Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORY“At this point in history the capacity to doubt, to criticize and todisobey may be all that stands between a future for mankind and theend of civilization.” (p. 8)Just five years later the discussion about the right to civil disobedienceresurged as a consequence of the student movement and the protestagainst the Vietnam war. On occasion of this profound protest, Frommmade the following interesting observation: 217“As long as people worship idols they will always find an attackon these idols to be a threat to their own vital interest. There isprobably no threat that has produced more hostility and destructivenessin the history of Man than the threat to idols; the fact is thatpeople always deceive themselves when they believe their own godsto be the only true ones. [218] But this deception in no way alters thefact that a threat to the idols is one of the mainsprings of the mobilizationof human aggression. […] A person can easily be persuadedthat his vital interests are threatened even though they are not. Hecan be brainwashed – as the expression is when speaking of an opponent– or ‘educated’ as one says when referring to oneself.”This fits nicely into our topic. It is indeed not difficult to figure outdue to which idol I am exposed to governmental aggression here andnow.The next and so far last discussion about civil disobedience ensuedin the years 1982/83 on occasion of NATO’s decision to deploy modernizednuclear weapons in West Germany as well as in the wake of theprotest of the environmental movement against the peaceful use of nuclearenergy and various large industrial construction projects like forinstance the planned western runways of the Frankfurt airport. 219 Inview of these at times escalating mass protests, the German SocialDemocratic Party (SPD), which had been freshly relegated into the opposition,conducted a discussion function within the framework of their“Culture Forum of Social Democracy.” In it a series of experts dealtwith the question when and under which circumstances a right to civildisobedience exists. In justification of civil disobedience the renowned217 Ibid., p. 141f.218 The German text adds here “…, and the gods of the others to be the true idols.” Über den Ungehorsam,dtv, Munich 1985, p. 144.219 In extension of the Frankfurt airport originally two additional runways had been planned, butdue to the massive and extremely violent protests only one was constructed at the time. The secondadditional runway is being built as I write these lines (2010) – with hardly any protest, asthe environmental movement seems to have petered out.186