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Solidarity gesture clenched fist: Just not do it mean?
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Actually, it's almost funny.
Anyone who campaigns against discrimination, against social inequality and exploitation or for climate protection often knows different types of accusations: One is that in reality you do nothing, just talk (or also: just tweet).
The other is that you are doing something (or: too much).
The second accusation is often brought up with a term that does not actually have a negative connotation: activism.
Nevertheless, "activist" is sometimes meant to be discrediting and as a contrast to serious, supposedly ideology-free action.
What's going on there?
First of all, an activist is simply a politically active person, according to Duden a “particularly politically active person”, according to Wikipedia a person “who promotes certain goals with special achievements, with activism”.
In fact, however, "activist" is a term in some circles today that is used almost like a dirty word and is often used when people are to be denied the status of an expert, scientist or journalist.
Even if these people are just doing their job or not just using their democratic rights of participation to vote every few years.
Margarete Stokowski, arrow to the right
Photo:
Rosanna Graf
Born in 1986, was born in Poland and grew up in Berlin.
She studied philosophy and social sciences and has been working as a freelance writer since 2009.
Her feminist bestseller "Bottom Rum Free" was published in 2016 by Rowohlt Verlag.
In 2018, »The Last Days of Patriarchy« followed, a collection of columns from SPIEGEL and »taz«.
Author Alice Hasters recently wrote on Twitter, “Folks, I'm not an activist.
Please stop calling me that.
I write about racism, yes.
But that doesn't make me an activist.
It makes me an author. "
The political and Islamic scholar Rami Ali wrote on the occasion of a "world" -Artikels, *'ll scientists migrant-or Muslim read inside to defame them regularly their expertise as researchers
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denied the inside - with the label of activism.
These designations do not necessarily come from the right: For example, the Green politician Volker Beck wrote in a later deleted tweet about the Deutschlandfunk journalist René Aguigah that he was a »DLF activist«.
The Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection is promoting a podcast episode with the words: "Federal data protection officer Ulrich Kelber and network activist Katharina Nocun on privacy on the web (...)".
Like Kelber, Nocun also has a job; on her website she calls herself a civil rights activist and publicist.
She is often invited on television as an expert, but for the Justice Department it is enough to call her a "network activist."
When and why are people called "activist * inside" when in fact they only pursue their profession - whether as scientists * inside * publicist inside, lawyer
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inside * physicians inside or whatever?
Remarkably, this happens almost only in the case of left-wing political attitudes, and almost never in the case of capitalist, so-called liberal or right-leaning conservative attitudes.
One rarely reads about capitalism, tax cut, environmental destruction or meat-eating activists.
Incidentally, one rarely reads bias or activism when Christian journalists write about abuse in church institutions or non-disabled people about people with disabilities or heirs about Hartz IV recipients.
We remember: The people who demonstrate against the federal government's pandemic policy are »Corona critics«.
People who want to deny refugees the human right to asylum are "asylum critics".
The thing is: "Critic" is a neutral term, it suggests that the person being called that has arguments and a certain amount of expertise.
more on the subject
Demonstrations in Berlin: Hitler salute and sun salutation do not balance each otherA column by Margarete Stokowski
But anyone who is feminist or anti-racist or who fights against other forms of discrimination quickly gets the label of activism stuck on: As if it were some kind of dirty hobby, which maybe a compatibility committee should check whether everything is still going well.
Even if people simply use the means that, firstly, belong to their profession and, secondly, are intended for expressing political opinions in a democracy: for example, to inform the public about grievances, be it in the form of television appearances or open letters.
Of course, there are also those who voluntarily call themselves activists.
But that does not change the fact that the term is used by some to mark people as ideologically deluded, often with the formulation that a person is »not a journalist / scientist, but an activist«, as if he had next to what he said , also secret goals and allies - and as if both were not possible: knowing the facts as an expert on a certain topic and then formulating an attitude from them.
And as if those who criticize it were free of any ideology and had no economic and political interests.
Don't burst into tears in the face of the world situation
In the case of a journalist in, express * political opinions is by critics
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often used inside the quote from Hanns-Joachim Friedrichs, one should not make a journalist "in common with a thing, not even with a good".
It has just been stated often enough that this quote was never meant to prevent journalists from representing political opinions.
Friedrichs' words come from a SPIEGEL interview in which, towards the end of his life, he was asked whether it had bothered him in his work “that as a news presenter you have to constantly present death”.
No, he said, you shouldn't let that bother you: “I learned that in my five years at the BBC in London: keep your distance, don't get in common with something, not even a good one, not sink into public concern to stay cool in dealing with disasters without being cold. "
On the whole, there is little more to this quote than that as a journalist you shouldn't burst into tears in public in view of the global situation.
It does not say that you have to be "neutral", especially since there cannot be such a thing as neutral reporting, if only because the selection of topics on which you work is never neutral: you look at what is going on in the world happens and decides what should be reported or commented on.
And if what is reported or commented on is discrimination, inequality or the depletion of resources, one often cannot avoid dealing with the accusation of activism, even from colleagues.
Matthias Kreienbrink once wrote in the »taz«: »It is often older journalists from established newspapers who hold this opinion.
Who want to discursively determine where journalism ends and something like activism begins.
So also who belongs and who doesn't. "
By the way, there is an opposite term to activism, which is rarely used: Attentism.
People who sit out problems without taking any action are called "Attentist".
For some, however, this is simply not possible: Because many people who fight against racism, sexism, homophobia or trans-hostility do so in the original sense of the word "activism", but it is simply their everyday life because they keep doing it be confronted with hostile attitudes and want to change something about this state of affairs.
If they are called »activists« for this, it may be meant derogatory, but honestly speaks for a good state: that they are finally heard.
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