Saturday’s post on the authoritarian turn in German politics has become one of the most widely shared pieces I’ve ever written. I am truly grateful to all of my readers for helping me report on what is happening in my country.
A great many have argued that my comparisons to the DDR (the old East Germany) are off-point. They suggest that National Socialism (Nazism) is a better historical analogy, and that we are seeing before us a re-manifestation of classic German fascist tendencies. I think this is a misreading, and at the risk of repeating myself to I’ll try to explain why. In a second piece later this week, I’ll write further about fascism and its nature, because I think this is a locus of particular confusion especially in the Anglosphere. (That will be a much more complicated essay, but I’ll try to get it finished by Wednesday; here, you need only know that I’m avoiding terms like ‘fascism’ and ‘totalitarianism’ very deliberately, for reasons I’ll soon clarify.)
In the beginning, there was liberalism. This is the political and moral ideology emphasising individual rights and equality that emerged alongside ‘capitalism’, which is just a loaded term for the economic relationships that arose spontaneously in industrial society. Liberalism sought to impose strict limits on the state, originally for the purpose of protecting individual freedoms, and as an ideology it had its critics. On the Left, socialists and communists attacked liberalism for its failure to achieve true human equality. These Leftists believed that illiberal interventions in the market economy and in many other areas of human society were required to achieve egalitarian ideals. On the opposite side of the political spectrum, Right-nationalists explicitly rejected the universalist pretensions of both liberalism and the socialist Left. These Right-nationalists were generally ethnic particularists who explicitly embraced social hierarchy.
Importantly, both the socialist Left and the nationalist Right retained some liberal elements and vocabulary. Communists preached that a revolution of the proletariat would achieve true human freedom and democracy, while the Right-nationalists adopted some liberal and even socialist terms, often expressing egalitarian concerns for ethnic in-groups. It is thus best to conceive of liberalism, socialism/communism and Right-nationalism as overlapping electron clouds, which achieve mutual exclusivity only at the extremes.
One commonly hears that the Left and the Right are political illusions and that they no longer apply to modern politics. This is because World War II destroyed Right-nationalism as a meaningful political force. Western Communism survived until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and in attenuated form socialist ideology lives on within our respective liberal democracies. In this new world, being ‘on the Right’ has acquired a different significance; it simply means ‘not being on the the Left’. Thus libertarians, free marketeers, the traditionally religious, gun enthusiasts, free speech advocates and even certain strains of environmentalists who are not worried about carbon dioxide all find themselves ‘on the right’. While this is pretty stupid, it does not mean that the political spectrum is an illusion or mere propaganda. Leftism is still a thing, and Leftists are easily identified by their egalitarian, universalist aspirations. Functionally, Leftism operates as a political technology, whereby an elite at the top of society pursue patronage relationships with clients at the bottom, with promises to redistribute the wealth and privileges either of a displaced elite or of the middle classes.
Authoritarianism is much more ideologically neutral than often acknowledged. Illiberal socialists and Right-nationalists alike have no problem taking repressive measures against their own people. As for liberalism, it is more complicated. Liberalism presents itself as anti-authoritarian, and the historical prosperity of liberal states has permitted liberal regimes to follow through on at least some of their promises to recognise individual liberties. People who are fat and happy are generally content with their political establishment, whatever its nature. Faced with restive or even potentially recalcitrant citizenries, however, liberal systems can become quite repressive. We saw this very clearly during Covid.
Even in the absence of popular uprisings, liberal regimes have been elaborating ever more authoritarian political programmes for generations now, because exercising control is simply something that states do. As one’s political concerns move away from core liberal commitments, authoritarian interventions also become easier to justify. A hypothetical liberal state dominated by Right-nationalist parties would deprioritise individual freedoms in service of national goals. While such states hardly exist in today’s world, war or other external security threats awaken nationalist sentiments even in Leftist governments and inspire much the same behaviour.
Vastly more common in the West are nominally liberal states dominated by Left-leaning or socialist parties, whose politicians see liberal commitments as an obstacle to their egalitarian programme. At the national level, these Leftist regimes have circumvented liberal constraints by developing an elaborate ideology of positive rights. Like their negative precursors, positive rights are constructed as prior to the democratic prerogatives of the people and they require state power to enforce. The entire Civil Rights regime in the United States and the Green policies currently destroying the German economy all unfold within a universalist positive rights regime.
Internationally, Left-liberalism has learned to abhor the autonomous politics of the nation-state, both as a breeding ground for its enemies on ‘the Right’ and as the culprit for the slaughter of the great 20th century wars. These Left-liberals have erected an entire globalist postwar order, extending from international institutions like the United Nations and the European Union, to lobbying operations like the World Economic Forum, and to many other non-governmental organisations and philanthropic enterprises. It is very common to read that this phenomenon is somehow fascist, but this is a grave misunderstanding. These are institutions inspired by liberal egalitarian ideas and fears that too much national democracy will play into the hands of (Right-wing) antidemocratic actors. Precisely because of its National Socialist past, Germany since the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949 has at its disposal robust enforcement mechanisms to defend our democratic constitution against undesirable democratic outcomes. These are now being deployed against notional “Right-wing extremists” in a similar manifestation of illiberal liberalism domestically.
What is happening in Germany is therefore quite simple: our Left-liberal Government, faced with a concrete electoral threat to its hold on power, is abandoning ever more of its liberal scruples to maintain its position. This makes it increasingly illiberal, but it does not make it fascist. (Fascism, as I’ll argue on Wednesday, is a specific historical phenomenon that emerged on the Right in response to the pressures of modernity and the social consequences of the First World War.) The measures Nancy Faeser outlined are all directed against perceived enemies on “the Right”, with the explicit goal of maintaining an “open society”. That sounds like a laughable joke and it is, but it also betrays the fundamentally Leftist, universalist impulses behind this campaign.
Postwar liberalism has elaborated an entire mythology of itself rooted in its triumph over the Right-nationalist Axis powers, and in consequence “Right wing extremists” have become the only conceivable enemies. It is understandable that many observers, confronted with the authoritarian behaviour of the Left-liberal establishment, can conceive of no other way than ‘fascism’ to conceptualise this new politics. I merely want to describe what is happening in different terms, because a world in which a zombie fascism is beckoning around every corner is precisely what Nancy Faeser uses to justify her repressive fantasies.
Now to some side matters.
All historical analogies are imprecise, and that includes my references to East Germany. I very much agree with those who have voiced doubt that a shallow schoolmarm like Nancy Faeser is remotely capable of re-founding the DDR. As I’ve said many times, the states of the liberal West have only ‘soft’ authoritarian means at their disposal, and their enforcement apparatus looks positively emaciated compared to those of the former Warsaw Pact regimes. Our rulers will have serious problems quashing AfD and the rest of the political opposition, and they are just as likely to mess up and make things worse for themselves as they are to succeed. In a way, that has already happened: the AfD owes a great part of its success to the short-sighted triangulation via which Angela Merkel abandoned the Right flank of her own CDU. The errors of her successors are an order of magnitude more egregious and likely to fail even more spectacularly. That said, these lunatics are anything but toothless; they can do a lot of damage to ordinary people.
Some readers asked whether Faeser’s measures against “Right-wing extremism” are a mere trial balloon, or a proposal to test the waters. I must report, alas, that this is all very real and immediate. The Interior Ministry believes that the greater part of these prerogatives lie already within its powers. Only in a few areas, such as its eagerness to sniff into the financial affairs of ordinary Germans, does it face legal hurdles. In the present environment, these will be easily overcome. As I said above, Germany has an extensive political enforcement apparatus, in the form of the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, or the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). The BfV stands under the direct control of the Ministry of the Interior, and it is trivial to direct its powers against political opponents. The BfV has been dogging the heels of the political opposition for years now.
Others asked me what can be done about this. I addressed this question a few weeks ago; the short and discouraging answer is that I don’t know. It helps to recognise that Faeser’s repressive plans are themselves a reaction to the solution sought by vast parts of the German electorate, who have cast their lot with the anti-establishment AfD. One often reads in dissident circles that voting is entirely useless, but I think that’s an overstatement; certainly, our rulers appear anything but unbothered by the electoral preferences of ordinary German people. Of course, I don’t think mere voting is the only answer, and for the moment I fear that we’re along for the ride whatever we do.
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It is a stupid word anyway. The Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa mentioned it in one of his films. A twig is easily broken but many twigs together are hard to break.That is the meaning of the bound branches. Like a family and Japanese ‘fascism’ has always had a family feel. I would rather live under a Shogunate than live under the WEF. Safetyism becomes such a habit. The emasculation of a population is easier then you think because you are pushing at an open door,.If you want to keep a young lad strong and vital then you need to put him through his paces.
Well this ought to please Nazi Faeser. The intimidation appears to be working as not everyone wants to gamble with their family’s safety. Nice bit of projection from the Leftard government and their bitches, the MSM, here too;
”A successful entrepreneur who was running for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in district elections says he is withdrawing his candidacy due to serious threats to his family.
The 40-year-old Matthias Beerbaum cited “threats against and danger to” his family, although he did not give specific details surrounding the potential threat. He said the decision was not easy for him, but he did not want to deal with endangering his family.
“This should not happen in a democracy,” he announced in a press release on Thursday evening last week.
The threats against his family come at a time when the media and the government have compared the AfD to the Nazi party and claimed the party is “anti-democratic.” Many within the left-liberal ruling coalition are now calling for a complete ban on the opposition party due to its popularity in the polls. At the same time, the country’s far-left interior minister, Nancy Faeser, has called to shut down bank accounts for those who donate to “extremist” right-wing parties and, in conjunction with the federal police and the Office of the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), plans to initiate a series of new laws to target the opposition.”
https://rmx.news/germany/this-shouldnt-happen-in-a-democracy-afd-politician-withdraws-from-election-race-after-threats-to-his-family/
Filthy communist bitch. Doing her party duty. We arenliving in a re-comnunising Europe. Very dangerous times
Nationalism is a blunt and clumsy tool but given the nastiness of the refinement of the system it is simply the only thing left. We all sit back and experience ourselves growing poorer. We got used to that in 2008 and now we are told to get used to successive waves of it. We have British families who are living on the streets or who can’t afford to live. How much longer do you think that you can keep up the spiel? That we are the country with the best of everything? They always go too far. We are a sick and demoralised population but they are really taking the Mick now and I sense that people are beginning to ken it. Even the huge white clots in the venous and arterial system – this is becoming mainstream.
In the UK I believe we had a coup executed so perfectly that nobody noticed. Kwarteng was removed and Hunt, his economic opposite installed, and then Truss was removed and a WEF puppet moved into place. All carried out by a bit of hedge fund market manipulation.It is beyond me that hardly anbyody bats an eyelid at this.
Eugyppius’s analysis is a good read but it only really holds if you believe that governments and not corporations/banks wield the ultimate control. I’m with Simon Elmer and Agamben. It’s the return of fascism, Mussolini style.
I think this explanatory approach is far too complicated. Faeser’s plans aren’t referred to as fascist by our so-called “anglo-saxon friends & allies” because of something they are but because of something she is, namely, German, be it in name only and probably very much against her will. Everybody who was born after 1945, more so if he was born in global Anglo-Saxia (whatever became of the Normannic conquerors we don’t know) was brought up on a constant ideological and cultural diet of “Nazi Stuff” were evil German Nazis are always getting beaten by the anglo-saxian knights in their shining armour fighting for all that is good, just and beautiful in the world¹. On top of that comes the political sphere where “Nazis” are still everyone’s most beloved universal villain, not the least of a certain state in the middle-east which will take German money with one hand and conduct anti-German propaganda campaigns with the other.
The long and short of that is that, for the typical Anglo-Saxian, Germans simply equals Nazis and things will likely remain in this way for at least some time to come. Hence, when Faeser clumsily imitates the US democrats, eg, believing in the panacea of tightening weapon law to solve all interesting social ills, that’s obviously evil and since she’s German, this proves that she’s Nazi. And that’s all.
Da drüben hassen sie uns und dagegen gibt es, wenn man nicht verächtlich sein will, nur ein Mittel: Furchtbar zu sein.
[Jünger, „Feuer und Blut“]
¹ This propaganda campaign has been running since 1914, originally using Huns instead of Nazis as the latter term didn’t yet exist at that time. Its substance hasn’t changed.
Boring twaddle.
I’m sorry if I failed to enterain you. This might have been caused by me not trying.
“for the typical Anglo-Saxian, Germans simply equals Nazis” – This is not true.
I don’t know how representative this school of thought is, however, the Mogwai-text above which starts with Nazi Faeser is a nice example of it. Faeser is a SPD-politician, ie, the from the original socialist German party and her political goals are closely aligned with those the US democrats. This means she’s a dedicated antifascist and antinationalist and isn’t exactly friendlyly (?) disposed towards Germans she basically considers the enemy. Yet, she’s being labelled as Nazi. As this certainly cannot be because of her politics, her German heritage would seem to be the reason for it.
Hitler was a leftist, he adhered to 8 out of 10 points of Marx communist manifesto dropping only the property theft and inheritance theft parts of the manifesto. There is no such thing as the far right, this would be a society with no state, rather communism and racism are two sects within the left that seek to entirely dictate citizens lives. Socialists need to own Auschwitz as much they own Stalin’s great terror.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/hitler-and-the-socialist-dream-1186455.html
Out of my head, I can immediately tell that he also certainly didn’t plan to collectivize farming in order to turn a bunch of family-run, relatively small agricultural businesses into large units of industrialized agricultural production in order to eliminate the difference between urban and rural areas. He was in favour of the exact opposite of that.
In order to address the remainder of this load of tosh (the article, there are some remarkable phantasists on the current political right), it’s sufficient to say that Hitler denounced Marxism in the strongest terms in Mein Kampf as he believed it to be the final stage of the Jewish world conspiracy for total domination of the world by Jews and effective elimination of the German race.
It’s not tosh read the article. You’ve bought a left/right paradigm that makes no sense. If the left see the answer as being the state, and right the answer self reliance. How can far right be the complete control by the state? That’s a philosophical contradiction in terms. The other clue is Hitler called himself a socialist, but according to you apparently he wasn’t.
You are also ignorant as well rude. The Reichsnährstand had legal authority over farming with price controls, and conducted command and control policy over farming determining what seeds were sown, fixing prices, overseeing all production. You know rather like erm a command and control economy. That policy led to food shortages as early as 1936.
The origin of the political terms left and right was the sitting order in revolutionary national assembly of France. On the left sat the people who were in favour of a democractic republic and on the right, the more conservative ones who wanted to keep a constitutional monarchy. 20 century American neoliberals with their weird ideas about ‘statism’ weren’t represented because this ideology didn’t exist yet.
BTW, it’s rude to comment on other people instead of their opinions. The latter is just critcism.
Don’t be so rude then. I’m perfectly aware of the origin of left thanks. In practical terms how left and right manifest themselves is exactly as I describe. It’s perfectly obvious fascism is a leftist philosophy, it’s just communism with slightly less theft of property.
I wasn’t commenting on you. And referring to an article written by someone else which starts with an obviously invented quote — the one about Hitler having learnt a lot by reading Marx which makes no sense at all as Marx published tomes about economic theory and not revolutionary politics, that would have been Lenin – as tosh is entirely appropriate, because it is tosh.
In practical terms, the neoliberals are targetting conservative voters and hence, they seek to label their theories about radical change of society as right and everyone who opposes them as left. This makes no historical sense and hence, it’s best ignored. Especially since it has a decidedly Marxist tinge to it as they’re really aiming for the Marxist Paradise regained! state of a state-less society of autonomous communities.
Communism just with private property is contradictio in adiecto (English contradiction in terms) because the abolishment of private property is the very core principle of communism. Without it, it isn’t communism.
Touching moment not long ago when my new twenty-something son-in-law, who I think is a wonderful boy, reacted to something I mentioned (probably too casually) about Hitler being fundamentally a leftist with “Wait, no that’s wrong – I did this in my A-levels – he was an extreme right-winger.”. Bless.
https://youtu.be/hTXSKaogA2c?si=fKsKfgzTZj1GzTNz
The MET up to no good again with one of their dubious “officers” making up their own laws.
Frightening stuff.
No, no, no. Hitler was a radical Marxist. Nazis were socialists. Its in the darn name of their parry. They didn’t come up with their name as a joke. A true far right would be extreme free enterprise people who would almost want no government interference in anyone’s life at all.
Comkuniam and Nazism were both branches of leftism. Hitler controlled industry and people’s lives by implementing controlling policies and laws. He behaved almost exactly like communists did and do – control people and things by making more and more constricting laws against whatever they do not want or like. This is why the left always throws around their interpretation of the nazis as far right, fascists. To sow confusion in our minds.
See this article from the Independent, back when it was somewhat open minded and unleftist.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/hitler-and-the-socialist-dream-1186455.html
And this excellent video from Tik
https://youtu.be/0q16cq25SCY?si=Keun2_sxKXDQLzJ0
I generally agree with Eugyppius, but in this case I think he has confused two separate ideas. Perhaps this comes from his German viewpoint.
Fascism is the concept that the State should rule, in cooperation with privately owned and run businesses. Mussolini’s Italy was fascist.
Wartime Germany, on the other hand, was Nazi, or National Socialist. National Socialism is similar to fascism, but not the same.
It seems to me that Nazism is more collectivist than fascism. It desires complete suppression of individuality so that all individuals become part of the State, whereas fascism envisages more a complete cooperation of individuals so that they are all aligned in the same direction.