Left Party MP Cansin Köktürk was thrown out of a German parliament plenary chamber on Wednesday for wearing a t-shirt with the word "Palestine" printed on it, a move deemed a political statement by the parliamentary leadership.
Bundestag President Julia Klöckner intervened during the session, reminding MPs that political messages on clothing are not permitted in the chamber.
While the Bundestag does not have a detailed dress code, its rules require MPs and visitors to dress "in keeping with the prestige" of the institution. Enforcement of this standard is left to the discretion of the session chair.
this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
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She could’ve just not worn the shirt dude. She was told beforehand that it’s against the house rules of the Bundestag and she did it to create a scene, which worked. She was back the next day. It’s really not that deep, however I always enjoy Americans explaining European politics to locals, so I thank you wholeheartedly for the entertainment.
That's a logic totally anchored on the idea that "all rules are unchallengeable and undisputable", hence from that point of view people must simply follow the rules and if they don't it's their fault, never that of the rules.
As I said, NAZI Germany relied on exactly that mindset to get Germans to meekly accepted what the NAZIs were doing because "it's the rules and all people have to do is obbey them". In fact, "people must obbey the rules and if they don't and they get punished it's their fault" is a general way of thinking of Fascists in general.
My entire point is that rules are no such thing - they're made by humans, are meant to achieve certain goals and have certain costs. In a Democracy rules should be examined, evaluated and changed if they're not more or a gain than a loss. This is even more important for rules around democratic processes such as lawmaking.
What this legislator managed to do was show the anti-Democratic nature of some of German processes, which was probably her intention.
Oh, and I'm European, not American, which is why nowadays I think Germany is a fucking disgrace (an opinion which is almost the opposite of what I thought about it a mere 5 years ago): it's exactly because I come from a country which has Modern European Humanist values and which itself overthrew a Fascists dictatorship and transformed into a Democracy 50 years ago, that I have actual Democratic Values and am sorely dissapointed every time I find yet another way the country which had the worst version of Fascism in Human History, instead of being the strictest practicioner of Democratic Values possible, is instead doing things like civil society surveillance, supporting a massive Genocide very openly because of the ethnicity of the aggressors and their victims, trying to bypass the Rule Of Law to silence dissent, practicing overtly Discriminatory treatment of people depending on their ethnicity and as in this case suppressing free speech in the actual Bundestag by using an ill-defined rule about "protecting the image of Parliament" to override the ability of a Parliamentarian to represent their voters when there in Democracy there are very few things more important than that.
If I was from the land of Donald Trump, First Pass The Post and voting for the Lesser Evil because voting for Good instead of Evil is not a realistic option, the German Bundestag suppressing a parliamentarian's ability to represent their voters because that parliamentarian is taking a political stand that the majority disagrees with through a perfectly legal means, with just the word "Palestine", would seem miniscule and irrelevant in comparison.
It's exactly when you're used to real Democracy that the kind of shit going on in Germany really stands out as bit-by-bit continued reversion of Democracy in favor or surveillance, force and even racial selectivity in the exercise of Power.
Lmfao okay dude
LOL!