Vince Ebert criticizes Armin Wolf: A call for debate instead of division!

Vince Ebert criticizes Armin Wolf: A call for debate instead of division!

As part of the Krone deep talk “Message Macht Medien”, the German star comedian Vince Ebert sharply criticized the withdrawal of ORF presenter Armin Wolf from the platform X (formerly Twitter). According to Ebert, this step represents a capitulation to an open debate. He fears that society in Germany and Austria will fall back into anti-Enlightenment times in which the exchange of different opinions is increasingly restricted. Ebert emphasizes that the Enlightenment was crucial to prosperity and humanism and that tolerance of different opinions, often lost in today's debate, is a central asset

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Ebert also warns that the unreflective categorization of statements as belonging to certain camps leads to a loss of this tolerance. He sees a dangerous moral sorting in society, which leads to division, especially when it comes to current issues such as wokeness, cancel culture, climate and migration. All of this increases polarization instead of reducing it. Ebert’s final conclusion reflects the title of his book: “What fuck, Germany?” and applies equally to the situation in Austria.

Wokeness and cancel culture in discourse

Terms like “wokeness” and “cancel culture” are currently omnipresent in political and social debates. FDP politician Katja Adler had difficulty defining “woke”, even though she identified it as a problem. Politicians like Markus Söder and many journalists also show uncertainty when dealing with these terms. “Woke” means “awakened” or “mindful” and describes an awareness of issues such as racism and sexism.

The African-American context of the 1960s originally coined the term, which gained popularity with the Black Lives Matter movement starting in 2014. In Germany, “woke” only became known after it was appropriated by conservative and right-wing radical groups, who gave it a negative connotation. In 2021, the term found its way into the Duden and was defined as “highly politically awake and committed to fighting discrimination”. “Cancel Culture” is a new creation that emerged in the USA in 2014 and addressed boycotts against people who made discriminatory statements.

Social context and danger of polarization

Literary scholar Adrian Daub criticizes the reporting on cancel culture, which, in his opinion, is often exaggerated and one-sided. In the same breath, it is pointed out that both wokeness and cancel culture are politically charged terms that tend to oversimplify social debates and thus promote polarization. The New Yorker article by Peter Engelmann also addresses how wokeness, which was originally a democratic movement, has developed into an ideological fighting term that undermines the principle of equality in democratic societies.

In today's discussion, it is essential to find the balance: while sensitivity for discriminated groups is important, the diversity of opinions and discourse must be promoted instead of ideological absolutizations prevailing. The risk is that society will fragment into groups that are no longer able to communicate with each other.