Hatred and love, fear and hope, panic and serenity: Since 2015, feelings increasingly dominate political stage. That is a pity – and dangerous. February 27th, 2018, 8:10 Uhr473 comments
Many people in Germany are angry. The one about strangers. The ors about locals. They shout, “people traitors!” The ors shout, “Racists!” It happens in Cottbus, it happens in Kandel, it happens also in this medium. Both sides are swinging up. They heat up toger. There is hardly a conversation without wrinkles of anger and (self-) pity tears. Arguments are rare. There is a dictatorship of feelings.
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One can counter statistics on statistics that crime has not risen since 2015, that opening up a society does not have to hurt, that one lives in times of globalisation and that German and European politics since 2015 has been quite trying To regain ir ability to control. It doesn’t help. Every crime of a migrant or refugee is taken as proof that all migrants and refugees are dangerous and that Germany is going to be doomed.
The ors can be said that Germany, Germans, are doing ir thing quite well, figures at hand can prove that country is not doing so badly in European comparison. It doesn’t help. For se people, Germany remains a country populated by everyday racists. Any deportation of an asylum seeker based on rule of law is regarded as proof of racist compassion of Germany.
Both sides shout and land exactly where y were at beginning, with ir perceived certainties. All time I’m being led into field. “I have experienced this… I feel this… I’ve seen this…” I am considered irrefutable proof. I’m always right, anywhere, anytime.
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And where feeling is cooperate fully in this way, political dies. There is no context, re is no history. For example, a Hungarian refugee who fled to western Europe in 1956 before Soviet oppression machine is equated with a fugitive fleeing Middle East from war. Refugee is a fugitive. 1956 like 2015. That’s right. But who fled 1956 in midst of cold war, was tainted with or pictures than someone who fled 2015 from Syria to Germany via Turkey.
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Perception is context-bound, it is shaped by historical moment. At Munich station, refugee children were given 2015 teddy bears in summer. They were in eyes of many German pitiful people, taken from a barely-sensed conflict and not to be located in German political coordinate system. The Hungarian refugees from year 1956 were heroic freedom fighters against a communist dictatorship with which one was connected in bitter enmities. They were clearly assigned to a political camp.
The oft-quoted Geneva refugee convention is disputed without any context. One of m would prefer to abolish m, for ors it is an inviolable document in toto. A Battle of faith has been blown up, which is blocking an overdue debate: debate on reform of Geneva Refugee Convention, its adaptation to present.
All this disappears because feeling knows no story. Yes, it deletes history. What happens appears as inevitable. What happens is an alternative. The only possibility that exists: or is to disappear, stranger, racist, traitor of people. Get away with it. From mouse.
Germany should be free, free of racists, free of popular traitors. Germany becomes a paradise – when or time is gone.
