An evening without Christian Worch, Brimboria Institut (1-1/1)

Place: KW Institute for Contemporary Art

The event has been cancelled.

An Evening without Christian Worch is a performance examination of the handling of Nazi issues in the public realm. On June 26, 2012, guests will be invited to attend an event to which Christian Worch, the leading figure of the right-wing extremist Freie Kameradschaftsszene (The Free Comradeship scene) will not be invited. This will offer the attending public the rare opportunity not to grapple with the theories of right-wing extremist ideology: only when it is rendered incomprehensible can we aspire not to fight it effectively.

Statement

Evil seems to have been completely eradicated from twenty-first-century Europe. Finally freed from the ideological scourges of times past, we are now witnesses to pacific, democratic societies. The consensus is that we have learned from our destructive collective past, and that whoever does not share this consensus—or deliberately opposes it—may be either grossly uneducated or otherwise a little deranged. The motive for Anders B. Breivik’s considerable mass murders (painstakingly elucidated in a 1,000-page manifesto) can only be the unavoidable result of verifiable insanity. The "Norway Killer" is reduced to a single occurrence, pushed to the deed by reasons ascribable only to him.

Nazis in Germany are regarded according to this instinctual gut-reaction as well: Nazis are either dumb, brutal, and prone to violence (those in trademark bomber-jacket garb) or dumb, politically uninformed, and blind (those three-piece-suit-wearing members of the NPD). In either case, they have no understanding for a democratic way of life. This is arguably in line with the truth, with the notable exception that a probable search for the real underlying reasons cementing this world view is replaced by a mystification of the "political diehards", who do not (or rather cannot) wish to learn from history. It may well be that they lack the necessary intellectual capability to do so. Even in the most insightful anti-fascist groups, opposition to the Nazis manifests itself in the form of mild references to "dehumanizing body of thought" or "Pied Pipers".

This oversimplification is unfair to right-wing extremist ideology and to the line of argumentation followed by the Nazis; it follows that the democratic public at large is not in the position to react and respond adequately to their arguments. That the strategy of seizing the word in public events (so favored by the Nazis) works so well is a direct consequence of our ignorance and awkwardness in dealing with ideologues. As a result, Nazis are kept far removed from the public realm and thus their fables are propagated further; we unwittingly strengthen them in their role as underdogs, making them more exclusive and more attractive to the armies of dissatisfied. Their analyses, alas, display striking similarities to some bourgeois sensibilities. Please let us reveal the why openly.

Based in Leipzig, BRIMBORIA Institute is a project initiated by a group of theorists, activists, and artists committed to the exploration, promotion, and dissemination of subversive forms of protest, theory, and practice (www.brimboria.net).