I grew up with the living memory of fascist atrocities. As a child, my mother watched people collapse and starve in the streets; my father told me about the sheer brutality of concentration camp commanders, the extracted gold teeth, and the shrunken heads of murdered Jewish prisoners displayed as trophies. Spending two days at the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial when I was 14 scarred my consciousness forever: it revealed the terrifying efficiency with which Germans elevated mass murder to an industrial scale. Shaped by seminal literature like Anna Seghers’ The Seventh Cross and Bruno Apitz’ Naked Among Wolves, I internalised early on just how fragile human civilization truly is.
I also absorbed a disturbing historical truth: the "concerned citizens" of nearby Weimar complained back then about the poor air quality because the emaciated bodies burned in Buchenwald's crematoriums produced foul smoke. They weren't outraged by the genocide happening next door; they were annoyed by the smell in their backyards. This is why I hold a deep-seated distrust toward the so-called "bourgeois middle class": it is historically comfortable, conforming, spineless, and self-absorbed. Should fascism return, the quiet middle will not stand in its way.
Today, we are witnessing a modern iteration of this moral cowardice in public debate—a textbook case of False Balance and discourse distortion:
Where is the universal empathy for civilian casualties? Where is the courage of an enlightened society to call out state violence regardless of who commits it? Turning a blind eye to human suffering in Gaza reflects the very hypocrisy that has always defined the passive middle class. It is time to break through this media-driven False Balance and restore genuine moral clarity.
