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Here are a few sentences from emails I received this week in response to this column.
»If the misconduct of the corona crisis is dealt with in the future, you will be the first media representative who has to answer to court with regard to the corona crisis. The term Nürnburg 2.0 comes up more and more often. "
"Should you continue to induce compulsory vaccination through your agitation, which you do indirectly and deliberately, I will take the liberty of holding you personally accountable using the Old Testament method in the event that my family is harmed by a forced vaccination for which you are jointly responsible."
"On the basis of this and other publications of yours, we will apply for the death penalty for you in a democratic process at an ordinary court in due course, because your thinking and your publications show a consistently consolidated basic fascist attitude."
»Are you actually tired of life ??? With your anti-democratic pamphlet in the mirror, you have just turned 15 million unvaccinated and, in some cases, vaccinated citizens against you. and these are no longer just any dull ones. these are people who have the intellect, the money and the will to hold you accountable for them in the future. I don't want to be in your skin. "
"With it [the text] you upset so many people against you so much that I assume that it could mean your death sentence."
It must be said that I will certainly receive far fewer letters of this kind (even if this is by no means the first time) than other people who express themselves publicly: I am white, male and otherwise privileged in many ways.
Many colleagues have such and far worse experiences much more often.
But I find two things remarkable about these communications.
In various of these emails (I have reported all those in which my imminent death is announced), as in the top quote, a parallel is constructed between people who do not want to be vaccinated and the victims of the Nazi dictatorship. "Nuremberg 2.0", interspersed quotes from the assassins from July 20, 1944, "Fascism" accusations. The irony that they themselves are demanding the "death penalty" for someone who has merely written a text while believing themselves to be a "victim of fascism" apparently escapes the people. This spin is of course not new, see yellow "Unvaccinated" stars on "lateral thinkers" demonstrations. Amazingly, many now send death threats under real names, some with a company address in their signature. That leads us to point 2:
Many of those who write here really seem to believe that a political situation could arise in this country in the near future, in which people like me will be executed - despite the fact that a vast majority have long been vaccinated, voluntarily and willingly. “As can often be observed in private and business circles,” writes one, “the situation is slowly beginning to turn around the credibility of politics and the media, and the first sales movements are noticeable. Only you don't seem to have heard the shot. ”He's not the only one who seems to see it that way. In the Telegram or Facebook groups in which my email address was passed around, there is a parallel reality that does not only match the facts with regard to Covid-19 and vaccinations.But also in relation to society as a whole. If you are interested in this group and its mechanisms, strategies and ways of thinking, this report from the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy is highly recommended (from page 24).
Sure: Those who write such emails are definitely not representative of all the unvaccinated in this country.
There have also been very differentiated and polite letters from people who are of the opinion that a medical indication rules out vaccination for them, for which I understand very well.
Especially people who cannot be vaccinated have to be protected by the rest of the people.
And people who depend on an intensive care bed for completely different reasons.
The remarkable career of the term "cohesion"
Which leads us to an argument, which goes beyond extremists and their death threats, and is much more frequently voiced by all those who reject criticism of a lack of willingness to vaccinate: This leads to a “social division” or endangers “solidarity”.
A few weeks ago at the New Institute in Hamburg I had the opportunity to hear a lecture by the political scientist Jan-Werner Müller, who teaches at Princeton.
He pointed out, among other things, what a remarkable career the term "cohesion" has made in the public debate in this country in recent years.
"The conflict in itself is not a danger to the community," says an essay that Müller published in the summer, "it really depends on how it is instigated and under what conditions it can be resolved."
The same parts over and over again?
The constitutional lawyer Christoph Möllers, who is currently working at the same institute, wrote in a book published in 2020: “Political division does not arise from too many, but from too few distinctions.” In any case, one can only speak of a political division if “a society keeps moving into shares the same parts «.
Interestingly, both of them refer in their texts to a different, somewhat older criticism of supposedly cohesion-threatening tendencies: the criticism of "identity politics".
The accusation of endangering "cohesion" often comes from the right.
Anyone who demands equal rights for their own group is initially only endangering the status quo, not "cohesion".
Both authors find it absurd that people who defend themselves against racism, sexism or even sexual coercion should damage “solidarity”.
"The attempt to play off social fairness against anti-discrimination policy is ultimately based on the mistaken idea that it is a kind of zero-sum game," writes Müller.
And about the term "cohesion" itself: "Without embedding it in a larger context of values, the term remains politically and morally indefinite."
Long ago left the ground of common values
This sentence fits the current situation frighteningly well, because once again the desire for social solidarity (now through the act of vaccination) is now called into question with reference to the danger of "division" and the threat of "cohesion".
People who write emails with death threats, and also those who believe anonymous claims in some Telegram channels more than the Robert Koch Institute or the permanent vaccination commission, have long since left the ground of common values.
more on the subject
For reading and forwarding: Why should I get vaccinated? A column by Sascha Lobo
The same goes for those who compare themselves to Holocaust victims because they still want to understand the risk balance between vaccination and infection.
In this context, this argumentative handout by Sascha Lobo is recommended again.
Personally, I would not go as far as Christian Vooren, who this week demanded in Die Zeit that society should even go this way.
What is needed is “a sharp wedge.
One who divides society ”, but in the right place.
One does not solve the problem by approaching the deluded
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Stocker, Christian
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I think this split has existed for a long time: there is still a relatively small group of people who have said goodbye to the canon of values and facts of all the rest.
Elsewhere, such as the United States, it is far worse.
It is quite possible that this group will also become so solidified in this country that from now on our society will "keep dividing itself into the same parts", to say it with Möllers, but that is not settled.
In any case, this problem will not be countered by going as far as possible towards those who have left the ground of common values and shared facts.
The "split" is not being carried out by 80 percent of those who have been vaccinated above the age of 12, nor by people who do not believe in a global conspiracy.
But the suffering of school children, parents, students, nurses, intensive care physicians, for example, has apparently been less important than "solidarity" up to now.
Cohesion in spite of bungling
In fact, a vast majority of the population has shown an enormous willingness to stick together in the past 20 months, despite outrageous political bungling.
Politics and the future government behave “like at a party where everyone agrees that one does not want to risk a split in society”, wrote Jan Feddersen this week in the “taz”, “and that's exactly what is wrong, because consideration is taken which conceals weak decision-making. "
That's right: With more and much earlier 2G rules, vaccination requirements for certain professions and other measures, for example, one could have ensured for a long time that the now inevitable catastrophe in the intensive care units does not occur or at least turns out less bad.
Ignoring social conflicts in order not to endanger "cohesion" does not help in a democracy.