The great uprooting

Many people are disoriented because they lack long-term basic convictions and a sense of belonging.

People's disorientation makes them controllable and manageable. The pseudo-pandemic, alleged man-made climate change, Russophobia and gender madness confirm this every day. Disoriented masses can be swayed in any direction by ideologies and media propaganda and are therefore exactly what those in power want. One reason for this disorientation is the uprooting of people, which has been going on for centuries.

by Felix Feistel

[This article posted on 1/9/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-grosse-entwurzelung.]

If you look at people in Germany, you can see that many of them drift from one trend to the next, follow politicians and their ideas or quickly adopt the worldviews proclaimed by the media as their own. Like little children, they follow the instructions of the state, which they regard as heresy if they question them. Clever marketing makes every new trend palatable to them, which they then follow without giving it a second thought. Whether it's a vacation in the latest trendy country, cruises, Netflix series or a certain style of music - the mass media shapes people's desires and needs and delivers the right fulfillment at the same time.

The coronavirus policy was also a trend that was sold using very ordinary marketing strategies and which people largely followed. Although the measures were obviously pointless and harmful to health, they allowed themselves to be sold as a new, identity-creating feature. Vaccination status suddenly became their own individual value. Because that's what it's all about: a search for identity. As social beings, people need a sense of belonging, but also an understanding of themselves. The coronavirus measures were able to provide both. Suddenly you knew who you were: you were a vaccinated person, and therefore you also belonged to the group of vaccinated people.

This interplay of identity and belonging is what makes up human life, and people have always been searching for identities and communities that give them stability.

For a long time, religion was this characteristic. People saw themselves as members of one denomination or another and found their sense of belonging in this. This made it clear: "I am a Catholic and belong to the Catholics." Or: "I am a Protestant and belong to the Protestants." This affiliation was necessary because it created continuity - even in times of great upheaval such as the rural exodus or industrialization. However, the importance of religion had been steadily declining since the beginning of the Enlightenment, and new identities had to be created. After the detours via "class" and "nation", both of which have proved fatal in their extremes, many people today find themselves without a larger, meaningful narrative of their own identity and belonging.

This is accompanied by a lack of orientation in which they search for belonging and identity. They find them in ever smaller subcultures, in fringe groups, in which equally disoriented people gather and together create a new identity. These subcultures can be based on any number of factors and often have their origins in consumerism. The gothic, punk, metal or hip-hop scenes are such identity-forming groups that are oriented towards musical taste and in turn break down into thousands of subgroups.

Political tendencies offer a different orientation. Whether "right-wing" or "left-wing" - both directions have an identity-forming function, either as nationalists or supposed members of a superior race, or as so-called anti-fascists, communists, socialists, or whatever other labels there are. The LGBT scene is another such group that creates identity and conveys a sense of belonging. Here, identity is fed by a supposed "otherness", a feeling of not being accepted, of not belonging. As a rule, however, this is a feeling that does not correspond to reality, but serves an egoism that is based on being "special" and "unique" in some way. In this quest for uniqueness, all these supposed individuals congeal into a conformist and homogeneous mass.

Identity problems are negotiated in all these groups and attempts are made to solve them individually and collectively. However, this does not succeed, which is why the groups keep falling out and disintegrating into new subgroups. This is why new letters must always be added to LGBT. This group is also a scene that is currently very trendy. As it is politically instrumentalized, it is very present in the media and politically, which gives the impression that it is a real, promising identity that can be found there. As a result, the scene is constantly growing and events such as Christopher Street Day turn into mass events.

Young people are particularly susceptible to identity-forming structures, as they almost always go through an identity crisis on their way to adulthood or are at least searching for their identity. This can lead to confusion and ambiguity, which they then try to resolve in one way or another; be it because they think they find their identity in gender and sexuality, or in the "right" political view. They join together with people who are more or less equally disoriented and form a relatively closed and homogeneous group based on one idea or ideology. However, this homogeneity has to be recreated again and again, which leads to ever greater division.

Closed groups whose content is linked to their own identity quickly become ideological and totalitarian. After all, people believe they have found the truth for themselves, as it has become part of their own identity, and must defend it against outside influences or spread it in a missionary manner.

An attack on the group's content or symbols, criticism of them or simple rejection is then tantamount to an attack on one's own person, because the group is inextricably linked to one's own identity. The consequences are often narrow-mindedness, intolerance and violence, and not only among those who are considered "neo-Nazis". The so-called antifa and LGBT scene, between which there are also overlaps, are just as intolerant and violent as the neo-Nazis.

The only difference is the target of the violence. While neo-Nazis generally target foreigners, self-proclaimed anti-fascists like to attack those they have identified as supposedly "right-wing". While on the one hand they believe they have to protect Germany and the German people from foreign infiltration and annihilation, on the other they believe it is absolutely necessary to defend diversity against the evil outside world. Both legitimize violence. For this reason, it is also fairly indifferent and largely depends on chance which group disoriented people end up in.

The fact that the search for identity in homogeneous groups leads to violence can also be observed in completely apolitical areas. Whether hooligans who identify themselves through their soccer team, religious groups who commit violence against each other, or in the German rap scene where different gangs fight each other - the apparent solution to the question of identity in homogeneous, closed groups is one of the triggers for violence, which - transferred to a larger, state level - leads to totalitarianism on the inside and war on the outside.

This phenomenon can currently be observed in real time in Germany and Europe. Here, politics is taking over identity crises and their bogus solutions and instrumentalizing them to enforce its own interests. Be it the "climate", be it "corona" or the gender craze: internally, a rigid system of coercion is being established that amounts to totalitarian control. Externally, a "we" is being constructed that defends "democracy" against the "evil Russians". A democracy of which nothing has long since remained on the inside, in this best Germany of all time.

Uprooting

One has the impression that this disorientation has increased to an extreme in recent years. Society is becoming more and more divided and the tone of public debate is becoming increasingly shrill, ideological and lacking in alternatives. Instead of political debates aimed at achieving the best possible outcome, anyone who deviates from the prescribed truth is insulted, censored, persecuted and silenced. Instead of "live and let live", everyone is to be subjected to the constraints of gender ideology and health totalitarianism.

The identity crisis is acted out on a political level and imposed on all other people. This is a development that could have catastrophic consequences, whether because "climate measures" destroy people's livelihoods or because the Russia-Ukraine conflict leads to a nuclear disaster. If we want to prevent this catastrophe, we need to tackle the root cause of this crisis. So what is the reason for this identity crisis?

There are certainly several reasons. However, one of the reasons could be an increasing uprooting of people. People are no longer growing up in a sense of belonging, according to which they define their identity, but in a climate of constant insecurity. This is a development that began centuries ago.

The rural exodus, in which poverty forced many people into the cities, completely uprooted them. They had to leave their ancestral homes to find work in the factories. At that time, however, religion was still widely used as a lifeline. This subsequently lost more and more of its importance as secular aspects predominated in Western thinking.

By the time of the First World War at the latest, the family was no longer the root cause. Millions of men died in the trenches at the front; those who returned were severely traumatized and in turn not accessible to their children. "Black pedagogy" was omnipresent in the upbringing of children, using educational methods such as violence, intimidation and humiliation.

Emotionally cold mothers and absent fathers caused constant insecurity and certainly no environment to which one could feel a sense of belonging. This was provided by the Nazi youth organizations, as well as the SA, SS and Wehrmacht. An escape into nationalism was also an important factor here, which created identity and a sense of belonging through the National Socialist groups. A second, destructive war left large parts of Germany in ruins and drove millions of people to flee. Once again, they lost their local roots, but this time they also lost their national ones.

Nationalism was now frowned upon in Germany and is still considered a precursor to neo-Nazism today. Post-war western Germany built its identity on the economy. Prosperity spread and created a large middle class that could live a relatively secure life. However, money and property offered no real identity or sense of belonging and, as the only determining factors in life, did not form a reliable root, especially as families in post-war Germany were broken and dominated by violence. In post-war Germany, the drama of the First World War was repeated through the multiple traumas, which were also expressed in the form of violence towards one's own children, as well as in emotional or actual absence. The practice of sending children away, in which families sometimes sent their children for many weeks to health resorts or youth hostels where the same educational methods propagated by the Nazis prevailed, led to serious trauma for the children. To this day, all of this prevents families from putting down roots.

The whole thing is being taken to extremes by the current LGBT wave, which wants to completely redefine families and subject even gender to arbitrariness and constant change. After men were already under fire before, simply because they are men, and therefore supposedly violent oppressors, women are now also being deprived of their last refuge, their last anchor point of an identity.

Women are no longer supposed to have and raise children, and if they enjoy activities that are generally attributed to women, they are considered conservative and outdated; if they reject trans ideology, they are even considered counter-revolutionary and therefore misanthropic. Women are now also supposed to be men who see themselves as women, just as men can also be women who would rather be men. This transforms the lack of orientation for the younger generations into absolute madness, which makes it even easier to manipulate and instrumentalize them. The fact that this works can be seen in the high willingness to comply with the coronavirus staging, as well as in the wave of hatred against Russia or support for destructive climate policy.

However, regional and local roots were and are less and less possible. Capitalism continues to centralize its production in the cities, leading to a new rural exodus. People are moving away in search of work, the land is decaying and is increasingly being bought up by investors. At the same time, a job today is no longer necessarily permanent. It can change several times in a lifetime, which is often associated with relocation.

In an effort to find the best possible starting position for their later working life, more and more young people are being drawn to universities far away from their home town in order to land the best possible jobs, which are often limited to the big cities. This means that young people in particular are moving all over the country or the world without really being able to settle down and put down roots anywhere. It is therefore no longer possible to establish an identity and a sense of belonging based on where you live or where you come from.

In East Germany, things are different to some extent. Resistance to the coronavirus measures was greatest here, and dissatisfaction with politics is also highest here. The reason for this could be the common roots in the GDR, which not only sensitized people to propaganda and the absurdity of the system, but also created a stronger sense of community and - through shared experiences - an identity. After all, the East Germans have been the victims of neo-colonial exploitation and capitalist mismanagement since the fall of communism. Their life's work and the humus in which they were rooted were taken from them by force. These experiences created a sense of belonging and at least parts of an identity as East Germans who were at the mercy of West German encroachment and shaped by the socialist GDR system.

The AfD also draws on these commonalities and thus meets with approval. Of course, this party is also an inadequate solution to the identity crisis and only instrumentalizes it for its own political goals. However, it is increasingly becoming an anchor for disoriented people who do not want to engage with the content of the other parties. They are looking for a foothold and are turning to things that - whether supposedly or actually - once promised rootedness in the past. The concept of homeland is thus ideologically charged and instrumentalized by parties, while the so-called left fights against it as a new term of hate.

But even this only gives rise to violence and hatred. In this case, it is directed against the refugees who are increasingly coming to Germany because the living conditions in their own home country are unacceptable. These people are also uprooted people who bring their conflicts and identity crises with them here and sometimes act them out with violence. Behind this are traumas caused by war, expulsion, oppression and torture - and who knows what else these people have experienced. They are also often instrumentalized, used as political leverage or deliberately used to destroy society. Nevertheless, refugees are victims; and those who drive them to flee and instrumentalize them are perpetrators.

So if we want to put an end to violence, oppression and ideological delusion, we have to start with the question of rootedness.

As social beings, humans urgently need roots in order to feel a sense of belonging. This can give rise to a healthy identity. However, these roots must be strong and healthy. A search for identity in a nationalism that suggests one's own superiority over other peoples is not such a healthy root.

On the other hand, an understanding as a German - or even more locally: as a citizen of Baden-Württemberg, Munich, Hamburg or Klein-Kleckerfeld - is possible if it gives rise to a firm position in the world that is not based on arrogance towards others. Identity cannot be created through political groupings, nor by sacrificing all categories and criteria to complete arbitrariness. It requires a firm stand, the knowledge of one's own origins and a sense of belonging. These are the roots from which the blossoming of individuality and identity could then be formed.

But how this is possible in an increasingly crazy world of arbitrariness is something that everyone has to find out for themselves.



Felix Feistel, born in 1992, studied law with a focus on international and European law. He already worked as a journalist during his studies; since his state examination he has been working full-time as a freelance journalist and author. He writes for manova.news, apolut.net, multipolar-magazin.de and on his own Telegram channel. His training as a trauma therapist according to Identity-Oriented Psychotrauma Theory and Therapy (IoPT), which he also works as, has broadened his understanding of the background to what is happening in the world.

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