The federal government nominates the political scientist and publicist Ferda Ataman as the new anti-discrimination officer. A replacement is long overdue. But Ferda Ataman is a fatal miscast! With it, the problems of discrimination in our country are not fought, but simply shifted – by the degradation of new groups.
Ferda Ataman’s world view is very simple: Germany is racist through and through. At least that’s the feeling you get when you look at their articles, interviews and activities. Accordingly, the old, white men are privileged by nature, live out their superiority, act and think racist. In this absolutist scheme, members of minorities can only be the victims of this racism and are perceived as a homogeneous group of victims who should be protected from the evil whites.
In this worldview, racism originating from non-whites does not exist. In this worldview, the old white man must be the racist. This abstruse fantasy of homogeneous groups of victims and perpetrators is a product of the identity politics that Ms. Ataman represents passionately. Here, minorities claim for themselves a form of species protection – or it is attributed to them – which in turn bears biological traits: “Because I am black, white people cannot understand me! So white people have nothing to say about it either.” Racism is not a one-way street. By no means does it only lead from the whites towards the others.
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It’s a popular strategy among left-wing activists to hold debates only when they face little to no opposition. Ferda Ataman and her association Die Neue Deutsche Medienmacher dream of creating a kind of database of people who can be considered as talk show guests for all sorts of topics, and excluding all those who take contrary points of view or those that are unworthy of discussion. Together with her association, she and her association claim sovereignty over the interpretation of standpoints that are and are not worth discussing. Message behind it: Anyone who does not share the “right” (her?) opinion has no right to participate in debates.
Media that defend themselves, do not follow the guidelines of their association of new media makers, express a different opinion, are defamed every year with the negative price “Golden Potato” (a racist name). Criticism of Islam is automatically labeled as right-wing and Islamophobic. Ferda Ataman refuses to name the origin of perpetrators, even if it is relevant to the crime. According to the glossary of her association of new media makers, terms such as “honor killing”, “Muslim anti-Semitism”, “political Islam” and “integration” should not even be used, as they consider them to be racist.
In any case, phenomena such as Islamism, integration problems and a lack of equality between men and women in these milieus are merely constructed fighting phrases that exist to support the right-wing and to strengthen their racist worldview, Ataman confirms her position in an article in “Zeit”. 2019
At the same time, Ferda Ataman herself has no problem calling Germans potatoes and thinks that there can hardly be a more harmless foreign attribution. Whether the feelings of others should be considered and respected is probably based on the question to which group these feelings belong. marginalized group? Yes! White? No way!
It goes without saying that Ms. Ataman herself likes to be extremely sensitive, for example when asked where she comes from. A question about which Ferda Ataman could even write a whole book entitled “I am from here. Stop asking.”.
On the other hand, she seems to care less about the feelings of police officers and thinkers critical of Islam. Because the police are evil in their world view and racist across the board, just like the protection of the constitution, talk shows on German television, Julian Reichelt or Ronya Othmann. And Muslims who take a critical look at their own religion or culture are automatically Islamophobic. And even if most of them can only live with police protection, she doesn’t understand why the Germans consider them brave. For them, empathy ends there.
The current book by Ahmad Mansour: Show solidarity!: Against racism, anti-Semitism and hatred
Ataman explains why some statements are classified as clearly racist, while others are not, through different power relations and the problem of structural racism. She completely ignores the fact that, firstly, such relationships can be different depending on the situation, that majority relationships can also be different (e.g. a German child at a Neukölln school) and, secondly, that generalization and the stirring up of prejudices are still not morally justified.
She is concerned with ideology and not so much with reducing racism or discrimination. Because if you want to fight racism, you have to reject any shade of racism. This logically compelling consequence must not be questioned.
To truly fight racism and discrimination, we need to go beyond just identifying and punishing racists and protecting victims. We must also distance ourselves from those who misuse the term for political or personal gain. For example, when left-wing extremists use the debate about racial profiling by the police to question the state’s monopoly on the use of force and criticize the police indiscriminately.
Frequently, highlighting grievances is immediately dismissed as racist when it comes to migration or integration. For example, when Berthold Kohler commented in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” on July 28th, 2020: “So that Germany does not become a failed immigration country, it must demand of the migrants what is also the minimum standard for the long-established Germans: obey the law and to keep the law,” the organization Neue Deutsche Medienmacher, chaired by Ms. Ataman, replied in a tweet: “Classic right-wing framing: migrants don’t obey the law
The lens that Ataman looked through in this tweet was one that was pre-set for the possible racial implication in a statement directed at migrants. However, she ignored the fact that the point here was not to upvalue the Germans and devalue the migrants, but on the contrary, to the contrary, for successful multicultural coexistence to be evaluated according to equal standards.
Those who ban thought often proclaim that they stand for diversity, immigration and multiculturalism. But their behavior and their statements completely contradict that. Rather, they show that they vehemently reject this symbiosis. How is a culturally diverse society supposed to emerge if freedom of expression, cultural innovation and the broadening of one’s own horizons are forbidden?
And as I write these lines, I get the feeling: This battle has long since been lost. It will be the same as in the countless debates of the years before. Articles will be written, and many will even attempt to be factual and provide arguments that pursue critical discourse. But then they will be followed by radical right-wing gaffes, after which all criticism will be dismissed as right-wing ideas and politicians, which are holding still out of fear of criticism, will condemn the right-wing agitation and express their solidarity with Mrs. Ataman. And the debate? She will be silent…
Ahmad Mansour, who has lived in Germany for 14 years, is the namesake and managing director of the Mansour Initiative for the Promotion of Democracy and the Prevention of Extremism. As a young Palestinian in Israel, Ahmad Mansour almost became a radical Islamist. Today he is one of the most important experts on Islamism in Germany.
