What do actors and actresses have to fear more than boos?
Applause from the wrong side.
This has been shown by the #allesdichtmachen campaign in the past few days. Regardless of the fact that some of the videos posted under the hashtag were actually grotesquely unsuccessful, it was noticed how many people wanted to do the videos just by listing the supporting voices "from the wrong side": Corona deniers and lateral thinkers, the AfD member of the Bundestag Joana Cotar and the CDU right wing Hans-Georg Maaßen. Since then, the actors have tried above all to distance themselves from this »wrong side«. There is almost no discussion of the content.
And yes, yes, some of the videos would actually be worth it. With this, for example: »My name is Jens Wawrczeck«, the actor Jens Wawrczeck begins. "I'm an actor and I'm afraid of applause ..." At this point he pauses a little. «... from the wrong side«. When he plays theater, nobody is allowed to sit in the auditorium on the right. "Then the applause only comes from the left." Wawrczeck thinks about it - and he notices that from the perspective of the auditorium it is exactly the other way around, that all people are only sitting on the right. His conclusion: It is better to keep the theater completely empty in the future. "Then there will be no applause from the wrong side and then I will feel safe."
The video is a successful satire, which unfortunately got lost in the general outcry - and which alone finds its confirmation.
Because "Applause from the wrong side": This is an accusation that not only affects actors and actresses in today's debates.
Sahra Wagenknecht, for example, can sing a pioneer song about it.
In her new book, she criticizes the identity politics of so-called lifestyle linkers - and receives applause from the AfD for it.
That alone is enough for some to discredit their positions and arguments.
It seems that false friends are more dangerous today than clever opponents.
»Some information may have harmful effects«, the philosopher Julian Nida-Rümelin recently said, »but if I have reasons to believe the information is correct, then I have an obligation to convey it.
We are not allowed to choose what we communicate from a strategic point of view. "
It is part of the essence of the joke that it is not constructive, but anarchic.
Does what applies to information also apply to opinions?
Should one rather censor oneself if one senses the danger that one's own opinion could be misused by dark forces in an opinion struggle?
Or does the democratic competition of ideas demand that people let out everything that is rushing through their beets, including the half-baked, crazy, absurd?
The question can certainly not be answered across the board for each individual case, but a liberal, truly democratic spirit will have more and more sympathy for the second alternative.
Arguments have to go out in the fresh air, without fear.
The opinions that are often called the dissenting ones are the most valuable in a democracy.
Not necessarily the most likeable, the most well thought-out, the best - but the most valuable.
Because even the most unreasonable contradictions help reason to sharpen its position.
Actors have been accused of not having a constructive sense of humor.
Apart from the fact that it is part of the essence of the joke that it is not constructive, but anarchic - it would not have been constructive to scan the videos for the successful moments instead of the unsuccessful ones, i.e. primarily to look at what is worth considering, wise , inspiring, instead of primarily looking at what can be scandalized?
The philosopher Robert Pfaller has complained that a crucial principle of democratic debate culture is currently being lost: “Namely, that you have to try to bring out what is strongest and most sensible in each other's position.
Otherwise you have no chance of becoming smarter in dealing with your opponent. "
The first victim of the war, it is said, is the truth.
This also applies to the war of opinion.
What are our political debates about?
About the matter?
Or just about your own team winning?
Sometimes you get the impression that faction discipline is not only in place in parliament, but in the whole country: in the editorial offices, the university seminars, the Facebook friends' groups.
Does a truth become untrue when the wrong one applauds it?
And what does the bigger damage: an argument that seems to play the wrong side - or an argument that is suppressed?
In a democracy the answer can really only be one: silence is tin, speech is gold.
Even if only sheet metal is talked about.
Enlarge image
# All-sealing-screenshots: What is it all about?
Photo: - / dpa
Anyone who argues, on the other hand, that someone else's argument could provoke "applause from the wrong side" does not believe himself to be in a debate, but in a struggle; he evaluates every idea, every piece of information, every irritation only according to whether it will gain him ground or the others.
The first victim of the war, it is said, is the truth.
This also applies to the war of opinion.
Now some will howl and say that any criticism should be discussed.
Yes that's right.
But to express one's opinion freely, that does not only mean: to be allowed to express it, free of state and private censorship.
This also means: to feel free enough inside to express yourself.
Even if you personally affirm this, like the author of this comment, you have to take note that some others are now apparently different.
Is that all your fault?
In an interview with Deutschlandfunk, political scientist Ulrike Guérot complained that there was "no more room for legitimate criticism" of the anti-corona measures.
Any criticism is immediately absorbed by the right, and that is why few even dare to go public.
"The whole discussion is mined."
And the philosopher Robert Pfaller also diagnosed a "decline in the culture of discussion and a post-democratic propaganda of obedience." It is worrying that "almost everyone who expresses criticism is very quickly portrayed as right-wing nuts."
It is worth reading through an old essay on the subject, written by Hans-Magnus Enzensberger in 1962. It was the time of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
"There is no doubt from the outset how many views of reality are possible," wrote Enzensberger.
"You can only count to two."
Doesn't that sound like a text that someone could have spoken under #allesdichtmachen?
“The talk of false applause,” Enzensberger continued, “refers to a strictly symmetrical world from which colors are banned; it tries to attract the critic to always the same field, the white one. He can talk there as long as he wants. His partisans don't have time to listen to him. They are busy looking for signs of applause in the black field of the enemy. In this way they make their enemies the arbiter of their own speech. It doesn't matter what is true or untrue in the words of her speaking. "
Enzensberger considered criticism that tactically engages with such rules of the game and bows to them not only as interchangeable.
It's dangerous.
»What is useful to the opponent must be omitted: What this sentence amounts to becomes clear in its reverse: What is useful to one's own side happens.
The structure of both sentences is totalitarian. "
You don't have to swing the club of totalitarianism;
They're swinging too many at the moment anyway.
And yet it should be noted that even the term "applause from the wrong side" is inscribed with camp thinking that is currently so poisoning many debates.
The accusation is hostile to discourse because in its wake it is only discussed tactically, no longer with real interest in knowledge.