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Evacuation in Lützerath (on January 12): Those who firmly believe that they know everything better can also be left behind socially
Photo: INA FASSBENDER / AFP
Whether you have to call all the rascals “Paschas”, as Friedrich Merz did with a lot of contempt in his voice – I don’t know.
In any case, he makes it easy for all those on the left who want to push away a debate about culturally archaic family behavior and its firebreaks in the German education system.
It should be self-evident, for example in the face of a hard core of foreign or migrant New Year's Eve rioters, to state and discuss various integration deficits.
One could even say: If we still haven't gotten to the point with the social integration of such young bull milieus, that New Year's Eve rockets are kindly shot up vertically and not horizontally into the face of a police officer - then we're still pretty much at the beginning.
Can we agree on that?
The longer I watch the spectacle at the edge of the opencast mine in Lützerath, the more I have the feeling that the integration deficits that come to light there are serious, probably even more serious, because it is about the rules of a democratically constituted society.
The hard core in Lützerath and the support squads in various big cities are all apparently radical ecological organic potatoes.
That sets them apart from many of the Neuköllner louts, but what else?
It seems to me that there is no qualitative difference between the left-wing battle cry “All Cops Are Bastards” (ACAB) and the Neukölln “We f*cken your streets”.
The police are always the enemy: Some see them as representatives of state power, which they allegedly bully and structurally discriminate against on a daily basis.
The others go into battle because the state and system are said to be driving the world to climate death.
Apparently, both groups have finished with the state as they think they know it, although they are happy to accept citizenship benefits/Hartz IV or a tax-financed place at university.
more on the subject
New year in the capital: »The majority of people in Neukölln want a stronger state« An interview by Anna Reimann
Both groups also show well-oiled self-organization and well-trained commitment.
Lützerath looked like a Gallic fortified village for a while, in Neukölln the rioters in their neighborhood set up artful ambushes.
One's own violence is always merely counter-violence and therefore just.
Even Greta Thunberg is not too bad for this oldest of all tricks.
Anyone who sees "No Future" for themselves, planetary or personal, has little to lose.
“You wanted it that way” could therefore be heard from the Lützerath tree houses and from the balconies of the prefabricated buildings as well.
In any case, it's the sound of machos or babos, even Luisa Neubauer from Fridays For Future joins in: "Somebody has to draw a line if we want to have less of a crisis at some point," she says.
“And because the government obviously doesn't have the balls in its pants to do it, we're going to do it.” Anyone who firmly believes that they know everything better and are miles ahead of the masses can also be left behind socially.
Despite these similarities, the two groups are treated very differently, but I wonder if the different motives really justify it.
That's not fair, it's cowardly.
That's double standards.
Let's take the Federal President and the Governing Mayor of Berlin.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier said of the New Year's Eve rioters and the police that he expects "that we as a society are respectful of all those who hold their heads for all of us".
These are “not whipping boys for the frustrated”.
Mrs. Giffey, in the election campaign, invites to the summit against youth violence and said: »If you react quickly, there is also a change in behavior.« She meant a quick reaction by the law enforcement authorities.
Would the two say that to the people of Lützerath, who seem to live in a parallel world without heating bills and the Ukraine war?
Throwing stones or firecrackers in groups and making life as difficult as possible for the police by the hundreds?
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Of course not.
White, bio-German and contemptuous of the state?
The Steinmeiers and Giffeys of the republic would think of right-wing extremists from East Germany, of football hooligans or of Reich citizens in Swabia, but certainly not of the climate fighters.
Their motive not only acquits the perpetrators, but also saves them.
That's why it's time to say with a remnant of bourgeois self-assertion: The people from Lützerath are the bigger problem because they know better and understand better what they are discrediting - and that more powerfully than the guys from Neukölln ever could.
It is often the children of the bourgeoisie who throw stones at police officers, despise court decisions or demonize political compromises.
It's harder than if other people's kids were doing it.
Because if it's your own children, then it's always your own failure.
By that I don't mean the (possible) failure before the climate crisis, which we are constantly being presented as incredibly comprehensive, although it is not.
It's the failure to adequately educate these groups about what democracy and society mean: the continued negotiation of different positions and interests.
Among the parties, the Greens are the first to pay for this omission: their elected representatives have negotiated a compromise that their supporters reject because it is one.
Alone: Anyone who thinks that "everything is enough" is a socially acceptable attitude has not understood how freedom to many works.
