Wie man im Ausland auf Schwarzers Fall reagiert

Jetzt nimmt auch die männerpolitische Website A Voice for Men Stellung zu dem Skandal um Alice Schwarzer. Dazu wird die EMMA-Herausgeberin zunächst einmal vorgestellt:

For decades, she’s been the ugly face of German feminism. No other feminist in Germany comes anywhere close to her notoriety and she has single-handedly done more to discredit feminism than any MRA could ever hope to. If she didn’t exist, we would have to invent her as a textbook example of everything that’s wrong with her hateful ideology.

Dem unbenommen teilt der zitierte Männerrechtler den Zorn nicht, den viele Deutsche auf Schwarzer wegen ihres Steuerbetruges empfinden. Er führt dazu näher aus:

She has been crucified all over the mainstream media. The political magazine Cicero went so far as to call her the "Erich Honecker of feminism" (Honecker was the socialist dictator of East Germany). Even members of the arch-feminist Green Party are attacking her now. The general population is similarly outraged; hardly anyone is still willing to defend Schwarzer. There’s even a petition for her to return her Bundesverdienstkreuz, which already has 6,000 supporters.

Though I have nothing but contempt for Schwarzer, I do not share this outrage. I regard taxation as illegitimate and tax evasion as a justified form of self-defence. Of all the horrible things Alice Schwarzer has done over her long career, this, to me, is by far the least objectionable. She has demonized men and male sexuality. She’s campaigning to get prostitution banned. She praised Valerie Solana’s SCUM Manifesto for having the courage to openly express hatred of men. She cheered on Lora Bobbit, who cut off her sleeping husband’s penis. She persistently refused to engage in civil debate with her critics and instead resorted to smear campaigns and name-calling. For a perfect example of this, consider her 1975 televised debate with Esther Vilar (author of The Manipulated Man) in which, as one of many insults, she called her opponent "not only a sexist, but also a fascist." Compared to all that, trying to keep more of her own money seems quite harmless to me.

Eine ähnliche Haltung vertritt hierzulande das Schwulenblog Gay West, dessen Kommentatoren Vergleiche zu Al Capone ziehen, den man ja auch nur wegen Steuerbetrugs zur Rechenschaft ziehen konnte und nicht für seine zahllosen anderen Missetaten.

A Voice for Men kommentiert auch die Rechtfertigung Schwarzers für ihren Steuerbetrug:

Schwarzer gives a curious justification for opening the secret account in the first place. She claims that public opinion was so hostile to her that she feared she would have to flee the country. It’s one thing to leave the country and quite another to have all your assets seized. Of course nothing of the sort ever happened to Schwarzer. However, it was her critic Esther Vilar who was actually forced to leave the country after being beaten up by a group of angry women. But even if we assume for the sake of argument that Schwarzer’s fears were justified, this still does not explain the tax evasion. It would have been perfectly possible to open an account in Switzerland—or some other foreign country—and declare her interest income to the German tax authorities. Unless of course Schwarzer feared that Germany would somehow be able to also seize the money in her Swiss account. This is a feat that not even Hitler accomplished at the height of his power, so it is a rather outlandish worry.

At long last, the tides have turned against Alice Schwarzer. She was losing ground before, especially with her unsuccessful fight against prostitution, which even many fellow feminists opposed. This tax scandal will hopefully prove to be the last nail in the coffin of Schwarzer’s reputation. Now she finally gets the scorn she so richly deserves, though unfortunately most of the mainstream media attacks on her still claim that she "accomplished" many great things for German women in the past (though these claims are always made in terms of vague generalizations; no one seems to be quite sure what concrete improvements Schwarzer brought about). We can only hope that this too shall pass.