The riding school mentality fails because of reality

The Bern riding school, an icon in left-green Bern, is almost an illusion in view of the longed-for most colorful world in history: In reality, it has, once again, bigger problems.

In recent years it has regularly come under criticism because left-wing extremists have attacked the police – sometimes brutally. The violence was sold as resistance. As a class struggle. We got away with it quite well. Social romanticism is still welcome in Bern. A little RAF sympathy is okay. And sometimes the barricades burn.

Now, however, the cultural center itself has to react to a grievance. It closes for two weeks. For an unpleasant reason: security could no longer be guaranteed. The reasons: escalating violence, attacks on guests, drug excesses. For the autonomous forces at work in the Bern riding school, such a repressive event such as a closure must be the worst thing. Because it presupposes the knowledge that free space also has its limits and cannot be expanded at will.

The culprits are no longer so easy to name. That’s why the closure seems like an admission. The diverse, inclusive, multicultural coexistence, well-behaved, enriched with a nice portion of rejection of the state, garnished with a pinch of violent hatred of the police: it seems, even in the left-green stronghold of Bern, like an anachronism – a yellowed memory of the times when people could still afford the Bünzli revolutionary attitude. Now reality collides with the worldview. Reality doesn’t just work in a colorful and harmonious way.

Because among the troublemakers and delinquents there are quite a few men from foreign cultures. But they are poor in our system: that is the mentality that prevails in the riding school. The fact that these men are less interested in the queer-feminist space in the riding school, but rather use this progressive approach to make strangers and prefer to hit on women: This presents the riding students with a stress test. Your own ideology collides with reality.

The collectivists of the riding school would never admit this, but this grievance would be a good opportunity to face the facts. The delinquency of foreigners from foreign cultures is also a problem in Switzerland, even in Bern. The feeling of security decreases. The police are already giving tips – not just in the riding school area, but throughout the city – that Bernese people should not carry large amounts of money or valuables. However, the collective points the finger at the state. He is said to have failed in his asylum and drug policy.

Hardly any other institution in Bern has as much influence as the riding school. Anyone who wants to reduce or even eliminate state funding has no chance. The “Berner Zeitung” got it right on its 30th anniversary in 2017: “The riding school can afford very, very much in Bern, which is influenced by its spirit. It is inconceivable that someone who runs against them politically will be able to gain a majority.” More power is not possible.

The fact that the responsibility is placed on the city – which is very friendly to the riding school – is also intended to conceal its own failures. The shop has also become busier and, according to the riding school, the guests are increasingly absent. Why should the place no longer seem trustworthy? If only the riding school had shown some sense of reality and had taken a closer look at offenses against sexual integrity or theft and drug offenses. Or, in serious cases, even called the police.