In Bochum-Wattenscheid, the election of an AfD deputy mayor has triggered outrage, suspicion, and calls for his removal — a local drama that mirrors Europe’s wider fear of populism. This essay explores how inherited guilt, moral panic, and the urge to “defend democracy” can end up undermining it, turning freedom into ritual self-policing.
For three centuries France and Britain have rebelled against religious authority, from Voltaire’s écrasez l’infâme to Nietzsche’s death of God and the modern satire of Private Eye and Le Canard enchaîné. Yet rebellion, once a weapon of liberation, has hardened into reflex. The challenge today is not to keep mocking but to recover conviction—before the state learns to silence even our laughter.
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), lens grinder and outcast of Amsterdam, became one of the most radical voices of the seventeenth century. His call for freedom of thought, secular politics, and democracy as the most “natural” form of government resonates today in Western constitutions.