(C) OpenDemocracy
This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



What Germany's Rightwing Voters Are Telling Us [1]

[]

Date: 2025-03

Transcript

Hello and welcome to In Solidarity. I'm your host, Aman Sethi. Something strange is happening in Germany. At its surface, it looks like the now familiar story of the rise of the far right. In September last year, the Alternative for Germany or AFD, as it is called, became the first far right party to win a state election in Germany since World War Two.

Then in February this year, the AfD came second in Germany's national elections, with 20% of the votes. The AFD isn't just another populist right wing party. Members of the party have consistently downplayed the horrors of Nazi Germany, but when I caught up with Georg Diez, our guest for today's show, he suggested that if we're serious about countering the rise of far right ideologies, we need to acknowledge that we're witnessing the birth of a new form of politics and prepare ourselves accordingly.

Georg is a German writer, journalist, art curator and fellow at the Max Planck Institute and project together, where he works on the future of democracy. He's also the author of a new book, Kipppunkte, or Tipping Points: From the promises of the 90s to the crises of the present. Georg and I spoke shortly before the elections, but his analysis pretty much checks out. Hi, Georg, welcome to the show. Let's start by walking through what we're seeing here. What's going on in Germany?

With the way that you describe it, interestingly, it sounds like it's really a country falling apart and in chaos, and maybe it actually is and us Germans didn't realize it. I think the larger view is that two things are happening here. On the one hand, it's part of a very long process of German reckoning with its history and past in a certain way, a lot of the debates go back to '89-'90 and the unification process.

I think there was a big realization that a lot of things that happened in the aftermath of the unification were built on false assumptions and were done in the wrong way. So specifically, the way the market economy was extended to the east. The east was formerly under communist rule, was integrated into the market, or rather was not integrated into the market, which led to massive disruptions, massive decline of business, and then the basic takeover of Eastern Germany through Western elites. So I think the anti-elite sentiment, which is driving the populist rage these days, has its roots in some way in that period, and the disaffection of East Germans is driven by that. And AfD is stronger in the east, much stronger. But it's not an East German problem. As is Neo fascism not a specific German or Italian or an East German problem. It's a bigger trend.

Looking back, it’s quite interesting how naive a lot of the assumptions were about the 90s, people thought that if you bring the market democracy will follow, that clearly didn't work. More to the contrary, you brought in a system that disrupted people's lives, didn't produce justice, didn't produce equality. It just brought some measure of prosperity for a while, living standards rose massively. But that stopped at the latest in 2008 with the global financial crisis, which is a big break in the history of the 21st century, and a lot of the problems go back to that, and with COVID. I think those are the two big ruptures.

I think the sense was always that Germany was distinct, but it was actually just slow and they had specific historic conditions which were rooted in its fear of right wing thinking. So basically, it was state doctrine that there can't be right wing thinking.

As you were talking, I was sort of noting down the the factors you were talking about and the centrality you give to the global financial crisis of 2008. A number of writers have been tracing the current moment back to the Obama decision to bail out the banks and prove, as it were, that the elites were more interested in bailing out the big guys at the cost of the little guys.

Could you talk us through what the global financial crisis looked like in Germany and what were the kinds of steps that the German government took that either validated this hypothesis or worked against it?

So in Germany, the crisis was, I think, outsourced. I think Europe was the playing field for Germany to outsource the consequences of the global financial crisis and turn it into a European financial crisis with specifically Greece as the main victim, or German parlance, the main perpetrator.

What happened on a European scale is that Germany became much more powerful in Europe and basically took over parts of the infrastructure of Greece, for example. So basically the Germans dominated Europe and caused a lot of resistance to German hegemony, but also we felt that we were actually saving Greece. So that was the starting of nationalism that then, I guess, caused a backlash against Germany.

There is almost like a common parlance, where people say ‘Fascism is on the rise. There is the return of fascism. This is a fascist party’. Now, obviously these are questions that acquire a certain urgency in Germany that they don't elsewhere in the world.

When you look at current right wing formulations and political formulations in Germany today, are they metaphorically fascist? Or are they literally fascist? How does one kind of think about the right wing extremism in Germany in 2025 versus the sort of period just preceding the Second World War? Is this a natural, teleological offshoot of that, or is it a new form that since we actually do not have a name for it, we're using an old name for a new thing?

I think it's not fascism. I don't think it's fitting, because it is describing an old phenomenon. And I would ask back, just rhetorically, why is it more pertinent or more important in Germany? Apart from the size of the country, I mean, if 10% of 80 million people become right wing, it's more than 8 million people, it's more dangerous.

I think we need to talk about the global phenomenon. We talk about not the rise of fascism, or the rise of right wing authoritarianism. I think it's something else. I talked about Elon Musk and wrote a piece about him the other day. I talked about techno feudalism. I think we are entering a different period where injustice in humanity has a different face, different methodology, and it's global and it will have certain national forms that it takes on. So I think we need a new name.

This is also a massive crisis of democracy. We can't win elections by saying, don't vote for fascists or for authoritarians, we need to make a clear case for what democracy can offer. I think it's clear in the upcoming German election that the offer is not good enough. I think people are desperate. People on the left on the right, or center right, are desperate for good personnel, good ideas, confident voices, clear messages, clear concepts, a break, a rupture, that's manageable, but not a break, and the rupture that's crass and destructive. The narrative is still that democracy is working, we need to stick together, we need to be strong and sustain this system, then the storm will pass. No, it won't.

Aman Sethi 12:00

I think we're actually entering a very interesting part of this conversation. Because I think in the beginning, and I was trying to understand what was going on here, and I understand now that we've reached a point where I think this question of categorization is an important one.

Because I think in the beginning, there was a way that we were using words with the sense that we have already diagnosed the problem as fascism. But, as you're pointing out, if it isn't, then that's in some ways even more confusing, right? What is this thing? What is this thing that we're confronting?

I have seen a sort of strain of commentary around the world where some writers are saying that it isn't so much that there is a global rise of the far right, but rather there is a global disaffection with incumbents. People are just tired of whoever's in power at this point. And it's almost like that there clearly was a moment where it felt that there was a kind of, you know, beautiful symphony of liberal democracies singing together to to kind of, you know, achieve the greater common good. And there seems to be a global cacophony now. But do you see, in some ways, opportunities here?

Do you see a way that this election could result in, perhaps a little more chaos, and then one thinks about what Germany in 2029 looks like, and when you look ahead, what are the kinds of signals you're listening for in German society? Let's forget who wins and who loses. What are the kinds of signals you're listening for versus the noise?

I think underneath it all there are opportunities. That's also an answer that I need to give myself, to listen to myself and feel good, so that I can get up tomorrow morning and say, no, there are opportunities and it's going to be fine.

It’s also a fact that my generation in Germany is just weak in the sense that we have never really had to fight for democracy. So if we never really had a big crisis, we never had a war, we think things will be fine. And actually they are not.

My Jewish friends and my refugee friends say, ‘actually, one day to the next, it can be over, everything can be different’. That was never an understanding in German society. Nor was it understood that things could be changing at all. So I think the underlying fight is really a German fight, and the underlying conflict in German society is change versus not change. And as you say this is overlays with anti-incumbent sentiment. I think Strangely, I think the anti-incumbent feeling is that you shouldn't change. In Germany, as in other Western countries, it's not a party that's incumbent, It's more the system that is incumbent.

Earlier in this conversation, you talked about your frustration with the current configuration of how democracy is operationalized. Is there a particular idea that if you could seed now, and the tree would grow in whatever, five years, 14 years, 15 years, hat would be the seeds that you would cast in terms of ideas? Is there? any one now, or does the hard work of thinking begin now?

I'm 55 so I'm an old-ish person, I would say. But I'm fortunate enough to work with people in Project Together, who are in their late 20s and early 30s, and I'm quite interested in what they do. The question is, how do you create structures that are able to identify problems rationally, and somehow objectively. Like,’Okay, we have a problem with schools. So what do we do?’ That's also kind of a mindset of the new generation, to work ideologically, pragmatically, backwards, to start with 'If that is your analysis of the problem, what would you need to do?'

Not to get too philosophical, but somehow the time arrow has shifted for the 21st century. I think that is also clear with climate change. We live in the future out of necessity. We need to live in the future to understand what's going to happen in 2040 and then to anticipate the steps that are necessary. I think conventional politics is still working in the time arrow of the 19/20th century. Still using Newtonian physics, when we need to have quantum politics, basically.

We need to have a politics that operates in different time zones, in different realities. Not that that's the specific way that we talk about politics with among Project Together, but it's clear there's not one solution, that there's not one answer, that there is not one time frame, that there is not one playing field, but it's a lot of actions, there are a lot of actors, and you really need to put as much energy - it's all about about energy - you need to put as much energy into the system as you can. And so it's quite uplifting.

There is an understanding that how politics is separate from party politics, separate from elections, how it's an everyday practice, and I think it's this new generation. And I do believe that - I see it with my kids - this is the smartest generation ever in the history of mankind, what they know, how they are moving through the world, I think it's impressive and also it's the only thing that we can hope for, it's our kids. But I do believe that it's a good generation coming.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/podcasts/in-solidarity-podcast/germany-afd-far-right-fascist-trump/

Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/