The Order of Freedom
On Opinion Corridors as a Substitute for Lost Community Bonds
By Oliver Erichiello
When J.D. Vance criticized the limits of free speech in Germany at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, the German political class responded with outrage. Central to his criticism was Germany's established “firewall”policy—the cross-party practice of politically isolating the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), which shortly after his speech had risen to become the second-strongest force in the German parliament. This practice of exclusion manifests not only in formal bans on cooperation but also in the long-standing strict tabooization of certain topics and positions in public discourse.
The outraged reaction reveals a deeper phenomenon: The maintenance of specific opinion corridors is not an arbitrary political decision by malicious enemies of freedom, but a direct consequence of a socio-historical constellation. This manifests in everyday life primarily by dictating which positions one may hold, which terms one may use, and - particularly important - with whom one may even speak or conduct politics. For where shared value convictions and cultural self-evidence are lacking, adherence to these unwritten boundaries becomes the last common denominator of social order.
Community and Society: A Fundamental Distinction
Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936), the founder of German sociology, offers a key to understanding modern political discourse with his distinction between community and society. Community refers to organically grown connections based on kinship (family), spatial proximity (neighborhood), or spiritual bonds (friendship, shared faith). They do not arise through contract but through shared history and experiences, common rituals, and self-evident belonging. Society, on the other hand, is based on rational contracts, alliances of convenience, and calculated interests. It is instrumental, formal, and interchangeable. Societies embody themselves in the modern regulated state and open markets. While communities are held together by internal unity and emotional bonds, societies require explicit rules and external control. Societies without strong community foundations tend to secure their internal order through increasing formalization and regulation.
The Paradox of Formalistic Societies
In countries that build their collective identity primarily on formal rules rather than substantial community bonds, the common interpretation of reality is not supported by shared values and cultural narratives but secured by latent discourse rules. The fear of open debate is not rooted in totalitarian aspirations but in the fundamental uncertainty about what holds the civic community together at its core if not the strict adherence to binding and enforced patterns of speech, thought, and especially action.
The opinion corridor thus functions as a substitute for missing community binding forces, which are intuitively interpreted against the background that the counterpart will also have a common interest in the welfare of the country. However, where organic solidarity is lacking - the kind that emerges from grown relationships - societal consensus must be secured through discursive boundary-drawing. Without the stabilizing force of community bonds, any questioning of the consensus appears as an existential threat to the de facto fragile social solidarity. This dynamic becomes particularly evident in times of crisis or profound social change when established certainties are called into question. It is precisely then that the structural weakness of purely formalistic social structures becomes apparent: They have difficulty productively integrating dissent as a response to changed circumstances and instead tend to rigidify through immutability. There emerges an increasing inability to face real challenges. Formal consensus preservation becomes more important than confronting uncomfortable realities.
Media and Public Discourse in Formalistic Societies
In formalistic societies, this dynamic is reflected particularly poignantly in the media system and public discourse. Here, media not only assume the function of information dissemination but also that of discursive border control. The boundary between legitimate diversity of opinion and “problematic” positions is often not delegitimized through argumentation but through formal exclusion mechanisms. In this context, media become guardians of the discursive order, whose primary function is no longer the critical reflection of social developments but the maintenance of that formalistic consensus fiction that is supposed to secure social cohesion as a substitute. The public space thereby loses its potential as a site of vibrant democratic debate and becomes the ritualized stage of a formal consensus enactment, in which substantial conflicts and contradictions are systematically obscured.
Comparative Perspectives
The different manifestations of opinion corridors in European countries with comparable historical burdens illustrate the central role of community binding forces. While Germany experienced an almost complete “de-emotionalization” of national consciousness after the Nazi era, countries like Austria and Italy, despite their fascist heritage, preserve stronger community elements.
In these countries, concepts like “firewalls” are significantly less pronounced. Italy is even led by Giorgia Meloni, a politician from a post-fascist party, and in Austria, Herbert Kickl, a representative of the national-conservative FPÖ, nearly became chancellor after his party had already once provided the vice-chancellor. The decisive difference between these countries and Germany lies, among other things, in the stronger preservation of traditional community binding forces: The continuing significance of the Catholic Church, strong family structures, and a (for various motivations) less disrupted relationship with their own history enable a community identity construction that is not primarily based on formalistic rules.
In these societies, community elements function as stabilizing factors that allow for greater discursive openness - not because they are more tolerant but because their social integration depends less on the strict adherence to discursive boundaries. Social cohesion is secured through deeper, organically grown structures that make deviations from consensus seem less threatening.
The narrowing of the discourse space follows a paradoxical logic: The more uncertain the collective identity of a society, the more narrowly the boundaries of what can be said are defined. What appears from the outside as a restriction of freedom of expression is, from this perspective, a self-protection mechanism of societies that have lost their community anchor.
The Paradoxical Logic of Discourse Constriction
Let us return to J.D. Vance and his criticism of the European and especially the German opinion corridor. What the American Vice President implicitly addressed is a fundamental difference in the understanding of freedom: While in the American tradition, "freedom" is set as an independent, absolute value, freedom in Germany exists almost exclusively within the regulated framework of the frequently used characterization of the “free democratic basic order” - a formula that linguistically expresses the binding of freedom to a formalized set of rules ("order").
A powerful counter-image to the formalistic society can be found in the Czech constitution, which was significantly shaped by Václav Havel after the fall of communism. The writer and later president fought for an understanding of freedom that was anchored in Article 2 of the Czech constitution adopted on December 16, 1992: “Every citizen may do whatever is not prohibited by law, and no one may be compelled to do what the law does not impose upon them.”This constitutional formula embodies a fundamentally different understanding of freedom than the “free democratic basic order” in Germany. While the German formulation conceives of freedom as something that exists within a predefined order, the Czech one proceeds from a positive concept of freedom.
Havel's commitment to this principle stemmed from his deep conviction that a society can only remain vibrant if it fundamentally trusts its citizens and if freedom is not primarily limited by rules but supported by shared values and community consciousness. This view reveals an understanding of society that recognizes formal rules as necessary but conceives of the deeper community bond as the actual carrier of social connectedness.
Prof. Dr. Oliver Errichiello is a German-Italian sociologist and social psychologist who specializes in the “Brandsociologie” (Sociology of Branding) and is author of numerous books. He teaches in Mittweida, Hamburg (Germany) and Lucerne (Switzerland).
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This seems to go too far in the direction of functionalism vs. intentionalism. Yes, there is a social order, and perhaps the Germans more than many others do seem en masse to prefer to rely upon the state and its many instruments to form and enforce their opinions so they can maintain moral superiority and assuage historical guilt.
But the elites and rulers of Western democracies are not mere reflections of the community or society, but rather an independent body with their own aims, incentives and the ability to put their thumbs on the scale to tilt society using its tools and lucre to maintain influence and win friends. And any study of Germany cannot ignore the relentless propagandizing of the population under the Marshall plan and beyond. One can in fact break the spirit of a people (see Soviet Russia for a well-known, uncontroversial example).
Power elite analysis cannot be ignored in analyzing social and political phenomena. Especially where rulers have somehow led the ruled to adopt such absurd positions as transgenderism, or the evil of "Putler", or that Russia is both somehow inept and weak but also indomitable and about to run through Europe, or the limitless superiority of the "post-War order." Introspection is not a strength of Modernist mythologies.
One cannot ignore the current elites in Germany panicking to maintain hegemony. Limiting this to a mere misunderstanding, or innocent, non-malign prioritization of a "Western democratic order" strikes me as quite naive. Sin is real, and at odds with our deeper nature. To observe facts and behaviors on the ground, and assume that panicky, hyperbolic elites aren't at least somewhat concerned with their power, their loss of privilege, their loss of prestige, or even worse, the crimes that may be exposed by their adversaries should they take power, is just not a tenable position and throws common sense out of the window.
Lastly, Catholics understand that freedom is and must be exercised, and is only fully enjoyed, within the boundaries of good order. But that order is holiness and the seven virtues, and at it's highest, the Law of Christ.
It sure as hell isn't modernist pseduo-democracies and their endless penchant for platforming the most disgusting of high-low alliances with perverts and trespassing barbaric peoples (h/t to Bertrand de Jouvenel) to weaponize moral superiority. On some level, sure, many of the facilitators and instruments believe their own nonsense (smell their own farts as it were), but there is also a self-recognition that the rules apply less to them, for they are better, and we are not.
There is no doubt that there was an intentional effort post WWII to isolate individuals across the west by dissolving all community associations, from family to religion, and reorienting peoples focusing their attentions on media, sports, and entertainment.
After hollowing people out of spiritual lives and significant social exchange, the elite could then replace lost values with new ones, easily and convincing many of their new invented and self-serving moralities.
Folk from healthy communities would never succumb to ridiculous stories such as the various iterations of climate change allegations, CO2 emergency (an element needed for life), endless civil rights causes, invasions of countries by millions of strangers as compassionate (where is the compassion for native citizens?), or pandemic threats. They are meant to herd whole populations into desired behaviors and managed via manipulated abusive claims of fear and existentialism, justifying ever tighter "stakeholder" corporate/military/government management.
Societal breakdown has been intentional, and people need to be aware of how the top does see the majority as sheep. The west needs to be re-evangelized so that it is not prone to stupid moralistic and emotive propaganda, which only aims to abuse, not to respect the dignity of peoples as made in the image of God, He who is love.