Political correctness has resulted in the weakening of the democracies and the rise of “populists”, Döpfner complained at a media conference organised by the Austrian government in Vienna, German daily Die Welt reported.
Axel Springer is the largest digital publishing house in Europe, with numerous multimedia news brands, such as Bild, Die Welt, and Fakt and more than 15 000 employees.
Springer media in Germany was however instrumental in Angela Merkel’s confidence that she would be carried on a wave of enthusiasm while breaking the laws in force and ignoring the Constitutuion.
One of the main engines of the refugee “summer fairy tale” in 2015 was in fact the Bild newspaper. Bild was the media pioneer of the campaign for open borders. When the Federal Police were held back at the borders, the former editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann adopted the motto “Refugees welcome”, which has since been used by far-left anti-fascist groups.
On September 9, 2015, Bild even reproachfully noted in a picture at that time that Merkel had not worn the “Refugees welcome” button to the Bundestag.
The mass rapes in Cologne on New Year’s Eve of the following year did not bring the newspaper to its senses either. So Döpfner’s latest concerns seem contrived, to say the least.
Politicians increasingly do not say what they think anymore and media described less and less what is, but rather what should be, the tone-deaf Döpfner complained. This has alienated citizens from politics. “More and more people feel like they’re not saying what they really believe anymore, they’re not talking anymore about what they really mean, they’re just not talking anymore, they’re just living somewhere else on another planet.”
Last year, Döpfner had warned the newspapers in Germany to regain their lost credibility. “Maybe we talk too much like politicians in empty phrases, speech bubbles, in abridged phrases, perhaps we have also lost confidence through unworldly political correctness”, Döpfner said.
Since July 2016, Döpfner has been President of the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers (BDZV). He is married to Ulrike Weiß – the daughter of Ulrich Weiß, a former management board member of Deutsche Bank AG.
Despite lacking the most basic foresight regarding immigration, Döpfner has been showered with globalist awards. He has won the McCloy Award of the American Council on Germany, the ADL International Leadership Award, from the Anti-Defamation League in New York, and Strategist of the Year, from the Financial Times, Germany.
When a CDU politician dared to meekly criticise Springer, imploring it to end the campaign of “Refugees welcome” with photos of children who cross a barbed wire fence or waving from behind a bus window because it could be understood as an “invitation to Germany”, he was harshly attacked by Springer.
In February 2016, the CDU member of parliament Philipp Lengsfeld warned Springer against their pro-refugee media campaign: “This message is misleading and unhelpful in the present discussion, which is so essential for Germany and Europe, of reducing access, securing the external borders of Europe, and equitable distribution of those who are actually in need of protection.”
The newspaper struck back with extreme severity against the CDU politician. The then online boss and today’s chief editor in chief, Julian Reichelt, responded: “How dare you call a photo of a child crawling through barbed wire ’emotionally charged’.”
Reichelt revolted against Lengsfeld, accusing him of complicity in the “total failure” of policy directing the asylum crisis because it was not welcoming enough. The pictures represented “Christian values” Reichelt said. He received frenetic applause from the Greens and the Left Party, neither of them known for their Christian affiliations.
Döpfner’s sudden turn-around comes in the wake of the gruesome murder of the 14-year-old Susanna Feldman, a Jewish girl from Mainz that has made headlines Germany.
“The fate of this girl is compounded by the complete failure of German asylum policy, the bankruptcy of a hypermoral welcome policy that has ended in disaster,” says Dieter Stein, editor-in-chief of German weekly Junge Freiheit.
According to Bild: “The government should beg for forgiveness from Susanna’s parents.
“The only thing that is worse than the murder of a child is the murder of a child by a criminal who should not have been in our country.
“Crimes like these are explosive for our society because they are the bitter proof that this country does not have sufficient control over who is residing within our borders.”
An alleged migrant murderer Ali Bashar, now arrested in Iraq, apparently arrived in Germany in October 2015 with the large influx of refugees from Turkey and Greece. He should never have crossed the German borders. His asylum application was rejected in December 2016. He should not have been allowed to stay in Germany after that, but he was not deported because German asylum authorities are overloaded and afraid of legal options since the obstacles preventing rapid deportations are still in place.
