German MSM: 'Feminism is Fucked'

An op-ed by Jan Fleischhauer in Focus Magazine sheds light on the shifting auspices in the culture war of our time

At long last, it would appear that the Western love affair with what Herbert Marcuse once, and infamously so, called ‘Repressive Tolerance’ is drawing to a close. While I recommend reading the long, meandering, and at times very tedious essay in full, here are two brief quotes to set the scene (emphases mine):

Tolerance would call for intolerance toward prevailing policies, attitudes, opinions, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed or suppressed. In other words, today tolerance appears again as what it was in its origins, at the beginning of the modern period—a partisan goal, a subversive liberating notion and practice…

Translat[ing] liberating tolerance into practice…[is] to break the concreteness of oppression in order to open the mental space…Tolerance is extended to policies, conditions, and modes of behavior which should not be tolerated because they are impeding, if not destroying, the chances of creating an existence without fear and misery…

This sort of tolerance strengthens the tyranny of the majority.

Please read the entire piece; it is mind-blowingly radical, and, as also James Lindsay has argued (in a four-part series), this is the logic under which today’s agit-prop shock-troops of ‘the Revolution’ are uniting.

As to the content below, well, it comes to us courtesy of one Jan Fleischhauer, about whom the following is said over at Focus Magazine:

Readers either love him or hate him; very few people are indifferent to Jan Fleischhauer. You only have to look at the comments on his columns to get an impression of how much what he writes moves people. He worked for Der Spiegel for 30 years and moved to Focus as a columnist at the beginning of August 2019.

Fleischhauer himself sees his task as giving voice to a world view that he believes is underrepresented in German media. In other words, when in doubt, against herd instinct, commonplaces, and thought patterns.

Well, sounds like a daring, cantankerous character, eh? Well, it took Mr. Fleischhauer until around late autumn/Christmas season 2021 before he came to his senses with respect to the Covid ‘Pandemic™’. In Oct. 2021, he chastised his fellow ‘journos’ for ‘fulfilling their guard duties’ with respect to the political régime but he has had enough and went into what he calls ‘Covid Detox’ around the end of 2021. To be fair, in summer 2020, Mr. Fleischhauer voiced criticism (in alt-media but still) about the disappearing boundary between what he calls ‘political vs. science journalism’, but whatever his merits in this regard, he is, according to the second link cited in this paragraph, ‘fully vaccinated and boosted’ and ‘for two years, [he] followed all Covid mandates and rules’.

Take, then, what follows with a grain of salt; translation and emphases mine.

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When Left-Wing Female Students Worship Muslim Rapists: Feminism is Fucked

An op-ed by Jan Fleischhauer, Focus Magazine, 18 May 2024 [source]

What drives left-wing female students to worship an archaic death cult? Is it rebellion against their parents? Or is it the epidemic of a mental disorder, as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt believes?

There is a new virus to report. It first attacks moral judgement, then empathy, and finally logical thinking. When the process of destruction is complete, the brain has turned to compost. The novel pathogen finds its victims primarily among young people who lean strongly to the left politically. Its favoured areas of distribution are universities and cultural institutions [apart from Professor Haidt, I highly recommend Professor Gad Saad’s The Parasitic Mind).

Those infected can be recognised by the fact that they suddenly wear black and white patterned tea towels around their necks. Instead of exchanging arguments, they form groups and chant texts reminiscent of nursery rhymes. When they meet someone who disagrees with them, they start gesticulating and shouting wildly.

In the final stage, even feminist-minded women kneel on the grass in tank tops or bikinis and bow their heads in worship of Allah. Because they know even less about Islam than they do about the history of settlement in Palestine, the young women don’t realise that a woman has to cover every part of her body during prayer, from the hair on her head to her upper arms and upper body.

Do We Need to Worry About Young People?

Miniskirts are also frowned upon in Islam, as are shorts and any clothing that could be perceived as provocative. But the young novices will learn this—in addition to the fact that they will only play second fiddle in [our putative Islamic] future. The world they are about to embrace does not tolerate emancipation, and certainly not female emancipation.

Do we need to worry about young people? I think so. After all, the new pathogen is not raging just anywhere, but preferably in places of education where the elite of the West is being brought up. What will our future look like if the decision-makers of tomorrow can no longer think clearly? [a clearly-formulated point]

Many things become relative with age. My mother used to say that it grows out of you. But in this case, I’m not so sure we can count on it. Compared to the Hamas cult, even Scientology is a cheerful hippie sect. Scientologists also believe in crazy stuff, starting with the fact that the world was populated 75 million years ago by aliens who had to leave their home planet because of overpopulation.

But Scientologists don’t push gays off tower blocks, they don’t torture babies or mutilate pregnant women as a pastime. Better to lose your child to Scientology than to Islamism, one can only say. What is going on at Western universities? Is it the rebellion against parents that is driving young, enthusiastic people into the arms of an archaic death cult? That would be the most obvious explanation. But I’m afraid it’s not that simple [this is also the core problem with legacy media reporting: Mr. Fleischhauer, to his credit, is speaking about these problems—some 10-15 years too late (as regards ‘woke’), and some 50 years too late (as regards Cultural Marxism in the mould of Herbert Marcuse)].

A World Where Money Doesn’t Matter

I happen to know quite well the world from which many students who express their solidarity with the Palestinian cause come. It's a world where money doesn’t matter because Dad made enough on Wall Street to last three generations. It goes without saying that Charlotte and Liam are the apple of their parents’ eyes, which is why they are willing to put 70,000 dollars on the table without batting an eyelid so that their offspring can graduate from an elite university [all true, but the problem here is—the framing: Mr. Fleischhauer talks about the US as if that was the only problem; my objection here is that, while not untrue, this stupid force is now in full appearance in the US satrapies, such as Germany].

I saw on Twitter last week which courses are compulsory at Harvard if you're studying English literature. Literature only comes up marginally. Most of your time is spent studying queer theory, reappraising the colonial legacy, and criticising the white race. If you don’t have any money, such studies are nothing for you. Some jobs you have to be able to afford in the truest sense of the word [shall we talk about ‘sustainability’ or ‘DEI’ officials? Alas, this isn’t where Mr. Fleischhauer is taking us…].

If it is not rebellion against the parental home that drives students into Hamas enthusiasm, then what is it? Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt can lay claim to being the author of the moment. Generation Angst is the title of his latest book, which is at the top of the bestseller list. Subtitled: ‘How a rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental disorders.’ The book was written before the outbreak of the student protests, but it reads like a commentary on the situation. [That is easily explainable: Professor Haidt has been banging this particular drum for more than a decade; please watch this talk that is not part of the op-ed]

[Better late to a party than never, Mr. Fleischhauer, eh?]

Haidt has long argued that keeping young people away from anything they might find disturbing or even dangerous is incredibly damaging. By wrapping them in cotton wool, you create narcissistically disturbed beings who have a screaming fit at the wrong word.

Sensitivity and Aggression Go Hand in Hand

Many observers react with irritation to the fact that the same people who sniff out microaggressions everywhere, conversely know no trouble in taking brutal action against their peers, whom they have labelled as enemies [this is called ‘identity politics’, and its wide-spread application was first field-tested on a societal scale by Mao during the so-called ‘Cultural Revolution’]. Promoting tolerance, like the winner of this year’s European Song Contest, and at the same time mobbing a fellow contestant because she is Jewish—these go hand in hand.

But it is a misunderstanding to see a contradiction here. In truth, sensitivity and aggression go hand in hand. The essence of the narcissistic character is precisely to lash out in anger at real or perceived offences [true]. The prime example is Donald Trump. No one is more hated in the university environment, and many there are just like him [talk about splinters and beams, Mr. Fleischhauer: yes, most university professors are quite leftish, and Professor Haidt has been on the forefront of those speaking up about this for more than a decade, but that little bit of ‘research’—some might call it ‘journalism’—is apparently too much for you; apparently, Mr. Fleischhauer is incapable of realising where the intolerance is coming from in universities…].

It is the mixture of entitlement, tearfulness, and pathos that also characterises the protests. In a press conference, the squatters at Columbia University loudly complained that the university management had not honoured the canteen supply during the occupation. 70,000 euros a year in tuition fees and then no proper catering—how can that be?

When a journalist pointed out to the student spokesperson that it might be a contradiction in terms to insist on punctual food delivery as a revolutionary, she replied, her voice breaking, whether he wanted her and her fellow campaigners to die of starvation. Remember: the suffering in Gaza is bad. But it’s even worse when the food plan gets mixed up.

The Answer So Far is: Silence

I believe that on a deeper level, it has not really been understood how destructive unconditional Palestine solidarity is for the leftist cause [I’ll address this in the bottom lines]. How can feminism still be taken seriously when the most progressive part of the movement pays homage to an ideology that negates everything it is committed to? Many will no longer be able to resist laughing the next time a lecture on toxic masculinity is given at a panel discussion [well, better late than never, welcome to the party, Mr. Fleischhauer].

The answer so far is: keep quiet. A fortnight ago, a new female columnist was hired by Der Spiegel to advance the cause of women even more resolutely. Her first text? A reckoning with the outdated image of women in TikTok videos. Sure, that’s a problem too. But we would have preferred to know what a committed feminist thinks about particularly progressive sisters bowing their heads to Sharia law.

What works smoothly is the reflex to call anyone who crosses you a misogynist. That’s what’s left of the old vigour. You could see this very clearly last week when PR expert and political influencer Axel Wallrabenstein came under fire for contradicting a female activist who thought we should be more nuanced in our judgement of Sharia law [nope, we shouldn’t].

At Some Point You Have to Draw Boundaries

Wallrabenstein had posted a picture as a comment that showed women in Iran wearing deep veils. ‘Dress properly’, he wrote. That was enough to earn him the accusation that he was a drunk and a racist to boot.

If you follow Haidt, it is completely wrong to encourage narcissists in their distorted world view. His recommendation is not to avoid it, but to counter it. It’s like children who throw themselves on the floor when they don’t get the toys they want in the supermarket. If you don’t want them to turn into terrorists, you have to draw boundaries at some point. There’s a lot of shouting, but you have to put up with it.

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Bottom Lines

Well, this surely qualifies as a belated acknowledgement with certain WTF qualities (sic). Mr. Fleischhauer, though, is a widely respected legacy media ‘journo’ and his ‘conversion’ happened to come after he read a book by Jonathan Haidt or listening to a talk or two.

If the situation hadn’t become so stupid and dire, he could quite likely care less about the ‘veil of love’-wearing ‘Pro-Palestine’ supporters of campus.

The essay, I would argue, reads absurdly out of style, place, and time, and if Mr. Fleischhauer would have taken that kind of stance in the 2010s, well, I’d have some respect. As it stands, his op-ed falls short on many levels, of which the most egregious fallacies are in my view:

‘Leftists’ and ‘progressives’ are depicted as ‘good’, but some of them are a wee bit pampered and self-righteous. At now point in his column, though, Mr. Fleischhauer comes out strongly against the existing evidence of massively increased anti-Jewish incidents since 7 Oct. 2023, Germany’s post-’unification’ reason of state being unconditional support for Israel, or the no-less problematic notion of what the boundaries he alludes to mean in practice.

There is similarly no condemnation of what Hamas has done (although, to be fair, he called them a death cult, which is true), but for reasons that have to do with ‘polite society’—rampant fear of being labelled an ‘Islamophobe’, I’d suggest—Mr. Fleischhauer refuses to call a spade a spade: there are 1.4b or more Moslems on this planet and they mostly live in virtually Moslem-only countries. These countries all have boundaries, hence if we talk about ‘consequences’ and the like, there’s a good investment for Western taxpayers: one-way tickets.

This, of course, goes to the heart of the problem of our time: look at a few local elections in the UK that recently saw radical, pro-Sharia candidates win.

There is little hope that members of these ‘parallel communities’ will be successfully integrated into mainstream Western societies, esp. as, every Friday, their ‘clerics’ tell them that, once they outnumber the locals, they can do what they want to the deserving infidels. There are plenty of videos on social media that attest to this clear and present danger to the West.

What, then, can be done about this at this late stage? (Forgive me for the crude invocation of Lenin’s post-1905 tract.)

First of all, I think that the West shall insist on the separation of church and state at all levels and without compromises (except those specified in the constitution). No veils, no hijab, no burkha in any public contexts that isn’t the open streets.

Freedom of religion, second, is also a big-ticket issue, but the current laissez-faire approach to Islamic theology (which trains Islamic religion teachers for secondary schools) must be put under close scrutiny and all but the most mainstreamed, liberal, and Westernised Islamic interpretations shall be re-classified as political ideologies. This would mean a cold-stop for many such ‘religious’ communities and esp. their taxpayer subsidies via tax exemptions and the like.

Thirdly, the West should bid farewell to romantic notions of everyone eventually embracing the benefits of Western Civilisation. Some non-Western cultures are more receptive to (parts) of this legacy (look at esp. East Asia, incl. India) while others are clearly not.

Without taking a clear stand on these issue, above all, there won’t be much else ‘the West’ can do, for it will be over in a few decades.

Finally, I don’t want to come across as a rabid Islamophobe (I’m too much of a product of Western Civ to do so: as long as you abide by the ‘live and let live’ motto, fine). Among the issues Mr. Fleischhauer also raised, perhaps to induce clicks, there is also the notion of ‘feminism’, which he uses barely to ridicule some of the protestors (and rightfully so).

Yet, restoring sanity—and a future—to ‘the West’ will also require to bid farewell to comparable protections of equally stupid and insidious ideas, such as ‘Feminism™’ (for a wonderful example of the ‘intersectional qualities’ of all of the above, click here to read about Judith Butler coming out on the side of Hamas).

But that, too, is a bridge too far still for legacy media, as are the nooks and crannies of faculty appointments and the climate of absurdity and, yes, fear that reigns on campus.

Epilogue

I’ll close this out with a brief anecdote about an undergraduate student of mine who, earlier this year during office hours, our conversation turned to leftism (said student is a Labour Party local politician), and when asked, I always tell everyone that I’m not a Leftist. The student’s reply was:

They haven’t fired you yet?

Which tells you everything you need to know about the sad state of our universities.

Science and scholarship are processes, dynamics, or dialogues, not an end to itself. Whatever ‘Covid’ was, it certainly put ‘the Science™’ in charge, as opposed to what (mostly) passed for scientific enquiry to that point.

I suppose that ‘education’, widely understood, needs to be rectified, too, and perhaps sooner rather than later.