What were once simple treats are now symbols of cultural debate (Photo: Elizabeth/Unsplash)
Sometimes it happens in broad daylight and out of the blue. Before you know it, even the most well-behaved of the well-behaved is tainted with the stain of racism or sexism. Take sweets, for example. Until recently, eating a meitlibei was by no means disreputable, let alone violent. In fact, meitlibei is even suitable for peace-loving vegetarians. It is a traditional pastry from the Bernese region, where it is called Meitschibei. As such, it is part of Switzerland’s culinary heritage.
The bread researcher Max Währen knew what the Meitschibei was all about. In 1957, he defined it as a finger-thick, horseshoe-shaped Bernese pastry “without any previously recognisable special symbolic meaning”. From today’s perspective, the word “previously” seems to testify to the bread researcher’s almost prophetic foresight. Did he suspect in 1957 that the guardians of political correctness would sit in judgement on the Meitschibei some 65 years later?
Be that as it may, a Basel bakery chain has taken action and turned the supposedly sexist meitlibei into a harmless “lucky charm” – culinary heritage or not. The patronising comments at the counter had become too much for the staff. The language police cleaning up the confectionery shelves is nothing new. Two years ago, a “committee against violent sweets” wanted to put an end to the Mohrenkopf and at the same time initiate the “decolonisation of patisserie”, as if anyone who made, sold, ate or even just used the word Mohrenkopf was a violent racist and colonialist.
Unlike the Mohrenkopf, the morally strict committee apparently no longer exists. In the face of Frauenschenkeli, Spitzbuben, Nonnenfürzen, Prussiens, Grittibänzen, Croque Monsieur, Zigeunerspiessen, Kosakenzipfeln, Têtes de Moine and many other culinary delights, academic do-gooders still have a lot of work to do to ensure that the discriminatory aftertaste is finally banished from the kitchens and bakeries of the world.
Whether this would make the world a better place, however, is questionable. On the contrary, the obsessive display of virtue does not solve any of our problems; on the contrary, it creates a whole series of new ones. Since ‘diversity’ has been interpreted as a kind of secular universal religion, almost everyone can feel discriminated against on the basis of some identity trait and make their demands. Even the most privileged of the privileged can now feel wholeheartedly disadvantaged, as the women’s strike has shown.
At the same time, however, everyone is suspected of being racist or sexist themselves, unless they carry the correct attitude before them like a monstrance. This kind of moral inversion of the burden of proof does not lead to peaceful and fair coexistence, but on the contrary to a cynical, dogged, frustrated and self-enriched society that pits everyone against everyone else: men against women, poor against rich, natives against immigrants, heterosexuals against homosexuals, the right against the wrong.
And so even places of small happiness such as a sweet shop become a moral battlefield over a product that has never given cause for complaint for decades. You could be happy about such a small thing. But in the realm of the guardians of virtue, unbridled joy quickly becomes blasphemy.
This column is an excerpt from the book “Neither Reft Nor Right” and is published here with the kind permission of the author.
