"Politically, there's not much that connects us. But as obvious as that is, so is the fact that we have a very similar idea of how a sovereign, adequate debate culture." Norbert Lammert, middle-right politician (CDU) said that about Gregor Gysi, a German far left politician.
He and Gysi had the funniest exchanges in debates in the Bundestag, the German parliament. Gysi was opposition for all his life, Lammert was he President of the parliament, and had to watch over the time each orator got. As the subjects of hilarious exchanges were mostly related to that, Gysi one day gave Lammert a watch as a gift - a watch that was going backwards. That was only one of the many jokes between the two.
If you care to laugh a little, here's a video that works with subtitles, a best-of so to speak:
These days, the German parliament is confronted with a new style of "politics", one that is not based on discussions and finding the middle ground, but to provoke. Speeches are not meant to convince the other person of arguments, but to create 15 second clips that are later used in social media to rile up the followers. This technique is mainly used by the AfD, whose members proudly collect their calls to attention like it wasn't destructive to the democracy as we know it, but a prize that they win for being rebels.
Political puberty?
Politics have changed a lot after social media. The fact that the general attention span of any citizen seems to have reduced to 30 seconds at most and only gets shorter each year makes real debates impossible. Nobody listens to full exchanges of arguments anymore, as they're not able to follow them. And the AfD knows that and takes full advantage of that.
It's something they're good at...
As so many times, it's hard to see an out of this, as it's a downward spiral. They don't want debate, they want attention. They want votes. And they get it that way. As for now, most media and politicians have tried to ignore the "rebels", just not giving them the attention they need. But that didn't help at all, on the contrary, it fueled the "us against them".
Make them.
The solutions seems easy enough - make them debate. Be prepared. Recently, Boris Palmer, Principal Mayor of Tübingen, sat down with the AfD candidate and debated him into the ground (Text in German, sorry!). He did a better job than many journalists, questions everything that Frohmaier said, presenting facts and explaining why their agenda wouldn't work and be disastrous for the middle and low class in Germany. Exactly the economically lower classes are those who most vote for the AfD.
Don't go down to their level.
He didn't do that, he stayed on his level, and that is just right. It's not that pretentious "When they go low, we go high" that Michelle Obama once exclaimed. It's about not letting anyone go under your skin, and drag you down. Nor become arrogant, pretending to be better.
Real life and social media.
In the podcast "The Power of Words"(Podcast in German, sorry!), researcher Luca Rehse-Knauf further suggests to do just that in social media. Most people there are lurkers, they don't get active in debates - but they read. Presenting solid arguments with sources and such does help according to him, because people read it. I recently used the Amazon-Analogy:
Everyone reads the worst reviews, but most people know that most of them are just frustrated people blowing off steam.
Same goes for social media. People read the answers. If the superficial and easy explanations don't get rebutted, they become true. And yes, there is a line between rebuttal and feeding the trolls. But ignoring the trolls in politics is not working.
An uphill battle?
Absolutely. But using "Oh, everyone is so dumb, they won't even get it!" is not good enough, either. Yes, people are more superficial, they don't like to have real, honest and productive confrontations anymore but love to stay in their Echo-Chamber, like I wrote a few weeks ago (Link in English! Yey!).
Creating our own echo-chamber lamenting about the other people's supposed dumbness is not better. It's the pretentious way, what Michelle Obama called "high", but is actually just a different kind of "low". It's unproductive. No matter what party we like, we have to confront ourselves with other arguments, we have to keep debate culture alive. And be it just for the sake of getting more amazing interchanges of words:
Gregor Gysi: "Now I'm arriving at the conclusion, Mr. Bundestagspräsident. Whenever someone speaks interestingly here, you interrupt. That really pains me."
Norbert Lammert: "Mr. Gysi, you could start with the interesting part. Then you'd have enough time."
With other words:
"As soon as we hate back, we loose our sovereignty." - Gregor Gysi
(I did the textual translations, sorry if there are mistakes!)
What are your thoughts about this topic? Please feel free to engage in any original way, including dropping links to your posts on similar topics. I'm happy to read (and curate) any quality content that is not created by LLM/AI, as well as read your own experience and point of view, I love to learn!