Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYThe information scientist Prof. Dr. Karl Steinbuch, who had to experiencethe collapse of discussion culture at German universities in theearly 1970s when left-wing radical students saw to it by means of socalled“sit-ins” that inconvenient professors could no longer teach,wrote about that in wise foresight: 199“One does not admit that democracy consists of letting the othertalk as well, and that discussing starts with listening. This depressingstyle of public discourse will finally lead to de-democratization.”Several decades in advance, the Spanish sociologist José Ortega yGasset, whom I have also quoted before, characterized absolutely accuratelythat, which has been happening ever since in Germany, by writing:200 “‘to have done with discussions,’ […] means that there is a renunciationof the common life based on culture, […] and a return tothe common life of barbarism.”That you are not trying to dissuade me from my opinion with arguments,but instead by refusing any discussion and by striving to throwme into prison, is exactly this relapse into barbarity. Because, as KarlSteinbuch has said it: 201“[… the] prerequisite of any credible and enforceable behavioralnorm in our time [is] its justification by means of comprehensiblenecessities […].”Threats of violence, however, are not justifications by means ofcomprehensible necessities. He who refuses a discussion and uses violenceinstead has stopped justifying. He then can no longer expect to beunderstood.Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich have become famous withtheir book The Inability to Mourn, which was a milestone of the FederalGerman process of coming to terms with the German past. But thepremise with which both authors have written their book seems to havebeen overlooked, which is why I may call it to mind here from theirintroduction: 202“Is the German people’s striving for wealth truly accompaniedby a newborn love for liberty? Is their ability to tolerate and respect199 Karl Steinbuch, Kurskorrektur, Seewald, Stuttgart 1973, p. 98.200 José Ortega y Gasset, op. cit. (note 61), p. 135; Engl. ed. (note 61), p. 56.201 Karl Steinbuch, op. cit. (note 199), p. 60.202 Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, The Inability to Mourn, Grove Press, New York 1975,p. xxiv.179