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Kicked out

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An amusing story made the local press: In a local ‘leftie’ café, they kicked out an employee of the Ausländerbehörde (‘aliens office’?) because they disapprove of the extraditions ordered and performed by that office.

Doing that may be a bit self-righteous, but it seems consequent and reasonable if you are against extraditions. Who’d want to serve people who made it their profession to literally destroy the lives of people. They have a strong ‘anti-extradition’ policy at the café – recently even showing a rather good exhibition of anti-extraidition posters. So it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that they won’t be happy to support the people who earn their money by kicking people out of the country.

On the other hand, the (conservative, small-town) local press is keen to point out that lack of ‘tolerance’ and considers this issue important enough to use it as a leader on their local ‘news’ section. And certainly I can see them enjoying that once in a while they can point out ‘intolerance’ in the very people who otherwise point out their narrow-mindedness. There’s a sweet irony to it.

I don’t think it’s a particularly good point, though. Our leftie friends certainly are far from an ‘everything goes’ attitude. They have ideas about which range of lifestyles and cultures should be tolerated and supported (a wide one) and strongly dislike attempts of people to mess with that. And they’re (mostly) consistent with that. It seems silly to tell them that they need to support people who disagree with their point.

A further point could be that they may to build an environment in which ‘illegals’ can peacefully enjoy a cup of coffee without worrying about their legal status or being harassed. [I am not saying they do this but as they also don’t let men into their place one night a week for similar reasons, it wouldn’t seem too surprising.] Certainly having government officials who may know – and possibly pursue – those people in the same place could ruin that plan. I am not even sure whether state servants may (or want to be) sufficiently ‘off-duty’ to ignore the environment they experience when having a coffee in their spare time.

All in all, a fun story to watch. Everybody trying their best to present their self-righteousness and telling others off for being self-righteous.

Looks like the story has been picked up by taz as well.

April 20, 2010, 8:16

Tagged as göttingen, kabale.

Comments

Comment by Stefan: User icon

I guess this is kind of a special case. If one of the local neonazis would have ordered a breakfast at the leftie café and got thrown out, certainly no one would have cared. Everybody would have agreed that throwing him out is the correct reaction. Mainly because no one likes a nazi in their café but also because they understand it’s just such an obvious provocation

This case however is a little different. I guess no one outside of the leftie environment would normally consider throwing an employee of the local aliens department out of their café. First of all because they don’t recognize them and if they did, they normally wouldn’t perceive them as evil and even if they would think they’re doing something evil they would probably still tend to think “oh, they’re just following the law, they’re just doing their job”.

This leads the classical question if the soldier that obeys orders from his superior should be made responsible for his actions. I guess in this case you could say, that the lady is probably not forced to work in the aliens department so should does at least have some kind of partial responsibily for her actions. Besides that I have no idea what is actually going on in Göttigen’s alien department and how the employees are treating the foreigners and vice versa so I guess some insider knowledge might be helpful if you really want to judge the situation. In the end I suspect though, that they’re mostly just doing their job which means applying “tough” laws which the foreigners might tend to interpret as bullying.

I guess it would be interesting to ask the café if they actually have some kind of an official blacklist containing all the persona non grata.

April 20, 2010, 13:36

Comment by ssp: User icon

I guess in this case you could say, that the lady is probably not forced to work in the aliens department so should does at least have some kind of partial responsibily for her actions.

I totally think that anybody who’s capable of doing a well-paid job can essentially choose what (s)he does and has to take responsibility for the effects of that job on others. Nobody needs to work on the extradition of other people if they don’t want to.

I guess some insider knowledge might be helpful if you really want to judge the situation

I don’t have real ‘insider’ knowledge, but there surely is heated opposition which somewhat culminated at the beginning of the year [indymedia + links].

I guess it would be interesting to ask the café if they actually have some kind of an official blacklist containing all the persona non grata.

Please don’t. They seem to be nice people in general. Just don’t tip them too far in the direction of ideological battles.

April 20, 2010, 15:20

Comment by Stefan: User icon

I totally think that anybody who’s capable of doing a well-paid job can essentially choose what (s)he does and has to take responsibility for the effects of that job on others. Nobody needs to work on the extradition of other people if they don’t want to.

I friend of mine works for the city administration in Mannheim and as far as I can recall you’re not that free to choose. He worked some time as an employee in the social welfare office and although he requested to be transfered to another office it took many years before they actually offered him another position. I guess work contracts in public service allow the employer to place you wherever they want. Of course this still leaves the option of quitting the job, but as it’s not so easy to find a new job in todays employment market I guess this is more of a theoretical option for many. I’m not trying to protect those people, but I’m saying they’re most likely not doing it for sadistic reasons.

I don’t have real ‘insider’ knowledge, but there surely is heated opposition which somewhat culminated at the beginning of the year.

To be honest I have no notion whatsoever of how this extradition system works. I suspect that as usually the truth lies somewhere inbetween the extreme positions.

Please don’t. They seem to be nice people in general. Just don’t tip them too far in the direction of ideological battles.

I was just joking! I mean in general I really like the non-violent lefties because I agree on many points with them, especially when It comes to criticizing the negative effects of capitalism, globalization and gentrification. It’s just that sometimes their behaviour seems a bit silly to me :)

April 20, 2010, 18:51

Comment by ssp: User icon

FWIW, one hears that the city found it couldn’t sue the café for the behaviour and the café says they don’t want to confront their guests with people who play a role in the ‘Abschiebemaschinerie’.

Reasonable.

April 23, 2010, 13:33

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