Democracy… Shut up! – A commentary from Leipzig-Connewitz

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“Democracy… Shut up!” – Outrage? Yeah, right, I couldn’t care less today! After all, this is an authentic snippet of dialogue from a city with a long history of democracy. Just before midnight in the south of Leipzig. A punk band is playing. Two people are walking towards me. As one passes by, the only word I catch is ‘democracy’. From the other: ‘Shut up!’ Then both disappear into the frenzy of the night. Who was trying to silence whom here?

I don’t know. This bizarre snippet has been on my mind for days. Perhaps democracy was being defended. Perhaps mocked. Perhaps someone had spouted some misanthropic nonsense. Perhaps it was just punk slang.

But can democracy also be viewed from a slightly punk perspective? Not just mohawks, studs, tinned beer… More like that peculiar attitude: I don’t have to be like you.

Who’s actually putting up with whom here?

After all, punks are seasoned non-conformists. For decades, they’ve been living amongst people who look different, listen to different music, wear different clothes and have different ideas about what constitutes a successful life.

And somehow they put up with it. It’s not just society that has to put up with punk. Punks put up with society too. Department shops. Front gardens. Dress codes. Career plans. Cars. Ideas about when someone has ‘made something of themselves’. And punks probably think quite a lot of it is rather daft.

Punks even put up with their own contradictions. They want to be individualists, yet they can spot their own kind from a hundred metres away. They scorn conventions, yet have created their own. They want to be independent, yet they need their scene. They fight against commercialism – and sell T-shirts.

So what? Perhaps it is precisely this relaxed attitude towards their own contradictions that could do a frazzled democracy a world of good.

A bit more punk, please

Because we’ve become surprisingly sensitive by now. And sometimes surprisingly insensitive. An election turns out differently than hoped: crisis. A political decision goes against our wishes: an outrage. Someone prioritises migration, the climate, the economy, gender roles or nature conservation differently: how dare they?

Somewhere in between, punk might stand and wonder: don’t make such a fuss. You don’t all have to think the same way. You don’t even all have to like one another. You just have to put up with one another.

Actually, it’s quite democratic: the right to be different works only if it applies to others too. To punks. To conformists. To everyone in between. You don’t have to be like me. You don’t even have to understand me. You stay where you are. I’ll stay where I am.

But what if someone denies others precisely this right?

After all, punk tolerance isn’t boundless indulgence. Punk becomes intolerant of intolerance at the very latest when being different denies others the right to be different. Then it’s time to say: Fuck off!

So perhaps we sometimes put up with the wrong things. When does tolerance turn into indifference? When does putting up with things turn into looking the other way? And when must the punk in us rise up? Are we currently too much or too little punk?

I’ll never know what that exchange on that night in Leipzig really said about democracy. Perhaps the full exchange went like this: “I can’t stand this democracy any longer.” – “Shut up! It puts up with you too, doesn’t it?”