Germany’s Next Top Model’s first, second, and third place winners this year are raising eyebrows, with critics indicating that the series’ decision on who wins the reality show competition has little to do with beauty and everything to do with ideological and woke programming.
In one tweet, which has nearly 1 million views, Belgian historian and professor David Engels posts a photo of the three winners, all people of color, and writes: “No joke: There is at least one thing you have to concede to the woke German elites: they are coherent and deadly serious about their wish to totally reshape their country. Shakespeare would say: ‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.’”
In a country with such a small Black population, commentators are speculating that this was an effort for Germany’s Next Top Model to uphold woke virtues and even promote acceptance of mass immigration in German society, which Germans are increasingly turning against, as polling shows.
It is not the first time that the show promoted controversial topics. German columnist Anabel Schunke posted on Twitter about 2021’s winner, which was actually a biological male who changed their gender to female and beat all the biological female competitors.
“Anyone who complains about first through third place in Germany’s Next Top Model has probably already forgotten that the beautiful Soulin (Omar) lost to a biological man in 2021,” wrote Schunke.
Schunke, however, stated that she did not take issue with the weight of the first-place winner in 2023. Instead, Schunke, who apparently watched the show, said that Vivien Blotzki, the 2023 winner, did not perform her tasks on the show, and in light of the show’s ideological direction, Blotzki’s victory further revealed the show’s ideological bent.
“By the way, I never said anything against the winner of #GNTM because she is overweight, either in my comment in Weltwoche or in my initial post. After all, there are now enough ‘curvy models.’ It’s just that she couldn’t get a single job and others were better. And if you look at the decisions in recent years against this background and the current winner, then I come to the conclusion that it is no longer about performance, but about diversity at any price,” wrote Schunke.
Ich habe übrigens nirgendwo, weder in meinem Kommentar in der Weltwoche noch in meinem anfänglichen Post etwas gegen die Gewinnerin von #GNTM gesagt, weil sie übergewichtig ist. Immerhin gibt es mittlerweile genug „Curvy Models“. Es geht einfach darum, dass sie keinen einzigen…
— Anabel Schunke (@ainyrockstar) June 16, 2023
However, on the other side of the spectrum, a number of media outlets are praising the winner.
“I think it’s fantastic that Vivien was the first curvy model to become Germany’s next top model,” said Kerstin Schneider, the magazine editor-in-chief of the German edition of Harper’s Bazaar.
However, the trend of promoting diversity often to the explicit exclusion of White people has been seen in a range of cultural and political areas in Germany. For example, German taxpayer money is often tied to diversity initiatives, including funding for film, arts, and cultural projects. As Remix News previously reported, one German state-funded initiative from the MOIN Film Fund website states: “Applicants are now obliged to answer a questionnaire on the diversity of their planned project.” For example, applicants must answer whether there are “people of color” on the team. MOIN claimed, however, that the checklist does not affect “artistic freedom or labor law issues.”
While Germany has been one of the most welcoming countries to mass immigration in the world, many of the newcomers do not share such warm feelings towards the German population. Earlier this year, for example, German-Iranian author and commentator Behzad Karim Khani wrote statements about Germans who criticized migrant-fueled mayhem during New Year’s Eve, which were widely criticized.
“I think we’re at a point now where we should have an honest look at the situation. Let’s start with the simple statement that we — migrants, foreigners, people with … call us what you like — are not going to leave that easily. And neither will you, dear organic Germans, though, demographically, you’re definitely going away. You’re dying out, and your country needs about 400,000 new workers (every year) over the next 15 years, that’s about a million immigrants a year. We migrants will probably inherit this land. So we could play for time here, which is time you don’t have.”
In another case earlier this year where ideological concerns played more of a role than merit, a White male justice minister in Germany was removed from his position because he was White and male and replaced with a Black female. As Remix News reported, the Green party dismissed its own justice minister, Dirk Adams, in the German state of Thuringia. He was not found guilty of any wrongdoing, but instead was simply a male of the wrong skin color, which, by the Green party’s own admission, was the entire basis for his dismissal.
Adams fought hard to keep his spot but was replaced by Afro-German Doreen Denstädt. Thuringia’s Minister-President Bodo Ramelow, of the Left Party, fired Adams, who was the minister for migration, justice and consumer protection. The dismissal came about after the Green party directly requested him to be replaced by Denstädt, who has no law degree or political experience.
The Green party celebrated the dismissal of their own minister over gender and race, with a statement that indicated the new appointee demonstrates the “importance that the topics of integration and migration have for us Alliance Greens.”
In another example, a top German university posted a job, stating that White people should not apply in order to make space for people of color.