I won't let anyone join the debate club who wants to set it on fire

digipigi: You once quoted something your mother said: “There are no bad people, only the wrong kind of distance.” What does that mean to you—and how does it apply to politics?

Marina Weisband: I’ve always taken this sentence as my personal guiding principle. It taught me that I can’t change other people. What I can change is how I behave toward them. And yes, I believe that applies to politics as well. In the debate over proceedings to ban the AfD, for example, we often hear: “You can’t ban opinions; you can’t erase ideas from people’s minds with a ban.” That’s true. But we can keep these people out of government. We don’t need a thought police. We just have to ensure that people who want to take away others’ rights don’t get into these positions of power. Period.

digipigi: And just like that, we’re right in the middle of the debate about democracy’s ability to act. What can we do to counter authoritarianism?

Marina Weisband: Democratic parties can still offer a better narrative than they currently do. Housing, social justice, infrastructure—the things that concern people in their daily lives. Do good and talk about it. According to a recent Bertelsmann study, the traffic-light coalition government has been more effective than its predecessor and successor. But it was really bad at selling that message. This is also due to how the attention economy works: negative headlines get more clicks. Habeck saved us from the energy crisis—that’s not a headline that lasts for months. If someone makes a small mistake, they’re dragged through every headline. On top of that, the way politicians communicate completely denies emotions. As a psychologist, I consider that fundamentally wrong.

digipigi: Speaking of emotions: These days, they’re often triggered and generated on social media platforms. Do you still see digitalization as a source of hope for a better, more connected world?

Marina Weisband: When I wrote my first book over ten years ago, I thought: Now humanity really ought to be coming closer together. We were better informed than any generation before us, connected globally, and able to use automatic translation. But then antitrust laws failed worldwide, network effects took hold, and a handful of large platforms took over the internet—driven by the logic of hardcore capitalism. The result was that algorithms turned users back into consumers. The internet is still the most powerful tool humanity has ever created. The only question is what incentive mechanisms we leave it to. A democracy in which people get their information mainly through private platforms owned by billionaire oligarchs who collude with authoritarian governments—that cannot work. We have handed these people control over our attention.

digipigi: What would be the political response to that?

Marina Weisband: Europe could force the major platforms to ensure interoperability—open protocols—so that, whether I’m on Mastodon, TikTok, or my own platform, I can view content from other services, and vice versa. Just like email: no matter which provider you use, we can write to each other. Then we wouldn’t have this network effect that makes us completely dependent on the big tech giants. The platforms would never do that voluntarily because it undermines their business model. So it has to be a political measure. And it would already look very good on a government today if they themselves communicated only on decentralized services like Mastodon, and not on platforms that want to bring Europe and a liberal world to its knees.

digipigi: You’re working with schools on your “Aula” project. What’s your impression of young people today?

Marina Weisband: Young people are harder to categorize than they used to be because they’ve become much more diverse. I encounter both incredibly well-educated, politically active, self-confident young people—and students who are completely disengaged, passively consuming content, and in some cases deeply conservative. I’ve never seen so many young people suffering from burnout as I do today. The social contract—good education, good job, good income, retirement—has been broken. Many young people are well aware of this. Some are on a “get-rich-quick” kick: they see that society is splitting into rich and poor, and they feel they must belong to the rich. Hence the Lamborghini aesthetic, the showing off, and hence also many young FDP voters. Children are raised to be consumers from the time they are toddlers through social media. In school, they consume the curriculum without ever being asked: What do you want to learn? This affects their self-image—a very powerless one. Because whoever is a consumer is always dependent on what’s on offer.

digipigi: And that’s exactly what Aula is trying to change?

Marina Weisband: I should probably explain “Aula” briefly: It’s a nonprofit organization that, for the past ten years, has been providing schools with a framework that allows all students to actively participate in decisions affecting their school—contributing ideas, discussing them, voting on them, and putting them into action. The school board signs an agreement that delegates certain decision-making areas: no firing teachers, no spending money that isn’t there—but changing school rules, planning events, and modifying facilities. Our initial evaluation shows that the project primarily boosts self-efficacy. It takes young people out of the role of consumers and puts them in a role where they shape their environment. The school becomes their own space. And we see that vandalism is declining, violence is declining, and compliance with rules is increasing—because the students created these rules themselves and understand why they exist.

digipigi: Can democratic trust be restored this way?

Marina Weisband: Trust stems from one of two sources: Either I trust institutions because they always look out for me, or because they belong to me. In West Germany, we had the first model for decades—the economic miracle, constant growth, with each generation faring better than the last. We had a consumerist view of politics. Angela Merkel herself said in her book that she approached politics as a service. That’s true. But this model reaches its limits when growth stops. In my household, I can say: Either the dishwasher gets fixed or the child gets new sneakers—dear family, this month’s budget only covers one of those. That’s a tough choice, but I make it because it’s my household; I understand the problem. But if I feel that something was promised to me by an abstract group called “politics,” yet it isn’t delivered, then there is no trust and anger arises. That is where we are now. So we need the second model: institutions that open up and say—we belong to you. My role in democracy isn’t just to vote every four years. Democracy—I’m part of that; it’s my household, where I have a say.

digipigi: Speaking of “having a say”: How do you talk to people who, in your view, hold completely absurd positions?

Marina Weisband: I make it a point to set aside the conspiracy theories they tell themselves—but to take more seriously the underlying needs. Someone says their daughter can no longer walk safely through the streets. I hear: safety. A basic human need. I ask further: “Why?”—“She’s being approached by men.” – So we have a problem with sexism. ‘Let’s work on that.’ The deeper I dig, the more I realize: Many people who attribute their misfortune to racism actually have needs that aren’t all that far removed from my own. The need for safety, for being seen and needed. And I never try to refute conspiracy theories. People believe in religions that have predicted the end of the world five times—and five times it hasn’t happened. And after every refutation, they believe in it all the more strongly. We are not rational beings. So I ignore the story and shift the focus: I take the needs seriously, not the stories people use to try to satisfy them.

digipigi: Does this conversation strategy also work with professional politicians who hold extremist views?

Marina Weisband: No, that’s something completely different. I no longer appear on talk shows with AfD politicians. That’s a setting where no one is allowed to lose. I only validate their positions by stepping into the same arena with them, as if these were somehow negotiable values—whether human rights are good or overrated. We mustn’t even open up such debates. As a democrat, I must take it for granted that all people are valuable. If we start arguing about that, we’ve already lost. I have an image for this: If I have a debate club, I’m happy to debate with anyone who’s serious about it. But I won’t let anyone in who wants to set the debate club on fire. That doesn’t contradict the goal of holding debates—on the contrary. In doing so, I protect the space where debates are possible in the first place.

digipigi: How do you view the future of democracy?

Marina Weisband: I hate the phrase “defending democracy.” I don’t want to go back to where we were yesterday—because yesterday led us to where we are today. I want to continue building and developing democracy. Toward significantly greater participation. A bit like “Aula,” only on a larger scale.

digipigi: How hopeful are you right now?

Marina Weisband: In the short term, I’m worried. We learn alarmingly little from history: appeasement doesn’t work—we’ve known that since the 1930s—and yet here we are discussing it again. I wouldn’t count on us being immune to anything just because of our history. In the long term, however, I’m very optimistic. Fascism is a failed ideology. It always devours itself because it always needs enemies from outside. The more it eliminates, the more it seeks them within its own ranks. From this long-term historical perspective, I’m not worried at all. And: Fortunately, hope and feelings aren’t just about politics. Spring is coming; we should all get outside again, smell the wood, dip a spoon into lemon pudding. The little things make us resilient for the big things.

Marina Weisband is a psychologist, politician, and founder of Aula gGmbH, a project dedicated to promoting democracy in schools. She served as political director of the Pirate Party and is the author of several books on democracy and the digital society.

Photo: (C) Lars Borges