The Schizophrenia of the Prefix Citizens

Since the end of Europe’s division, and especially since the EU expansions in 2004 and 2007 there is not a single European country left that cannot be called civic with respect to its political organization, economic system, and society in the sense of capitalistic business management on the common basis of a nation of law and democracy.



So what does this thunder-blast demand to create a “Europe of Citizens” from the civic Europe mean? And what does this stamping of the “enraged or brave citizens”, nervously flanked by the media mean? I want to be me, but I am a different entity? Am I not only stronger than me, but may I also confirm now by intolerance what I always used to legitimize by tolerance?

At a time in which the meaning of the term “citizen” had not yet been clearly defined, it did not require a prefix in order to develop potency within the social discourse. The term “citizen” was complex but clear. It was complex because of its multiple definitions: sociological, economical, political, legal, moral. It was clear because it received its precise definition as a synopsis of those facets.

The term “civic” defined the demand for self-interest, legitimately enforcing it – as long as it served the public interest at the same time, no matter how dialectic it may be. Hence, “civic” has always been a social term, though it never stood for the intention to rid the anti-social from this world. What it fought against was the asocial, i.e. what the citizens considered criminals and malingerer, but also aristocrats since their nobility was based on birth and not on performance, social usefulness, or ethics. Equality was granted before the civic law backdrop; behind the scenes, the misery determined by the laws of nature due to the inequality of men and their talents and opportunities was supposed to be eliminated. Thus the term “civic” defined an ideal wherein the non-ideal had its place, therefore also legitimizing the misery first created by the “civic world” itself as a natural part of that ideal. The devotion to an ideal, and the simultaneous acceptance of an all but perfect reality changed the idea of the “civic world” into a concrete utopia which no longer envisions a different future. That is what made this “ideal” successful - and also sealed its fate.

Enraged and Brave Citizens

Hence, “rage” is considered anti-civic. What should the citizen be angry about? About the social misery? As a citizen, he has long accepted it – he just does not want to be part of it. About the system? It is his system, and he definitely pays his taxes in agreement with the fact that the state disposes of those funds to defend this, his system, by all means, even by means which are contrary to other civic ideals, if necessary. If safety is what the citizen desires, he agrees to have his freedom restricted. If freedom is what he desires, he forgets about fraternity altogether. If fraternity is what he desires, he switches from the cold security of the legal status to the pompous world of privacy. Here he once again grumbles relentlessly about the public world. And if in the eternal failure of an entire civic existence such dissatisfaction which may be considered rage arises after all within the cracks between these spheres, even this fact has always been protected by civic law under the title of freedom of speech. The regulars’ table is its cell - and that is where it is definitely visible that “rage” is merely a euphemism for resentment.

And what about “courage”? How much courage does it take to exercise the forms of civil protest which the civic nation of law provides for and defines, i.e. the freedom of assembly, the right to demonstrate, the freedom of speech? Just that little bit of courage one wishes to cool down. However, at a time when the term “citizen” still meant something, courage was a natural attribute: fighting arbitrariness, risking one’s life while fighting for the implementation of civic rights, and demanding to be able to develop your own individuality, even if it is contrary to the milieu or the spirit of the time (zeitgeist). Following his heroic times, the “citizen” has failed with respect to all these demands: He lost the fight against arbitrariness not only in the dark times of civic history; even in less sinister times he legitimized arbitrariness with tolerance time and again. Most of them considered defending the civic rights less lucrative than exchanging those rights against security, privileges, and arrogance. And the idea of individuality as a social demand has been sacrificed for a hefty profit on the market which makes the masses uniform with particles of individuality. You must not understand it but be in a position to afford it.

Hence if the term “brave citizen” is considered a tautological term, the “enraged citizen” is also an active contradiction in itself. He clenches his fist, but his fist is empty because he let go of what he now believes he is rebelling against. He demands political participation – full of contempt for politics. He demands rationality – and elects those who serve his resentment. He fights politics there where it catches his attention, i.e. locally (because of a train station, a tunnel, an airport runway), but later chooses the same policies which defend his “national interests” without being able to formulate what those may be.

Split Interests

Which interests might people have that would be fundamentally different from the interests of another nation’s citizen? The only thing that’s apparent is that “national interests” must be something totally different than regional or local interests, downright the opposite – which would be an interesting realization should a prefix citizen would come to that conclusion. That is to say that it would be his self-awareness of the schizophrenia already expressed by the tautological term: The “I am somebody different”-split in the demand “Europe of Citizens” also stands for nothing different than “Europe – those are the others!” And indeed, this is the citizen’s inner turmoil: living at his specific location with all the civic rights, on a continent that is now completely civic: “Europe” – that’s too far away for him, too abstract, he doesn’t see or hear what is being built over there, he doesn’t know the people who play an active role, he alleges that they have privileges which, would he ever be in their position, he would certainly insist on for himself - and that makes him angry.

On the local level, however, he suffers from the contrary. Everything gets to him, here he hears and sees what is being built, and, as a neighbor, that bothers him if you will. He is familiar with the political representatives, he hears the clichés they use to try and make things right for everybody on an ongoing basis, and he does not see the right but only the helpless attempt to legitimize arbitrariness and wastefulness in those clichés. That makes him angry. This is how the citizen finds his civic world break into two parts, into one too far removed, and one too close. They are both concrete worlds, and he stands in direct opposition to both.

Over there they are setting specific parameters, over here specific living conditions, i.e. according to a logical political system which may be criticized in many ways indeed – but not for not being civic.

There are two potential reasons why the political organization of the civic Europe might not suit the European citizens, and why the citizens’ political participation options at their place of residence might produce enraged citizens: Either Europe, on a local as well as on a common supranational level, went against the principles of civic policy and economy (this is a grotesque and instantly rebuttable thesis, of course), or the enraged citizens within this civic Europe no longer are aware what the term “civic” stands for (this would be an interesting punch line indeed). However, in order to somehow cement together his divisiveness, the prefix citizen definitely needs a third item to act as glue that holds his identity together. And this third item has to be centered between the one that’s too far and the one that’s too close. In addition, it must be extremely greasy and sticky, and it has to be so abstract that it may not be questioned by specific experiences. This third item is the national (spirit). It embeds the residence into something bigger and higher, but is not as far removed as “Europe”. Simultaneously it provides for a feeling of belonging which, as abstract as it seems, creates a sense of community as desired even where there are concrete differences and boundaries, objective common grounds. 

From National State to Europe

During the dawn of the civic age, the national identity, a shabby ideology, which has regularly led to wars and crimes against humanity, had one sole rationale: to create less fragmented domestic markets from the countless small states, principalities, and sovereign provinces of the fragmented Europe, and to bind small enemies together into larger powers which were supposed to protect the free trade within their now expanded territorial boundaries. As much as this concept proved to be disastrous historically, it actually constituted a historic compromise with regard to the civic interests which now enforces the European Union as a peace project: a larger market, unified parameters, legal protection. But instead of considering a civic Europe the fulfillment of what the national state could only be a bad partial solution for, the prefix citizen is now even more eager to experience himself as authentic wearing the ideological nationalistic costume thus the murderous masquerade of his ideals. In doing so, he considers the concrete realization of his historic causes merely a fraud, and regards his own participation in the bourgeois transformation of Europe just as disenfranchisement and exploitation. Although disenfranchisement and exploitation might be entrenched in the concrete reality, as little repeal as the prefix citizen gets from the retro-chic of nationalism, as little will he realize its causes in the picture puzzle of his schizophrenic existence.

The prefix citizen phenomenon might be even more complex. However, empirical findings show that he himself blurs all inner distinction while trying not to segregate the movement of the enraged. Hence the demonstrated rage and his alleged courage imply neither an agreement with civic interests nor a difference from the civic society, a society which would fundamentally like to question the matter the prefix citizen believes he’s rebelling against. He rebels against his own political representation which, on the national level, he simultaneously legitimizes. He just might need courage one of these days – when he takes a look into the mirror. ●

Robert Menasse is a writer and lives in Vienna.