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Living according to the Facebook method: Anyone who doesn't suit me will be blocked.
Photo: Peter Steffen / picture alliance / dpa
A few months ago a new, particularly strictly curated bookstore opened in Berlin-Neukölln. It only offers works that have been written by women or so-called queer people. So no Böll, no Kafka, no Grass. Not even Richard David Precht. Women are also severely sorted out. Authors who are considered trans-hostile in the queer-feminist scene are kicked out. “For example, we don't have Alice Schwarzer and JK Rowling here,” said the bookseller in an interview with “Die Welt”. Your store should be a “safer space”, a place where your customers can be absolutely sure that no bad book gets their pulse racing.
The idea of transforming former debates such as universities, theaters and even bookstores into shelters for like-minded people comes from the USA and is one of the questionable achievements of a movement that claims to advocate more diversity. In truth, Safe Space activists have applied the filter bubble principle of social media to real life: If you think the same way as I do, you get a heart; whoever does not will be blocked. So you are sexually fluid, but remain intellectually in lockdown.
The movement arrived in Germany with a few years' delay. According to the university press office, a series of lectures at Kiel University on the subject of discrimination culminated in a final round for “Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPoC)” called “Safer Space”. The organizers apparently did not notice the bitter irony of focusing on skin shading and origin, of all things, in the fight against everyday racism.
Similar at the Schauspielhaus in Düsseldorf.
Black theater people are currently demanding that politicians provide them with a self-managed stage, a “safe space for black bodies”, plus subsidies of 600,000 to 800,000 euros annually for at least four years.
Apart from the fact that this is a pretty transparent maneuver to maximize personal income: Anyone who thinks that they can use a kind of township stage to fight the racism that exists in Germany will, I fear, experience disappointment.
And isn't the political debate also marked by disgust?
The Greens want to get rid of Boris Palmer, the Left Sahra Wagenknecht, the Hungarians should get out of the EU, and every day there is a new call for discourse on Twitter, from #BildBoykott to #HaltDieFresseLauterbach.
It may also be due to Corona. Anyone who sits at home between potted plants for months develops a certain oversensitivity. I think that's dangerous. For the open society, safe spaces are not refuges, but dying rooms.