Press
Norbert Lammert (CDU) is understanding towards people who believe they are in a forbidden world. However, he believes freedom of expression is protected.
Berlin – Quite a few people in Germany have the feeling that they are no longer allowed to say everything – or no longer say it the way they are used to, because otherwise they would be “cancelled”. There is a feeling, especially among conservatives, that their opinions are left out if they do not correspond to a certain image. “Woke” has sometimes become a cultural fighting term among younger, more progressive people.
“Freedom of expression does not mean that there can be no contradiction”
Norbert Lammert, born in Bochum in 1948, also knows people who are troubled by the perception of a world of prohibitions. However, he personally has “never in my life had the impression that I was not allowed to think or say anything in this country,” the former President of the Bundestag stressed in a conversation with IPPEN.MEDIA. Nevertheless, he can understand “that there are people who have the impression that it is better not to say certain things under certain pressure of expectations.”
Lammert, now chairman of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, appeared to be somewhat concerned about social developments in the conversation. The social climate has become more illiberal, “in some ways more narrow-minded,” he said. Some are subject to the misunderstanding that “freedom of expression means that there can be no contradiction to one’s own opinion.”
Lammert is disappointed by anti-Israel protests at German universities
Lammert also sees narrow-mindedness in the anti-Israel protests at German universities these days. “These protests surprise and disappoint me because even among academics there is a loss of willingness to differentiate instead of generalizing,” said the Christian Democrat, “to understand causes and effects instead of spreading conflicts and aggressive slogans.”
Lammert was President of Parliament from 2005 to 2017. So he left office before the AfD entered the Bundestag. How would he deal with the largely right-wing extremist party today? “I don’t regret that this question no longer arises for me.”
In his home region of the Ruhr, he can certainly explain the AfD’s electoral successes: “The Ruhr area has had to cope with one structural change after another over the decades.” Fear for one’s own job has become a permanent condition. “This creates a considerable amount of uncertainty and disappointment, which is also reflected in the election results.”
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