[Catfish]

Translation of the article:
(it is from 2015, and the "axis" blog has only deteriorated, since then)

"Without me!
The publicist Michael Miersch has left the blog "axis of good" because it was too hostile.
By Mariam Lau
February 12, 2015 1 Comment
From the
TIME No. 05/2015


Setting the stage for a liberal counter-public, per Israel, per America, per capitalism, against the downfall conjurations of the environmental movement - that was the founding impulse for the political blog Axis of the Good. When it went online in 2004, it was initially a kind of bottle post, with a small community of writers in the circle of the ecocritical duo Dirk Maxeiner / Michael Miersch and the publicist Henryk M. Broder wrote in Rage. In a good mood, they wanted to bring the good news to the people that the forest does not die, capitalism defeats hunger, and America's military power goes hand in hand with moral integrity. Axis of the good, that was the antipode to the "axis of evil", as the then American President George W. Bush Iraq, Iran and North Korea had identified.


The bottle post from that time has become one of the most visited political blogs in Germany. But just now, with the axis of good reporting one million visitors per month, one of the founders says goodbye: Michael Miersch, 58, is appalled by the direction the blog has taken. He has promised his former colleagues not to talk about his criticisms with other journalists, but he has made them public on Facebook, where hundreds of previous readers have since joined him. "On the axis, a mood has spread," said Miersch, "which has little in common with the originally liberal, cosmopolitan and enlightened attitude." Not only did Axis writers recently sympathize with the AfD's culture-pessimistic attitude and the resentment of the Pegida movement. Miersch also reports hateful letters to the editor. In them, people are phoning about names that sound strange to them. People said "Islam criticism" and said, "I hate everyone who is different from me." The euro is described as the "worst destruction since the Second World War", Germany as a refuge of decadence.

But the real Urkonflikt occurred on an October night 2014. Broder had made in a post about making fun of the fact that in Berlin a senior prosecutor was declared the point of contact for victims of homophobic violence. "Small offenses such as robberies without injuries are not prosecuted," Broder had written. "In the case of perpetrators with a migration background, the origin is deliberately disguised. (...) Both the police and the judiciary lack staff. Everywhere? No, not everywhere." Miersch took the text from the blog, Broder put it back on it, Miersch distanced himself in a separate entry: "422 cases of violence against homosexuals were reported in Berlin within a year," he wrote angrily. "Who, how Broder, thinks you should pay more attention to property offenses or Hütchenspieler instead of beaten-up gays, has a rather perverted sense of justice."

Broder is reluctant to respond to the allegations. "What he rides or has ridden," he says about Miersch's farewell, "I do not know, and I do not care, I'm not his shrink, Dirk and I go on anyway and wish Michael only the best." Miersch had never complained to them about the political orientation or a censorship of his views, says Broder. "We have a very wide range of opinions, and we are only one-sided when it comes to German anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and the energy transition, and Michael has never bothered about that, on the contrary." Miersch would even continue to be a shareholder of the "axis of good".

With his mockery of "left-wing sluts", about gays, the long-Islamized Germany and the "parasitic pack" of do-gooders, Broder and his colleague Maxeiner are now assured of an applause they would never have achieved with the original circle of freedom-loving homeless."


Of course it is easier and need less effort to just bash and hate foreigners. Problem is the worst evil the world suffers from is not the strength of evil, but the weakness of the better.