Those sexual-harassment posters are gaslighting Germans

Nothing better illustrates the profound disconnect between German officialdom and reality than a recent poster campaign against sexual harassment in public swimming pools. The campaign – launched this summer by Cologne and soon copied by neighboring Büren – is beyond infantilising and betrays the authorities’ deep-seated mistrust of ordinary citizens.

The posters follow a consistent pattern: they show white perpetrators harassing dark-skinned victims. One image has proven particularly controversial – it shows a slightly overweight white woman with red hair grabbing the backside of a brown boy with a prosthetic leg. ‘Stop! No groping!’, the poster warns. Another poster depicts a young white man staring at a dark-skinned woman as she tries to shower. A cartoon turtle, ‘Tiki’, features at the bottom of the posters, encouraging victims to call out her name every time they feel they are being harassed. The posters are so condescendingly childish (indeed, they were drawn by a prominent illustrator of children’s books) that anyone over the age of five would surely cringe and turn away.

The poster campaign is ridiculous on multiple fronts, not least as there is a genuine problem that needs to be addressed. In recent years, German swimming pools in urban areas have become more like battlegrounds than places to exercise or unwind. After several mass brawls at Berlin’s swimming pools, including one involving more than 100 people in 2022, anyone entering is now greeted by security personnel and has their ID checked. Last year, several German pools closed temporarily after large fights broke out involving teenage boys and men.

Clearly, this silly poster campaign has done nothing to improve the safety of the public pools in Cologne or Büren. All it has done is vindicate those who have long said that the establishment has lost the plot.

There is another problem with the poster campaign: its sheer dishonesty. Even the most pro-migration liberal knows that Germany’s problems with sexual harassment, whether in public pools or on the street, are not being caused by pudgy white women. It is not racist to say that men from migrant backgrounds are disproportionately likely to be involved in these incidents.

The facts clearly bear this out. Last year, German federal police recorded 423 sexual offences in public swimming pools. Almost all of the suspects were men and nearly 65 per cent did not hold German passports. Indeed, the percentage of individuals from migrant backgrounds may be even higher than that statistic suggests, given that dual nationals were classified as German. Recent cases further underscore this pattern. Only last month, eight young girls were sexually assaulted at a swimming pool in Hesse. The suspects are four Syrian men.

Ever since the refugee crisis in 2015, when masses of young men entered Germany, mostly from Middle Eastern or African countries, women and girls have been at a heightened risk. This was brought home during the 2015 New Year’s Eve celebrations in Cologne, when numerous women were mobbed and sexually assaulted by new migrants. It beggars belief that 10 years on, so many in the establishment are still desperately trying to deny, downplay and avoid tackling this problem.

Wisely, Büren’s mayor, Burkhard Schwuchow, removed the posters last week, and even offered a lukewarm apology for putting them up in the first place. Yet some in the local authority have since tried to defend the campaign as a noble attempt to ‘visualise diversity and avoid stereotypes’. Clearly, the Büren authorities view their population as little more than overweight racists, or sex pests, or both.

The poster campaign has given us an insight into the worldview that, depressingly, still predominates among many members of the German establishment. They simply refuse to allow the public to have the ‘wrong’ opinion on mass immigration.

The most disturbing aspect of the poster campaign is the extent to which it betrays women and girls. Indeed, it insults victims of sexual harassment by implying that women are more likely than men to be perpetrators. Rather than address real problems honestly, the authorities chose gaslighting, cartoon turtles and liberal propaganda. It’s no wonder that so many ordinary citizens were furious. And so they should be, too.

Sabine Beppler-Spahl is spiked’s Germany correspondent.