Somewhere buried in the straight-up listing of almost 1500 posts is one that mentions the man we called Germany's Mr. Mohawk after his trademark red hairdo, Sascha Lobo.
In that post, we said that he had great talent but needed a bit more time to find his voice.
Which, coming from us, was a statement so presumptuous that is can blow your mind. Who are we, an unknown little pseudonymous "blog" to tell a well known media person he had talent?
Well, that's just us.*
But he did it.
With the simple question: Why don't we call refugees displaced persons?
The German political right, in the form of the CSU (still calling themselves Christian) had an apolpectic meltdown: that's an insult, you cannot say this!
Coming from a party that uses all nasty anti-refugee and anti-migrant stereotypes on the books and invents some new ones, why would Mr. Mohawks question drive them crazy?
Because displaced persons (in German Vertriebene) are the good refugees or the good migrants from the end of World War II.
To the Germans, and the Bavarians in particular, these displaced persons were their brethren, ethnic Germans forced out of German territory in the East or out of areas where they were part of a multi-ethnic state. These were the innocent victims hunted down by the Russians, persecuted by newly minted nationalists (incidentally, often guys who had collaborated with the Nazis until a few weeks earlier).
They were the raped women, the young children, the starving old people who symbolized the innocent caught up in the turmoil brought about an otherwise brutally devastating regime.
In West Germany, these refugees made up a large part of the population in some regions, and all parties courted them, but the conservatives revered them and loudly supported the calls of the organized refugee movement for the return of the occupied lands to the East of East Germany. Officials in Bavaria often call the "ethnic German displaced persons" the fourth tribe of the state.
The blogster believes that the Christian Democratic Union (CSU) felt the sting of changing the label because it encapsulates exactly what is happening to the current refugees from war torn countries: people caught up in a world of slaughter trying to find a way out, even if it means many die along the way.
What Mr. Mohawk did was change the label. The CSU conservatives are masters in the art of changing labels, for example, stigmatizing European Union citizens who exercise their right to look for work in any EU country as "poverty migrants" or as "abusers of the German social security system".
But this time, they found themselves outflanked by a guy they hate. Oh, they hate him, for his hairstyle - his views are just icing on the hate cake.
The hard reality of today's EU refugee situation is not easily reconciled with Christian values: if lots of refugees face closed borders, you get deaths, many thousands.
Using "displaced persons" removes the cop out enjoyed by many German conservatives: blame the victims, dehumanize them.
The change of label is unlikely to stick, conservatives will fight any attempt to make it permanent, and the press and the public will prefer the well established "refugees".
But, for a second, it pierced the veil of self congratulatory smugness.
So, thank you.
* The kind of over inflated ego that comes as stereotypical byproduct of spending your days in a basement newsroom in your PJs (at best) with only an imaginary lava lamp for company.
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