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23.4 percent are for a fascist, certainly not bad. But if you, esteemed public, really want to destroy the free and open society, that's not enough, of course. Then you need more. Not only more percents, but above all more of a very special substance: the dull bourgeoisie namely, the evil twin of upright bourgeoisie.
Fascists rarely win alone, they need sympathizers, allies and trivialists. And you are also worth it - if you finally confess to the dull bourgeoisie. Whether in conversations in social media, in editorials or in the coffee kitchen in the office.
Go ahead, it's easy, because many have taken this path before you. The dull bourgeoisie has spread like a, well, nebulous carpet in the country. Please understand this text as a guide to dullness. After all, every civilizational achievement can be turned into something poisonous.
And that is the general recipe for the destruction of liberal democracy: the reinterpretation of bourgeois values and positions towards egocentric stupidity. For each meaningful aspect of bourgeoisie, you must find a superficially similar equivalent that replaces the bourgeois fundamental value of humanity with its opposite. It's easier than you'd expect, try it for yourself! *
Moderation becomes lethargy
The essential feature of the bourgeoisie is the moderation. The dull bourgeoisie makes lethargy. The difference is that moderation is an active decision that sometimes is not targeted. For example, when it comes to defending liberal democracy, the only form of government in which upright bourgeoisie can exist.
On the other hand, the lethargic stolid bourgeoisie makes everything happen as long as it is not affected. Or more precisely: does not feel affected. For in the dull-bourgeois world, everything becomes coagulated, even the measurable reality. So if the house burning on the ground floor does not feel warm to him at all, the stupid man on the roof terrace asks loudly and rhetorically if the water splashed by the fire department is no longer a pity. Specifically, you must brand the fight against extremists as extremism.
Decency becomes "Political Correctness"
With the phrase "Political Correctness," you turn the bourgeois virtue of decency into an egocentric monster. Those who say "Political Correctness" in a contemptuous sense make their own scale of feeling the center of the world: I decide what is degrading and what is not.
The N-word is then a cherished tradition, against which three black people you know have nothing at all, hoho, whereas "potato" and "white, old man" are highly racist insults.
This becomes easier if you do not conceive of language as a fluid cultural construct that simultaneously depicts and shapes reality, but instead imagines language as a monument. Namely, as a memorial of yourself. For the secret of the correct, so bully-bourgeois application of "Political Correctness" is to consider each own sensation as unquestionable "common sense" and reject all other sensations as exaggerated, hysterical or humorless.
Morality becomes hypermoral
Hypermoral is a concept by Arnold Gehlen, a philosopher who joined the NSDAP in 1933 and unfortunately did not publish his planned major work "The Philosophy of National Socialism". After the war, he was smoothly denazified as a "follower" to the conservative leader and now serves as a stooge of the New Right.
Again, today's distinction between morality and hypermoral is nothing but egocentricity: you alone decide what is morally legitimate or compelling - and where you absolutely have to let five be straight, otherwise you limit freedom - that is, your own freedom. From 3,000 years of Western moral philosophy, as a dull citizen, please only take with you what suits them situational in the junk. Before any moral clarification, the very first question must be: And me?
Freedom of expression becomes my freedom of expression
Learning from Gauland means winning and healing. And if Gauland says that "freedom of opinion in our country goes too far in some things," then that is the office of dull bourgeoisie. Because otherwise the AfD and their supporters scream at every opportunity "freedom of speech!".
This apparent contradiction is none at all in a dull bourgeois world - for there exists only freedom to my opinion. But that is, as even the left-liberal ivory tower dwellers have to admit * already laid out in the word freedom of speech, which otherwise would be called freedom of interpretation. So you become a dull chatterer!
Empathy turns to tearfulness
Compassion as a bourgeois, community-building value has to be changed marginally from a blunt bourgeois point of view. Again, by focusing on your own person and all that are similar. Compassion becomes compassion for oneself. Compassion becomes self-pity. From the own gut feeling becomes the generalizable resentment.
As a dull-bourgeois you must not tire of preaching the need for a certain hardness, but should answer any even so gentle adversity against yourself with maximum tearfulness. The victim is always you, and even if your club is smeared on the bowels of others, you only highlight the bruising, discomforting blister in your palm.
Debate becomes normalization
The bourgeois debate, the most important instrument of deliberative democracy, actually serves the negotiation of politics. Instead, use the debate to normalize your own deep-seated, right-wing resentments. Speak full-time with rights rather than rights, embody every still inhumane attack as a disputable opinion in the discourse. Because this is how their own, slightly better-dressed enmity suddenly looks friendly and harmless.
But beware, this is true only on the right. Practically anyone who always wants to speak with rights on principle bury this principle immediately when it comes to Islamist opinions. For then Dumpfbürgern immediately sheds light on the need for red lines in the debate. Their simple way out of this problem is called bigotry! It is the key to any good dull citizenship.
Human dignity becomes self-similar
And so that is the dachshund core: while bourgeois understands human dignity as the highest good, the dull bourgeoisie categorizes them supple. The more similar someone is to you, in whatever respect, the more dignity you allow him.
It really is that simple, because in this highly elegant way you can be genuinely concerned about the rescue operation for a white Briton in the Mediterranean and at the same time consider the strategic drowning of African migrants as an applicable political instrument.
Self-similarity is your magical sauce that you add to the bourgeoisie. The gigantic Ödön von Horváth wrote: "The philistine is known to be a hypochondriac egoist, and so he seeks to adapt cowardly everywhere and to falsify any new formulation of the idea by appropriating it." He meant it as a diagnostic warning - but you know as a stupid citizen: It's a guide. Cheers Germany!
* Recommended only for white, heterosexual, non-Jewish, non-disabled, non-poor cis men. Everyone else does not like that, right?
The podcast question:
How do you fight against your own stupidity?