The Moralizing Over-German

…is young and white — and she knows better. She is the perfect counter-image to the “old white man”, who often enough should have been her father or grandfather. The moralizing Over-German is possibly not a bit better than the old white man, for when it comes to being privileged and patronizing, she is in no way inferior to him. As far as I can see, there is hardly any Over-German who is not privileged — on the contrary: privilege almost seems to be THE prerequisite for moralizing: The recently much-discussed “cityscape” does not exist! And that is, on the one hand, because what must not be, cannot be, and on the other hand, because that “cityscape” probably takes place above all in places where the privileged, moralizing Over-German rarely ever goes — and if she does, then perhaps with that romantic shudder that befalls upper-class children when they briefly come into contact with the ground of reality.

The pedestrian tunnel in the center of a big city at the end of a boozy Saturday night might be something entirely different from the pedestrian tunnel in some not-so-popular neighborhood on the way home on some damned evening in November, when the lighting doesn’t work because the municipality in question is so broke that the lamps can no longer be repaired. Or one is so woke that one shines — and so brightly that even the darkest pedestrian tunnel looks like pure Broadway.

While the old white man is criticized for habitually being right, the young, moralizing Over-German appears at least just as naturally certain — if not, thanks to the shift in Zeitgeist, even more so.

What I am writing here is possibly irrelevant, because those whom I am describing probably would not even call themselves “Germans” in the actual sense. And yet it is true: Their mother tongue is generally German, they generally come from privileged German households, they generally have a master’s degree from a German university, and when they generally see the world more as it should be than how it — perhaps also — is, they are as German as any rhapsodic, revolutionary, or insurgent — in any case radical — variant of the German Zeitgeist before them.

In Germany, two things tend to mix quite readily: Protestant zeal and a certain sensitivity. Faith as such has almost or entirely been extinguished, but the zeal — that is still there. Possibly the extinguishing of faith is an essential component of the preservative that maintains the zeal.

Today this sensitivity expresses itself as a firewall: We have history. We are sensitive to history. But instead of asking ourselves who the Nazis actually were, and who perhaps today truly corresponds to that spirit, we prefer to dismiss a part of the people who do vote, but no longer feel represented.

Whoever takes a jerrycan to set a refugee shelter on fire can only be dealt with through consistent investigations (and therefore the police!). But whoever is skeptical about whether the current migration policy is really correct does not have a jerrycan in hand. Yet whoever is rhetorically made suspect of carrying a jerrycan “just like that” distances himself internally.

Eighty years later, resistance is quite simple. Whoever considers today’s “right-wing” protagonists en masse to be Nazi apologists — well, in my opinion, he or she has not understood who and what the actual National Socialists were. If someone is a National Socialist, then — as said — only the emergency services and afterwards the courts can help. But if, for the sake of simplicity, one declares any random skeptic, doubter, demonstrator, or opponent to be an anti-democratic enemy inspired by National Socialism, then one does not help democracy — quite the opposite: one strengthens the supposed opposing side and reveals oneself to have an all-too “narrow” understanding of democracy.

Jörg Heidig