Guilty as charged – reflections on woke justice

Rebekah Bills

November 06, 2024 5 Reactions

Die Panne is a parable for the complicity of post-World War II generation with the evil of Nazi ideology. But rereading it recently, I was struck by its relevance to the Age of Wokeness.

Traps has a semi-religious reverence for justice. His “trial” brings to light his “crimes”, but by what authority is he being judged? His interrogators convince him of his guilt but they are not part of a legitimately constituted legal system. So is he really guilty? And why is Traps so consumed by guilt that he condemns himself to death?

Isn’t the moral confusion of Traps mirrored in the bizarre gaslighting spectacles of the social justice movement – taking the knee, excoriating the shame of white supremacy, therapy for white guilt, wearing keffiyehs in solidarity with Palestinians and so on?

The problem is, Dürrenmatt suggests, is that mere men have invoked our metaphysical longing for absolute justice to create guilt, without justifying it by referring to the existence of a higher metaphysical arbiter of justice. It’s remarkably like today’s woke guilt trips.

Today, “social justice” is perhaps the animating spirit of higher education and academia in America and other Western countries. In 2019, The American Conservative published an article entitled “Social Justice: OurNew Civil Religion.” In 2020, The Atlantic followed suit with Helen Lewis’ article, “How Social Justice Becamea New Religion.” Fast forward to the close of 2024, and the campus protests over Israel’s invasion of Gaza and the ever-growing demands of the LGBTQ+ movement have culminated in a new level of social justice fervour.

To understand how social justice in the West has become so manic, allow me to return to the unlucky Alfredo Traps. Traps finds himself infatuated with justice with a pious devotion not unlike today’s social justice warriors, and his infatuation increases as his host’s game unfolds.

As the former prosecutor interrogates Traps during the meal (with the sinister former judge and executioner looking quietly on), Traps reveals that he disliked his now deceased boss and had an affair with his boss’s wife, which he admits could have been a factor in his boss’s recent heart attack.

Traps’ hosts attempt to enact justice at the metaphysical level, becoming divinely authoritative in their judgement toward Trapps’ hidden desires and his worst inclinations. They dispense legal opinions on cases like Socrates and even Jesus before Pilate with god-like authority. As the dinner concludes, the judge declares that Traps is guilty of murdering his boss. That’s not true, of course. Even if Traps was happy at his boss’s death, he did not cause it. But, gaslighted by the “tribunal”, he goes upstairs and hangs himself in compliance with the verdict.

Why commit suicide over a macabre game? That’s the intriguing question raised by Die Panne.

Traps is a banal modern Everyman, without convictions and religious principles. There is something missing in his life and becomes intoxicated by the possibility of being part of something greater. He wants to be committed to something which is worth dying for; something that promises to elevate him above his meaningless daily routine. Death becomes a kind of liberation which atones for the burden of his guilt.

Dürrenmatt provides two cautionary warnings: first, that justice can inspire blind and intoxicating religious devotion, such as Traps demonstrated.

Second, any institution, individual, or social movement that dispenses verdicts predicated on a godlike reach into the human heart leads to grotesque misapplications of justice. The four dinner hosts’ manipulation of Traps and the tragic outcome of their game illustrates how ministers of justice fail when they play God.

Today’s woke social justice tribunals dole out condemnation by appealing to the god-like powers of social justice, making right and wrong subject to arbitrary definitions. It is a seductive ideal for people without metaphysical convictions.

Dürrenmatt’s play unveiled the heart of darkness in many of the citizens of the German-speaking world. How many of them approved of Nazi horrors, or at least turned a blind eye to them? The satisfaction that Alfredo Traps admits to feeling over his boss’s death hint at that evil. And, indeed, they had something to feel guilty about. What he points out is that unscrupulous people can exploit that guilt.

Dürrenmatt regarded himself as an atheist, although he was the son of a Swiss pastor. Die Panne obliquely points to the need for a higher source of morality that lies outside of man and man’s institutions—something utterly lacking in today’s postmodern culture. Playing God while denying God is a dangerous and intoxicating game, and one that today’s social justice warriors are quite good at.

According to Dürrenmatt’s parable, the guilty verdicts doled out  by today’s social justice tribunals could have dark consequences.  

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Rebekah Bills served four years as a civilian intelligence officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency, earning 6 Individual Act Awards, DIA’s Science and Technology Mission Enabler Award, and the Director’s Personal Coin. Now—her best assignment to date—she cares for her two young sons, Gabriel and Emmanuel, and her exuberant Great Dane puppy, Beowulf.

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