THE SECURITY MANIA

By Helmut Hoege

[This article published in: Junge Welt, March 29, 2005 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.jungewelt.de/2005/03-29/025.php.]




Since the dissolution of socialism in the Soviet Union, China and Yugoslavia, races (ethnic groups), religions and nations are emphasized, no longer classes. At the same time the development from the welfare- to the security state seems to be advancing inexorably – in Germany with the Red-Green in control. Police surveillance- and control systems undermine the data security and privacy of citizens. The fourth law for modern services (“Hartz IV”) and the expanded law against the body trade relieve the state of its obligation to guarantee the personal rights of German citizens. At the same time many decisions of the German courts allow industrial firms to simply clear away whole villages or parts of cities by casually referring to their creation or assurance of jobs. Neoliberal policy together with mammoth international corporations atomizes the last fragile communities and solidarian personnel to mere human dust. This atomization is justified with the positive terms “flexibility,” “health competition,” “adjustment to US standards” and “personal companies.”

Since Margaret Thatcher’s brazen slogan “I don’t know any society – only individuals,” the old pre-fascist social Darwinism has become socially acceptable again. If the dolphin was the death animal of the New Age, now in the new economy the wolf is praised as exemplary for our future economy and survival by manager consultants, elite universities and entertainment gurus. To the rightwing journals Spiegel and Focus, all nature is seen as a single fitness center. Every week they come with new discoveries: envy genes, attractiveness genes, dominance genes and so forth. If that sounds too pretentious, the Springer gutter press feeds this dirty system with daily horror stories of increasing foreigner violence or Islamic terrorist attacks.

The fear of the Cold War winners of a further class struggle is hidden behind the worldwide security mumbo-jumbo against terrorism – formerly the just liberation struggle of the oppressed people of the third world. In the future, “security of supply” will be most important, a manager said recently at an international oil- and gas-conference. To the rich and cultivated, security is also a very personal matter with their bodyguards. The industrial- and trade division in Potsdam trains its unemployed as personal guards. Searches for weapons occur increasingly at discos and golf courses. The gorillas could be in position in five minutes.

Nevertheless the poor are not entirely abandoned. The self-defense schools are booming. Security is sold in the shops through video-surveillance cameras, all-around insurances and fighting dogs. Bicycle locks are offered that are more expensive than the bicycles.