The Stasi of feminism “Anonymous complaints for discrimination”

Foreign policy February 25 2023 – 06:00 Minister Paus’s initiative “That branch will create general suspicion” Berlin. «Together against sexism». This is the name of an initiative launched in mid-February by Lisa Paus, Federal Minister for the Family in the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Paus, 54 and a member of the Greens since 2009, initiated the project together with the Federal Association of German Employers and the German Association of Municipalities. Along the way, the Federal Employment Agency, and large companies such as Microsoft, Siemens and Thyssen Krupp, but also the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (which has the status of Land) have joined. A success right from the start to fight against the culture of discrimination that is strong in the world of work and of which, in large majority, women are victims. Less popular, however, is the «Meldestelle Antifeminismus» portal, an anti-feminism reporting office also designed by Paus to combat discrimination even outside the workplace. The center is targeted not only for verbal abuse against women but also, for example, for expressions considered politically incorrect towards any gender or minority. Bild wrote that since the office was inaugurated on February 1st, the reports arrive more or less at the rate of 150 a week, many of them coming for example from the health sector. The ultimate goal of «Meldestelle», a ministry spokesman explained to Bild «is to acquire knowledge on the phenomena of group hostility and better evaluate the social potential of some crimes of a political nature». However, the project suffers from a flaw: reports can be delivered anonymously, a circumstance that has exposed Paus to criticism not only from the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU) but also from those of the Liberal Party, the smallest of the three formations of Scholz’s red-green-yellow majority. For the former Minister of Agriculture and very popular vice president of the CDU, Julia Klöckner, the vigilance of citizens is important “but the fact that the State requests anonymous complaints, even only in the case of subjective suspicions, can negatively influence society and fuel distrust and mutual insinuations. To the number two of the Liberals (Fdp), Wolfgang Kubicki, the initiative recalls the one taken in 2020 with which the Municipality of Essen invited citizens to report anyone who violated the rules of the lockdown “and who did not correspond to the humanitarian sense of the Constitution”, he said. told Bild. But there are also those who, on the moderate Welt, have criticized Paus for having invested 130,000 euros of public money that the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, close to the Grünens, has used to start a project «in the absence of a clear definition of what the ‘anti-feminism’, while for crimes there is always the option of calling the police. Beyond the financial commitment, the question of anonymity remains central. Many read in it the transition from the presumption of innocence to a state of “general suspicion”. Paus seems to fan the fire of mutual vigilance, a fire already very much alive in German culture. In Germany, try to lightly brush against a car that is not yours during a parking manoeuvre: soon someone, even a passerby, will call the police to make sure there hasn’t been any damage. In a country where the names of two notorious political police still ring out, the appeal for everyone to watch over their neighbors seemed a discordant note.