[Thread] Yesterday evening, the @Airbus Head of Public Affairs Germany threatened #ExtinctionRebellion to not get in his way. With 5 exclamation marks. 😲 
Mr Reinhardt has more than 1000 followers on Twitter, so we felt a bit uneasy about this and wanted to know what exactly he was willing to do.
So we asked him if he just wanted to run us over with his company car or rather intended to use one of the weapon systems produced by @Airbus, like those #Eurofighter jets #Airbus is selling to #SaudiArabia. He said: "Whatever it takes."
Taken aback by this, we wanted to make sure Mr Reinhardt was not just a troll account. But alas, there he was: “Head of Public Affairs” on the @Airbus homepage. Now #ExtinctionRebellion surely is a public affair, but Mr Reinhardt’s angle of addressing it was… unusual.
We also found Mr Reinhardt’s Twitter account directly linked on the German #Airbus Public Affairs website, so we figured he was indeed representing the position of the company proper.
On the #Airbus homepage we also found a “Code of Conduct”. You can download it here: airbus.com/company/ethics… In English the opening message by the board of directors conveys a certain sense of humor given the context.
The German version we were reading at the time though opens with a rather matter-of-fact “Let words be followed by deeds…” And to be honest: those three dots did scare us a in combination with Mr Reinhardt's threat.
We knew #Airbus is building nuclear missiles for France, so we asked Mr Reinhardt to not use those against us - because it would put the people of Berlin at unnecessary risk. He said they were too expensive anyway. We felt relieved.
He then called us “fascistic”, “dictatorial” and compared us to Turkey, which is just now bombing and shelling #Rojava. We found that strange, because while #ExtinctionRebellion is strictly nonviolent, the #AirbusGroup is a weapons manufacturer also selling to Turkey.
Before we could figure out what to make of this, he also compared our peaceful blockades to what the Nazis did in Germany 80 years ago.
We felt things were escalating far too fast and tried to soften the situation up with peaceful messaging, telling him we were sorry he had to take a detour with his car. It didn’t really work.
Mr Reinhardt also repeatedly implied he thought we were all unemployed. Puzzling, as we had only seen right wing trolls making this claim so far. We told him we had in fact taken a week off work in order to make people aware of the climate catastrophe. He was unimpressed.
By the way: We don’t think it’s shame to be jobless at all. We do find it disconcerting though that a highly paid top level manager would think people to be worth less without a workplace. Or would think that unemployed people should not engage politically.
Mr Reinhardt then started to brawl with commentators joining the exchange, telling random people to "come over if you have the balls". We decided it was time to leave the conversation.
We do wonder though: Does @Airbus advocate the threats and judgements levied by their Head of Public Affairs against #ExtinctionRebellion? How does #Airbus reconcile them with its commitment to environmental protection or its core values? airbus.com/company/we-are…
@Airbus PS Mr Reinhardt decided to delete his tweets and edit his Twitter profile this morning. Our original exchange is archived here:
@Airbus While we are happy about the attention this little exchange is getting, we would also like to stress that more than about Mr Reinhardt we would love to hear form his (former?) employer about their actions regarding the #ClimateCatastrophe
Also we have been shadowbanned by Twitter from all search results. @TwitterSupport, could you please explain?
@TwitterSupport So it seems we have been unshadowbanned now. 😎
