"This will have consequences": Schawinski threatens SonntagsZeitung over Thiel article
The publication of an opinion piece by Andreas Thiel on Roger Schawinski's new No Billag book is to "still have consequences," the radio pioneer announces in the program "TalkTäglich".
"I don't want to say anything about Mr. Thiel," Schawinski told host Markus Gilli on Monday's "TalkTäglich" program when he asked him about Sunday's article. "What I find terrible is what the SonntagsZeitung did, making insinuations that I would bring Nazi rhetoric, that I am a racist, etc. - that will still have consequences." The newspaper had - typical for today's times - "left every ground of decency".
It is not surprising that Schawinski does not take Thiel's article lying down. In his article "Schawinski gegen Schawinski," the satirist openly and directly compares the argumentation strands and rhetoric of the Radio 1 boss with those of the National Socialists. The fact that Schawinski is trying to "as racists or any other "extremists", namely "from the far right camp""Thiel is convinced that the language used by the SRG is reminiscent of that of the Third Reich. Thiel also draws direct parallels to Nazi rhetoric in Schawinski's statement that the most important motive of the No Billiag initiators is a "deep-rooted hatred of SRG". Here Thiel writes verbatim: "If Schawinski were not so well-read, one would have to assume he was unaware that he was borrowing from Nazi propaganda here. According to philologist and Holocaust survivor Victor Klemperer - who dissected the rhetoric of the Third Reich like no other - the 'abysmal hatred' imputed to all Jews by the Nazis was a main motive of Jew-baiting."
Thiel's deliberate use of Nazi comparisons against Schawinski can certainly be interpreted as a calculated provocation in the direction of the radio pioneer. Schawinski's Jewish ancestors once lived in Poland. "If they hadn't moved from Poland to Switzerland exactly a hundred years ago, I wouldn't exist," Schawinski said in 2014 in a Baz interview. After a trip to Poland in 1990, he never wanted to return: "The Second World War and the Holocaust were so close to me there that I found it almost unbearable.
The book author then said something about Andreas Thiel, with whom Schawinski once had an escalating clash on his SRF talk show "Schawinski" when it was about an Islam article by Thiel published in Weltwoche: "Mr. Thiel knows even less about media than he does about Islam".
Whether Schawinski will take legal action against the SonntagsZeitung, he left open on Monday evening. (hae)
