Enlarge image
"That sounds like a lot of work, but well, lighting everything is a lot of work."
Photo: Vetta / CSA Images / Getty Images
If you really want to set everything on fire, it helps to make a list and slowly work through it.
Lighting the paper with the lockdown resolutions of the federal-state meeting does not help, everything fits on a post-it note and it quickly fizzles out.
However, the question of how we can get out of the third wave of pandemics should not detract from all other pressing problems.
Conveniently, for the sake of clarity, a considerable number of key messages of these days can be summarized under one keyword: abuse of power.
In the CDU / CSU, in the church, in the theater.
Margarete Stokowski
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.
This was followed in 2018 by »The Last Days of Patriarchy«, a collection of columns from SPIEGEL and »taz«.
As different as the cases are, they are similar in that they happen in institutions where the wrong use of power is a structural problem.
“Structural” may have been a worn-out word by now, but it still fits well because it means: permanently repeating and based on the lived values of the respective group.
"Lived values" as a difference to purely theoretical, official values.
Because as a theoretical value, for example, greed should be a mortal sin for the CDU / CSU.
Extremely problematic handling of money and influence
The current crisis of the CDU / CSU is often called the “mask affair” instead of the “corruption scandal”, whereby “mask” and “affair” are both questionable, because affairs come and go - and it's not just about masks.
Jens Spahn, for example, should be happy every time the "mask affair" is mentioned, because there were various problems with his mask buying and selling policy, but there was also the question of his new villa or their financing and Spahn's attempts to stop reporting.
And in addition to the high commissions of his party colleagues for mask deals, there were also questions about PR for corrupt politicians and autocrats and the matter of trying to influence the press on the subject of letters to the editor.
In all of these cases, which can no longer be counted on two hands, there is an extremely problematic way of dealing with money and influence, which seems to have a certain tradition in the Union.
"If the cheater belongs to the same group as you are, the cheating is contagious," wrote Christian Stöcker here two days ago.
“In the Union, the social norm that you just don't get caught seems to be quite widespread at the moment.
The first step of the party and parliamentary group should finally be to make it unmistakably clear that this is not part of the organizational culture. ”But, given phenomena such as the“ declaration of honor ”, one suspects how little the will is to gain enrichment and gain advantage. To change the culture of the Union.
The attempts of the Catholic Church to resolve its problem with sexual abuse may at times appear a little more committed, but they are also noticeably protracted.
The new report on abuse in the Archdiocese of Cologne has brought a lot of brutal misery to light, but the fact that the cases have been going on for decades indicates that the mere disclosure of the failure does not necessarily mean its end here, too will, even if there are resignations.
The fact that something is fundamentally wrong when officially celibate men's clubs still take responsibility for children is not really up for debate.
The concept of "case collection plus resignation" is not a reappraisal and above all not a prevention.
Heribert Prantl wrote: »Fundamental reforms are needed in the church system.
You can hardly wait for them from above.
It is time for disobedience from below. ”But what should this look like?
The fact that more and more people speak up who have been abused by clergy or by persons in authority in church institutions such as schools or homes has been going on for over ten years.
That masses of people are leaving the church, too.
The fact that something is fundamentally wrong when officially celibate men's clubs still take responsibility for children is not really up for debate.
It is not enough for individuals to resign or take leave or change jobs.
It is also not enough if they apologize on top of that.
That’s the way it is in the Union, that’s the way it is in the Church, and that’s the way it is in the cultural sector.
Now the director of the Volksbühne, Klaus Dörr, has resigned because he has been accused of sexual harassment and further abuse of power.
That is the bare minimum, but what use is it?
If you are familiar with the theater system, which, with its hierarchies and a surplus of choleric men who have been transfigured into geniuses, is predestined for assault, one is hardly surprised - not only about the sexually assaulting behavior of artistic directors or directors against precariously employed actresses, but also about racist insults and devaluations: WDR has just reported on the case of Ron Iyamu, who played a slave at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus and was racially insulted and threatened by his director and his colleagues.
"I've been working at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus for 2 1/2 years now, for 2 1/2 years I've been experiencing racism there again and again and for 2 1/2 years no one has done anything," the actor wrote on Instagram.
Well, corruption, child abuse, sexual assault on women, and racial abuse may be very different cases, but abuse of power are all.
It is actually known that abuse of power takes place particularly often where power is unevenly distributed.
Power in itself is not the problem.
If power is the ability of subjects to act effectively in social space, then it can belong to a group that controls and coordinates one another.
The problem is hierarchies.
Wherever there are positions so high that people feel all too safe in this position, abuse of power is not inevitable for every individual case, but it is hardly preventable overall.
This applies to MPs who believe they are too immune, to the conditions in kindergartens and schools, in universities, in churches, in the police force and the armed forces, in prisons, hospitals, nursing homes, theaters, sports clubs and professional sports, in orchestras and choirs, ballet schools and apparently also with the »Bild« - »Zeitung«.
And many more.
more on the subject
Internal investigations against "Bild" editor-in-chief Reichelt: "Birds, encourages, fires" By Isabell Hülsen, Alexander Kühn, Martin U. Müller and Anton Rainer
Abuse of power at the Volksbühne: "The theater is a monarchical micro-state" An interview by Elisa von Hof
Uncomfortably long list.
Can you name one single type of institution in which power is highly concentrated on individuals and in which there has been no case of abuse of power in the past few years.
It will grow back if you don't destroy its roots.
Anyone who harms others in and with the help of his position of power was not suitable for this powerful post.
As long as cases of abuse of power in all these institutions are mainly dealt with in such a way that the offenses are documented and prosecuted (where possible), a few resignations and apologies are made, and everything else goes on by and large as before, it will not take much longer to change.
This cannot be changed by higher penalties, but only by preventing individuals from feeling unassailable due to their position.
This also includes not turning those who leave or have to leave their post of their own accord into geniuses or declaring them to be just aloof, unlucky ones who have stumbled across a stupid mistake.
Anyone who harms others in and with the help of his position of power was not suitable for this powerful post.
If people repeatedly behave abusively in this post, then this post must be abolished or at least fundamentally changed.
That sounds like a lot of work, but well, lighting everything is a lot of work.
