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Dealing with Criticism in Politics: Attack is the best irresponsibility

2021-03-11T16:05:05.133Z


There are at least four ways in which one can deal with legitimate criticism. An adult - or play dead, attack, flee. Unfortunately, the last three in particular are popular in politics.


Icon: enlarge

Deputy Georg Nüßlein (CDU) in the Bundestag: dead

Photo: Christoph Hardt / imago images / Future Image

Rosa Luxemburg would have been 150 years old on March 5, 2021.

A sentence from her has come down to us that sounds like the aphorism of the hour:

"Self-criticism, ruthless, cruel self-criticism that goes to the bottom of things is the air and light of life of the proletarian movement."

Quoting Luxembourg, the very large historical cutlery?

Yes, because in the past few days and weeks I asked myself, perplexed and amazed, with every new political grievance, with every bipartisan failure and with every individual error of a democratic representative: What has become of the self-criticism that gets to the bottom of things?

When was the last time a political actor took responsibility for what he screwed up?

And why do politicians actually react so sluggishly to legitimate criticism?

Samira El Ouassil Right Arrow

Photo: Stefan Klüter

Born in Munich in 1984, is an actress and author.

In 2016 her book “The 100 most important things” (with Timon Kaleyta and Martin Schlesinger) was published by Hatje Cantz Verlag.

In 2009 she was the candidate for chancellor of the »party«, which at the time was not allowed to vote in the federal elections.

She was recently awarded the Bert Donnepp ​​Prize for media journalism for her media critical column »Wochenschau« (uebermedien.de).

There are at least four ways in which one can deal with legitimate criticism.

One adult - and three very popular in politics: play dead, attack, flee.

MEPs are happy to use these ways of reacting to refuse any self-critical argument - and this in various areas, be it masks, vaccines, tolls, Wirecard, right-wing extremism or, in particular, very popular: corruption.

Killing dead as a political feat boils down to pretending, with closed ears and eyes, that everything is actually going very well.

Economics minister Peter Altmaier, for example, is terrifyingly good at this:

“Many have worked over the weekend and until today so that the economy and the federal government can work together to make the test strategy a success.

Bad for the virus, good for all of us! "

This sentence reads like a message from a parallel universe.

One must assume that Altmaier took himself spiritually hostage and developed the Stockholm Syndrome against himself.

The classic killing aims to ghost the critics until, at some point, hopefully enough grass has grown over the matter and your own party members can be seen with you again in public.

The gratuitous introduction of a “code of conduct” in the wake of the corruption scandal in the Union is for me the political counterpart to a deer frozen in panic in the headlights, hoping that the public truck that rolls up will end up in the ditch in another country.

Well, let's hope that thanks to compliance, politicians will no longer come up with the idea of ​​wanting to profit from a pandemic and their own office!

Political self-paralysis

Also that Prime Minister Armin Laschet, in his sharp criticism of the corona corruption in the Union, does not deal with the Van Laack affair, in which a multi-million dollar order for not very tear-resistant corona protective equipment went to the company without prior tendering Son models: a form of political self-paralysis.

The classic killing aims to ghost the critics until, at some point, hopefully enough grass has grown over the matter and your own party members can be seen with you again in public.

It is therefore a bit surprising that the lobby professional Philipp Amthor has already risen from the politically half-dead and apparently appeared with his own grave arrangement on International Women's Day.

The second way to deal with criticism: the attack.

Sometimes this - as the well-known saying goes - is also the most defensive form.

On Tuesday at Markus Lanz's Union parliamentary group leader Ralph Brinkhaus presented the premier class of this discipline with a shameless criticism defense attack like out of a textbook, when he was angry with my columnist colleague Sascha Lobo about the word »failure« and placed badly with a Conspiracy uppercut Lobos criticism wanted to expose as a planned provocation of the editors.

Criticism as a deliberate provocation!

It is obvious that Brinkhaus with such an egocentric perception cannot see that this very perception is at the core of the problem.

Critical incapacity that is too incapable of criticism to recognize critical incapacity, I call it the Dunning critical incapacity effect.

But also Helge Braun's rather stubborn offensive »Why does the state have to offer everything?«, Most recently with Anne Will, falls into the category of intransigence for self-protection, which tries to protect itself from further criticism by throwing back the accusation in an awkward way.

The escape method

After all, the third variant is less common in German politics: flight.

The blandest way to deal with criticism once allowed an AfD politician as a transparent talk show stunt.

In the UK, Meghan Markle-owned British breakfast show host Piers Morgan stormed out of the studio on Tuesday after a well-founded criticism from his colleague.

But such actions are less common in this country - you escape differently.

Only after internal party pressure to draw conclusions must not be confused with self-criticism and the assumption of responsibility.

Rather, one sneaks out of the affair like a backbencher, it is basically a moving act of playing dead - see currently the Union politicians Nikolas Löbel and Georg Nüßlein.

At the insistence of the party leadership, Löbel resigned his Bundestag mandate, it should not be until August, and now with immediate effect following criticism.

Nüßlein also resigned from his position as vice-head of the Union parliamentary group, but he wants to keep his mandate in the Bundestag for the time being.

A spineless retreat to installments without assuming responsibility or insight, a slow-motion escape with excuses, in which a five-digit amount of additional diets is taken along with you, although you have already benefited financially from the pandemic.

An adult way of dealing with criticism

Only after internal party pressure to draw conclusions must not be confused with self-criticism and the assumption of responsibility.

But what would be the adult, fourth way of dealing with criticism?

It is the one who can accept criticism and let the heart grow into honest self-criticism.

It is the one that we need more than before in a pandemic because only insight can prevent further wrong behavior.

It is the one who allows mistakes but is not afraid of responsibility;

who does not attack with premature hurt or suppress everything with naive narcissism.

Right now we need of all those in power, the best and most self-critical version of themselves, not the Piers Morgan version.

A version that lives up to Rosa Luxemburg's statement.

Icon: The mirror

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2021-03-11

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