“Angriff auf die Freiheit” – A Polemic by Juli Zeh and Ilija Trojanow
Biometric passports, telephone and video surveillance, online searches, computer surveillance: in Angriff auf die Freiheit (i.e., Attack on Freedom) the writers Juli Zeh and Ilija Trojanow appeal to responsible citizens to defend themselves against encroachments on personal freedom.“We want to warn you.” So begins the barely 140 page long pamphletAngriff auf die Freiheit. Sicherheitswahn, Überwachungsstaat und der Abbau bürgerlicher Rechte (i.e., Attack on Freedom. Security Madness, Surveillance State and the Dismantling of Civil Rights; 2009). “We are in the process of swapping our personal liberties for a specious promise of ‘security’.”The authors of this polemic are the writers Juli Zeh and Ilija Trojanow, both of whom are best known for their award-winning novels. The idea for a joint project of another sort came about through a e-mail exchange between them. The exchange in turn went back to an essay, ”Mit Sicherheit in den Untergang” (i.e., Securely into Disaster), by Trojanow. “It could be by me”, thought Julia Zeh after reading it. And so it came about that the two writers jointly dedicated themselves to a subject that is equally important to both of them.
Freedom: a forgotten good
Angriff auf die Freiheit is about the creeping erosion of fundamental democratic values and about the state’s rage for surveillance and collecting data. Especially since the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center in New York, politicians and the media have been stirring up fears and anxiety. Yet “Not terrorism is the present danger for our country, but rather the readiness to be intimidated by terrorists and the attempt to exploit the ‘terrorist threat’ in order to introduce authoritarian structures”.In the face of this evoked danger, citizens have surrendered their liberties in favor of a supposed security. The value of freedom seems to have been forgotten; without complaint or struggle citizens have, in the view of the authors, let the state turn them into see-through persons. Replying to warning voices with “But I have nothing to hide” is, in their opinion, precisely the wrong response: “freedom is not a bonus, a premium, a thirteenth salary. Our understanding of the state presupposes it”. As Benjamin Franklin once said: “Those who would surrender freedom in order to gain security will end up losing both”.
Useless tightening of security laws
In Angriff auf die Freiheit, Juli Zeh and Ilija Trojanow argue boldly and directly. For example, they take a close look at the measures that the state has propagated as necessary in the “fight against terrorism”: biometric passports, telephone and video surveillance, online searches and computer surveillance.Conclusion: “To date in Germany, not a single terrorist attack has been foiled by means of tightened security laws. Many of the introduced measures have been proven to be unsuitable to the stated purpose of combating terrorism”. In an almost thirty page long appendix, the authors cite numerous sources and references that corroborate their arguments.
“Security is a feeling”
Using hyperbole to make a sober risk assessment, Trojanow and Zeh attempt to convince the reader that the new fear of terrorism is irrational. For example, the risk of a child drowning in a swimming pool is seven times higher than that of losing one’s life in a terrorist attack. “There is no such thing on this planet as complete security, unless one wants to regard death as a secure condition.”In an interview Juli Zeh has explained that “There has always been a terrorist threat. And we can work out quite soberly what terrorists can do to us: it is a question of a predictable number of deaths. That isn’t pretty, but they aren’t numbers that exceed those generated by the other security risks we live with daily”.
Wake-up call
After the appearance of Angriff auf die Freiheit, critics accused the authors of having written about their subject “in only a very one-sided way”. Moreover, that they had “little new to offer”. Yet Trojanow and Zeh mean to give the reader neither a deliberative, balanced consideration nor the latest information: they mean to stir him up, to wake him up.“I wouldn’t write if I wasn’t quite convinced that through writing one can change the way people think”, Ilija Trojanow has said in an interview. “And by changing the way they think, also change the world.” The last sentence of the book reads: “Fight back. It is still not too late.”
