What drives left-wing students to worship an archaic death cult? Is it rebellion against parents? Or is it an epidemic of mental disorder, as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt believes?
There is a new virus to report. It first affects moral judgment, then empathy and finally logical thinking. When the destruction process is complete, the brain has turned into compost. The new pathogen finds its victims primarily among young people who have a strong left-wing political leaning. His preferred area of distribution is universities and cultural institutions.
You can recognize those affected by the fact that they suddenly wear black and white patterned tea towels around their necks. Instead of exchanging arguments, they stand in groups and chant texts that are reminiscent of nursery rhymes. When they encounter someone who disagrees, they start gesticulating and shouting wildly.
In the final stages, even feminist-minded women kneel on the grass in tank tops or bikinis and bow their heads in worship of Allah. Because they have even less knowledge of Islam than of the settlement history of Palestine, the young women do not know that a woman has to cover every naked thing when praying, from the hair on her head to her upper arms and upper body.
Miniskirts are also frowned upon in Islam, as are shorts and any clothing that could be considered provocative. But the young novices will learn that – in addition to the fact that in future they will only play second fiddle. The world that they are preparing to embrace does not tolerate emancipation, especially not female emancipation.
Should we be worried about young people? I think so. After all, the new pathogen is not raging just anywhere, but rather at training places where the West’s elite are trained. What will our future look like if the decision-makers of tomorrow can no longer think clearly?
A lot of things are put into perspective with age. It’ll grow out of it, said my mother. But in that case, I’m not so sure we can rely on it. Against the Hamas cult, even Scientology is a happy hippie sect. Scientologists also believe in crazy things, 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 skyscrapers, nor do they torture babies or mutilate pregnant women for pastime. One can only say that it would be better to lose your child to Scientology than to Islamism. What is going on at western universities? Is it rebellion against parents that drives 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.
I happen to know quite well the world from which many students who express their solidarity with the Palestinian cause come. It is a world where money is no object because dad made enough money on Wall Street to last three generations. Of course, Charlotte and Liam are the apple of their parents’ eyes, which is why they don’t bat an eyelid and don’t pay $70,000 to send their offspring to an elite university.
I saw on Twitter last week which courses are required at Harvard if you’re majoring in English literature. Literature only appears marginally. Most of the time is spent studying queer theory, coming to terms with the colonial legacy and criticizing the white race. If you don’t have any money, such a course of study is not for you. Some jobs you have to be able to afford in the truest sense of the word.
If it’s not rebellion against the home that drives students into Hamas enthusiasm, then what is it? The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt can claim to be the author of the hour. “Generation Fear” is the name of his current book, which is at the top of the bestseller list. Subtitle: “How rewiring childhood is creating an epidemic of mental disorders.” The book was written before the student protests broke out, but it reads like a commentary on the situation.
Haidt has long held the view that it is extremely harmful to keep young people away from anything that they might find disturbing or even dangerous. By wrapping them in cotton wool, you create narcissistically disturbed beings who start screaming at the wrong word.
Many observers are irritated that the same people who sense microaggressions everywhere make no effort to act brutally against their peers who they have marked as enemies. Promoting tolerance, like the winner of this year’s European Song Contest, and at the same time bullying a fellow contestant because she is Jewish, it runs parallel.
But it is a misunderstanding to see a contradiction here. In reality, sensitivity and aggressiveness go hand in hand. The nature of the narcissistic character is to lash out wildly out of anger over real or perceived insults. The prime example is Donald Trump. Nobody is more hated in the university environment, although many of them are exactly like him there.
It is the mixture of entitlement, whining and pathos that also permeates the protests. In a press conference, the occupiers at Columbia University loudly complained that the university management had not maintained the cafeteria’s supplies during the occupation. 70,000 euros in tuition fees per year and then no decent catering – how can that be?
When a journalist pointed out to the student representative that it might be a contradiction to insist on timely food delivery as a revolutionary, she answered in a cracking voice whether he wanted her and her fellow activists to die of exhaustion. Note: The suffering in Gaza is terrible. But it’s even worse when your meal plan gets messed up.
I believe that on a deeper level, it has not been fully understood how destructive unconditional Palestine solidarity is to the left-wing cause. How can one take feminism seriously when the most progressive part of the movement pays homage to an ideology that negates everything that one is committed to? Many people won’t be able to stop themselves from laughing the next time a panel discussion includes a talk about toxic masculinity.
The answer so far is: remain silent. Two weeks ago, “Spiegel” hired a new columnist to push the women’s cause even more decisively. Your first text? A reckoning with the outdated image of women in TikTok videos. Sure, that’s also a problem. But one would have preferred to know what a committed feminist thinks when particularly progressive sisters bow their heads to Sharia law.
What works smoothly is the reflex to call anyone who crosses your path a misogynist. That’s what’s left of the old Elan. You could see this very clearly last week when the PR expert and political influencer Axel Wallrabenstein came under fire because he contradicted an activist who thought that Sharia law should be judged in a more differentiated way.
Wallrabenstein had posted a picture as a comment that showed deeply veiled women in Iran. “Get dressed properly,” he wrote. That was enough to earn him accusations that he was a drunk and a racist to boot.
If you follow Haidt, it is completely wrong to encourage narcissists in their distorted worldview. 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 toy they asked for at the supermarket. If you don’t want them to develop into terrorists, you have to draw boundaries at some point. There’s a lot of screaming, but you have to endure it.
Read all of Jan Fleischhauer’s columns here.
Readers love him or hate him, but very few people are indifferent to Jan Fleischhauer. You only have to look at the comments on his columns to get an idea of how much what he writes moves people. He was at SPIEGEL for 30 years, and at the beginning of August 2019 he moved to FOCUS as a columnist.
Fleischhauer himself sees his task as giving voice to a worldview that he believes is underrepresented in the German media. So when in doubt, avoid herd instinct, platitudes and mental patterns. His texts are always amusing – perhaps it is this fact that provokes his opponents the most.
You can write to our author: By email to j.fleischhauer@focus-magazin.de or on Twitter @janfleischhauer.