A Berlin actor writes a bit to himself on Facebook.
He's been watching an evening of television about colonialism and is wondering about the moral of the story.
In it, he writes, progress almost always wins, and morality is almost always on its side.
One assumes that he means: because progress is progress.
If the “Indians” had stood their ground against the immigrants from Europe, the actor writes, the United States would not exist.
But progress comes with violence and tremendous losses.
"The 'Indians' did not have time on their side".
Basically, the question is whether the achievements of civilization could be had at all without unjust violence.
According to Hegel, the periods of happiness are empty pages in the book of world history.
The actor formulates questions like these: "Would the 'Indians' have liberated us from the Nazis?" As a historical question, it is poorly posed because it cannot be answered.
All you can do is tell fictional alternative stories like Laurent Binet's most recent novel, Civilizations, in which the Incas conquer Europe in 1531.
So far, so unclear and a little confused.
But now the house the actor is working on is coming, the Berlin Schaubühne.
She issues a press release on his statement.
He plays down the mass murder of the indigenous population of America, his text is racist and discriminatory, you apologize.
The actor also apologized.
He apologized on Facebook and also "internally" and also decided to take part in "individual coaching on the subject of racism and diversity".
The house itself feels responsible.
This is not only interesting for the tone.
It is pretended that there is a crime in the actor's sentences that can only be healed by going through all the instances of apology and diversity coaching.
What the actor said and to what extent it was racist is not communicated but assumed.
The press release praises the company for the fact that “appropriate measures are taken in the event of such incidents”.
From the therapeutic to the police tone.
So that we understand each other correctly, we don't want to defend the statements of the actor at all.
But is there a need for re-education if they have fallen?
He did not recite them from the stage.
Before which tribunal does the Schaubühne have to ostentatiously cleanse itself when an actor outside the theater says something ambiguous?
And would she be absolutely sure that nothing similarly ambiguous is guaranteed to ever be said within the theater and off its stages?
Striving for this security would be fatal.
After all, who would want to go to a straightforward theater that affirms everything we already think about the world, society, and the good and bad in history?
So perhaps the answer would not be the extremely voluntary diversity coaching, but a stage version of Binet's "Conquest" with the actor playing the role of the Inca king Atahualpa.