Parliament vs. mob

© DAPD

When I saw this picture in the news I just saw some protesters making a statement. The banner sais "Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar" - a direct quote from the German constitution of 1945 (Art. 1.1 S.1). It actually is the very first sentence and therefore the most important one, when it reads in English "Human dignity shall be inviolable" (PDF, English).

However, I wondered in disbelieve when I reread the incident in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (F.A.Z.). The real story goes like this: When a Nazi-Party (NPD) made public that the new neighbours  in the little village Insel (accidentally German for "island") were convicted sex offenders, the members of the conservative party (CDU) and other citizens found a mob. They protested, harassing the two men and even attacked their home. To control the continuing vigilantism, the police was given special authority. The 400 inhabitants village has become a well secured "island", with CCTV and patrols as well as guards at every street to enter or exit the place.
Since this is continuing, the men and women visible on the photo, certainly have a point, when they refer to the constitution. In this case against vigilantism. Furthermore, these people are not citizens of Insel, but Members of the Saxon-Anhalt Parliament - in other words the representatives of the citizens on state level.
That's so weird, since usually people express their difficulties to the politicians. Since Parliaments are institutions founded by the people, it's a bit like employees telling his boss about how to finance the business, behave on the stock market and lower the wages while rising the workload.

In times, that it is possible that Parliaments protest against their own people, conditions must be very dire.

a Newer Book on Net politics

Although I didn’t read it yet, I am under the impression that the book will have (n)one impact on the discussion. Still Markus Beckedahl states, that his texts would fill the gap of books able to explain net politics and its movement to the elder generation in plain German.

I only recognize that there are already a lot of books trying to inform or guide their readers. However, the Webbed World of Wonders could neither be explained in that way by Lobo, Schirrmacher, Gaycken, Clarke, Kurz or Rieger (to name just a few). They were either too scientific, populist, foreign or wrong – at least from my point of view and (yes!) I read their stuff.

Judging from its table of content, “Die Digitale Gesellschaft” (the digital society) will provide a general overview of the topic. Lucky readers will be provided with an update on their web-world-view. Others might find themselves spending money on another piece of net propaganda. By the way: against their own beliefs, the authors published their book via a well known commercial publisher, who equipped it with DRM. Even though this is understandable from a marketing point of view, it is seen by many commenters at netzpolitic.org as political bigoted.

I will fed my brain with its content once I can squeeze it in my schedule – probably somewhere between policing, politics and public attitudes towards sentencing. Let’s hope it won't be a disappointment.