Denis Scheck | Denis Scheck: Using Nazi language against the left

Photo: dpa/Christian Charisius The man has it all: he makes precise judgments about books and their authors, about political debates and much more. Denis Scheck has plenty of airtime on public broadcasters. For some reason, Sandra Maischberger invited the 61-year-old to her talk show this week. Here, as a commentator, he was supposed to give an assessment of the political situation after the success of the Left party in the Berlin House of Representatives election, which was so scary for the “political center”. He was happy to do that.

The self-proclaimed "fighter for the good, beautiful and true" described the party's plans to implement the Berlin referendum on the socialization of large real estate companies as "pied catching" and the voting behavior of Berliners with a view to GDR socialism up to 1989 as "collective amnesia". And he warned the SPD and the Greens against a coalition with the Left: "If you go to bed with dogs, you shouldn't be surprised if you wake up with fleas in the morning."

When former Left Party leader Jan van Aken, who was later called onto the TV stage, protested against this poor taste, Scheck happily followed up: “I’m sorry. I should never have compared the left to a dog, but should have spoken of it as a flea.” A man like Scheck should know who he is borrowing rhetorically from. Victor Klemperer finally explained in his classic “LTI” how the Nazis dehumanized political opponents and Jews by calling them vermin.

The literary critic has attracted attention before. In his SWR series “Schecks Anti-Kanon” he presented himself as a god in white and presented the supposedly worst books in world history. A blue lightning flashed out of his sleeve and, using a trick, hit a book, which then burst into flames. In July 2021, God Schenk symbolically destroyed not only Hitler's "Mein Kampf", but also Christa Wolf's story "Kassandra". Critics were outraged by the lumping together of the “Führer” effusions and the work of an internationally renowned writer, as well as by the implied burning of books. The “Süddeutsche” found this association to be far-fetched.

Denis Scheck himself probably found himself very funny. He had already caused a small scandal in 2013. At the time, he appeared on his show “Druckfrisch” with black make-up on his face. He wanted to make fun of publishers who had removed the N-word from well-known children's books. He called this “cowardly, premature obedience to the follies of political correctness that has encroached on art.” Scheck then countered critics of this reliance on racist stereotypes by saying that in his contribution to the topic he had also taken a position against any kind of discrimination. And so he will probably deny any similarity between his portrayal of the left and dehumanizing Nazi language.

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