The Berlin Opera Cancellation and the Politics of Fear

A post by Maynard

Now this is an interesting story, and it’s noteworthy because it’s not just another tale of big, bad Islamists. Rather, it tells us (the West, that is) something about ourselves.

The show in question is a presentation of Mozart’s Idomeneo, King of Crete, and it concerns the aftermath of the Trojan War. The opera as originally written by Mozart would not have offended anyone except maybe worshippers of Neptune (the pagan god, not the planet). But the director, Hans Neuenfels, is an artistic soul who decided what was needed was an epilogue involving the severed heads of various deities, including Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha, and — you guessed it! — Mohammed.

The police received an anonymous phone call from a woman who was concerned that this opera might offend Muslims. The rest is history.

Note that there was no indication that the upcoming presentation had raised a blip on the radar of the Muslim community. The cancellation was purely a precaution in anticipation of expected trouble. You see how we’ve entered an era of self-censorship. This is particularly nefarious because it’s often a relatively invisible thing. If we’re ready to quietly re-orient our lives so as to avoid giving any potential offence, however innocent, to the thugs of the world, then what have we become?

On the flip side of the coin, it sounds like the director has gone out of his way to render Mozart offensive to religious people, and this sort of thing deserves a ripple of protest. I’d be happy to protest it if it were to come to my town. But I think we (the good guys, that is) all understand that the culture war is a battle of hearts and minds, and must be won by persuasion and not by intimidation and violence.

So the ironic summary is that in this case, the Islamists haven’t done a thing, and we merely see an example of the West grappling between its two unhealthy urges: Extreme political correctness and cowardice on one hand, and in-your-face degenerate offensiveness on the other. Is it too much to hope that both of these extremes will strangle each other and let the rest of us sane and decent people get on with our lives?