Tolerance Only Helps the Ruthless
By Henryk Broder

Page Two of Three

"I've always decided in favor of aggression"

I had resolved today not to mention for once this new European appeasement policy towards a new kind of totalitarianism, which takes up the tradition of fascism and communism and enhances it diplomatically as well as technologically. I don't like to repeat myself. Of course, we are dealing with the same situation again and again: The zest for action of one side, which views itself as God's gun-toting arm, faced on the other side by helpless voices babbling "Never again!" and "Defy the beginnings!" This side has failed to realize or does not want to realize that the beginnings are long gone. The most committed action one can expect from it is the annual commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz. Not just in Germany, but in all of Europe, the longer the Third Reich is past, the fiercer the fight against the Nazis is being fought.

However, when a German fisherman loses his way in border waters and is subsequently sentenced to eighteen months in prison, or when fifteen British soldiers are being arrested and presented to the world as spies, perplexity abounds; one does not want to endanger dialogue with the despotic regime and would never threaten to impose sanctions which would only make the situation worse.

One of those British soldiers summarized the situation acutely after his release and repatriation. He said: "Fighting was no option." If fighting is no option, what would one become a soldier for? "Fighting is no option" would be a nice motto for the European constitution; additionally, this statement should be printed on all Euro notes.

But I do not want to complain and be cross tonight, or get angry about the erosion of values and the folk music nights on public television. I would prefer not to get angry at all anymore. In my opinion, all the many full-time angry people are simply ridiculous. They attend television discussions hosted by Christiansen, Illner, or the "Presseclub," giving statements which sound like some rusty old garden gate that hasn't been greased in ten years. Whenever I've had to choose between aggression and depression, I've always decided in favor of aggression. It seems more digestible. By now, of course, I've started to look for a third way - not because I've become wiser, but because I've become more tired. At some point I noticed that my gaze was more likely to be attracted by advertisements for senior living and for stair lifts than by those for Victoria's Secret underwear. This shocked me so much that I am now forcing myself to read articles about the love lives of the Tokio Hotel boys [German teenage pop band], so as not to lose touch with modernity.

But this deflection strategy takes energy, and it only works to a certain extent. Because, in spite of all good intentions, I still get angry - more often and more intensely than I would like. And in the end I always come back to the same question: am I crazy, or is it the others? Is it true, or was it my imagination, that the director of a Berlin theatre said about those killers who shed other people's blood under the trademark sign of the RAF, that they had been "no ordinary murderers who killed for material gain," but merely misguided idealists without material interests, who wanted to take action "against the murder of hundreds of thousands of children and women" in Vietnam?

Leaving aside the fact that the Vietnam War had long been over during the climax of RAF action, a sentence like this one should make the earth shake until this director is swallowed by his own orchestra pit.

Can it be true that the lawfully convicted killer of an eleven-year-old child is successful with his complaint to the European Human Rights Tribunal in Strasbourg, merely because his human rights had been violated when he was threatened with physical pain during his police interrogation? The murderer's lawyer was "stirred and deeply moved" by the good news from Strasbourg, namely that the tribunal had agreed to consider the complaint. And when this case is taken up again, chances are it will end with an acquittal, seeing as the rules of a fair trial have been violated.

I know that even a murderer is entitled to a trial according to the code of criminal procedure, but an eleven-year old child whose right to life was violated is entitled to not having its murderer styled as the victim of his own crime. In theory, all these things are matters of course that shouldn't even need to be discussed.

The fact that, in practice, they are not matters of course is due to the suspension of common sense and its replacement with three vices: equidistance, relativism and tolerance.

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Henryk Broder is one of Germany's best known journalists and commentators. A former AICGS Fellow, Broder has been a reporter for Der Spiegel and Der Spiegel Online since 1995.

This speech originally appeared in German in the June 25, 2007, edition of Der Spiegel Online and is available by clicking here. It also appeared in the July 6, 2007, AICGS Advisor, and was translated into English by Anke Irgang.