Virtuosos of indignation

But that's exactly how the digitally triggered world of communication works today: you absolutely want to attract attention, set an example, revolt in the name of alleged unreasonable demands and mental deprivation of freedom and pretend to be in possession of the exclusive untruth with which the apparently unenlightened Majority would be influenced. Outrage has now become an all too cheap means of communication for many and many right-wing extremists: It is often practiced through a socially marginal, “incorrect” form of communication that leaves its addressees in the dark about how a message could be meant: just playing rebels with ambiguous, ironic aspects of their expressions and thus consciously move in the vicinity of aesthetically ambiguous, surprising and irritating modes of expression.

Right-conservative, lateral-thinking rebels in particular are often not virtuosos of their communication that divides society: They clearly believe in what they bring out outrageously and loudly and are seldom able to see themselves from a distance and through the eyes of others. Anyone who deliberately disrupts the standards of sensible communication must see to it that they somehow re-explain the fragments. Even those who seem to be just outraged can do so in a way that shows others that it is only one of many other ways to act in this way. To be outraged can also mean: at the same time to build a distance to one's own one-sided view of the situation.

Take that, user: “Truths” as they are often communicated in social media today are always ironically broken, exaggeratedly staged or deliberately kept in the gray area between fictions and facts: they are made aesthetically recognizable as stagings. Like all aesthetic truths, they are aesthetically constructed, often shortened, exaggerated or otherwise triggered and have no claim to the eternity of mythical truths that never existed or will never exist. Many things are outrageous today, depending on one's own political-aesthetic point of view; But in the end, the medium of indignation is an expression of a society that is today characterized by social insecurity, threats to the future, a lack of empathy and various forms of non-recognition.

Michael Kroeger