German public broadcaster ZDF is under fire after canceling the planned live performance of an “anti-fascist” song in one of its popular comedy programs.
ZDF dropped plans to air “Keine Angst” (No Fear), the new song by rapper Danger Dan and classical musician Igor Levit, in its weekly current affairs satire show Die Anstalt. The network said the song, which calls for Germans to take action against the far right, could be interpreted as an “incitement to violence.”
Levit and Danger Dan, whose real name is Daniel Pongratz, were set to perform the song at a pre-recording of the show last week. After the network dropped them, they posted a video of the song to YouTube, where it has quickly gone viral, reaching the number one spot on YouTube Trends for music in Germany.
In the video for the song, short in stark black and white evoking the style of German expressionist films of the 1930s, Danger Dan sits at the piano and quickly rattles through a chorus of instructions for how to combat rising right-wing extremism in Germany.
Alongside fairly innocuous advice (“Talk to bars and pubs/ask if they have space available for an evening/for a party against the Nazis.”); the song also suggests “outing” the “nazi pigs” by putting up flyers and posters with the names, addresses and photos of far-right extremists. It ends with a suggestive, if ambiguous, call to action: “It’s obvious what needs to be done/ I won’t say anything more about it/ Best regards to Lina, Gucci, Maja, and Nanuk.”
