Once you start looking, as I did in my last post, into signs of the new despotism in Europe, and in Germany especially, you can’t look away—your eye is drawn from one disgrace to another.
Eugyppius just tipped us to a particularly absurd and infuriating case of speech-policing in today’s Germany, but one which illustrates that God indeed has a sense of humor, that of the Anti-Green Grocer.
Now everyone schooled in the ABCs of anti-totalitarianism has heard of the conformist “green grocer,” who puts up communist signs in his shop without believing in them, made famous by the Václav Havel essay, “The Power of the Powerless,” here quoted from the text made available by the Hannah Arendt Center:
The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: "Workers of the world, unite!" Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment's thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean?
I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. …
Obviously the greengrocer is indifferent to the semantic content of the slogan... This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: "I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace." This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocer's superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers. The slogan's real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocer's existence. It reflects his vital interests. But what are those vital interests?
Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient;' he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, "What's wrong with the workers of the world uniting?" Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology.
Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something suprapersonal and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from themselves…1
So many these days deceiving themselves in that way!
As a real dissident of our time, C.J. Hopkins, recognized amidst the Covid madness, the Mask, either immediately, or upon all attentive persons becoming aware by the summer of 2020 of its near-total ineffectiveness against Covid-spread, was the Green Grocer Sign of our time. I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace…
Hopkins, an American leftist writer who became a citizen (or long-term resident) of Germany, thought he could best get the totalitarian associations of the facemask through to his new countrymen not by referring to a Czech example under communism, but rather, by using a Swastika image:
But you aren’t allowed to recognize such things, or to claim to recognize them, in today’s Germany. Oh no. Using a “making light of the holocaust” -type statute, the authorities came after Hopkins hard, and with a little help from their book-banning friends at Amazon. He won his main trial on this, but the commissars are threatening more to come.
And speaking about authorities stomping upon supposed rights (the German constitution’s Article 5 says that “Everyone has the right to freely express and disseminate his or her opinion in speech, writing and pictures”), let’s get to the case of the Anti-Green Grocer. Eugyppius translates this from a German outlet called Apollo News:
A fruit seller at the weekly market in Wittenberge … put up a poster on his van with the words “Greens & Green voters will no longer served by us.” He is now facing criminal charges for this offence. The police confiscated the poster on Friday morning. According to the police, he is under suspicion of inciting hatred. The state security department responsible for political and crimes against the state has taken over the investigation.
The merchant who displayed the poster on his vehicle comes from the district of Stendal in Saxony-Anhalt. The police accuse him of not showing any insight when the officers took the poster down and filed a complaint. Initially, employees of the Wittenberg public order office had informed the police.
You see, this fellow is a farmer’s market seller, just the kind of vendor the hippie-ish Green Persuasion has always taught us to revere. But, 50 years after that 60s/70s dawning of that Environmental Consciousness, when it comes to the actual policies of the now influential political party that rose to power espousing it, and which over-relies on intrusions of the administrative state to enforce them, many of these vendors and farmers have been so repeatedly harmed and harassed that they wish to never sell their goods to the leaders and supporters of that Party. So our new grocer, who unlike the Czech one made famous by Havel is the opposite of conformist, is Anti-Green:
I hope to have more soon about this man’s case, about the right-to-refuse-service issues it raises, and especially about how it illuminates the increasingly obvious desire of our progressivists across the world to Enforce Fraternity, but let’s close with Eugyppius’s observations.
Shockingly, he can and does point to two other recent incidents of vigorous speech against Green Party figures resulting in criminal fines and even house-searches from the authorities.
This is why, in the post I linked to last time, Eugyppius labels his Germany a “pseudodemocracy.”
It’s a carefully chosen term. It doesn’t just mean that Germany is now an illiberal democracy, a society governed by popular opinion via elections but trampling upon classic constitutional/liberal rights. It additionally means that democratic say is itself being controlled to the point of elimination.
More specifically, given the growing number of threats from top German politicians to make the AfD illegal, or to hobble any of its elected representatives with denials of access to government information, Eugyppius speculates that what is presently forming is a situation similar to the legal v. illegal parties one of East Germany, wherein all the legal parties were in fact sham-ones, because they all were controlled by the communists.
What was that proud old '“radical” song, again? Oh, that’s right: “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised?
The one which needs to be written for our era is: “The Coup Will Not Be Televised.”
Or maybe scratch that “Will,” and replace it with a “Was,” because events are strongly suggesting that in Germany, at least, the Coup has already happened.
It really appears to be as serious and grim as all that, though let us at least relish an incident of symbolic aptness that our serious-yet-at-times-humorous God has arranged in this dark hour, that against the new mobs of greengrocer-sign-brandishing conformists and the vile police-state oligarchs they lick the boots of, He has posed the witness of the Anti-Green Grocer!
You can also find this essay in the essential collection, The Great Lie: Classic and Recent Appraisals of Ideology and Totalitarianism, put together by our friend Flagg Taylor, professor of political science at Skidmore College.
The story of the compliant greengrocer reminds me of something my elderly mom remembers from growing up in Nazi Germany. Her dad kept a secret radio in the attic of their home to listen to broadcasts from outside of Germany. Somehow their neighborhood butcher found out and threatened my Grandma that he would report Grandpa to the authorities if he didn’t get rid of the radio right away. Apparently, he was being “merciful” because he recognized what good customers my grandparents were. After all, they did have 12 children to feed.