(Staff; 11/12-03; p.2)

The politically interested public had to face three decisions about staff at the year’s end that rather count as provincial farces. Since at least two of the ones fired had a prominent role, they were more.

First one is linked to the Hamburgian ex-senator R Schill – Hamburg is a two million metropolis as well as one of Germany’s federal states; governors are called senators. The right-wing populist had been responsible for the fact that Hamburg’s government had more time to spend on his personal matters and affairs lately than on fulfilling their citizens’ mandate. Not only because there were unbridgeable differences between him and the city’s first mayor, O von Beust, the mayor dissolved the ruling coalition of his party, the Christian Democrats with the Liberals and Schill’s party. Elections now will take place sometime in February.
What remains of Mr Schill’s tenure? – Well, the police should have become new uniforms and a local yellow press had been able to produce some headlines.

Two other decisions are about a federal MP elected in a Hessian province, M Hohmann and about an army officer already fired. Both took advantage of a long standing feature in Germany’s changing society, xenophobia.

The evilness of such a technique lies in denouncing a minority for all insecurity and possible or just perceived depravations in a society. The minority chosen has to meet several conditions: it’s got to be big enough to be made plausibly responsible for all fault-lines; secondly, it’s got to be small enough to ensure that no-one blamed is among one’s friends or relatives. If the so fenced-off (or formerly: fenced-in) have a history of stigmatisation, they are prone to become scape-goats.
Real cause-effect relations, be it about economic mechanisms or the production of perceptions, this way are left unmentioned or re-interpreted by a technique just depicted. It was the corner stone of success for the Weimar Republic Conservative Revolution as well as for the New Right in Europe or the once more upcoming militias in the US.
[Original German article closes with some literature remarks and an internal link to a satire on Germany’s higher education system. For the latter draws on very recent ongoings and you’ll need an understanding of the situation, it is omitted here.]

(end of article)