How Did Germany Become a Moronic Inferno?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's 1943 essay "On Stupidity" has never been more relevant.

On Saturday I attended a party in Austria to celebrate the 5-year anniversary of the founding of the independent media channel, AUF1 (“Alternative Independent Television, Channel 1”). Along with my friend, Dr. Maria Hubmer-Mogg, I made a few remarks about the value of free speech as an alternative to mainstream media propaganda.

The Wikipedia entry for AUF1 is typical of the sort of disparaging rubbish—likely penned at the behest of the German Federal Intelligence Service—that is now commonplace in Germany.

AUF1 (“Alternative Independent Television, Channel 1”) is a far-right website based in Linz, Austria, founded in May 2021 by Stefan Magnet, who also serves as editor-in-chief. It is considered one of the most widely read media outlets in the far-right scene in German-speaking countries. The German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV ) monitors the channel.

AUF1 spreads far-right content and primarily appeals to COVID-19 deniers , climate change deniers , conspiracy theorists, and Putin supporters. Although AUF1 does not possess a television broadcasting license, a regional broadcaster temporarily aired AUF1 content in a designated time slot. The responsible authority therefore determined this to be a serious violation of the law.

From September to November 2023, AUF1 broadcast a six-hour daily program via Astra satellite until this was prohibited by the state media authority in Baden-Württemberg.

Lest the reader forget that AUF1 is “far right,” the author of the above entry reminded him three times in the space of four sentences.

Note the total lack of understanding of the entire concept of free speech that is expressed throughout the entry. As John Milton stated in his 1644 essay, Areopagitica, free speech is not a matter of stating the orthodoxy of any given time, but of having the liberty to think, discuss, and question. Anyone who embarks on this enterprise will necessarily make errors, which are part of the process of discovering the reality of things.

Thus, one may disagree with many or all of the representations and opinions presented in AUF1 reporting, but still recognize the value of having an alternative voice in the public forum. The entire point of free speech is not to protect speech with which everyone already agrees, but that which challenges the orthodoxy and consensus at any given time. Without free speech, it ultimately becomes impossible to think about things.

The constant abuse that AUF1 CEO Stefan Magnet has suffered at the hands of German authorities since he founded the channel reminds me of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s 1943 essay, “On Stupidity,” which I translated and wrote about a few years ago on this newsletter. The following passage strikes me as most relevant.

To understand how to deal with stupidity, we must try to understand its nature. This much is certain: it is not essentially an intellectual, but a human defect. There are people who are intellectually agile who are stupid, while intellectually inept people may be anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in certain situations.

One gets the impression that stupidity is often not an innate defect, but one that emerges under certain circumstances in which people are made stupid or allow themselves to be made stupid. We also observe that isolated and solitary people exhibit this defect less frequently than socializing groups of people. Thus, perhaps stupidity is less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a special manifestation of the influence of historical circumstances on man—a psychological side effect of certain external conditions.

A closer look reveals that the strong exertion of external power, be it political or religious, strikes a large part of the people with stupidity. Yes, it seems as if this is a sociological-psychological law. The power of some requires the stupidity of others. Under this influence, human abilities suddenly wither or fail, robbing people of their inner independence, which they—more or less unconsciously —renounce to adapt their behavior to the prevailing situation.

The fact that stupid people are often stubborn should not hide the fact that they are not independent. When talking to him, one feels that one is not dealing with him personally, but with catchphrases, slogans, etc. that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell; he is blinded; he is abused in his own being.

Having become an instrument without an independent will, the fool will also be capable of all evil, and at the same time, unable to recognize it as evil. Here lies the danger of diabolical abuse. Through this, a people can be ruined forever.

In the final analysis, when mass stupidity descends upon a people, those who have retained their ability to think independently can do little to fight the moronic inferno. Some witty fellow— perhaps Oscar Wilde or Jean Cocteau—once quipped that “being hated by idiots is the price one pays for not being one.”

To retain one’s mental health and joy for life, all one can do is laugh.

With Dr. Maria Hubmer-Mogg and AUF1 CEO Stefan Magnet

How did Germany become the moronic inferno that it is today? I believe that what we see happening is the result of precisely “the strong exertion of external power” that Bonhoeffer described in 1943.

This power is being exerted by CORPORATIST interests—that is, the sort of “public-private partnerships” championed by the World Economic Forum. Italian political theorists during the 1920s characterized this binding of state and corporate interests— to enhance the power of both—as “fascism,” which derives from the Latin word fasces (”to bundle or bind”). The medical word “fascia” derives from the same Latin root.