Germany struck with outrage after racist chants on a jet set holiday island (2024)

LETTER FROM BERLIN

In a 14-second video, filmed with a smartphone on the patio of a trendy bar in Sylt, a small North Sea island where the German jet set tends to gather. The footage shows a group of well-dressed young people, clad in white shirts, sweaters tied over their shoulders, sunglasses on, and co*cktails in hand, dancing in the setting sun to "L'Amour Toujours," by Italian DJ Gigi D'Agostino. One of the partygoers merrily salutes with his right arm while mimicking Hitler's mustache with two fingers of his left hand. All around, chants of "Deutschland den Deutschen, Ausländer raus!" ("Germany for the Germans, foreigners out!") can be heard.

Spread on social media on Thursday, May 23, these images shot during the weekend of May 18-19 at the Pony, a trendy bar in Sylt which charged €150 for admission that evening, sent Germany into a frenzy. In the next few hours, a manhunt was launched on X and other platforms, calling for the video's participants to be identified. The next day, a Hamburg-based influencer posted a message on Instagram saying that she had recognized one of her assistants, and that she had fired her on the spot. An advertising agency did the same to one of its employees who could be seen in the video.

Politicians were quick to react, right up to the country's top leaders. "Such slogans are repugnant, they are not acceptable," said Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday. "This video is worrisome because it shows that it's not just the disenfranchised who are becoming radicalized, but that radicalization is also coming from the heart of society," said the federal republic's President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Saturday, during a visit to Bonn. Indeed, this is what makes these images so unique and explains why they have gone viral. These are not typical faces of the German far-right – a skinhead neo-Nazi, an angry citizen of a former East German region – but those of the privileged gilded youth.

'Haven't we learned anything?'

As soon as the video was released, the Pony's owners said on Instagram that they were deeply "shocked," condemning "all forms of racism and discrimination" and asking anyone who recognized any of the participants to inform the police. After comparison with the club's security camera footage, one of the owners told the daily newspaper Tageszeitung that only five people, in his opinion, had been singing the xenophobic slogans, with the others merely repeating the actual lyrics of the song. "You can hear it very clearly and that was a relief for us," he said.

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