Wutbürger
Judy Dempsey article
They are called “Wutbürger.” And they have become the bane of every political party in Germany.
Loosely translated as “enraged citizen,” the Wutbürger has stepped outside the classical political and parliamentary system by organizing demonstrations and town-hall meetings, protest marches and sit-ins.
“It’s as if the post-1945 consensus of Germans accepting the status quo and the conventional structures of the main political parties is coming to an end,” said Andrea Römmele, a professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. [..]
The past several months have seen an extraordinary swelling of spontaneous civil society movements that have jolted the political parties.
“There is no doubt about it,” said Wolfgang Bosbach, a leading Christian Democrat lawmaker. “We are concerned.”
“You have all kinds of protest movements springing up all over the place,” Mr. Bosbach continued. “They consist mostly of educated people who are neither left-wing nor right-wing but somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum. [..]
Partly as a result, during regional elections in March, voters ended the party’s 58-year rule by electing the Greens, who for the first time in Germany will head a state government. The new premier, Winfried Kretschmann, has promised to hold a referendum on the future of Stuttgart 21. [..]
This phenomenon of the angry or even enraged citizen has become so entrenched that the German Language Society in December named “Wutbürger” word of the year for 2010.
“The word reflects a particular mood,” said Andrea-Eva Ewels, managing director of the German Language Society, which was established in the late 1940s to oversee the development of the language. Each year, it finds and documents new words entering the German language. And each year, it selects a winner.
“In the case of the Wutbürger, the citizens feel that the political decisions are made over their heads,” Ms. Ewels said. “It has created a kind of frustration, or anger. You can see it from the spate of protests over the past year.”
Just another example of old structures crumbling down. Notice how ppl complaining that “that the political decisions are made over their heads”. What they complain about is a key part of second wave; due to its principle of specialization many people should work on one small part of the bigger picture, and The Integrators connect the whole piece together. But regular person has too much power (information) in her hands these days due to new technology. They do not want to be treated mindless stupid automatons on the assembly line.
The article also mentions left-wing, right-wing divisions do not capture the mood of this crowd, and that is yet another example of the collapse of modernity.