Ranting for refugees

When celebrities and politicians form alliances, they're asking for trouble - however important the cause. Til Schweiger, probably Germany's biggest domestic movie star, met up late last week with Sigmar Gabriel, vice chancellor, economics minister, and head of the center-left Social Democratic Party, to discuss, according to Gabriel's subsequent Facebook post, "plans for refugees and against far-right hate campaigners."

Accompanying the post was a photo of the pair looking a little overheated in a Berlin cafe, with, as Gabriel put it, "serious faces for a serious issue." The occasion for the discussion was the 51-year-old actor's much-publicized plan to build his own "model" refugee home "with a few of his friends."

The photo immediately harvested a wave of online derision, with jokes about the top TV cop show "Tatort," which Schweiger stars in: "Torn between fear of Schweiger in politics or fear of Gabriel in Tatort:"

Or jokes about the actor's potential political career: "Of course now the question is: what post will Til get in Siggi's shadow cabinet? Foreign minister? Pop commissioner?"

The ire of the film star scorned

Schweiger responded to the mockery with the kind of raging polemic that he has employed for many of his recent social media interactions: "You're so poor....!!!!," he said on his Facebook page. "Instead of supporting us in an extremely important issue, you pour out derision...! You should be ashamed!!! Twitter mockery...! What is that!???! Some idiots who complain and have nothing to do...! I look down on you, full of pity and contempt...!!!"

This is the same tone that Schweiger adopted for the anti-refugee commenters who responded to his initial call for donations in July, when he told the "empathy-less pack" to "piss off from my page." (Fittingly, his furious social media persona suits the movie role he is probably best known for outside Germany: the Nazi-hating psychopath Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds).

Like news reader Anja Reschke, Schweiger has won much praise for his determination to face down openly racist comments that have poisoned the refugee debate in Germany, and which many link to the string of attacks on asylum seeker's homes across Germany. "I tried," he wrote on his Facebook wall on Monday, "but even if you try not to get angry and instead reach certain people... always the same garbage."

But Schweiger's honest endeavors have faced more sober obstacles than mockery and xenophobia. First, his plan for a model refugee home drew a few prickly comments from Manfred Schmidt, the head of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), which is in charge of dealing with refugee reception and shelter. "If someone claims they can do it better, then the first reaction of an authority is always going to be reserved," he told "Die Welt" newspaper, before noting that as a private citizen Schweiger doesn't have to deal with the same regulations as a public agency. The actor doesn't, for instance, have to start a Europe-wide competition to find a contractor to run his home. "Public administrations are bound to strict contract-awarding structures," he said.

Gabriel's arms exports

More embarrassingly, Schweiger's talk with Gabriel came in the same week as new figures were revealed about German arms exports. Germany's status as one of the world's biggest providers of machine guns, tanks, and other military equipment is an issue that the economics minister has made his own since he came into office promising to rein in the business.

As it turns out, last week's figures showed that 2015 is on track to be a record year for German weapons exports. Following an official parliamentary information request from the Left party's Jan van Aken, Gabriel's ministry admitted it had approved almost as many sales in the first half of 2015 as in the whole of 2014: 6.35 billion euros ($6.97 billion) worth of weapons between January and June this year, compared to 6.52 billion euros in the whole of 2014.

Not only that, the value of military exports to the Middle East and North African countries has more than doubled in the first half of 2015 compared with the same period in 2014 - with a total of 587 million euros. In other words the region that most refugees are fleeing is also the region that Germany is selling more and more military equipment to.

"The German weapons exports are out of control," said van Aken in response, while the Green party's Agnieszka Brugger released a statement that read, "Sigmar Gabriel has described weapons exports as doing business with death, but beyond snappy phrases and empty promises he has barely delivered."

And yet this nuance does not seem to be endangering Gabriel's new friendship. "Sigmar Gabriel is a straight guy!!!" Schweiger told his Facebook followers. "Respect!!!"