Prof. Dr. Gesa Lindemann
How much violence does democracy need? How much can it tolerate?

Violence is a political term and therefore controversial. Is it violence when protesters from the "Last Generation" movement stick themselves to the streets to draw attention to inadequate climate policy? Some courts answer in the affirmative, while in the public debate the protests are also seen as legitimate civil disobedience. It is tricky to speak of violence and at the same time it is recognisable that democratic states must use legitimate force both internally and externally. Fundamental and human rights only exist if states guarantee their enforcement both internally and externally. The latter inevitably end up in a paradox of violence. The freedom and dignity of individuals are protected on the basis of state violence. Violence ensures that people can trust in the absence of violence. In Europe, this order developed in a complicated process in which older orders were replaced, for which trust in the ability of one's own (family) group to use violence was central. It is only in modern society that an understanding emerges according to which violence is to be understood as violence against the individual body, as an attack on the freedom of every single living human being. This order breaks with the violent past of serfdom (Europe) and slavery (USA). No one should be forcibly forced into a fatefully predetermined future. Everyone should be able to trust in freedom from violence and live in freedom and dignity. This promise is the normative standard that we owe to modernity and against which we should measure the modern order. The pressing questions today are: Does the enormous social inequality not lock the mass of the population into a fate without freedom? Is climate policy, which ignores the dramatic insights of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an attack on the freedom and lives of future generations? Should we not understand this as a violent attack on freedom and life? Must the state counter this violence?

(Excerpt from the press release of the University of Augsburg from 22 December 2023)