With "The 100": The ARD makes the ultimate confession about its own totalitarian mentality
With social pressure hidden behind debate culture and freedom of expression, “The 100” appears – as the new ultimate indoctrination show on ARD calls itself. The question “Is the AfD actually a problem?” was actually supposed to be answered between two opposing poles. In the end, however, the answer did not come from the 100 participants, who were pushed in one direction by ARD , but from the moderators themselves. And in an impressive and frighteningly subliminal way.
While the moderator Anna Planken defended the AfD as a democratic party, Tobias Krell took on the role of spoilsport - and ultimately became the game maker. The anti-AfD rhetoric used overshadowed Planken's passable portrayal of the AfD as a party that serves the needs of the population. Although this position was consistently defended for 60 minutes, Krell's talk about the unpopular party stuck in the end.
This was evidently the case for some participants: At the beginning of the broadcast, 63 participants saw the party as problematic, while 37 contradicted this portrayal. An hour later, this ratio had changed: only 28 participants saw no problem with the AfD, four abstained, and 68 sided with Krell. How could this happen?
The way in which ARD had designed the show was reminiscent of a survival game - eat or die, the motto could have been. This was not obvious at first glance, but became clear when the participants were involved in developing the theses. The quiz-like surveys that Krell held to support his points are particularly noteworthy.
"Who is to blame for climate change?" asked the moderator in all seriousness. The possible answers, however, seemed infantile. Participants could choose between humans, the sun and the moon. Anyone who chose one of the two celestial bodies would have made a fool of themselves on camera. On the one hand, neither of the two answers corresponds to the widespread narrative and, on the other hand, the person concerned would not have been given the opportunity to prove their own point of view.
In other words, by infantilizing the question, social pressure was exerted that ultimately led to participants realizing that humans were to blame for climate change. And in case a few more people disagreed, ARD had also taken precautions: the voting result, which could only be verified by a show of hands, was not shown. During the voting, only close-ups of some participants who had chosen the first answer option were shown.
A somewhat context-free excerpt from an interview with AfD politician Beatrix von Storch was then shown, in which the sun is blamed for the warming of the oceans. Although von Storch may have used this exaggeration as a stylistic device to reinforce the point that humans are not the only ones influencing the climate, this position was intended to underpin the AfD's supposedly anti-science stance.
The AfD "attacks our understanding of truth and science with this kind of thing," explained Krell. He is not wrong - because "our understanding" refers to the masses who follow a narrative. Anyone who questions such narratives seems to be an enemy of the truth.
And in Krell's eyes, this in turn means that people can no longer talk to each other. Statements like this were presented in an ultimatum and absolute manner: the only permissible truth - and anyone who thinks differently reveals themselves to be an embarrassing advocate of the discourse destroyers - in Krell's eyes, that is of course the AfD.
With this new concept, the ARD has created a demagogic masterpiece that is reminiscent of the citizens' council model. By apparently involving a cross-section of the population, results are promoted that are intended to be representative or at least illustrative for society as a whole. Similar to one of the citizens' councils of the current government, it was not clear in the program what background the participants had and how they were selected.
Apparently an actor also took part in the show – and became the protagonist of the final scene. The man who had initially considered the AfD to be unproblematic was finally convinced that the AfD was a problem for democracy in Germany. His conclusion that the AfD is a wolf in sheep's clothing marked the end of the show – and with it what was conveyed throughout the entire program: Forget the narrative.
Source: Apollo News
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