Gutmensch (literally good human in German) is an ironic, sarcastic or disparaging cultural term similar to the English do-gooder.
The German dictionary Duden, which included the term in 2000, defines Gutmensch as "a naive person who acts in an uncritical, exaggerated or tedious way while fighting for political correctness.
"[6] According to researcher Rembert Hüser, the term Gutmensch was coined as a joke made by German feuilleton writers of the "generation 1989", such as Matthias Horx [de] and Klaus Bittermann.
Bittermann explains in his epilogue of the Wörterbuch des Gutmenschen (dictionary of the Gutmensch): Literary scientist Karl Heinz Bohrer wrote at the end of his commentaries, in which he argued against the "terror of conciliation exerted by the provinciality of the Federal Republic of Germany": 'Maybe it would be best, if the Merkur established a little dictionary of the Gutmensch, including entries like tearing down the wall in our minds, constructive debates, weird thinking or stubbornness.
The Association for the German Language mentions as their first source a 1985 edition of Forbes magazine, in which Franz Steinkühler, at that time co-chairman of Germany's biggest metalworker's union, is called a Gutmensch.
[14] Die Welt journalist Matthias Heine [de] brings into play German pedagogical scientist Christian Oeser, who may have invented the term.
In Oeser's book Letters to a Maiden on the most fundamental Topics of Aesthetics, published in 1859, he writes about naive Gutmenschen as follows: "Isn't it clear that in the end, such a gullible Gutmensch will be laughed at for his unconditional love towards humans, that the whole world will call him a fool and that he will eventually fall prey to his own weakness?
That kind of criticism means that political utterances which don't demand consequences are only made to allow the speaker to appear in a good light.
According to humanistic approaches, they think everyone is equal, but foreigners impose their "own needs, ethical and moral ideas and goals" on him (jemandem etwas aufzwingen, aufdrängen) Sabine Forschner).
[17] On 11 August 2014, Norbert Bolz (TU Berlin), an academic in media and communication, said on radio station Deutschlandfunk: Gutmenschen are people who have oral presentation techniques that have been given a name in the last couple of decades, i.e. political correctness.
[1][19][5] Michael Klonovsky [de], for example, chief executive at German news magazine Focus, accused:[20] The Gutmensch finds the fact outrageous that there is an unproductive lower class, a benefit-scrounging scum, that there is plebs.
Potential criticism on (factual or putative) racist, homophobic, anti-semitic (and increasing also anti-Islamic) or sexual violations taboos is debilitated by downgrading the person with those rhetoric strategies.
The art of the rhetoric is working when terms like Gutmensch or "moralizing prig" bring the political opponent in discussions into situations where the reply is supposed to say "my opinion or the tabooed view".
In 2015, he proposed using Gutmensch to describe people who act aggressive and self-righteous when fighting for what they think is the good cause, unmindfully considering themselves being excluded from any set of social rules.
[15] Ironically, one year earlier, German writer Akif Pirinçci had called Martenstein a Gutmensch in his polemic Deutschland von Sinnen (Germany unhinged).
[24] At that time, Martenstein was still rather in favor of the term, polemically explaining in his book Die neuen Leiden des alten M. (The New Suffering of Old M.): "As for good-doing and most things in general, it is a question of the dosage: when overdone it becomes totalitarian.
"[25] In 2014, Patrick Orth, manager of German rock band Die Toten Hosen, registered the wordmark Gutmensch.
[26] In Germany, the "Unwort des Jahres", a word with bad connotations, is annually nominated by a changing, independent jury of four linguists and one journalist.
[27] In 2011 the jury stated: By using the term the ethical idea of the good man is picked up maliciously in internet forums in order to vilify all dissidents without considering their arguments.