Alternative facts in Bonhoeffer’s Germany

In 1943 Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes a brief letter on New Years Day entitled After Ten years. Within that letter he offers a poignant reflection on the human proclivity to accept a lie (Folly) not based on its empirical worth or moral standing, but simply because the lie appeases personal prejudices and gives the pathology validity in public discourse. Although at first glance it appears that Bonhoeffer offers a roundabout reflection on the idea of folly, what Bonhoeffer renders posthumously is an archetypal reflection on our current political discourse commonly known as the post-truth era and also a critique on his context that is shaped by der Kampf.  Bonhoeffer is speaking to his social context, which is shaped by Nazi propaganda, however, what he interrogates in Of Folly parallels our current sociopolitical discourse labeled as post-truth or what has been recently labeled as alternative facts.  

Bonhoeffer is rarely explicit about the sociopolitical context that informs his various perspectives and we are left to wonder how much of his social context is informing his theology, however, by this time in Bonhoeffer’s life we can reasonably suggest  that his thinking was clearly informed by his sociopolitical environment (one may also argue that his earlier thinking on the Sermon on the Mount was informed by his context but now it’s not just for the sake of academia or bolstering Volk ideology) more persistently than it was prior to Letters and Papers from Prison. In fact the ideology that is the impetus for the policy that justifies Bonhoeffer’s imprisonment lends itself to folly.  The social conditions in which Bonhoeffer is situated is birthed out of  the folly of Volk Weltanschauung which promotes the idea that the imperial man-the ideal human is of Aryan descent and any human being not a part of this racial origin was a threat to their existence.

Post-truth is described as that which relates to or denotes circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief (Oxford English Dictionary). It is a phrase first coined by Ralph Keyes in his book The Post-Truth Era. Post-truth are not just little white lies but are constructed with the aim of shaping public opinion. It first requires an antithesis to a particular idea or person(s). After World War I, Jewish people became the object of German scorn. Their sinking economy and global embarrassment gave away to feelings of shame, but also inadequacy, as Jews were perceived to be progressing further than their native Deutsch brethren(similar to the fear many people have today of minorities progressing more than mainstream America).  Hitler and his Nazi regime were able to exploit this feeling of collective loss and ethic embarrassment by promoting a trope of der Kampf usually translated as the struggle or battle (War and The Media, 128). One on level there was a socioeconomic struggle that destroyed Germany’s economy, largely due to the Great Depression. On the other level there was a transcendent metanarrative attached to der Kampf, where struggle operated as law of nature. This law not only promoted the competition for existence, but also treated the natural world as a site where humans could assist nature by improving their ability to resist any forces that threatened their survival.  The der Kampf gave the metanarrative needed to articulate the vision of the German Reich and as a result they promulgated an imagined Jew as an obstacle to be conquered and the existential threat to their existence (Selling Hitler, pg. 5).