of fresh air to the German television landscape.<\/p>\n

Max Uthoff and Claus von Wagner were not afraid to take on the powerful, following in the tradition of political satirists such as Dieter Hildebrandt and Georg Schramm at their best. Lawsuits and legal proceedings were their constant companions. None of that remains in the 100th edition, which aired on Tuesday on ZDF. The programme was marked by censorship and self-censorship.<\/p>\n

\u201cDie Anstalt\u201d presenters Max Uthoff, Maike K\u00fchl and Claus von Wagner [Photo by ZDF (Screenshot)]<\/p>\n

Shortly before the recording of the programme\u2014which has not been broadcast live since the pandemic\u2014ZDF management cancelled the planned appearance of musician Daniel Pongratz (alias Danger Dan) and pianist Igor Levit, who had intended to give the world premiere of their anti-fascist song \u201cKeine Angst\u201d (\u201dNo Fear\u201d). ZDF director Norbert Himmler justified this outrageous assault on artistic freedom and freedom of expression by branding the song \u201ca set of instructions for left-wing, violence-prone resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet neither Levit nor Pongratz is a left-winger. On central political questions\u2014in particular the Gaza and Ukraine wars\u2014they are entirely in line with government policy.<\/p>\n

Levit, a classical pianist of world renown who received Germany\u2019s Federal Cross of Merit for his outstanding musical achievements, has repeatedly and courageously taken a stand against racism, antisemitism and the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), and has for that reason been sharply\u00a0attacked<\/a>\u00a0by the German media. But since Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, he has increasingly become a defender of the Israeli state, even though he continues to take a critical stance towards the Netanyahu government.<\/p>\n

Danger Dan\u2019s hip-hop group \u201cAntilopen Gang\u201d released a vile song against Palestinian solidarity that reproduces the positions of the German government and Israeli propaganda. The song \u201cOktober in Europa\u201d states that today the \u201cbiggest antisemites are all anti-racists.\u201d The genocide in Gaza is justified with the line: \u201cCivilians in Gaza are Hamas\u2019s human shield, a human shield for the descendants of the Jewish gassers.\u201d And \u201cGreta\u201d Thunberg is accused of hating Jews.<\/p>\n

Yet although Danger Dan and Levit support the government on the war question, their call against the AfD went decisively too far for ZDF management. It evidently does not wish to antagonise the far-right party, which is being systematically built up as a party of government by large sections of official politics and the media.<\/p>\n

The song\u00a0\u201cKeine Angst\u201d<\/a>\u00a0calls for action rather than waiting until the Nazis \u201cgrow stronger in the parliaments and on the streets before we fight them,\u201d and develops purportedly \u201cappropriate ideas\u201d to this end: founding anonymous activist groups, holding anti-Nazi parties, conducting spray-paint and sticker campaigns, building local antifa structures, systematically researching into right-wing structures, building an antifa archive, publishing names and addresses (doxing), informing schools, universities and employers about right-wing extremists, informing the local press. Perhaps the public prosecutor\u2019s office would then wake up, the song argues.<\/p>\n

The song warns against relying on the security authorities and places great emphasis on secrecy and personal security: \u201cBut you\u2019d be stupid to count on the German state. Experience shows exactly the opposite; there are so many fascists in the police.\u201d The refrain runs: \u201cNo fear, no fear\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The song ends with the lines: \u201cNo fear, take it into your own hands. They look dangerous but we\u2019ll floor them. Coordinate yourselves, start training\u2014if you fight together, it can work.\u201d<\/p>\n

The final line reads: \u201cBest wishes to Lina, Gucci, Maja and Nanuk\u201d\u2014a reference to\u00a0Lina E.<\/a>, convicted by the Dresden Higher Regional Court in 2023 of attacks on far-right extremists and sentenced to more than five years\u2019 imprisonment, to\u00a0Maja T.<\/a>, who received eight years in Budapest in 2026 for the same reason, as well as to other members of an alleged \u201cAntifa East\u201d network. The Trump administration placed this \u201cAntifa East\u201d on its terrorism list at the end of last year.<\/p>\n

The presenters of Die Anstalt did not accept the censorship of their programme without protest. They called it \u201cfaint-hearted\u201d and addressed it in their broadcast. The camera lingered at length on the empty piano at which Levit was supposed to have played. Uthoff, von Wagner and Maike K\u00fchl then quoted ZDF\u2019s justification for the cancellation: the song called for violence and thereby violated programme guidelines. They then discussed passages from the controversial song.<\/p>\n

But they were not prepared to mount a principled defence of Danger Dan and Igor Levit. The outrage of a call to resist a party that is in part neo-Nazi being censored at the highest level on German public television provoked no storm of indignation.<\/p>\n

The entire programme amounted to self-censorship. The presenters complained that the cancellation had come at such short notice, even though \u201cZDF had had the lyrics of the song for weeks\u201d\u2014an admission that prior censorship of satirical texts at ZDF has by now become standard practice, with the audience none the wiser when censorship occurs early enough.<\/p>\n

Uthoff, von Wagner and K\u00fchl placed great emphasis on their rejection of \u201ccalls to vigilante justice and violence.\u201d They had to concede, however, that in some parts of eastern Germany there prevails a climate of fear and intimidation at the hands of far-right extremists, tolerated by the police. They posed the question: \u201cWhat happens when the state fails to exercise its monopoly on the use of force and people are left unprotected against Nazis?\u201d This debate was important, \u201cwhich is why we would very much have wished the artist to be permitted to perform with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their answer in this debate, however, runs in the opposite direction from that of Danger Dan and Levit, whose conception has undeniable weaknesses and is not capable of defeating fascism. But it acknowledges at least that the struggle against the AfD requires a broader mobilisation and cannot be left to the state.<\/p>\n

The ruling class resorts to fascism when class antagonisms have become so acute that they can no longer be held in check by democratic means. That is why right-wing and fascist parties are on the rise in most imperialist countries\u2014the United States, France, Germany, Italy\u2014and enjoy considerable support precisely within the state apparatus. They are needed to suppress resistance to the dismantling of social provisions, inequality and militarism.<\/p>\n

The defeat of fascism therefore requires the international mobilisation of the working class on the basis of a socialist programme that combines resistance to war, fascism and social inequality with the struggle against their cause\u2014capitalism. Political and physical confrontations with fascists, as Danger Dan and Levit advocate whilst rejecting such a perspective, are no substitute for this.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The presenters of Die Anstalt took an entirely different line. Their entire programme was oriented towards the demand for a state ban on the AfD. Such a ban on a party that is approaching the 30-percent mark in national polls and stands above 40 percent in some federal states would mean erecting a police state in the name of the \u201cfight against the right.\u201d The police and intelligence services, which are riddled with AfD supporters, would be further strengthened. And they would inevitably deploy their power against opponents of capitalism.<\/p>\n

Even now, the German Interior Ministry is working closely with the far-right Trump administration in the suppression of political opponents. Last week, senior Interior Ministry officials participated in an international\u00a0conference<\/a>\u00a0at the US State Department which, under the guise of fighting \u201cleft-wing radical terrorism,\u201d prepared the suppression of political opponents. The next meeting is to be held in Germany.<\/p>\n

At the conference, Trump\u2019s fascistic counter-terrorism adviser Stephen Miller declared: \u201cOne of the hallmarks of left-wing violence and terrorism is its entirely spurious and dishonest appeal to civil rights.\u201d Such appeals must \u201cfall on deaf ears.\u201d The law must be applied with \u201ctotal intransigence towards these enemies of civilisation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In several sketches, the anniversary edition of Die Anstalt glorified bourgeois politicians who at one point or another had championed a ban on the Nazis or some other far-right party.<\/p>\n

One of them is Robert Lehr, who in the Weimar Republic was a member of Alfred Hugenberg\u2019s right-wing nationalist German National People\u2019s Party (DNVP) and Mayor of D\u00fcsseldorf. The Nazis removed him from office, which qualified him after the war to become Interior Minister under Konrad Adenauer. In that capacity he pushed through the ban on the Socialist Reich Party (SRP) in 1952, which openly invoked the Nazi tradition. The Adenauer government\u2014riddled with former Nazis\u2014used this as an alibi.<\/p>\n

The SRP ban served above all to prepare the ground for the ban on the German Communist Party (KPD) in August 1956. The KPD was dissolved, its assets confiscated, its parliamentary deputies stripped of their mandates. Numerous party members, many of whom had fought against the Nazis, lost their jobs, their savings and their freedom. Some were imprisoned by the very same judges who had already locked them up under the Nazis. Yet Die Anstalt celebrates Lehr as a model.<\/p>\n

The author of the theory of \u201cmilitant democracy,\u201d Karl Loewenstein, was also lauded in the programme. The jurist from a Jewish family had fled the Nazis to the United States and developed there his political model, which served as a blueprint for the post-war West German constitution. This extends democratic rights only to those who do not call the existing social system into question.<\/p>\n

Particularly absurd was a sketch featuring Uthoff as Chancellor Friedrich Merz and K\u00fchl as Left Party parliamentary group leader Heidi Reichinnek. In it, the war chancellor and former BlackRock manager is earnestly urged to collaborate with the Left Party against the AfD. In reality, such collaboration has long been under way at both state and federal level, where it has proved to be an effective accelerant for the AfD\u2019s growth. Above all the Left Party, which under cover of left-wing phrases supports the right-wing policies of the other parties, has driven frustrated voters into the arms of right-wing demagogues.<\/p>\n

Twelve years on, Die Anstalt has thoroughly degenerated. Despite escalating wars, the largest rearmament drive since the Third Reich, mass redundancies in industry and an unprecedented chasm between rich and poor, its creators can think of nothing better than placing their faith in a strong state.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the WSWS email newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the satirical programme Die Anstalt (The Mental Institute) first went on air in February 2014, it brought…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[452,46842,46841,6635,25870,5,9056,3435],"class_list":["post-60203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-afd","tag-artistic-freedom","tag-censorship","tag-democratic-rights","tag-freedom-of-expression","tag-germany","tag-media","tag-zdf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}