German Court Rules that Werner Rügemer is NOT an Anti-Semite

 Could someone please enlighten me on what the definition of "anti-Semitism" is under German law?  Apparently the mayor of the town of Sprockhövel was ordered by a court to apologize to the political journalist Werner Rügemer for calling him an "Anti-Semite" and to repay all court fees for the defamation suit that dragged on for a year.  But Ulli Winkelmann, the mayor of Sprockhövel in reality had nothing to apologize for.  Any thinking adult could view this video of Werner Rügemer denying the legitimacy of the state of Israel and come to the logical conclusion that the man has a problem with Jews.

For non-German speakers, the key points come at the end of the presentation, when Werner Rügemer describes the state of Israel as an "uncontrollable" ("unkontrollierbare") vassal of the United States, a rogue state that spreads terror and misery in the world, a "testing laboratory for surveillance and killing technology" („Versuchslabor für Überwachungs- und Tötungstechnologie“).  He recommends that the Federal Republic of Germany no longer recognize the "Jewish State", and instead recognize a Palestinian State.  Presumably this would include the terrorist organization Hamas, which has called repeatedly for the annihilation of Israel.

It should be pointed out that this video appears on Ken Jebsen's YouTube Channel.  Ken Jebsen is a "journalist" and political activist who was fired from his job as a radio host for his anti-Semitic rants.  Jebsen also famously called the Holocaust a "PR Stunt".

One might argue that Rügemer's main problem is with "Zionists" and not with Jews per se.  But Rügemer has been fixated on historical Jewish figures for much of his career.  A favorite topic is how Jewish business leaders profited from collaborating with Nazis in the Weimar Republic.  He called the Jewish industrialist Paul Silverberg a "Prophet of Hitler" (this is a complete distortion of the truth, according to historical sources).  Far from profiting from Hitler, Paul Silverberg was forced to relinquish all of his board seats and nearly all of his wealth.  He died a broken and bitter man in Swiss exile.  And so it was with the founding family of the private bank Sal. Oppenheim, which Rügemer blames for corrupting the city of Cologne. Did the Oppenheim family benefit from ties to the Nazis?  Friedrich Carl von Oppenheim, who led the bank up to 1933, was arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo but managed to survive since the war ended before his trial.  He was posthumously declared Righteous Among Nations by the state of Israel for his work in saving the lives of Jews in the Netherlands.  

Rügemer's main criticism seems to be that so many of these Jewish "Aufsteiger" ("Parvenus") converted to Christian faiths and then managed to infiltrate "Urdeutsche" (i.e. Aryan) institutions: 

Zahlreiche Juden stiegen während der Weimarer Republik in die Vorstände von Unternehmen und Banken auf, nicht nur im traditionellen jüdischen Bereich der Privatbanken, sondern auch etwa in der „urdeutschen“ Deutschen Bank. 

(On the fate of Jewish managers of Deutsche Bank in the Nazi era see The Nazi Dictatorship and the Deutsche Bank by Harold James - my review here). 

Besides the Oppenheims and Silverbergs, Rügemer has written extensively about Jews like the Rothschilds and Warburgs who found their way to the United States and as the "power elites" were "forerunners of National Socialism" ( "Wegbereiter des Nationalsozialismus").  Today, Rügemer sees the Jewish-founded Goldman Sachs as principally responsible for the global Great Recession.  As for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, they remain "unexplained" - ("ungeklärten Anschlag auf die
Gebäude des World Trade Center in New York") See Tobias Jaecker: Antisemitische Verschwöungstheorien nach dem 11. September.

Rügemer's defamation lawsuit would have been thrown out by the courts in the United States. We do have freedom of expression here. If he had persisted, the court would have found in favor of the mayor of  Sprockhövel  based on the content of Rügemer's online videos and extensive writings. 

 

Comments

[Nichtauchdasnoch]

Insightful: Werner Rügemer und die „jüdischen Aufsteiger“: https://blog.psiram.com/2017/08/werner-ruegemer-und-die-juedischen-aufsteiger/

[David]

Thanks, yes I read the Psiram piece - a very well-researched and devastating critique of the anti-Semite Werner Rügemer.

[Nichtauchdasnoch]

The court mentioned above restricted to a summary judgement because Adriana Stern had withdrawn her critique. A second court, the Landgericht Köln, scrutinized her critique point by point and found sufficient evidence to call Rügemer "verschroben antisemitisch".
Source: https://blog.psiram.com/2017/09/nachtrag-zu-werner-ruegemer-und-die-juedischen-aufsteiger/