Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYWhen RAF terrorism petered out toward the end of the 1970s, the censoringof left-wing writings ended almost completely, whereas the indexingof right-wing writings kept swelling.As an unsuspicious witness to this one-sided instrumentalization ofthis governmental censorship agency against right-wing oppositionalviews I may quote the sociologist Prof. Dr. Eckhard Jesse, who hasmade the study of right-wing extremism his life’s task. Ironically in apublication by the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution(Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz), he stated in 1990 that theFederal Assessment Agency has “proven to be a gateway in several wayfor a one-sided anti-fascism.” 144 He continues: 145“Anyway, the procedures of the Federal Assessment Agency forMedia Endangering the Youth are difficult to reconcile with theprinciples of a free society, because the written and spoken wordmust not be subjected to guardianship.”“[…] A free society must not suffocate or suppress the free exchangeof ideas and viewpoints.”The indexing of political or politically undesirable literature as suchwould not be that big a drama, if the act of censorship really served onlyto keep such literature away from minors. After all, all sorts of pornographyand horror depictions are freely available to adults. You justhave to go to those plentiful special stores and departments accessibleonly for adults. If similar special stores existed on a grand scale for indexed,politically unwanted literature as well, one could live with suchcensorship, since this kind of literature hasn’t been written for minorsanyway. But such stores do not exist. Or rather: there once was one singlestore like it – in Frankfurt upon Main – which had such a specialdepartment. But because only literature deemed to be right-wing is indexedin Germany, the left-wingers were opposed to this store, and so ithappened that this store fell victim to an arson attack in the early 1990swhich has never been resolved.The indexing of politically unwanted media by the German FederalAssessment Agency therefore does not primarily serve to keep unwantedliterature away from adolescents, who aren’t interested in it anyway,but in order to let them practically disappear from the market, as it is144 Eckhard Jesse, Streitbare Demokratie und ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung’ in: Bundesamt fürVerfassungsschutz (ed.), Verfassungsschutz in der Demokratie, Heymanns, Cologne, 1990, p.304.145 Ibid. pp. 287, 303.120