“Trade action for insight”, says new anti-social movement

Invoking recent oil and gas shortages as well as the situation in Iraq, European activists plead for passivism

By Tom Wummer

Hamburg – If you expect one thing from activists, it’s activism. But this “is so last century”, claims Mathis Schmøkel, a Norwegian born citizen of Hamburg. “Passivism is the new activism”, he continues. “Our aim is to trade action for insight – for the better of all mankind.”

Schmøkel grew up fatherless and can look back on half a dozen years of political activism. A few months ago, however, all of this changed when he learned of his long unknown father, Jørgen Ritmeester, and his choices: Ritmeester had become a total recluse – and by this, his son claims, had arrived at a whole new level of insight. Insight not only into pop culture and fashion, but also into “the great old questions: What can we know? What can we hope? What are women?”

Schmøkel came to the European media capital Hamburg to spread the word “by yelling at passing journalists”, as he says. There he soon found lots of other reasons to become a passivist. Gas and oil shortages unknown in Norway shook German citizens, and so Mathis connected the dots and drew the only reasonable conclusion: “Stay at home, and you’ll save more energy than by any other measure! No cars, no buses, no trains, no aeroplanes – climate change wouldn’t be an issue if everyone would read books and grow plants instead of cruising around all the time.” For passivists, this also throws serious doubts on traditional political activism: “What good can it do if activists drive all the way to Genoa or Rostock to protest against an economic system they sustain by doing so?”

Another example for the moral superiority of passivism is the Iraq war and its consequences, passivists claim. Says Schmøkel: “If the USA had stayed at home and thought about the Middle East instead of going from church right to war without a thought, they would now know a lot more about Iraq and Islam.” Asked what the USA would do with that knowledge, Mathis gets slightly enraged: “You still haven’t understood – better thinking doesn’t make better actions. The point is that thinking long and hard enough prevents any kind of action!”

The next step for the passivists Schmøkel has gathered is to push the movement to the European level, although ‘pushing’ might be too active a word for passivists. In doing so, they might discover major obstacles: The commitment to passivism includes staying at home, which renders it quite difficult to bring the message to the people. “But we can’t resort to electronic communication, either,” one of the passivists adds when asked through the door of his flat. “That would mean to become active to connect. We can’t afford that.” Nevertheless, the plans to establish a European initiative named “Immersion, Passivity and Solitude” remain intact.

When asked about possible personal motives for his passivism, Schmøkel clearly denies the allegations that recently came up in Hamburg: “I did not and do not get involved into romantic adventures. Anyone who claims that my passivity and aspired reclusion are a reaction to repeated disappointments in romantic matters is flat out wrong. And please, don’t remind me of them!”