The ARD is looking for a whole week and several programs for what holds us together. The cabaret artist Dieter Nuhr gives his very own answer in the first program: “Nothing.” Is that really true?
It is a motto located in the politically correct low level between the Church Congress and the Federal President. “We wanted – what keeps us together?” So it’s not surprising if Germany’s biggest scoffer at the end of his search gives the question that ARD is currently trying to answer in a theme week: “Nothing!”
Nothing keeps us together, and that’s a good thing, says Dieter Nuhr, who has taken on this topic with loving care and anger, in any case as thoroughly as is possible in 45 minutes.
Does the state hold us together? Or the religion? Our family? Not even them, says Nuhr. And: “That’s not bad.” Excuse me?
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The attempt to politically pigeonhole Dieter Nuhr goes horribly wrong. The closest you can come to him is to imagine the (photo) artist, who has meanwhile traveled a great deal around the world, as a polyglot liberal.
So as a representative of a minority – and even this categorization would still reject Nuhr. Any kind of collectivism is repugnant to him, we’ll tell you about it in a moment.
But first: The way Nuhr takes part in this theme week for the station he works for is a single resounding slap in the face. If “nothing” holds this society together, then what is the point of the question that the first television program wants to answer with these numerous programs on the subject. “I was surprised,” says Nuhr.
After 42 minutes, he summarizes what he is about in a kind of spoken editorial. The big “we”, Nuhr flatly denies: “We simply live side by side.” “84 million parallel societies.”
In a divided state, as so many commentaries from the public broadcasters say right now? Nuhr pointedly counters: “Only a state that has been brought into line is not divided.” But doesn’t one have to look for the “we”?
“There are already far too many collectives.” Nuhr etches: “We have rights, left, mammals.” And: “Foreigners, residents, Sauerland.” And: “Late births, early retirees. Youngsters.” One is constantly assigned to collectives.
“I don’t want to go there.” Being an individual, not a group being. “From the identitarian left to ethnic comradeship to the fundamentalist religious community, the following applies: they are marching in step.”
Nobody can do what others don’t like. And if it does, then the pillory comes, preferably in “social” media, the outrage resonance rooms. “Society is already tightly collectivized.”
From the first minute of his new appearance, Nuhr destroys the principle of group membership, for example his own as an old white man. The “old white man” is the feminist narrative that aims to “cancel” an entire group from the discourse.
Nuhr, 62 years old, strongly counters punch lines: “I feel good as an old white man and if I no longer feel good, then I will become a woman.”
There is no more precise way of debunking the current discourse about sex versus sex, which aims to divide the world into green-modern and pre-modern-reactionary. Exclusion is the goal, which is why Nuhr eludes the “we”.
“I don’t ask myself what keeps us together, but: how much deviation is still allowed today?” Liberal Nuhr’s greatest opponent is the strong state that wants to decree how people think and live.
As in the case of “compulsory vaccination”. Whereby the “vaccination opponents” equally cross the cabaret artist. They are not concerned with freedom of expression, but “essentially with the freedom of one’s own opinion”.
Between opponents of vaccination and those who are forced to vaccinate, that is Nuhr’s message, the individual must assert their threatened freedom.
What kind of “we” is that supposed to be when racists and anti-racists are held together only by the conviction that “they ate the truth with spoons”. The ruthless consequence, this is also a message to the “woke” faction in the ARD – or is it the ARD as a whole? “Tolerance is not what unites us right now.”
And the cooperation in the team, with the employer? And the family, as the nucleus of society – isn’t it the proven “we”? Teamwork paralyzes the performance of the individual, says Nuhr, referring to the first sociological experiments on this.
They date from 1882 and support Nuhr’s thesis. Companies should think about this. Beyond studies, Nuhr comes with everyday family life:
Someone who lives alone takes out the garbage. In the family – a team – on the other hand, there is a discussion first: who takes out the garbage? The children say: “Right away” or: “Immediately” – i.e.: never. In the end, the oldest female member of the family takes out the trash. Who hasn’t experienced something like this?
Does money hold society together – prosperity? Hardly likely. The state guarantees: food, clothing, housing, heating, education and medical care for everyone – “and yet everyone shouts: there is too little public spirit” – how can that be?
The state “has never had as much money as it has today”, and yet everyone – no, only all the Social Democrats and Greens, which Nuhr does not say – is calling for more money for the state.
He is increasing the citizens’ income this week if the Bundestag decides it tomorrow and the Bundesrat agrees. Who wants to work at all when there are now fundamentally new views on it.
Nuhr on the anti-market economy zeitgeist: “We consider earning to be greedy, distribution to be social.” What should you do when children learn “that the we is responsible for the I”?
That they no longer have to walk themselves, but that their parents first carried them and then today they ride around with cargo bikes in trailers, the children. Lying down like the nobles used to do.
“So he shuts up.” How many studies and essays on the subject of “over-protecting” children by “helicopter parents” are there now?
Nuhr is much more than the time-diagnostic jester that he claims to be. Rather, he’s a freedom fighter, which explains the angry comments he’s regularly hit with, from both the left and the right, who like to vilify him as a “state radio whore”.
Nuhr has endured the hostilities for years.
This is also appropriate for someone like him, who has an audience of millions and who is probably regularly listened to by more people in the “quite normal” category, how do we say: the SPD chairman. If you dish out like he does, you should be able to take it. For Nuhr: no problem.
