The alarming rise of the pleasure police.

last updated 8 January 2015

Germany

Jens Jessen

Germany is cracking down on the pleasures of the working class, said Jens Jessen in Hamburg’s Die Zeit. “Everything that is fun, that promises a bit of warmth or distraction or comfort,” is to be regulated, taxed, or banned. It started with alcohol and tobacco, vices that now have minimum ages for consumption and higher prices. Then the authorities decided to ban certain aggressive breeds of dogs. Next they wanted a speed limit on the Autobahn. And now they’re passionately debating how to get rid of fast food and violent video games. All these pastimes, ostensibly blacklisted for medical or ecological reasons, “embody the proletariat lifestyle.” Booze and smokes, dogs and cars, video games and fast food: everything that the elites think “makes you dumb, violent, and fat.” Lawmakers who can’t control the economy in this age of globalization and can’t control foreign policy in a one-superpower world apparently have decided to exert their waning power over the powerless. And now that they’ve run out of working-class pleasures to tax, they’re turning to middle-class perks, such as airline flights and air conditioning. That’s the dangerous thing about the spirit of prohibition: Once it is let loose, “it spreads like an infection. And the first casualty is tolerance.”