If you believe the likes of the cat’s-piss-stained bedlamites playing Handmaid’s Tale dress ups, the early-modern witch hunting craze was a misogynistic crusade against women by the church. In fact, witch killings were most prominent in certain (but not all) Protestant lands and the vast majority of accusers were women, not men.
The closest thing to a contemporary witch-hunting craze is the outbreak of deranged denunciations by demented harpies known as the ‘MeToo’ movement. What started as a credible case (which, in fact, most of the accusers had known about, yet kept shtum for years and decades), against one detestable individual, erupted into a free-for-all denunciation frenzy.
Its latest victim is a former German Greens MP by the name of Stefan Gelbhaar. I’ve no doubt few Good Oil readers would be inclined to sympathy for a Greens MP, but Gelbhaar’s Kafka-esque ordeal should change that.
Gelbhaar is a 48-year-old criminal defence lawyer who was, until very recently, running to be a candidate in the 23 February elections. He’s reasonably handsome if you like a Timothy Dalton chin dent. He has two young children and he’s a moderate, centrist Green, which is probably the root cause of his troubles.
Then one morning, he woke up to find that he’d been turned into a metaphorical cockroach.
Late last year, quite out of the blue, Gelbhaar was informed by Green HQ that serious allegations of sexual assault had been made against him by an anonymous woman known only by a pseudonym, ‘Anne K’. He was never told who Anne K was or what he was supposed to have done to her, so it was impossible for him to defend himself. Gelbhaar swore he’d nothing to hide, but what could he say? ‘I didn’t do any of the things I don’t know about’? Just before Christmas the German public broadcaster RBB secured a signed letter from the mysterious Anne K swearing her accusations were true, so they ran with the story of Gelbhaar’s ‘crimes’ and he was encouraged to resign. Green career up in smoke.
These sorts of shenanigans have become all-too familiar in recent years. Even when they’re exposed, though, the victim’s life and career lie in ruins.
But, the Greens being the Greens, this particular case makes even the Duke lacrosse team case look like a model of investigative propriety. Like the Rolling Stone fake ‘Rape on Campus’ story, the sexual assault couldn’t have happened for the simple reason that the ‘victim’ never existed.
The twist in Gelbhaar’s tale is that it turns out that Anne K doesn’t actually exist. RBB has had to announce the fact, shamefaced. For all the signings of affidavits, Anne K and her story of being harassed by Gelbhaar has been revealed to be a fiction cooked up by an enemy of Gelbhaar’s, a woman, also in the Green party, who describes herself online as an angry autistic feminist. You’ve got to really loathe someone to publicly humiliate your own party just before an election, but there’s no one a left-wing German Green hates more than a moderate German Green, I’ve been told.
Except maybe the Australian Greens. As far as they’re concerned, not even a party founded by ex-Nazis is tough enough on Jews.
The angry Green feminist has also, reluctantly, had to resign. Or as she puts it, take some time to deal with the accusations levelled against her. Poor poppet.
But it’s too late for Gelbhaar. He hasn’t been reinstated as a candidate – the paperwork can’t be done in time, officials say, and besides he’s tainted. Another young hopeful is running in his place. So the angry feminist stalked and got her man.
And did German feminists, or the German Greens, admit their wrongs? As if.
The German Greens have a young superstar in their ranks – a 25-year-old blonde called Jette Nietzard, radiant with youth and self-confidence […] Jette is a role model for socially aware Gen-Z Germans and is spoken of as a future party leader. Her response to the Anne K affair makes it clear whose side she’s on. ‘Where power is, power is abused,’ she says. ‘We believe victims and we expect the Green party to stand with victims.’ The Greens should stand shoulder to shoulder with an imaginary psychopath?
Well, why not? Their NZ cousins stand side-by-side with absolutely real psychopaths.
Maybe Gelbhaar should have shoplifted something from the local Aldi or Lidl. Then he could play the victim card, too.
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