criticism, ridicule, insults, and sometimes a burst Egg on the collar of the suit jacket (Helmut Kohl), or color on the neck (Joschka Fischer), politics has always been a risky business. Anyone who stands for election should have a thick skin. The best is to have a keen sense of Humor and quick wit. And, of course, a bodyguard. Assassinations have always been the possible dangers to which were exposed to politicians like Wolfgang Schäuble and Oskar Lafontaine in his own body had to know. But overall, it did not need to fear, as politicians in Europe too much of his life.
These times seem to be for the Western democracies in the past. Threats against members of Parliament, the threshold for physical violence decreases, such as the attack on the Bremen AfD’s Deputy Frank Magnitz shows. In France, the event has not gone unnoticed. Since the yellow occupy the West roundabouts, have received the deputies of the République Marche Emmanuel Macron countless threatening letters. Every Saturday evening, the French see baffled in the news new images of the violence on the streets of your country. A policeman beats a demonstrator to the ground. A protester in a yellow vest who hits a police officer. Vandalism against the offices of members of Parliament, is on the agenda.
Self-empowered avenger do not shy away from, in the apartment of the hated subjects to penetrate, or even the Ministeriumstür of the government speaker to break up. There is intimidation against Macrons members, sometimes even death threats. The party’s spokesperson for République en Marche has been threatened, that they would be “heads” or “hang”. Brutal words that make you afraid.
How to react to this wave of violence? As Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Edouard Philippe summon Republican values of tolerance and non-violence? Try to understand the causes? Why do so many people misunderstood? The violence feeds from a well-known demagogic ground. Classic anti-parliamentary ingredients are served: the well-paid, inept deputies, all of which make it to our cost (at least in France), in the palaces and their privileges, the care a damn about our everyday life, on the contrary, with their taxes and levies.
Or Macron is so arrogant, our actions bump in to him on deaf ears, please, less words and more empathy, Mr. President! Similar to it sounds – after devastating months of discord in the Grand coalition in Germany: Our politicians are not paid to argue all day long, while we stay on our problems to sit. The Parliament should rather go to work, instead of spending his time with hollow words. It rails against the elites, the Privileged, the Rich, the against the Berlin and Parisian ivory towers.
It is the direct democracy of living, and, if necessary, a punch me in the face. To make it easy for a government, in such a social climate, significantly, that democratic processes are lengthy and tedious. And that there are no easy solutions, and certainly no Savior.
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translated From the French by Odile Kennel.
