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Federal President Steinmeier: Was that really an affront?
Photo: BERND VON JUTRCZENKA / AFP
"With all understanding for the existential threat to Ukraine from the Russian invasion, I expect Ukrainian representatives to adhere to a minimum of diplomatic customs and not interfere unduly in our country's domestic politics." Discharge (there have been different and contradictory statements by German and Ukrainian politicians) by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
I have to say: this is my favorite reaction.
Everything about it is stunning, starting with the generous "understanding" kindly offered for the particular circumstance that one is about to be massacred.
With the poetic determination of an alarm dispatch, which culminates in the word "expect," the German side made communication demands on the Ukrainian government.
Prussian plus points for this well-sounding vocabulary: "customs", "unbecoming", "interfere", "minimum".
This is German
tone policing
, i.e. an excited rebuke, but please hit the right note, in the most disturbing form, since the own trumpet-like nature is obviously not perceived here.
Sniffy to passive-aggressive
The political and media echo that followed this offending news (which was first brought out by the "Bild" newspaper) increased from instructive indifference to offended pedagogical advice to a complete lack of empathy and all other possible impulses of passive-aggressive knowing better , which we already know from our debates here.
But especially with Mützenich, I asked myself the question: Do you really have to keep your composure and composure, even when you are literally under fire, just to prevent supposed diplomatic upheavals?
Do the actors of a government have to show unity and strength even when their lives are threatened due to communicative conventions and an alleged strategy towards the common enemy!
– do justice to the political etiquette?
Then I realized: This is the completely wrong question.
The correct one is: do we really have our ass open?
After at least a decade of misjudgments, how can certain German government officials not only
do Westsplainen after the Russia policy of the past few years?
not letting it go, but also wanting to explain to the Ukrainian leadership the correct »allowing oneself to be attacked«;
only to then remind you of a completely arbitrary protocol in order to let the world know about your own stupidity?
In just two symbolic gestures, some MPs went from "We must find a solution to prevent more deaths" to "Sit down, six!" (how I hate that phrase).
It is astonishing with what diplomatic "sophistication" some are now working on President Zelenskyj and on a tonal inappropriateness of the Ukrainian ambassador Andriy Melnyk.
Posture grades instead of solution orientation
What is cultivated, consciously or unconsciously, by this outrage is the tale of an ungrateful and overly demanding Ukraine.
In my opinion, this narrow-minded demand for unity towards Russia weakens the common cause rather than the Ukrainian government's desire to welcome Olaf Scholz as the symbol-Apostle Steinmeier in Kyiv.
I find the expectation that in such a war of annihilation a country has to earn the right to support through a submissive attitude and be careful not to squander any sympathy in Germany, I find arrogant and disconcerting - but the shift from an acute, necessary solution-orientation to the awarding of ratings , which has dominated federal sensitivities in recent days, is nothing new.
Even in times of peace, it is a fundamental problem for some politicians that they often prefer to work through a form of criticism in order not to have to endure and acknowledge that there could also be some truth in the criticism of their own politics.
Demands, objections and refusals like those of Selenskyj and Melnyk, who do not obediently comply with the operating speed and the political traffic regulations of German rulers, are immediately dismissed as an outrageous disturbance of the peace and a communication accident.
It is being discussed whether the disturbers are allowed to take such a liberty at all.
Has he actually done enough in his life to be allowed to complain here in Germany?
Investigations are being carried out in all directions, pylons are set up around the incident, everything flashes and lights up, the political interference police record the data, and use rulers and decibel meters to investigate whether the form of the disturbance is still within the permitted range or is it already too inappropriate vulgar, too loud.
A journalistic team advises on the powers of the disturber and whether his statements still meet the international DIN standards.
And only when all the formal questions have been clarified do you start to think about why the political process is being disrupted here in the first place.
This is one of the reasons why the style of the Ukrainian Ambassador Melnyk has been criticized quite often, and he is often asked whether his statements hit the right note;
whether his form is useful for the cause, whether insults are the right way: because it is easier to discuss it than the question of why so many people are still dying and to what extent German politics is preventing this death by making faster and more difficult decisions could.
Rudeness can also mean integrity
The supposed impoliteness of the attacked is here a politeness of the desperate.
In philosophy, perceived impoliteness in such circumstances can be considered morally transformative.
Based on Socrates, the philosopher Agnes Callard describes that such an »affront« can be a form of maintaining intellectual integrity.
She calls it "Socratic courtesy," which consists in showing respect to people by impolitely disturbing their thinking.
»(Socrates) would insist that his odd approach is
true
politeness.
He would point out that the word 'civility', i.e. decency, politeness, comes etymologically from the Latin
civis
– citizen – and accordingly disrupting through bold thinking and speaking is part of our citizenship.
Rudeness is commonly reduced to the idea of disrespect because manners are for us the visualization of our ideals and goals - therefore confronting it engages us more than its causes, its triggers.
We react more alarmed to moral injuries than to the cause of them.
But in diplomatic communication, impoliteness, in this case the alleged breaking of protocol, must not be reduced to disrespect, but can also be understood in the political context as an expression of political integrity, i.e. in exactly the opposite form as an expression of our ideals and goals.
The fact that the dimensions of being duplicated, an "affront" and "damage" that the office of Federal President could "suffer" from is still being debated seems like superfluous capers in Victorian England's ball season, like foreign policy leaps and bounds and the attempt to focus on one To fight terrain where you can only win.
It is about suppressing the reality of war by shifting categories and standards.
Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz describes it as "irritating" that Ukraine has rejected the planned visit by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
You know what's even more irritating?
A war – in which those who are attacked must behave politely.
