Germany "Neo-Nazi changes gender to serve in women’s prison"

Liebich's Twix account says he's in Russia 😆and wants to apply for asylum either in the US or Russia.
(don't want to link but you can easily find it - there are several but one is active and has a note that several users are posting).

I had read about a hint regarding Moscow this morning and wondered whether Liebich travelled through Hungary.

The "Spiegel" article contains the info that Liebich's complaint at the media oversight committee was refused and Liebich also retracted other legal complaints.

"Viele Medien, auch der SPIEGEL, hatten über seinen früheren Vornamen »Sven« und seine Vergangenheit als männlicher Neonazi berichtet. Liebich forderte unter anderem Schmerzensgeld wegen angeblicher Verletzung der Persönlichkeitsrechte als trans Person, zog seine Forderungen aber schlussendlich wieder zurück.

Auch eine Beschwerde beim Presserat verpuffte und wurde einstimmig als unbegründet abgelehnt: Es sei wahrscheinlich, dass Liebich »die Änderung des Personenstands in missbräuchlicher Art und Weise vorgenommen hat, um zu provozieren und den Staat vorzuführen«. Auch deshalb hat sich der SPIEGEL entschieden, Liebich beim männlichen Pronomen zu nennen."

(translation by me)
"Many media, including "Der Spiegel", reported about his previous first name "Sven" and his past as male neo-nazi. Liebich demanded, amongst other things, compensation due to this affecting his rights as a trans person but later retracted these.
A complaint at the media oversight committee was dismissed. The comittee said it was "likely that the change in the register was misused to provoke and ridicule the state". This is another reason why "Der Spiegel" decided to use male pronouns."

Thus the complaint was dismissed because the comittee who is responsible for media standards and ethics decided about who applies self-ID correctly and who doesn't. I learned so much from the discussions about the UK and media and pronouns, and I would say something similar applies here: this media committee cannot actually decide about who is "really" trans and who isn't. That's not in the Self-ID law. The committee can of course decide about this media matter but not outside of this realm.

So the stunt works, because now politicians are scrabbling to refine the law.

I bet he's shaved that moustache off!

IIRC it could be up to 10000€, they could have done the whole piece without using any pronouns, they chose not to.

Der Spiegel sailing close to the wind, there.

Remind me again what the fine is for misgendering those who have officially registered a new gender?

Article in The Telegraph

Neo-Nazi vanishes after changing gender to serve sentence in women’s prison

Interesting, Tagesschau uses female pronouns throughout, Spiegel uses male ones.

Since the fucker is clearly trolling, will His next stunt be to try and claim political asylum for persecution of his beliefs in wherever he rocks up

Liebich didn't arrive at the prison he was supposed to when his time started (today or yesterday). Liebich absconded and is suspected to be in another country.

https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/liebich-haftantritt-fahndung-100.html

https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/behoerden-suchen-rechtsextremisten-marla-svenja-liebich-a-b3a8768c-a3a1-4c08-b3f3-488d3165b1ca

@Charabanc
Yeah, right now Germany has it's Isla Bryson-moment, though this guy was sentenced due to neo nazi activities; a different category of crime.

Finally the TAZ decided to report on this, though only in a comment, not a news article.
https://taz.de/Kritik-am-Selbstbestimmungsgesetz/!6106300&s/

They are trying to make out this is a sock puppet activity

But the conclusion is still hopeless:
"Die Sache ist jedoch: das Selbstbestimmungsgesetz ist nicht das Problem. Es ist eine absolute Notwendigkeit für die Rechte einer bereits extrem vulnerablen und marginalisierten Community und muss mit aller Kraft verteidigt werden. Das Problem sind bösartige Menschen wie Liebich, denen es genuin Spaß macht, diese Community und ihre so fragilen Rechte zu torpedieren – und eine queerfeindliche Politik, die dieses Spiel begeistert mitspielt."

translation by me:
"The Self-ID law is not the problem. It is an absolute necessity for the rights of an already vulnerable and marginalized community and needs to be defended with all our might. The problem are evil people like Liebich, for whom this is pure fun to torpedo this community and their very fragile rights - and politics who see queer as the enemy and play their [Liebich etc] game".

They are trying very much to paint this into a corner and to have "good people" and "bad people" who use this right, not seeing that it doesn't work that way, either it is valid for everyone who is mentioned in this law or not. Also they only put the fault towards the people who they claim are misusing it and do not reflect on the lawmakers who did not listen to advice from critics, i.e. the lawmakers were made aware of the problems, it was not an unknown or unforseen entity, and they still went ahead.

There are some threads here from earlier months / the past two years (?) where Self-ID in Germany was discussed, for anyone who missed it and is interested in more background.

now they will have to bend over backwards to distinguish who is "serious" and "deserving" and who isn't.

Nicola Sturgeon just stirred those waters. She said (re "Isla" Bryson) that maybe transes who commit rape or equally awful crimes shouldn't be allowed to be their gender of choice.

The transes are KICKING OFF!!! Trans is not a choice, a right that can be rescinded is not a right, etc etc. Even hardcore transmaidens like NS cannot stick to the message for long, because it is nonsense.

Regarding the looks, Frida Kahlo might have been the inspiration (not that it works).

Agree, @Maerchentante, now they will have to bend over backwards to distinguish who is "serious" and "deserving" and who isn't. That will be an interesting discussion.
But as I wrote about the case of the leftist extremist "Maja T.", the female name is indeed very deceiving. This is the first time I feel really misled as I hadn't followed that case closely until now, and had not realized it's a non-binary person. I'm also astonished about the contrast in how it's handled and discussed in public.

This connects to topic of "not our crimes", too. Will these two people be counted as female extremists (both the leftist and the right-wing?).

This Spiegel Artikel from four weeks ago uses female pronouns throughout

https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/marla-svenja-liebich-rechtsextremistin-kuendigt-verfassungsbeschwerde-an-a-5301787e-fa0d-4ee1-8f89-3929716d9146

There's another piece about the German Minister for the Interior (equivalent to the Home Secretary in the UK) where they are bending over backwards not to use any pronouns for Liebich.

I do not agree with any far right positions, but find it hilarious that it's far right extremists showing the country what a farce the SBG is.

That's a good idea; the local and regional council to be elected are the ones who set the rules for local public services (unless it's already settled by country / national law), such as access to toilets in public buildings etc.
And then many regions do have prisons, in which case those questions can be asked, too (even if prisons are not governed by local law, having a few politicians asking uncomfortable questions can set things in motion).

see below tweet, this has been going on a long time and i suspect that it may start to gather pace. There are local elections next month and sex-realist women's groups are already asking questions of candidates.

Anyway, i have posted the translated version, can provide orig link in German if anyone wants to repost.

This thread prompted me to read some more articles around the case, and a commenter somewhere referenced the case of "Maja T."
This is relevant because "Maja T." is a extremist leftist activist.
https://www.dw.com/en/german-activist-maja-t-goes-on-hunger-strike-in-hungary/a-72821582

I had heard of this case but actually never clocked that Maja's previous name is "Simeon" and the person considers themselves to be non-binary. I genuinely thought this was a woman due to the name and many newspapers didn't say anything about it and I rarely watch all the videos in such articles.

Simeon/Maja was part of a group of German leftists activists who violently attacked people in Budapest whom they considered to be neo-nazis. While neo-nazis are problematic, frontier justice can be equally problematic.

The group Maja supposedly is part of is called "Hammerbande" and the others were / are also in court for attempted murder and other things.
https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/ndr-wdr/lina-e-linksextremismus-anklagen-100.html

Simeon / Maja was in court in Budapest as the attack happened there, but the wider group mostly committed attacks in Germany.

There was some forth and back between jurisdictions and the person was extradited to Hungary while the others of the group were not.

This video from court proceedings shows Simeon / Maja T.
https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/prozess-maja-t-100.html

There were further news about the fact that the prison conditions for this person were inhumane as Hungary was trying to make an example case of them. I do agree that from what I read the conditions sound as if it wasn't a prison in Europe under European laws.

This is very complex as the reason for their court proceedings and jail time also does not have anything to do with being non-binary, but due to the harsh conditions for their prison term the person has become some kind of political prisoner. Simeon's/Maja's supporters argue that the solitary confinement, the bedbugs and rotted food is Hungary coming down on TQ.

However, nowhere have I seen anyone say that this person was misusing a law by declaring themselves non-binary and choosing a female name. I read that the namechange happened after they were taken in by police.

To be clear, I am not on the side of anyone mentioned in this text; I am only adding this case to the discussion because it comes from the opposite political spectrum.

While the topic of Germany is back in discussion, soon there will be a conference by a society for "Evidence-Based Gender Medicine".
Their event will be in Berlin. I haven't checked the backers for this society, though.
But Faika El Nagashi and Rona Duwe (German & Austrian GC activists) have reported that opponents are already planning to disrupt the conference.
https://nitter.poast.org/el_nagashi/status/1959270887049306225#m

It's not clear how peaceful the protest is intended to be, but from the screenshots it sounds like they plan to do more than just waving some flags.

I really wish the problematic aspects of this topic were mentioned much more in mainstream media; the "Tagesschau" has not mentioned the neo-nazi news, as far as I'm aware.
But has anyone noticed, in a recent issue of the women's mag "Brigitte" was an article about a married man who changed into a Transwoman, and how supportive his wife was, and the surgery in the US ... Not one bit about the health dangers at all; they've reported it as if he really changed sex.

At the same time the TAZ (left newspaper) reports that the governments of the German countries (Länder), who have the right to national lawmaking through the "Bundesrat", want to finally get "sexual identity" into the constitution (Grundgesetz) and are making another attempt. They cannot change anything on their own but they can put forward a change of law which then needs to be heard in parliament.

https://taz.de/CDU-Laenderchefs-gegen-Bundestagsfraktion/!6104332/

The conservative party on the national level is still against it, and they would need their votes. The article explains that some of the conservatives in the individual countries are in favour of it.

The article which the Telegraph is based on seems to be in "Stern".
https://www.stern.de/politik/deutschland/dobrindt-will-selbstbestimmungsgesetz-vor-missbrauch-schuetzen-35996606.html

It's still not that good, as they only want to prevent "misuse"; not seeing that all of this does not work, but perhaps it's a step towards a more public discussion.

They were, but the people doing the warning were all women, and they couldn't hear our high, shrill voices.

And over in another thread we have wotshisface ex-judge McCloud wanting to go to the ECHR starting from the basis of the process being very rigorous and men who just say they're women not really being trans.

If that did proceed, it would be fascinating watching the ECHR trying to reconcile this mess. A ruling either way might have the effect of clearly putting Germany in breach. Even if McCloud "wins" and gets the ruling "men can be let in if they're sufficiently vetted, and it's not just self-ID".

Thanks @SirBasil - your input from the German side of it all, it's really interesting & I wish I'd tried harder at my language GCSE 😂

I've got to say I'm gripped. The absurdity is writ large - what are they going to do?

Completely agree that it's bad news that it's a hideous person bringing this to light.

Oh yes. AI is very clever, but only so clever.

For all the advances of machine learning, that piece reminded me that language translation, whilst better than it was, still has a long way way to go to be fluent. I'm kinda glad about that!

Thank you for that link.
A quote using page translation.

It is exactly the case of abuse that women's rights enforcers had warned against in the discussion about the Self-Determination Act, which came into force in November 2024: With the right-wing extremist Sven Liebich, a man declared himself a woman by speaking act who has no recognizably no transsexual identity. On the contrary: The neo-Nazi, who was convicted of sedition and other offenses, has repeatedly stood out in the past through homophobic and transphobic statements.