Lobo answers Fleischhauer: The gold medal in privilege blindness

column

Germany in January 2019:

• On January 1, a racist assassin in Bottrop and Essen drives several times by car into several groups of people. As a motive, he indicates that he wanted to kill foreigners.
• On 4 January it is revealed that an apparently right-wing man published personal and intimate data of about 1,000 political activists to harm them.
• On January 10, it is announced that in Hesse another police officer is suspected of having passed on government data to right-wing extremists .
• On January 11, district courts throughout Germany receive bomb threats from a "National Socialist offensive" .
• On 14 January, the lawyer of NSU victims , Seda Basay-Yildiz, receives another facsimile of a "NSU 2.0" fax, again with data that is likely to be from government databases. The first threatening fax was allegedly from a far-right network in the Hessian police.
• On January 16, the police raided 40 professed Nazis belonging to the National Socialist Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Germany , confiscated more than 100 weapons, but arrested zero people.
• On January 7, it is announced that the right-wing extremist network in the police is even greater: At least three other police officers have Hitler images and other extreme right-wing content exchanged, other alleged right-wing extremist police circles are known, such as in Hamburg.

During these times, my colleague colleague Jan Fleischhauer thinks it would be a sensible idea to publish a column in SPIEGEL on January 19, titled "Nazis in".

To grasp this, one has to penetrate deeper into the clamor that many people in Germany consider to be a debate. The text itself is to be understood as a response to a Twitter incident that began with a ZDF journalist. She had tweeted "Nazis out" on Jan. 1, in conjunction with an unmistakably sarcastic remark about who should be understood as a Nazi. A digital mob with death threats as pitchforks and rape curses as torches attacked her for days. In addition to the great solidarity that she learned - such as through the Twitter account of SPIEGEL ONLINE - yet another, at first glance surprising reaction was revealed: criticism of the phrase "Nazis out" of people who are quite obviously not Nazis are.

• Axel Springer boss Döpfner saw in "Nazis out" a trivialization of National Socialism.
• The "Zeit" saw in "Nazis out" an example of the brutalization of the debate.
• The "Süddeutsche Zeitung" realized that it was not so easy and asked where the Nazis should go.
• In the "world" someone even believed that "Nazis out" was literally anti-constitutional.

Well, literally the name "The World" is also close to fraud, in fact the newspaper is only a very, very small part of the world. But I prefer to hold back before anyone realizes that you are not really reflected in SPIEGEL ONLINE. By that time, however, the swelling Bocksgesang the criticism of "Nazis out" could hardly be surpassed. Therefore, only "Nazis were left" as an increase. And that's what it was all about: escalation.

The associated column content is in detail not so important, it is probably a textual gymnastics exercise to turn the abstruse headline in a non-extreme right direction. Because the most important thing about the column is, in my opinion, not the content and not the title - but the reaction to the headline . It is about the provocation of "the other", more precisely: the left and liberals. So those who had hoped "Nazis out" was a kind of German minimum consensus and therefore outraged.

Rights are defined by the indignation of non-right-wingers

One could dismiss this unconditional desire for provocation as childlike and would not be completely wrong, but nevertheless would not do justice to the phenomenon. Behind this is much more, ultimately a massive crisis of Western self-perception.

In the last 20 to 30 years almost every form of "we-feeling" in Western countries has been destroyed. The reasons for this are manifold, ranging from the end of the Cold War to the realization that "we" in the second half of the 20th century meant anyway middle-aged to old, white, non-disabled, heterosexual cis men.

This great crisis of identity through social disorder is particularly hard to bear for people who are followers of an "ordered world" whose order is "natural or God-given." These two citation snippets come from an interview that Fleischhauer himself conducted with sociologist Armin Nassehi in early 2019, illustrating "right thinking".

So, if everything changes in spite of the well-ordered world view, even though you fight against the change - what else is left? The answer is as simple as revealing, and it explains the controversy that many consider unthinkable about "Nazis out" in Germany in 2019, because it's about an identity mechanism that conservatives have taken away from rights: rights are defined by outrage by non-rightists ,

Conservatives adopt the recipe for success of the right

Rights view left and liberal as a compass pointing south. This explains why Trump fans would accept Putin rather than Obama as US president. What excites left, must be right - according to the "wind turbine principle" energy is drawn from the headwind. The mechanism of identity through provocation was researched by psychology and law professor Dan Kahan in Yale. He explained in 2016 why Trump fans share so many fake news on social media. They are not concerned with truth or meaningfulness. But a signal of social belonging by demarcation: Trump fans share what drives Clinton fans to white heat. The opposing indignation is not a by-product, but the main purpose.

From right-wing spheres, this attitude has spilled deep into the conservative camp, more specifically, "left-wing excitement" is the mainstream Conservative and Rightwing. Their relationship can be clarified with the eternal words of Ralph Giordano on German Conservatives: "For them, the real enemy is still left Right - that are somehow naughty relatives."

As a conservative, you can take over the recipe for success of Provo-roaring the right, even though banal provocation in the 20th century was the alternative to conservatism. Especially as recent political history teaches that this form of escalation never ends.

"Nazis in" is not even serious

Being able to write "Nazis in", even as a provocative pose, is only possible if you personally are not physically threatened by Nazis for their sheer existence - because you are not black, Jewish, or sexually diverse. (See the list at the beginning.) It is the gold medal in privilege blindness on the brazen band. And she is not even serious.

One recognizes that because Fleischhauer at the end of his column a recipe of dealing with Nazis leads, which should not arrive very well in rights. He writes that "Nazis are pure" is "much more socially beneficial", and explains this with the American "reeducation" of Nazis for post-war integration. The translation is "reeducation".

Fleischhauer suggests, I must read this, the re-education of Nazis. Aha. I tend to be critical of the concept of reeducation, but if Fleischhauer insists: "Nazis purely in the reeducation" as a heading, it could have been discussed! Oh, it was not about discussing, that's right.