Dhe liberal constitutional state is not to everyone’s taste, and that is due to its habit of being non-authoritarian. Most people experience the state’s regulatory power in the form of letters whose envelopes have different colors depending on the level of escalation. You know the feeling of being waved out of traffic by a police officer with a colorful trowel and then having a polite conversation. The state forgives a lot, gives the citizens ways to prove themselves as law-abiding. You have to do a lot so that a special task force is in the hallway early in the morning.
All of this is on purpose. The state is as civilized as the citizens who support it and how it demands it from those who reject it. His relentless but patient push for legality is only momentarily comfortable for delinquents. It demands of them not superficial compliance, but inner discernment, and this unceasingly, from the first to the fifteenth court hearing.
Many ideologies have pre-political, character-related causes
Of course, there are those who think that’s effeminate. An attitude of this kind is not difficult to imagine. After all, some have already experienced a fixed speech as children. There are people who, even as adults, yearn for an authoritarian order because they don’t see it as a threat, but as a place of protection. Anyone who has ever experienced how meticulous, downright tender, right-wing extremist NPD officials, soaked in misanthropic ideology, take care not to interrupt their comrades, knows what is meant. Many ideologies have pre-political, character-related causes. And some people are no match for the liberal demand for self-regulation.
Those who think this way will particularly like to use the fictional or real foreigner as an example, who comes from a country where the police first hit and then ask questions. This foreigner is the very best thing that can happen to the right-wing extremist. His outrageous lack of respect for the German patrolman makes the state look weak and helpless. Of course, that bothers many, but the illiberal is fascinated beyond measure by this foreigner, because he is an illiberal himself and because he presents the common enemy, the moderate state. This is how an authoritarian longing gives rise to a political program, including that of the AfD.
An ineffective regulatory power is perceived as illegitimate
A regulatory power that is perceived as weak and therefore ineffective naturally feels illegitimate. She’s like an elementary school teacher begging for silence in a powerless voice. All the more languishing is the gaze at paintings by Otto von Bismarck, which stands for a time in which no faxes were tolerated – and in which some would have felt more comfortable.
If you want to know which breed you belong to, you only have to listen to the “Reichsbürger” ideology. Those who laugh or shiver are immune to it. The others feel the pull of something that corresponds to their intuition. The “Reichsbürger” say that the German Empire continues to exist and that the Federal Republic, which was experienced as weak, was never effectively founded. The theory is intentionally complicated, but feeds on banalities. Like a Netflix subscription that someone forgot to cancel, the Weimar Constitution continues. Very easily. A discussion about the truth content is idle. A need is satisfied, a feeling.
The fact that the rule of law initially responds to bizarre arguments with reasonable counter-arguments is a particular incentive for the “Reich citizen”. With every colorful registered letter, the state not only proves that it is toothless, but also that it is illegitimate because it cannot enforce the law. The dumbfounded looks of people who don’t know how to react to the nonsense also act as confirmation. There the stuttering federal citizen, here the “Reich citizen” armed with paragraphs and footnotes, as he lectures with a superior smile.
Now the special task force has come through the door of many “Reich citizens”. On Wednesday, 25 suspected coup plotters were arrested. Of course, stubborn “Reich citizens” will now say that they are being persecuted by an unlawful regime. But actually, for a moment, the state acted the way they wanted it to. Not with an envelope, but with a balaclava, handcuffs and a Glock 46. These “Reichsbürger” unswervingly tried out how far they could go, and they got the answer. Ironically, the moment of their defeat is the fulfillment of their aspirations, the natural ending point of their ideology. It would be a fitting time to finally come to our senses.
#Ideology #Putschists #Reich #Citizens