Common sense 

and what the whole thing has to do with human family and Reichsbürger

A contribution by Lothar Hirneise

 

A central question in the debate about Corona is and remains: What can be done, or what can I do, to put an end to this madness? This question not only leads to the core of the Corona problem, but also to the fact that one quickly recognizes from the many different answers that Corona has long since ceased to be a virus problem. No matter in which direction one discusses, one always comes relatively quickly to the first act of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. As Marcellus says there so beautifully: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” and actually means with it all states of this world.

Over the centuries, people have handed over responsibilities to politicians far too often, and things went reasonably well. We got more or less interest, it was enough for a little house in the countryside or for a rented apartment and in an absolute emergency we let ourselves fall into a soft social net. Somehow it always worked out and most of us were satisfied, as you could see in the Bundestag election turnouts of more than 75% on average. The knowledge of lobbyism and the obvious incompetence of some politicians did not bother 3 out of 4 people so far. Not to mention mass animal husbandry, environmental pollution or war participation, which are somehow disturbing, but then just not so important for the lives of most people.

But by handing over social responsibility to politicians, we have created sideshows that are now catching up with us with and without Corona. Slowly we are realizing that our capitalist economic system of permanent growth may have more weaknesses than previously thought. Also the permission that extremely rich billionaires hardly pay taxes and now have so much money that they can buy or influence whole governments or worldwide acting organizations like the WHO is currently catching up with us brutally. Or that we have allowed banks to steal billions of taxpayers’ money through cum-ex transactions is also currently catching up with us, because we would actually urgently need these billions because of Corona. In the meantime, we are also paying for a health care system that does not even come close to deserving the name. Without really standing up against it, we have accepted for years that pharmaceutical companies (are allowed to) mislead doctors and medical students and that these lies are then passed on to us on prescription pads. And the fact that the famous fourth estate, which once included journalists like Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, is increasingly degenerating into a corrupt forge is also due to the fact that we continue to consume their intellectual trash and thus pay for it directly via subscriptions, or indirectly by watching advertisements.

It has long since ceased to be enough for us to complain or point out injustices and then have antibiotics prescribed for every sore throat and continue to subscribe to Der Spiegel. It’s time to stand up. Men call this behavior, this standing down, showing balls, but surely there is an equivalent in the female world as well. A first “show of balls” in the Corona crisis were certainly the great demonstrations throughout Germany and these were and are also extremely important. Also the whole educational measures about coronaviruses, PCR tests and mRNA vaccinations were and are important, because otherwise individuals with a common sense cannot inform themselves. So both measures, demonstrations and education, will continue to have their place.

But please let me come briefly to the notion of common sense. I would like to describe here a little more exactly what is to be understood by it or to say it more exactly what my definition of a common sense is. Perhaps I start first with saying what does not belong to a common sense. First of all there are extremes. Whether political or spiritual. Extremes do not belong to a common sense. Politically this would be e.g. communist or national socialist views and spiritually it would mean when people let themselves be guided by beings of the planet Krypton, which supposedly visit us here on the planet Earth. However, it is important to understand that one does not judge people with extreme views, in the spirit of Fritz Riemann’s Basic Forms of Fear. It is important to understand that we, as individuals with common sense, have nothing against people meeting for coffee and talking about the advantages of a communist system over a democracy. Or have a conversation about which aliens visited us first. It just means that we don’t want to waste the most precious thing we have, life time, with such discussions.

But wasting life time is only one side of the coin. The other is credibility. Whether we like it or not, but people who believe in extraterrestrials are not taken seriously in our society. Imagine once the chances of a politician on a seat in the Bundestag, if he would speak on his rallies 99 politically correct things and then at the end still mentions that he flies regularly on his home planet Krypton. What would be his chances of being elected? How long would he be on a ticket of his party? We all know the answers here and they need no deeper explanation. An anecdote on the side. Once you are in power, you may very well spout grandiose nonsense. A prime example is Kirsan Ilyumshinov, president of Kalmykia, who told in a TV show in detail how he was abducted by aliens (article Süddeutsche).

Much more important than to understand crazed politicians, however, is that if you want to be taken seriously by a majority or by the famous middle of the population, then extreme views have a diametric effect. Just think how the German population would have reacted if Prof. Drosten or Prof. Streeck had only said in public that they were avowed communists. Their complete medical knowledge would be questioned and they could immediately shelve their roles as advisors to the government.

This, of course, does not mean surrendering to the mainstream, quite the contrary. But there is a significant difference between believing that the moon is made of cheese and believing that homeopathic globules can be quite helpful. And here we have arrived at another point of common sense. The differentiation. Since media deliberately use non-differentiation in the form of framing, it is even more important that we do not fall into these traps. Therefore, the moment we ourselves no longer differentiate, we no longer differentiate ourselves from the current media framing. If we start saying that we are all one human family that includes criminals, pedophiles and anti-democrats, then we are not doing ourselves any favors and we are harming ourselves. But not only that, we also harm the group we belong to or in which others define us.

How negative a non-differentiation can be can be seen in the framing of Nazis. Even the blogger Rezo, who in the past also gave quite differentiated of itself, speaks in his last video of the fact that on Querdenker demos are at least 30% Nazis. Now I was in August also on both big demos in Berlin and know 100% that this is not true. And believe me, Rezo is also aware of this. But a blogger also knows what he can expect from his community or what they expect from him, because he lives on this knowledge. Exactly this knowledge is of course also passed on by the marketing department of large publishing houses to their editors and so it happens that mainstream media spread lies just like Rezo, regardless of what the individual editor thinks.

But to pretend now that we are completely innocent of such injustices would be comparable to the famous head in the sand. We cannot march on demos together with obvious Nazis or Reichsbürgern and even meet with them under the guise of human family or democratic debate space and then write on every promotional poster for a demo: We distance ourselves from any form of right-wing or left-wing radicalism. Who is supposed to take us seriously? If we want to be taken seriously, then we have to express that clearly and unambiguously. It is no longer enough to say that we have nothing to do with them, without at the same time clearly defining how, or from whom, we distinguish ourselves.

The Querdenker movement, in cooperation with so many other great people, has done a unique job in recent months and ensured that all of our protest, tied to the word Querdenken, has made it into the daily news. But we must now honestly admit that at the end of November, a different wind is sweeping through Germany’s protest streets than it was at the beginning of August. It has become unmistakable that our protest is not achieving the desired goals and is supported by far too few people. As long as we do not act as one, the efforts will continue to run counter and we will disintegrate from within. The people who were still in each other’s arms on August 1 in Berlin are today fighting in hundreds of groups, often even against each other. And I have not yet spoken here of all the parties that are not represented in the Bundestag and do not even want to talk to each other. Therefore, let me be very specific. As long as we distinguish ourselves from mask-bearers instead of anti-democrats and nutcases, we will neither be a big citizens’ movement nor (rightly) accepted by a majority. Of course, we can say that’s not what we want. But is that really true?

For me, I can only say that I want a large majority of Germans to agree with me, because as part of a minority I will never achieve my goals. I want holistic medicine to be paid for. I want social threefolding to prevail. I want this lobbying madness to stop, etc. etc. But for this we need majorities or at least a critical mass of citizens. But this is not possible without diplomacy, without compromise and especially not without common sense. If you share my opinion, I would be happy if you join us at www.ibam.io or www.wir.miteinander.io. We stand for common sense and are happy about every person who is willing to do something more than they actually have to do.