Democracy of Honor: When it's Time to Revoke Honorary Citizenship
Choosing someone to be an honorary citizen of a city is a curious habit. Even if this choice is made under the influence of a passing event and ceases to have any meaning for the population, it is rarely revoked. For this to happen, petitions have to attract signatures from a significant percentage of the local population. And this rarely happens.
This was the case in the German town of Bad Honnef, which designated Hitler an honorary citizen in 1933. Recently, the students of a local secondary school found out about this choice during a history lesson and decided to cancel the honor. They then produced a document criticizing the dictator's extreme right-wing stance, which was sent to the town hall along with a petition calling for the honorary citizen title to be revoked. This initiative has an important political significance in today's world, where extreme right-wing movements are springing up everywhere.
In fact, at least 4,000 German cities granted Hitler the title of honorary citizen, and not all of them canceled this honor. Some of these cities have chosen to consider Hitler's appointment automatically revoked with the fall of the Nazi regime, while others have taken formal steps to revoke this distinction.
The list of honorary citizens chosen by Brazilian municipalities is varied. A town in the interior of the Amazon chose Leonardo DiCaprio for this title, due to his actions to raise awareness and support for the preservation of the Amazon rainforest. In addition to him, there is Pope Francis, the late F1 racer Ayrton Senna, model Gisele Bündchen and activist Nelson Mandela, among others. However, there are cases of cities like Manaus that have among their honorary citizens representatives of political parties with absolutely irreconcilable views, such as President Lula and former President Bolsonaro. What is the point of this, if not to gain political advantage at the time the honor is bestowed?
The Bad Honnef students' initiative shows us that the exclusion of honorary citizens who no longer contribute to strengthening a community's identity can have as much political and cultural importance as the appointment of new candidates for the title.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
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