Arbitrary rule, social studies idealism and structural pacifism
Two reports that at first glance have no connection. On the one hand:
„Investigation of the SPD scandal: Not a bit smarter
(…) Former SPD general secretary Tasdelen resigns – questionable form of processing The whole process is irritating. It is incredibly important that harassment or abuse is dealt with in the church, but also in culture, in film or in politics. But this requires courageous plaintiffs who clearly testify to the abuses. This does not always have to be in public, but in the present case the review commission would at least have been the right forum. So the question remains: Where does a society end up if someone can raise unspecific allegations against someone out of the protection of anonymity and thus destroy careers?“
On the other hand: Commentary on the TV talk show“Hard but fair“
“The activist exposes the climate movement with eco-socialist slogans on ARD
It is the mega topic of our time: the climate crisis. To meet this challenge, you need as many as possible. It is all the more important to take people with us in the fight to keep the earth worth living on. However, this can only be done with fidelity to the facts and a proper sense of justice. It is all the more astonishing when a speaker from the „Last Generation“ shows off her anti-democratic understanding of the law live on television in front of an audience of millions and attracts negative attention due to her ignorance.
On Monday evening, Aimée van Baalen was a guest on the ARD talk show „Hart aber fair“ with moderator Louis Klamroth. It was about the climate. The 23-year-old is not only a spokeswoman for the „Last Generation“, but also a member of „Fridays for Future“ and „Extinction Rebellion“, i.e. an activist by profession – salary included. For example, when young and older people stick to the Stachus on the street in Munich, she stands by and eloquently explains that the government is deliberately and knowingly violating the Basic Law, referring to Article 20a. Almost 30 years ago, environmental and climate protection was included in the constitution as a national goal. A direct legal claim cannot be derived from this. In this respect, it is a somewhat daring legal maneuver to accuse the traffic light of violating the constitution. Much more dramatic than such gaps in knowledge is the legal understanding that the spokeswoman for an entire “last generation” at Louis Klamroth displayed. She blustered about „other democratic means“ and a „social council“ to be installed. In this, people would be drawn who would decide in “crisis meetings” “which measures will then actually be implemented”.
„Last Generation“ reveals anti-democratic attitudes
I beg your pardon? Arbitrarily drawn by lottery ticket, citizens should in future tell an entire society where to go? You couldn’t show more openly that you don’t stick with both hands to the Basic Law, which the „Last Generation“ usually refers to so overzealously, but trample on the constitution – apparently preferably in the bin. The demand here is nothing less than the abolition of parliamentary democracy. The deputy leader of the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag, the 33-year-old lawyer Konstantin Kuhle, summed it up straight away when he said in “Hard but fair”: “It opens the floodgates to the arbitrary state”. One can only hope that van Baalen and her comrades-in-arms listened carefully to Kuhle’s tutoring on democracy at the end of the show. „The decisions in Germany are made by the German Bundestag because it is democratically legitimized by elections by the entire population,“ says Kuhle. „You can’t draw people by random and endow them with the power to decide the weal and woe of the whole country. That is undemocratic.”
Yes, you don’t get that smart about what the investigative committee in the SPD was about. As far as was initially known, a couple of female Juso (Young socialist) comrades accused a senior comrade of sexual harassment. Apparently he did not grap them, rape or stalk them, but asked for the phone numbers of his female comrades, which they considered to be offensive, while old female comrade Renate Schmidt described the allegations as fabricated. But maybe old and not even so old SPD machos and the younger female generation of comrades has a different perception of so-called „toxic masculinity“ and doesn’t perceive it like the older generation. But that’s apparently not the point. In any case, Mike Schier is right when he sees an element of arbitrariness in the lack of transparency of the allegations and the relativization of the presumption of innocence in these Me Too campaigns – you could already see that in Alice Schwarzer’s witch hunt in her BILD People’s Court against Kachelmann. Apparently, however, parts of the younger generation are increasingly relying on such arbitrary elements. The paid female poly-activist from FFF, Extinction Rebellion and Last Generation Aimee van Baalen also called in the talkshow Hart aber Fair (Plasberg successor and moderator Klamroth is the friend of FFF boss Luise Neubauers) for citizen councils with lottery tickets, which is rightly criticized as a kind of arbitrary rule. And it’s not just arbitrary because of the lottery process. “ Räte”/ People´s Council models have often existed before. Be it the Soviet People´s Council Republic in Munich, which became a total dysfunctional chaos and fiasco. Be it the workers and soldiers councils of the Bolsheviks, which quickly ended in the 70-year rule of a totalitarian unitary avant-garde elite party, be it the ideas of liquid democracy and grass-roots democracy in the case of the Germn Pirates party, or swarm intelligence in the case of the German Basis party with swarm commissioners. Old wine in new bottles.
Nevertheless, it is wrong to immediately demand censorship and a ban on discussion in public television for these young activists or to denounce them as enemies of the constitution and an eco-RAF if you want to conduct the much-vaunted dialogue with young people and they have not even reached the level of the 70s. At that time, Rudi Dutschke was often enough on public televison The 68ers also had many workers, women and people´s council ideas, of which Cohn Behndit himself says today that this was the greatest foolishness. But the question is also whether the representative democracy is so representative with all those „lobby councils“, consulting advisor „councils“ of the government and the state, whose good advice is very expensive and especially if one wants to introduce plebeian elements ala Switzerland that discussion should be allowed. In addition, Switzerland is neither a people´s council democracy nor a plebiscitary democracy, but a representative, parliamentary democracy with some more plebiscitary elements than Germany. At least the parties should first ensure that the Bundestag is reduced in size and not increased further before we talk about other things.
Some say the young activists aren’t paying attention in social studies classes and there’s a lack of civic education. I tend to think the opposite and that in social studies lessons you get quite naive, ideal-typical and therefore romantic images of a real democracy and its foreign policy, which are too value-based and too little real-political and based on the real existing world there which generates s a very romanticizing idealism, In which only disinterested careerists and opportunists or real realpolitik checkers and practitioners do not believe and are therefore not disappointed. The young activists are disappointed social studies idealists who have absorbed re-education moralism like a Heribert Prantl, who seems like the finger-snapping and bespectacled nerd in the front row of social studies lessons, who also printed the articles of the Basic Law on his toilet paper roll to spread the spirit of the German constitution to the wolrd and who because they are constantly disappointed in their ideals, then split and differentiate into people who reject this democracy because it is too inefficient or who demand even more democracy or more outerparliamentraian street movements and activism (Apo), which carries this into parliament or a grassroots democratic people´s council democracy or NGO-dominated democracy . Many an Otto Normal / Joe Doe does not take all these ideals for face value and so seriously, is also used to harder things due to their everyday life and is also not as idealistic or even romantic as high school students and alternative students. And the simplest thing that one should learn is that democracy is a bourgeois form of rule, a question of state violence and power, and that consistently ignore this hierarchy and order with the almost ethnically homogeneous idea of a people’s rule of a united people that grows together and is fully integrated leads there to mutual disappointment on the left and right. Therefore, this exaggerated and overdosed social science idealism and previous structural pacifism is also the reason when the world turns into a polycrisis world, these idealists can become militant in both directions.