How to stay decent in a liberal democracy

When I was called a while ago and asked if I wanted to give a eulogy for Cem Özdemir, my answer was yes, of course. If the Central Council asks if Cem Özdemir would like that, I won't say no. And when I later – the date was already in the calendar – sat down at my desk and began to think more carefully about what it means to give a eulogy, a eulogy, especially as a political columnist whose day-to-day business is made of mockery and complaining, I got a huge shock.

A few years ago I read an interview with the philosopher Agnes Heller. She, who survived the Holocaust, Stalinism and decades of repression in communist Hungary, spoke there about the difference between being decent and being good.

She said: “A good person visits the old and the sick. He sits by their bed and talks to them, even if he is not related or friends with them. I'm not a saint, I'm decent, that's a bourgeois category."

Now, the circumstances under which Agnes Heller lived and worked can by no means be compared with those of Cem Özdemir and probably most people here in this room. We, who are lucky enough to have grown up in a liberal democracy and to be able to spend our lives in it. Of course, as Cem Özdemir rightly pointed out, democracy does not defend itself. But for us, staying decent does not (usually) involve any danger to life and limb.

We can speak out against any injustice, against any form of misanthropy, against anti-Semitism. We might get applause for it, even prizes. But nobody locks us up, nobody kills us. This may sound silly, but as we can see from dictatorships like Russia, Syria or Iran, this is anything but a matter of course.

So what does it mean to stay decent in a liberal democracy? Let me return to the desk once more. So I started collecting. I wanted to review all the interviews, speeches, tweets, and statements before I started writing. As you can imagine, when you start looking and sifting through Cem Özdemir, there is a lot, I don't want to say: tons.

I started to recap what has particularly stuck in my memory over the last few years. There is, of course, Cem Özdemir's tireless work for the recognition of the genocide of the Armenians, from which he never gave up, despite attempts at intimidation by Turkish nationalists and right-wing extremists. I still remember his speech in the Bundestag back then, in which he also named the role of the German Empire in this genocide, addressed the ongoing persecution of Christians in the region to this day, and reminded his colleagues in Turkey who, if they work to deal with this crime, be beaten up, imprisoned, even killed.

There is the state banquet with the autocrat Recep Tayyib Erdogan in 2018, to which Cem Özdemir appeared with a button on his lapel that read: “Give freedom of thought” – in Turkish, of course, so that Erdogan also understands it. A quote from "Don Carlos", a drama by Cem Özdemir's much-appreciated Swabian compatriot Friedrich Schiller.

In his Schiller speech in the Marbach Literature Archive, Cem Özdemir said about this quote: “Did Schiller know Erdogan? No of course not. But he didn't have to know him either. He knew the Erdogans of his time.”

Cem Özdemir knows how powerful language can be if you know how to use it. That means which word at which time in which place. Yes, dosage is also important, as is knowing when to rumble. His famous speech addressed to the AfD in 2018 in the Bundestag has certainly not been forgotten by many – including the AfD; it is a rhetorical lesson in how to counter right-wing populists.

Sometimes it's appropriate to make a fuss, after all it's about something. But just making noise is useless. You also have to argue coherently, otherwise all noise is wasted. Cem Özdemir manages both.

I quote: "All of you sitting there from the AfD, if you were honest, you would admit that you despise this country. They despise everything for which this country is respected and respected throughout the world”; "I've got the microphone here, and thank God you can't turn it off for me. I know, in the regime you dream of, you could turn off the microphone; but thank God you can't do that here." And "By the way, if you need the exit phone number for neo-Nazis: I have it. I'm happy to make them available to you."

The Green politician Cem Özdemir sharply criticizes the members of the AfD parliamentary group. He accuses them of being "made of the same rotten stuff as Erdogan, who arrested Deniz Yücel".

Source: WELT/German Bundestag

Özdemir has wit coupled with attitude. Appropriate formulations that I, as a columnist, am sometimes jealous of (and that rarely happens in the mostly boring construction kit language of politics), for example when he calls Erdogan "the operetta sultan on the Bosporus" (how true if one knows Erdogan's crocodile tears staged in a publicity effective manner!). Or his statement that IS cannot be “defeated with a yoga mat under your arm” – a rejection of any self-righteous pacifism.

Cem Özdemir is very clear on that. Even when it comes to Israel's right to self-defense. I quote, March 2021: “Israel is under continuous fire from thousands of Hamas rockets. At the moment, the country is not being protected by warm words, but by the Iron Dome missile defense system.”

Cem Özdemir is too realpolitikr to believe that language alone can change the world. And as if he didn't know that words can become shells. When it comes to the unprecedented crime of the Shoah, whether one's own parents or grandparents come from here or somewhere else, Cem Özdemir concludes that remembering also implies responsibility.

For him, remembering is not an end in itself. Cem Özdemir is not someone you meet at commemorative events, but who doesn't want to have anything to do with the anti-Semitism that still exists and actually exists for the remaining 364 days of the year. Yes, that's how it is: With the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, unfortunately, anti-Semitism did not magically disappear from people's minds. It still exists, right-wing anti-Semitism, centrist anti-Semitism, Islamist anti-Semitism, migrant anti-Semitism – and also left-wing anti-Semitism, which likes to come in the cloak of alleged criticism of Israel.

Anti-Semitism exists even in countries where there are few or no Jews. I can confirm that. A week ago I was in Iraq, a country that has so brutally and thoroughly expelled its Jews and that has nothing better to do in 2022 than to pass a law making any contact with an Israeli punishable by death.

If we only look at the security measures that had to be taken for this evening event, we can see that in Germany people haven't (enoughly) done their homework yet. The homework, the most basic of all homework, which Adorno formulated more than 50 years ago: "The demand that Auschwitz does not happen again is the very first thing in education."

Cem Özdemir is not an activist, not a moralist, not an anti-Semitism commissioner. And I don't want to deny the important work of the anti-Semitism commissioners in this country, on the contrary. But it is not the case with the fight against anti-Semitism that one person is responsible and the others can lean back.

When it comes to anti-Semitism, Cem Özdemir is on the spot: whether at the solidarity rally “Berlin wears kippah” in 2018 after two men wearing kippahs were attacked by an Arabic-speaking man in Prenzlauer Berg; whether in Halle, where he visited the sites of the 2019 attack, the neighborhood kebab shop and the synagogue; whether as an observer at the start of the trial against the assassin of this right-wing terrorist attack in the Magdeburg district court.

Cem Özdemir has made the fight against anti-Semitism his own, as we should all make it our own. He has just realized that those who are primarily and most affected by anti-Semitism should not be left alone with it. Even if it is often said that this is "an attack on all of us": That may also be true, but it primarily affects Jews.

And you have to say it again here: you can rely on Cem Özdemir. And he remains the pragmatist and Realpolitiker that he is. For Cem Özdemir, against all anti-Semitism really means against all anti-Semitism. Whether by the right-wing agitators of the AfD, the Erdogan fanboys at Ditib, spread by Manar-TV, Hezbollah's propaganda station, also in German living rooms, by leftists in the name of postcolonialism. One or the other is not swept under the table because it just doesn't suit you.

I quote: “The argument that there are also German right-wing radicals does not exonerate. It's bad enough that there are German right-wing extremists.” With this attitude, Cem Özdemir not only makes friends. At times he even makes very dangerous enemies, given the threats from German and Turkish right-wing extremists.

Cem Özdemir is now Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture. Previously, he chaired the Committee on Transport and Digital Infrastructure. God knows you don't have much to do there. Nevertheless, he finds time to write a foreword for the book of a persecuted Turkish author, to give a speech in solidarity with the people of Iran who are being murdered for their cry for freedom - precisely because it is important at the moment.

And as far as a politician's life is concerned: Whoever runs for election, even governs in the end, has to deal with the pressure to form a coalition, with power struggles and competition in the day-to-day business of politics. He sometimes makes short-sighted decisions, finds mediocre solutions, has to make compromises, may fail at one point or another, that's part of the game.

To come back to Agnes Heller: It is possible that you cannot remain a good person in politics. But to come up with a possible answer to the question I raised earlier (so what does it mean to remain decent in a liberal democracy?): Maybe not looking the other way, where unfortunately too often people are looking the other way, means acting, where unfortunately people often just stand by and remain consistent, whether one makes friends and/or enemies. Finding the right words with wit and dignity. With respect, no more and no less.

Cem Özdemir proved all of that and he deserves this award for that. Dear Mr. Özdemir, I am very pleased that this year's Leo Baeck Prize has gone to you. I say congratulations and thank you!

Ronya Othmann is a writer and journalist. The text is her eulogy for Cem Özdemir at the presentation of the Leo Baeck Prize by the Central Council of Jews in Germany.