The brutal attacks on emergency services on New Year’s Eve in Berlin have made it clear what the real challenges are for the police in the capital. In any case, they are not guidelines for politically correct language in everyday work, as they became known before Christmas.
Even then, the CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja wrote on Twitter: “Shortly before Christmas, the @polizeiberlin under SPD @Internal Senator Iris Spranger became the misguided language police: In a guide for allegedly discrimination-sensitive language use, the term ‘leading culture’ is denigrated.”
Czaja’s criticism was directed at an elaboration by the “Commissioner for Group-Focused Enmity” at the Berlin State Criminal Police Office, which was designed with the “involvement of individual non-governmental organizations concerned with the subject”. The CDU general secretary demanded that this “deeply questionable pamphlet” be “collected immediately”.
“Language,” it says, “shapes… our perception of reality.” Against this background, terms are explained, linguistic alternatives are named and formulations “to be avoided” are listed. For example, the term “refugees”, which is also used in the Geneva Refugee Convention, has been criticized because it “reduces people to a part of their biography” and meanwhile has “strong negative connotations”. Terms such as asylum seekers “are clearly discouraged”. “People seeking protection” would be better, for example.
Among other things, the term “leading culture” should be avoided. Explanations on this were largely taken from a publication by the German Institute for Human Rights. It has been copied verbatim that the term was used in 2000 “by the then CDU General Secretary Friedrich Merz”. However, the current party leader never held this position, and after Mario Czaja’s tweets it was deleted.
Other versions show notable deviations from the given source. For example, it is claimed that the term Leitkultur circulates “above all in right-wing populist to right-wing extremist circles”, while the original says that it is used “partly in right-wing extremist circles”. When it was pointed out that the catchphrase “more often in the ‘bourgeois middle'” was to be found, “bourgeois middle” was placed in quotation marks.
You can find that good or bad in terms of content. But it is problematic that (partisan) political views are propagated towards state employees under the guise of anti-discrimination. You cannot legally force police officers to use terms that are intended to convey certain political views instead of factually correct terms.
You are probably aware of that. As the Berlin police reported on request, it was only “recommendations, without any obligation to use it”. For this reason, the employee representatives were only written to “for information”, there was no “formal participation of the entire staff council”.
All of this is formally correct. But ultimately it is a political sleight of hand. It is clear to every police officer that the “recommendations” are associated with the expectations of his breadwinner. Anyone hoping for professional advancement will think twice about disappointing them.
And that reveals a problem that often exists with supposedly “non-binding language recommendations” – for example those on the use of gender language at universities. Where one’s own weal and woe depends on others, their “recommendations” are often sufficient to achieve subordination in the same way as legally binding specifications. If language is to be controlled, the alarm bells should always ring in a liberal democracy – no matter which way is chosen.
“Language is also dominance over us, over our thinking,” Professor Bernhard Großfeld once wrote in the “Neue Juristische Wochenschrift”. “He who has the language has the power.” For this reason alone, ideologically motivated language requirements are extremely dangerous from top to bottom.
Arnd Diringer is a professor at the Ludwigsburg University of Applied Sciences. He is the author of numerous publications on constitutional, civil and labor law.
