column

One of the strangest campaigns I've seen lately is called #unfollowme. The idea is to get people on the net to tell people that they should no longer follow them on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. The criterion for the request for henchmen is political sentiment. "Let's put together a strong sign against law!", It says on the website of the initiators. "Social media is like real life - no one wants xenophobia and racism among friends."

One of the first prominent supporters of the campaign was former SPD chancellor candidate Martin Schulz. In a tweet, he urged Twitter users to read nothing more from him should they march in right-wing demos. Can the change in the political climate be better summed up? In the past, politicians were proud to reach people who had lost their way politically. Today, they boast of not communicating with the wrong people.

Essentially, #unfollowme is a separatism propagated by the so-called identities: Instead of accepting that strangers are meeting, one pleads for keeping culture spaces strictly separate, so that nothing is mixed anymore. Thankfully, there are even apps that help find out who does not follow you anymore.

For some time now, I have the impression that many people are primarily interested in their political commitment to exclusiveness. Contrary to what the representatives of the multiculturalism say, it has advantages if one stays among themselves, this also applies to the opinion fight.

You are protected from surprises, including unpleasant opinions. In essence, one hears what confirms one's attitude and thus strengthens self-esteem. Above all, the isolation helps to demonstrate superiority: we are "the many", as one explanation of the German cultural scene is called - the other are the Nazis and idiots.

"Intelligence and education do not favor self-criticism and cognitive ability"

Social scientists have a technical term for this form of social distinction. You are talking about "Virtue Signaling". Key words and phrases like "#unfollowme" or - currently - "Nazis out" work like tattoos or eye-catching piercings: you signal like-minded people that you're on the right page. That it usually stays with the gesture, you can see critically, but runs as a reproach in the void. The purpose of identity markers is to mark identities. Therefore, it would be completely absurd, for example, to criticize a driving man like Sascha Lobo, whose texts probably serve essentially the virtue ad.

Man is not made for the impartial contemplation of reality, perhaps for explanation. We consider ourselves rational judging beings. In truth, we are herd animals, whose brains are designed so that we always find reasons why the tribe to which we belong is better and cleverer than other tribes. Prejudice is an inheritance of the history of our settlement, which paid off for the survival of a group when the cohesive forces were particularly strong.

Allegedly, more educated people are more capable of judging a situation without prejudice, they believe anyway. As I take the "FAS", the opposite seems to be correct. There is reported an experiment in which psychologists have asked subjects to name pro and con arguments on a contentious issue. Most of them had many more arguments supporting their own opinion, which shows that freedom of prejudice is not innate.

As the Harvard professor David Perkins was able to show, students were able to put more arguments on paper than non-academics, but the number of counter-arguments remained unchanged. The inclination to righteousness decreases, so you have to conclude, not with the degree of education, but to. Or as the evolutionary psychologist Leander Steinkopf wrote: "Intelligence and education do not favor self-criticism and cognitive ability, they reinforce what is in the human brain anyway: cognitive obscurity".

Man is an opportunist, and that too belongs to anthropological truth

You should not be naive. Right-wing extremists will not be induced to abandon their convictions by offering them dialogue, just as a radical animal rights activist or a follower of "Cuba Sí" will not change their attitudes. Human reason is such that it uses every loophole to hold on to the opinion once it has been conceived. But between radicals and ideologically motivated people, there is a gray area in which at least peaceful coexistence is possible.

Hardly anything brings AfD supporters as reliable on the palm, like the charge that they are Nazis. Even Nazis are sometimes outraged when they call them Nazis, which shows me that even very right-wing people seem to share certain moral values ​​with mainstream society.

A true racist should not take offense at being called a racist - just as no convinced National Socialist would have considered insulting him as a Jew-hater. It can be objected that outrage is made, so in fact it is only a matter of confronting a charge that is thought to harm one's opinion. But I think that's not how it is. The outrage is real.

Man is an opportunist, and that too belongs to anthropological truth. Opportunism has a bad reputation, but it can be quite useful for the cohesion of a society. Why did the transfer of Nazi-contaminated Germany into a democratic community work? Because the overwhelming number of Nazis after the war adapted to the democratic zeitgeist.

Democratic change presupposes, however, that politically scattered people are allowed to reflect. You can also push people into self-radicalization by telling them you think they are the last piece of dirt.