Frank Plasberg (archive picture):
Photo: Jörg Carstensen / dpa
Frank Plasberg tried really hard to get this show up against the wall.
Right at the beginning, at full throttle and just for the fun of it.
Then he asked Svenja Flaßpöhler with provocative naivety: "What would be that word that is guaranteed to trigger you?", A shit storm.
But the philosopher took him gently behind the wheel and said that she did not want to "start the show with a taboo break".
In fact, a crawled N-word or a Z-sauce would have already answered the question of the program: "Controversy over the language: what else can you say and what better not?"
When it comes to language, the motto in crooked German is brushed onto riot.
An exploring "How do we want to talk to each other?"
does not trigger properly, only that "may" assume that dark forces want to impose some kind of prohibition.
It's just the internet.
Stephan Anpalagan is on Twitter as a "political observer" and cannot see that there is a development originating from the "social" networks that restricts general language usage.
What is called "Cancel Culture" today was previously regulated through "decency, nursery" and good behavior, in short: through "common sense".
He considers the idea of "totally evil" to manifest itself in the "network" with the help of some particularly loud screamers as "absurd stuff".
Especially in a historical situation in which "the legal national" had long since penetrated "the center of society".
For the first time and after just a few minutes, the AfD stands like a ghost in the room, but is not picked up and evaporates again.
This is not a boy, this is a "child with a penis"
Svenja Flaßpöhler, on the other hand, thinks that "the path of the sayable" has become narrower.
In the "political, journalistic, moral" sense.
In the meantime, "the situation in which a word is used" no longer matters, but only whether the term in question is used at all.
Such totalitarian "language rigorism" should be rejected.
The writer Jan Weiler wants to score points in this context with the anecdote that an acquaintance wanted to pick up his "son" from kindergarten, but was corrected to the effect that the "boy" has recently become a "child with a penis".
Plasberg doesn't buy it from him: "Sorry, you made that up!"
Weiler adds that it is not the innocent language that has to be de-discriminated, but "those who are discriminated must be freed from discrimination".
And "the net" is indeed a forum in which "a certain cultural banality can be lived out unrestrainedly".
Unlike in the past in the letters to the editor, there is the "unlimited opportunity to get excited about the biggest nonsense".
R. Kelly continues to make money with his art
With his laissez-faire ("As long as it is not punishable ... hey!") He does not get very far with Stefanie Lohaus.
The editor of the feminist "Missy Magazine" knows "from history and brain research" beyond any doubt: "Language always comes before violence", so it is not at all innocent.
Furthermore, "Cancel Culture" is a chimera, an abusive comedian "Louis CK continues to tour happily" and an imprisoned sex offender like R. Kelly still earns money with his art.
It is true that, especially in the USA and there in museums or academia, it is easy to find contrary examples.
Unfortunately, a one-player with Dieter Nuhr, of all people, is prepared, who is not popular but is anything but "switched off".
Likewise, the WDR's "My grandma is an old environmental pig" affair, which Anpalagan uses to point out that right-wing extremists would then have threatened the responsible editors - not only online.
This is exactly where the rift runs in this broadcast.
Weiler and even more Flaßpöhler (as well as Jürgen von der Lippe in a supporting role as "old white man") see the real problem in a reality that doesn't care about language cosmetics.
Lohaus and Anpalagan tirelessly point out that language precedes violence or that discrimination "reproduces" and thus prolongs it.
Everyone is walking around "like an open wound"
Flaßpöhler asks: "At what level do we want to fight", language or reality?
For Anpalagan, however, language is identical to a reality in which people are exposed to the worst threats or structural disadvantages simply because of their exotic surnames.
Flaßpöhler explains that consideration for every single individual and their feelings leads to an "infinite regress" and ultimately to a "euphemism treadmill" (Steven Pinker), because sooner or later the supposedly more amiable term also takes on the connotation of the word it replaces should.
Lohaus, on the other hand, maintains that marginalized people have the right and, more recently, the means to make themselves audible.
There is no bridge over this moat.
When Flaßpöhler thinks how "everyone is now walking around like an open wound that has to be protected from infection", we should better "immunize" ourselves against insults, Lohaus accuses her of "right-wing rhetoric".
Whenever minorities demand their rights, "the end of the West is proclaimed".
The AfD knocks on the door again, but it wasn't even invited.
With a chuckle, the cook talks about the oh so "woken" guests
Plasberg recognizes "the problem that you have to assume a lot in order to understand the debate".
With friendly insistence, he has the central technical terms of the highly specialized discourse explained, which everyone involved can easily talk about.
What is a "framing"?
What do we mean by "diverse"?
And what do we think of Andrew Onuegbu from Biafra, who runs the restaurant "Zum Mohrenkopf" in Kiel?
With a giggle, the cook tells how he has to imagine two "woken" (another technical term) and correspondingly indignant guests as the boss several times, because the visitors find the "Mohrenkopf" racist on the one hand, but on the other hand they cannot take him seriously as a boss: "I think it's bad," says Onuegbu, "when people tell me when my feelings are hurt".
The derogatory technical term for resilient people like Onuegbu is "token", but Anpalagan doesn't want to use it, prefers to talk about "Jews in the AfD", and there it is, the AfD, which Plasberg has only been waiting for: "What I'm great if one would find this AfD ... why do one have to get the AfD out? ".
Yes why?
Perhaps because this party does not want to expand the "path of the sayable", but wants to shift it in its direction - with the aim of practicing a very real narrowing of the freedoms of migrant or otherwise marginalized elements of this society.
And then the moderator plays stupid again
Weiler does not want to "constantly load the terms with something dangerous", dear God, yes yes, the AfD: "What this political zombie apocalypse pulls off is completely unimportant!"
Weiler can afford this assessment, other people cannot.
The rift runs between them, and there it goes wrong.
On Twitter, by the way, you can make fun of the fact that the moderator is playing stupid and explaining technical terms "like I'm five".
Perhaps it was precisely this banal service that was his journalistic achievement that evening.
If he doesn't, the zombies will.
Icon: The mirror