It’s that particular time of year, once again, and Germans are taking to the street to celebrate carnival, a time-honoured tradition esp. along the Rhine (due to its mainly Catholic tradition).
Here’s what caught my eye last year:
The decisive feature of carnival is, of course, to be saying, doing, performing things that are otherwise deemed ‘controversial’, ‘politically incorrect’, or ‘inopportune’. This has a long tradition, and the following selection is no different.
Exhibit A: Spot the Agit-Prop
Did you notice something odd? It’s not the entire carriage—and here’s a picture of it:
Exhibit B: The People’s Choice (and my favourite)
Exhibit C: Bad Taste + Woke-ism
No theme is off-limits, and while I personally commend this stance in general (and at carnival in particular), see if you can spot the none-too-subtle agit-prop:
Note that the artist, Jacques Tilly, is ‘an atheist, and a humanist, and is an advisory member of the Giordano Bruno Foundation’, according to Wikipedia.
The Giordano Bruno Foundation is a ‘new atheist think tank’, according to its website. While it misappropriates the legacy of Giordano Bruno, here’s its mission statement (emphases mine):
The foundation's goal is to develop a viable humanistic, rational and evidence-based alternative to the traditional religions and to help it become established in society. This objective is based on the insight that we cannot face the complex challenges of the 21st century using the religious paradigms of the past [assertions don’t replace evidence, jus’ sayin’]
Instead, we need a contemporary view of the world that is in harmony with the results of scientific research and which is ethically and politically consistently oriented towards the individual's right to self-determination (as expressed in the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’) as well as towards the principles of an ‘open society’.
Sounds nice and expectable of a group in the spirit of Richard Dawkins. Its financing is a bit more tricky to assess (see here for the 2022 reporting, with finances on pp. 70-1), but they at least admit to receiving funding from, among others, the Julian Huxley Foundation).
Bottom Lines
Be that as it may, despite the clear ideological bias to be seen, the Düsseldorf Carnival remains committed to equal opportunity offending carriages and displays.
At least some people in Germany kept their good senses.