The moustached neo-Nazi in a women’s prison

Look at a photograph of German neo-Nazi Sven Liebich and the first thing you’ll notice is his thick handlebar moustache. So why, then, is this convicted, obviously male fascist about to be sent to a women’s prison?

Liebich’s case is puzzling. In July 2023, he was convicted of several offences, including ‘extreme-right incitement to hatred, defamation and insult’, as the BBC reports. Photographs from the time depict him yelling into a mic at a far-right rally and wearing an armband sporting the slogan of the Nazi stormtroopers (although curiously with no moustache).

Today, he is still very much a bloke. But he calls himself Marla-Svenja Liebich. And he wears a leopard-print top, tiny John Lennon sunglasses and a black floppy hat instead of fascistic totems. Crucially, since last year, he has had a piece of paper that says he is legally female. So he will serve his time in a women’s prison in Chemnitz, Saxony.

Liebich was able to pull the switcheroo on his gender thanks to former German chancellor Olaf Scholz, who last year introduced the Self-Determination Act, which drastically simplified the process of changing one’s gender on legal documents. All it takes is a simple declaration of one’s new gender and first name at a registry office. One member of Scholz’s cabinet hailed this as a positive way to ‘protect minorities’ – no doubt the neo-Nazi Liebich approves.

For all the satirical stupidity of this case, it is but one of many instances when men have been housed in women’s prisons thanks to rules or laws that permit ‘gender self-identification’. In some cases, these men have committed heinous crimes against women. But who cares about them? What’s important, apparently, is that men who say they are women have their identities respected, whatever risk they might pose to vulnerable incarcerated women. And if convicted rapists can chill with the girls, then what, logically, should stop a neo-Nazi?

As if the case itself were not absurd enough, the media coverage has been even more farcical. Outlets have tied themselves in pretzels not to ‘misgender’ the fascist thug. A BBC article refers to Liebich as ‘she’ throughout.

Der Spiegel even notes that Liebich has made ‘queerphobic’ statements in the past and suspects – heaven forbid! – that his decision to change gender may have been ‘abusive’. But the law is the law, and the state has no choice but to treat him as a woman.

The case of the goose-stepping Miranda Priestly shows what happens when the world bends the knee to a deranged ideology. In a sane world, it would bring the whole gender experiment to an immediate, abrupt end. But it won’t of course. As long as there are laws letting men pretend to be women, then there will be no end to the absurdities to come.

Georgina Mumford is a spiked intern.