As spokesperson for the writers’ association PEN Berlin, best-selling author Eva Menasse is concerned about freedom of art and freedom of expression: she complains about the toxic climate of discourse in the digital space and the “strangling desire” to always be on the right side. It would be better to remain silent on some topics than to take a clear position. A mistake, she thinks.
SRF: How are you doing in these times, with terrible wars and an unstable world situation?
Eva Menasse: I feel no different than most people. There is a feeling of being overwhelmed and hopeless. But I realize that the world has always been terrible and today we just know too much. If you push back this knowledge a little and switch off the devices, you can look at your own life again.
Can one “withdraw” and remain silent about all the injustice?
We drive ourselves crazy when we spend every second dealing with the horrors of the world. The flood of information that reaches us makes us hysterical. At the same time, it doesn’t make us react better – on the contrary.
After the Hamas attack on October 7th, you, as spokesperson for PEN Berlin, were accused of taking a position too late and not enough clearly. Is that correct?
It was the other way around. In the first few weeks we were the heroes of the reaction because we adapted our program for the Frankfurt Book Fair and immediately set up a discussion on Israel. At the same time, we protested against the withdrawal of the literary prize for the Palestinian writer Adania Shibli. As if she were responsible for the Hamas attack. I think this is a cultural-political scandal.
You don’t help the open society by abolishing it.
As PEN Berlin, we reacted in a variety of ways. The criticism came weeks later when the cultural sector looked for a victim and suddenly exaggerated our active reaction.
The BDS movement (“Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions”) aims at the cultural and political isolation of Israel and is even classified as anti-Semitic in Germany. Nevertheless, you criticize it as “spirit snooping” when artists are denied prizes because of their proximity to BDS. For what reason?
In its original idea, BDS as a boycott movement was the antithesis of terrorism: the goal was to achieve political goals using peaceful means. Although I reject the idea of BDS, the PEN Charter does not stand for cultural boycott. We cannot punish artists for what their government does and judge their works based on that. You don’t help the open society by abolishing it.
You criticize left-wing symbolic politics. One example is the Schalömchen tram in Cologne in the colors of the Israeli flag and with a Star of David. This distracts attention from the actual problem of true anti-Semitism.
This is the case in public debate. There is a series of right-wing extremist murders in Germany that dates back to the 1980s. It is still the right-wing extremists who take up arms, spread conspiracy ideologies and try to attack the state.
Instead, we are debating the hidden, structural anti-Semitism in the cultural scene. It seems to me as if these are distraction discussions that ultimately protect no one.
The conversation was conducted by Barbara Bleisch and is an excerpt from Sternstunde Philosophy.