The standoff first began on Saturday afternoon at an event organised by publishing house Antaios, during a reading held by politician Bjoern Hoecke of the AfD (Alternative for Germany) party. The session was disrupted by left-wing activists screaming “Nazis out!” and holding up signs, one of which read “Still loving books, still not loving hate.”
Und hier mein langer Text zur “Neuen” Rechten auf der #fbm17.
In Print heißt er übrigens: “Der Versuch einer Landnahme”https://t.co/rHnBvlrJgs— Danijel Majic (@DanijelMajic) October 16, 2017
Needless to say, the virtue-signalling attack by the left quickly escalated to pushing and shoving, while some of Hoecke’s supporters tried to protect him. Some 400 people were involved in the ruckus before police arrived to separate the two sides.
In the early evening, yet another presentation by two authors from the Identity Movement, also affiliated with Antaios, was disrupted by leftists with loud boos and whistles, causing it to finish early. Several people were detained. Members of the Identity Movement replied to the jeers that “everyone hates the Antifa”.
In a statement, the director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Juergen Boos, condemned “violence” while Heinrich Riethmüller, the head of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels was full of praise. “In the past few days, the bookbranch has shown itself alive and varied and has sent a strong appeal for freedom of opinion and pluralism, for an open and tolerant society from Frankfurt to the world.”
The Frankfurt Book Fair is one of the largest literary events of its kind in the world, hosting around a thousand authors and over 280 000 visitors. There had already been a tense atmosphere in the days leading up to the opening, as several stalls run by anti-globalist authors and publishers were damaged or vandalized.
During the scuffles, Nico Wehnemann of Frankfurt City Council claimed he was struck down by a “Nazi.” Wehnemann also said that some of the guests had shouted “Sieg Heil” during a previous meeting.
Hier das Video, das den Vorfall zeigt, in dem @nico_wehnemann “zusammengeschlagen” wird (@leogfischer) bzw. wie “Rechtsradikale Sieg Heil-rufend prügeln” (@ndaktuell).
Es tut mir leid, ich sehe da etwas anderes. #fbm17 pic.twitter.com/vFWbay43RI
— Jonas Fedders (@jonas_fedders) October 15, 2017
Videos of the incident show, however, that Wehnemann had obviously become a victim of his own imagination. His party chief, the former Titanic editor-in-chief Leo Fischer, subsequently spread the fiction invented by Wehnemann about the “Nazi” – an ordinary security officer – and calls of “Sieg Heil” , but even the police, despite the presence of numerous officers, had not noticed any “Sieg Heil” calls. This did not prevent several media from spreading the Fischer-Wehnemann fake news.
Es handelt sich um einen Mitarbeiter der #fbm17 – Weder ein Polizist oder Nazi.
In Kürze folgt eine Pressemeldung von uns zu den Vorfällen https://t.co/HcIOZAEFMu
— Polizei Frankfurt (@Polizei_Ffm) October 15, 2017
The Antaios publishing house of Götz Kubitschek, was the target of several attacks. Sometimes books were smeared with toothpaste and coffee, the inventory of the stand was stolen and the employees regularly smeared and insulted. Already at the beginning of the fair, the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels had been demonstrating against Antaios in a highly irregular fashion under the motto “For freedom and diversity, against racism”.
The Manuscriptum publishing house met with the same fate when strangers stole all the books and stained the booth. It was the result of a call from the book exchange, which encouraged the visitors to show “attitude” against the two publishers. Notably, at the time of the above-mentioned attacks, the book fair had only been open to the specialist audience. For other visitors, the Bücherschau opened its doors only on Saturday, suggesting that the public had not attacked the two publishers.
On Friday an argument erupted at the stand of Junge Freiheit. The left-wing publisher Achim Bergmann (Trikont) tried to crash an event with Karlheinz Weißmann on the subject of Kulturbruch in 1968. He tried to get onto the stand, but this was swiftly prevented by the publishing house’s staff.
Bergmann shouted annoyedly at the edge of the event and cursed the speakers. Another listener then shoved him in his face. When Bergmann’s female companion filmed the perpetrator a short time later, he snatched her cell phone and threw it in the exhibition hall.
Bergmann complained loudly, but the police did not respond to his complaints.
Unsurprisingly, headlines from the mainstream media after the event had little to do with reality: “Right-wing extremes strike against the left at book fair.”