More Echoes

The incident I mentioned in my Friday Miscellanea, the giving of an ECHO award to anti-semitic rappers, keeps having repercussions. Now Barenboim, Thielemann and Jansons are returning their awards as well. Barenboim puts it:

anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, and the open contempt of allegedly weaker and more discriminating minorities are an abuse of freedom that we as a society can never tolerate, and we must stand united against such voices and not encourage them by giving them prizes and legitimising them

The links go to items on the Slipped Disc website and there is a long and interesting comment thread on the first link. The prolific commentator John Borstlap wrote:

Strangely, these developments – which began their trajectory in the sixties of the last century – are one influential result of democracy, emancipation movements, and the ideas that there are no general standards in terms of behavior, manners, development, education etc. etc. because they are supposed to exclude people unjustly. So, the impulse to liberate the masses from their position (definitely much exploited in former times), is resulting in unleashing the untamed primitive instincts across the board, since in terms of numbers the underdeveloped are more numerous. Hence Trump, brexit, AfD in Germany, Pegida, populism everywhere, fake news addiction, etc.

Which raises a lot of interesting questions. Does liberating the masses mean liberating them from things like higher culture and classical music?