The following interview was conducted by Alexander Wendt on July 5, 2020, and originally appeared in German on Tichys Einblick on July 13, 2020. Translated by Russell A. Berman.
Alexander Wendt: Professor Bolz, the costs of the coronavirus pandemic are still unknown, but they will surely leave deep scars for years to come. Will our society return from post-materialism to a society with hard materialist concerns with numbers and balance sheets?
Norbert Bolz: Even before the coronavirus crisis, I had doubts as to whether the notion of a post-material society made much sense. To my mind, the “post-material” term only makes real sense as a description of digitalization and the rise of information technology. But the superstructure that is usually meant by “post-material” seems to me to be mainly a substitute for religion, and it never had the real significance for society that many ascribe to it.
Q: So the crisis won’t change much?
Bolz: It will have a salutary impact to the extent that it will lead many people to focus on fundamental concerns: health, safety, and the basic functions of the state that guarantees these matters. We are returning to a Hobbesian understanding of the state. During the recent wonderful decades, we did not have to worry much about the need to protect our security. That has changed.
Q: What does it mean for public communication if we start talking more about Gross Domestic Product and less about gender identities?
Bolz: We may soon be facing materialist distribution struggles, with open conflict between utopianists and realists, as has been the case in the United States for several years. Up to now, public discourse in Germany has been dominated nearly exclusively by a milieu distorted by affluence. In the post-coronavirus era, we may find that that rhetoric will be ratcheted down. There are two different cultures in Germany: idealists from the ivory tower and others who have to earn money. Up to now, the idealists have been in charge of the public debate. A paradigmatic example of this kind of windbag is the acting chair of the Social Democrats, Kevin Kühnert. He studied nothing, completed nothing, and has no real knowledge of anything—but he speaks well and knows how to present himself. On the other side, there are engineers, natural scientists, and entrepreneurs who do not speak in public because they never learned how, and public speaking is not part of their self-understanding. Until now they have more or less accepted the fact that they barely play a role in the public debate. But I think it is quite likely that they will develop a greater interest, now that it has become a matter of the real economic consequences of the crisis, at least to participate in the social debate and not to leave the field to the big talkers.
Q: What do you see happening in the United States?
Bolz: It is remarkable that in the United States, political correctness is even crazier than here, but there is also a free opposition camp. Talk radio reaches a large public there and gives many a chance to participate in public discussion. Twitter plays a larger role as well.
Q: Canadian author Jordan B. Peterson has evoked the so-called “intellectual dark web.” That is his ironic designation for a platform where he can talk with the neurologist Sam Harris and entrepreneurs like Eric Weinstein without the limitations of political correctness. Is something like that possible in Germany too?
Bolz: A while ago I made reference in a tweet to the intellectual dark web, where interesting discussions really do take place. In Germany, too, there are plenty of interesting, nonconformist minds. So far what is missing is money, the economic support that is needed to establish a sustainable public platform.
Q: Actually the classical media ought to provide a platform like that for open debates, if only out of self-interest. Why doesn’t that happen?
Bolz: This ought to be their job. I can only explain the extreme conformism in the editorial offices of most media through the very similar socialization of all journalists. There is no longer much difference between the private and the state-financed media in the discussion of most political topics. This sort of conformism is fatal, especially in this period in which all the political parties pretty much say the same thing, with the exception of the AfD [Alternative for Germany].
Q: What do you read?
Bolz: I used to appreciate Die Welt a lot. It bothers me that there too one now finds the hymns of praise for Angela Merkel’s great political leadership. If I want to read about German domestic politics, then I feel best turning to the Neuen Zürcher Zeitung. It offers a perspective that is distinctly different.
Q: The private media are calling for state subventions—above and beyond the sixty million euros already committed to support newspapers. Are we facing a statist structural transformation of the public sphere?
Bolz: I can’t say much to that. I can only pray that it doesn’t happen. When it is a matter of the existence of one’s own place of work, some media companies are evidently willing to sell their souls. I can even understand that. But the results would be terrible.
Q: In the context of the pandemic, scientists have had a clearly stronger influence in politics and media. Some virologists suddenly appear to be more important than members of the cabinet or leading editors. What does this mean for public debate?
Bolz: I am not able to judge the competency of the virologists who now appear widely in the media. During the pandemic, in general I appreciate the scientists and politicians who honestly concede that they still do not know enough. But as for wide swaths of the humanities: many are sinning against Max Weber’s exhortation against using the lecture as an opportunity to sermonize.
Q: Who is doing that?
Bolz: For example, Ottmar Edenhofer from the Potsdam Institute for Research on Climate Change. He is very proud to be the actual author of the papal encyclical Laudato si’ on climate questions as well as the key advisor for the climate policies of the German government. There are plenty of representatives of sociology, political science, psychology, as well as law who would love to appear in media debates as leading advisors. A real casting takes place: your chances to appear are best if you provide exactly what the editorial boards want on a specific topic. The fact that these academic opportunists appear more and more has become a big problem for academia.
Q: Do you see a chance that a new generation of scholars might break through this conformism?
Bolz: I am not particularly optimistic that a future generation of humanists and social scientists can break through the strictures of paternalism and conformism. People worry about their careers, and state control is becoming ever stricter. The result is opportunism scholarship. That’s why I place my bet more on thinking outside of the institutions.
Q: You recently left this academic world through retirement. Was that a painful departure?
Bolz: I am enjoying my freedom, which includes, among other things, the fact that no one can threaten me with disciplinary action. I can send out my missives on Twitter and place them in other select media channels. Otherwise I am experiencing what Goethe once described as the privilege of age: the gradual withdrawal from public visibility.
