Meinungsdiktatur and dehumanization

With Über Menschen, her first novel following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Juli Zeh seeks to intervene in a growing rift between different sections of German society by promoting a more caring attitude toward fellow humans despite ideological and other differences. Much in accordance with Zeh's public statements, in which she cautioned against mask and vaccine mandates and urged the German public to consider alternative approaches to contain the virus (see for example “Bestrafungstaktik”), Über Menschen makes the case for more tolerance of conflicting opinions and against too much emotional involvement in sociopolitical issues. At the same time, however, Zeh not only thematizes the lockdown and accompanying policies but also explicitly mentions and comments on a variety of other polarizing issues of the time: the murder of George Floyd, racism, environmental activism and protests, and right-wing violence. The overt goal of Über Menschen is to demonstrate human compassion, yet Zeh spends a lot of time vilifying left-leaning people while urging empathy for characters clearly recognizable as right-wing nationalists. Über Menschen closely follows protagonist Dora, a copywriter whose life situation and view of the world change when she moves from Berlin to Bracken, a small fictional village in Brandenburg, in the wake of the pandemic's outbreak in spring 2020. Über Menschen was met with some criticism, as one of its main characters is a neo-Nazi who is portrayed in a manner not entirely condemning, but rather understanding, humanizing, and at times sympathetic. Gottfried “Gote” Proksch lives next door to Dora and has a daughter who quickly befriends her and her dog. The Nazi has a tumor in his brain, and Dora's father is—what are the odds—a brain surgeon. In portraying a neo-Nazi as a likable human being, Zeh raises controversial questions about whether coexistence and solidarity are possible or desirable regardless of a person's ideology or adherence to a racist doctrine that seeks to eradicate entire groups of people. Über Menschen signals that dehumanization of a political other is a bigger threat to contemporary public discourse than ideological divides—a bigger threat, that is, than the extremist positions themselves. The first few paragraphs of Über Menschen show Dora digging up dirt in order to plant vegetables. “Weitermachen. Nicht nachdenken” (Zeh, Über Menschen 7; hereafter ÜM): these opening words imply that what the newcomer from the city needs is the physical activity of getting in touch with the earth as an antidote to the civilizational disease of overthinking things. Dora's digging is an act of grounding for the recent transplant from Berlin, but the fact that she had no idea what 4,000 square meters look like in reality—as well as her unlikely ambition to transform “[e]ine botanische Katastrophe [...] in einen romantischen Landhausgarten” (8)—indicate the detachment from nature commonly associated with urbanity. Accordingly, it is Dora's village neighbors who eventually help her: the neo-Nazi from next door donates handcrafted furniture, and Heini from across the street, who likes to tell racist jokes, helps the newcomer dig up the soil with his machinery. Here, Zeh employs the trope of village folk helping each other out. By contrast, the mentality of the city people, from whom Dora is fleeing and mentally distancing herself throughout the course of the novel, is represented by Dora's journalist boyfriend “Robert, der ihre Beziehung einfach weggeworfen und sich in die Apokalypse verliebt hat” (8). Before the pandemic, Robert had been an ardent follower of Greta Thunberg; now he enthusiastically follows all the Covid-related restrictions on contact and social gatherings. He seems to merely replace one reason for panic with another, one apocalypse with the next. Robert devotes his attention to curbing the spread of the virus while condemning those with less conviction for the cause, unable to tolerate dissension or doubts. When he tries to prohibit Dora from leaving their flat during the first Covid lockdown, she decides to leave Robert and Berlin altogether and move to the village instead. In the spirit of Ferdinand Tönnies's distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, as laid out in his eponymous book first published in 1887, Zeh attributes to the urban society an air of interchangeability that produces disposability, both of which cannot be afforded in the village community. Dora's boyfriend Robert embodies this dehumanizing trend of urban disposability by letting go of their relationship because of her dissensus in morally charged disputes. In the microcosm of the village, in turn, one cannot choose to ignore their neighbors and, therefore, must learn to live with them. The recurring statement “Dora kam da nicht mit” marks her break with a liberal agenda and reflects her view, “dass die ganze globale Aufregung das eigentliche Problem darstellte” (70). What is problematic, accordingly, is not environmental pollution, climate change, or any other issue itself; to Dora, the “actual problem” seems to be the compulsion of wanting to be right and of wanting to prescribe what others are allowed to say, a tendency that she locates in a left-leaning, activist, urban, and academic milieu. Zeh's description of the “actual problem” points to a line of reasoning frequently found among theorists of the political right-wing who speak of a Meinungsdiktatur, a dictatorship of opinion according to which freedom of speech is endangered by a supposed leftist ideology of political correctness. Through Dora, Zeh points out the importance of being able to detach oneself emotionally from ongoing discourses and of enduring differences of opinion. Dora serves as Zeh's example of remaining reasonable instead of charging arguments with emotions and relationships with politics—regardless of how different the other's worldview may be. In an interview from September 2021 with the Augsburger Allgemeine, Zeh expressed her disappointment in what she calls “irrationale Reflexe” in response to the German state's handling of the pandemic (“Wir-Gefühl?”). Zeh makes sure to state that she recognizes these irrational reflexes “auf allen Seiten,” and she demands a generally more pragmatic, objective, and less condescending mode of discussion. Her stated objective of promoting an open, honest, and more respectful discourse sounds like a worthy goal for “all sides.” In the end, however, the main object of contempt in her three Brandenburg village novels, including the one discussed in depth here, remains on one side of the divide, namely the self-centered, hubristic, liberal urbanite who exhibits, in Zeh's worlds, a tendency toward brutal force. In contrast to feeling self-assured and confident to be on the morally and politically right side, Zeh models through her protagonist Dora the practice of pausing rather than rushing to hold an opinion on a complicated matter, as speaking too soon can make the speaker seem alarmist and imprudent: “Der Plapperverstand schwieg einen Moment, dann ging es weiter” (ÜM 219). Sentences like “Sie beharrt darauf, sich keine klare Meinung bilden zu müssen, wenn es keine einfache Lösung gibt” (28) are congruent with Zeh's own skepticism in relation to Covid restrictions or to the shipment of heavy arms to support Ukraine against the Russian invasion in 2022 (see “Sollten” and “Ich halte es für unwahrscheinlich”). Dora's feelings toward Gote, the terminally ill neo-Nazi, are ambiguous and undecided, and so is her positioning in regard to his violent ideology and past. As they walk together to the little party that the village throws for him toward the end of the novel, she expresses her inability to take a stance: “Es gelingt ihr einfach nicht, eine Haltung zu finden. Vielleicht, denkt Dora, ist das Einnehmen von Haltungen nur so lange richtig und wichtig, wie man die Dinge aus sicherer Distanz betrachtet” (ÜM 350). Having an opinion on issues is, consequently, the privilege of a detached observer. Zeh paints a dichotomy between, on the one hand, people who are so closely confronted with an issue that they cannot afford to have a simple opinion on the matter and those, on the other hand, who are not in touch with or affected by an issue but have an attitude about it nonetheless. This dichotomy leaves no space for the representation of characters whose identity and mere presence in the village would make them targets and victims of the Nazi next door, and who would therefore have no choice but to have an opinion about him. The only non-Germans in Bracken are a group of voluntary student workers from Portugal, and they are indistinguishable from one another; hardly recognizable as individuals, they do not have a voice in the narrative. Gote encounters one female person of color, yet this minor character serves Zeh's depiction of Gote as a victim. A radiologist with the Indian-sounding name of Dr. Bindumaalini treats him in the Berlin Charité Hospital, but she is neither a part of the village world nor is she given any direct speech in the novel. We only learn about her indirectly from Dora's father, who tells Dora what a splendid radiologist she is and describes how Gote threatened to charge at her. Dora is ashamed of Gote when her father describes his violent outburst toward Dr. Bindumaalini. However, since the doctor is protected by four caregivers who manage to constrain the raging racist, she does not appear to be in any real danger and remains in a position of professional authority over the sick Nazi patient. Instead, Gote is depicted as an infantilized victim of his own fears: “Er hat sich die Ohren zugehalten und gebrüllt, dass sie ihn in Ruhe lassen soll. [...] Er schläft wieder. Wie ein Baby“ (278-79). When Dora's father repeatedly refers to Gote as her “Sportsfreund,” Dora interprets this as a further dehumanization, as she figures that “[e]in Sportsfreund ist kein richtiger Mensch, eher eine Situation” (278). Gote is shown as a problematic character but also as a victim of circumstance, as worthy of Dora's compassion. Despite such brief descriptions of Gote's physical power and after some pondering about what it means to be friends with a neo-Nazi “in Zeiten von George Floyd” (350), Dora ultimately deems it neither necessary nor important to hold a view on everything; she finds it okay not to have a clear opinion. But even this somewhat vague, mightily apolitical stance—if one wants to call it a stance—is relativized when Zeh adds: “Vielleicht, denkt Dora” (350). It is not without a certain irony that the political author Zeh—herself a regular guest on talk shows who has touched on an impressive range of social and political topics in her oeuvre of fiction, open letters, and essays—preaches abstention. Toward the end of the novel, after Gote has died, Dora jokingly reminisces about him with Steffen and Tom, the gay couple who had hosted the village party: “‘Er war ein Arsch’, sagte Steffen. ‘Aber einer von uns’” (401). The relationship between a gay villager and a neo-Nazi serves almost as a caricature of an ostensibly mutual antagonism that somehow results in a successful coming to terms with the other, with each other. Again, however, the onus is on the real victim to be forgiving: in a previous scene, Steffen and Tom have to endure Gote's verbal abuse—and are then told by Dora to be “menschlich” when they want to call the police. Steffen's posthumous dual characterization of Gote, “ein Arsch, aber einer von uns,” implies a masterful tolerance of ambiguity, an ability to detach from personal difference in order to coexist, as an antidote to the demonization of the political other. Over the course of the novel, Dora reassesses several liberal and socially progressive viewpoints that she had previously accepted as self-evident truths. Instead, she offers some stunningly simplistic solutions to problems that she clearly underestimates and falsely represents: “Rassismus ist, wenn man bestimmte Menschen für wertlos hält. Das ist grauenvoll, und das gilt überall” (339). This generalizing statement about racism, however, is not free of bias; it merely expresses an opinion that disavows the systemic and specific implications of racist elements in our present societies through a universalizing language, effectively equating group-focused enmity with the resistance toward the same. The statement ends up sounding remarkably close to the apparently innocent phrase “All Lives Matter,” which seeks to undermine Black people's struggles against racist violence and police brutality, and stems from the summer of 2020, the same period during which the novel takes place. Dora thus reaches the conclusion that the magic words are “Trotz allem”; the lesson she learns is to show compassion for fellow humans in need, despite being mad at them or despising them: “Es geht nicht darum, wer was verdient hat. Nicht einmal darum, für oder gegen Nazis zu sein. Das Zauberwort heißt ‘trotzdem’. Trotzdem weitermachen, trotzdem da sein. Trotz allem liegt da drüben ein Mensch“ (340). Once again, Dora displays a staggering amount of unchecked privilege when she equalizes all political principles in the face of human suffering. In public statements and in her fictional work, Zeh continuously targets an urban majority that ostensibly deems itself superior to a vilified other who does not comply with the only morally justifiable stance (that is, being against Nazism and for vaccination). Zeh effectively points out the blind spots of liberal self-conception, but the framing of her argumentation is revealing: Among the characters whom Zeh depicts as aggressive and hateful in Über Menschen is the cabaret artist Steffen, who harangues against right-wingers and reactionaries. It is not so much the neo-Nazi, then, who is erratic and irrational, who exhibits a tendency toward brutality, and who is truly difficult to deal with. Rather, it is those who argue for lockdowns and mask mandates, the fans of Greta Thunberg. Zeh's depiction of environmental activists whose moralist hubris turns into violence is quite deliberate: Professor Gerhard Fließ, in her first Brandenburg novel Unterleuten (2016), literally dehumanizes his neighbor by first calling him “Das Tier von nebenan” (473) and eventually brutalizing him physically, thereby spelling out, once again, where the dehumanization originates: from the feeling of moral superiority found in the left-leaning, activist, academic milieu. Zeh's novels are often praised as sharp social analyses, as close readings of society's contemporary challenges (see for example Stettler; Weise). That her books consistently depict environmentalists and liberal activists as hyper-moralist and hypocritical alarmists with a propensity for brutality, however, is rarely emphasized; and the amount of page space that Zeh spends portraying racists and a violent neo-Nazi as likable human beings is remarkable, especially in contrast to the negligible space that she gives to people who might be targeted by right-wing radicals and normalized quotidian racism. Zeh's focus reflects her priorities and indicates an interest in catering to readers who are not willing to follow discussions about racism, who may be tired of hearing about climate change, or who might feel left behind. The recurring “Sie kam da nicht mehr mit” appeals to those for whom too much change has happened too quickly, leaving their world complex and hard to manage. With Über Menschen, Zeh provides assurances to readers who are open to the notion of a leftist-ecological Meinungsdiktatur, which represses with the force of moral superiority any dissensus to what may be subsumed under the label of political correctness—regardless of what incorrectness would entail. Zeh allegedly holds up a mirror to society as a whole, yet her messaging is slanted, as it is particularly critical of progressive viewpoints and effectively frames the adherence of concerned, well-meaning citizens to reactionary ideologies as resulting from their neglect and ostracism vis-à-vis a loud and self-righteous mainstream liberal culture

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• Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft

  Ferdinand Tönnies, Bettina Clausen et al.•Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, 1887•1970

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