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.
This article originally appeared on Eugyppius’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.
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Obviously true but I would add the complimentary accomplishments: the Western public seem convinced it wasn’t the trillions of dollars printed in 2020-21 or self-defeating energy policy that caused inflation, it was Poot Poot go Bang Bang. Back to Ukraine and with over $100 billion chucked in just from America everyone with skin in the game seems to be jumping ship from the Kyiv laundromat (apparent short-straw recipient, regime fixer on Ukraine Bunter has just been to give and take) and talking negotiation back to April 2022 scenarios, that Bunter told Zelenskyyyy to abandon at the time. Any nasties or biolabs there have had ample time to be neutralised so
Dr David KellyHans Blix can go and check if there’s sceptics. And abolishing democracy, procedure and civil rights for the other invisible enemy Covid is just a vague memory, with the boldest propagandists have you believe the vaccines are a unanimous success and a public never more enamoured by more gene therapies:…as Russell Brand pointed out months ago…it’s a real turn around, when the only questioning coverage in the MSM that you get about the proxy war..is from the supposed far-right Fox News…no ‘left’ bias news outlets, who historically might question ‘war’….will move against the narrative…
In the UK, just like the scamdemic propaganda, the whole of MSM have followed the truly juvenile and frankly, often cringe-worthy, ‘truth-light’ agenda….it’s utterly dismal and pathetic…
Jimmy Dore is a case in point …. he of course has his own show, which gets more views than many MSM outlets, but the only MSM he gets invited to appear on? Fox!!…..
This is a brilliant rant, and spot on…..
https://rumble.com/v27wxsm-tucker-carlson-and-jimmy-dore-your-enemy-is-the-military-industrial-complex.html
Excellent piece of investigative journalism uncovering the disgusting tactics used by a UN initiative called ‘Team Halo’, to literally harass and make life hell for any health care professional who speaks out publicly against the official narrative. This is a new low and next level malicious. Because it’s all about a virus and for the good of our health…yeah, evidently!
”On Sep. 20, 2022, Melissa Fleming, the under-secretary-general for global communications at the United Nations, appeared at the World Economic Forum to discuss how the United Nations was “Tackling Disinformation” regarding “health guidance” as well as the “safety and efficacy of the vaccine” for COVID-19.
“A key strategy that we had was to deploy influencers,” Fleming stated. “Influencers who were really keen, who had huge followings, but really keen to help carry messages that were going to serve their communities.”
Fleming also explained that the United Nations knew its messaging wouldn’t resonate as well as influencers, so they developed Team Halo.
“We had another trusted messenger project, which was called Team Halo, where we trained scientists around the world, and some doctors, on TikTok. We had TikTok working with us,” Fleming said. “It was a layered deployment of ideas and tactics.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/un-initiative-targets-and-doxes-doctors-and-nurses-who-dont-follow-covid-19-narrative_4989210.html
Would be interesting to see this data comparing mortality in different US states vs number of experimental vaccination doses and see how this claim holds up.
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1620512597798977539?cxt=HHwWhoDUnebnm_0sAAAA
The UK data they are referring to is the ONS data at May 2022 (rather than insurance data) so hard to see how they’ve reached their conclusion there as there are problems with that dataset as Norman Fenton etal have shown. So we can’t reach definitive conclusions.
I don’t know if you aware of this man in the USA…John Beaudoin? He acquired thousands of death certificates, and matched them to VAERS data, showing links between vaccination and death…or at least death and injuries within a short period of vaccination…
https://rumble.com/v257tpw-john-beaudoin-exposes-truth-of-covid-deaths-from-medical-records-live.html
He also has a substack…
https://coquindechien.substack.com/p/vaccine-death-count-and-a-ramble
His basic premise (which being a data dummy suits me!) is that if all death certificates had a field which related to vaccine type and date received…then each State could count deaths within 1-3 days…after 1 week, 10 weeks, 25 weeks, to one year…after immunisation…
“I maintain that I can end this debate in a week if any state allows me to correlate the databases. There is a term in law that fits. Res ipsa loquitur – direct translation “thing itself storyteller.” id est, “the thing itself is the teller of the story.” Lawyers and judges say, “The thing speaks for itself.” And that is what this data does. Once the number of deaths that occur within days or a couple weeks of vaccination are known, no doctor, no research scientist, no lawyer is necessary to explain or parse the data. The data will tell the story on its own. We will all be done with this vaccine.”
Seems a good idea to me….and on a personal note, if you were undertaking a giant new medical experiment, I would think it might be something you wanted to know anyway??
Thanks. Wasn’t aware of him. I’ll take a look when I have a bit more time.
I have always appreciated your data…I even quote it on occasion…LOL!
He is an interesting person, and I think it would be simple enough to do…you have to ask why none of them want to make it simple!?
He spotted the correlation between vax and strokes, way back, from the death/VAERS data…
Love the kindness and humanity of your posts too, some brilliant links too
I’m halfway through the John Beaudoin video and it’s totally blowing me away. Love his style too and asides about beer making etc!
It’s much clearer what’s likely to have been happening in England and Wales now as the overall age stratified deaths pattern between 2020 (which includes the circa 8 weeks pandemic period) and 2021 (the vaccine period) is very similar to Masachussetts.
As you will know what John Beaudoin has done is to split the causes of death from the death certificates but these causes themselves are split by age band and compared between 2020 and 2021. When you do this it all becomes clear. The lack of dry tinder effect in the oldest age groups when looking at total deaths obscures what has been happening in lower age groups in England and Wales (my own charts show this). The dry tinder effect is in this regards a bit of a hypothesis.
But what John Beaudoin’s Masachusetts analysis does in demonstrating the lack of dry tinder effect by cause of death by looking at age bands is astonishingly revelatory. The same thing must be happening in England and Wales.
The real climate crisis is sinister ideology
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-real-climate-crisis-is-sinister-ideology/
Ben Pile
–
Cimate crisis just sinister ideology to bring in worldwide communism. When the Berlin Wall came down they had their new rebranded version of socialism ready. .
………
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“James Innes-Smith in the Spectator on the mystery of why an anti-white campaign group is blaming white people for the violent death of a black man at the hands of five black police officers.”
Not a mystery. White people are to blame for everything, if you ask certain people.
TY: ‘I thought surely they can’t be monitoring people who are critical of government policy… But it turns out they were!’
Yup, one of the barriers to the development of opposition to covid folly and evil is that even old cynics like TY struggle to imagine that people they thought were broadly like them could be so wicked.
Another critical item that crawled out of the woodwork: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0pu0ucsXVk&list=WL&index=3 “NHS therapist reveals his experience”. It contains an associated link to elsewhere: https://rumble.com/v26y5j8-ex-nhs-therapist-speaks-about-vaccine-roll-out-worries.html
“The things is, we have not only been seeing high excess deaths in older people, we are actually seeing very high excess deaths among younger people now as well, which was NOT the case during covid. Something has changed.
In Europe during week 49, there was a whopping 43.3% more deaths among children aged 0-14 compared with the average number of weekly deaths during covid from 2020 to mid 2021. This should make alarm bells ring.
Why is there so many child excess deaths?This is very worrying.”
https://petersweden.substack.com/p/child-excess-deaths
After much, yes he is, no he isn’t…it looks like the great news is that Mark Steyn will be returning shortly….!
Brilliant….
https://www.steynonline.com/13216/back-from-the-dead
https://dossier.substack.com/p/bill-gates-secured-hundreds-of-millions
From Jordan Schachtel….
Bill Gates secured hundreds of millions in profits from mRNA stock sales before suddenly changing tune on vaccine technology Once an mRNA evangelist, Gates now dismisses the technology as inferior, after banking a 15x return on investment.In reviewing SEC filings, The Dossier has found that the Gates Foundation’s holdings in BioNTech went from 1,038,674 shares to 148,674 shares over the course of the third quarter of 202, downsizing the Gates position in the mRNA vaccine manufacturer by 86 percent of shares held. Gates just so happened to time the market perfectly, selling the shares during BioNtech’s best performing quarter.
The Gates Foundation secured its shares in the Pfizer vaccine partner through a pre-IPO equity deal with an agreed upon purchase price of $18.10 per share. With an average sale price of around $300 per share in Q3 of 2021, this means that the Gates Foundation banked roughly $260 million in cash from the sale, with $242 million being untaxed profit, given that the money was invested through the foundation.
No Comment!!
I’ve got to agree ebg – No Comment or I might get banned.
Soz the Downtick was me thinking I was replying to say Spot on
Another ‘conspiracy theory’ ??
https://expose-news.com/2022/04/13/us-dod-contract-covid-research-ukraine-nov-2019/
The world first started to hear about a novel coronavirus in early January 2020, with reports of an alleged new pneumonia like illness spreading across Wuhan, China. However, the world did not actually know of Covid-19 until February 2020, because it was not until the 11th of that month that the World Health Organisation officially named the novel coronavirus disease as Covid-19.
So with this being the official truth, why does United States Government data show that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) awarded a contract on the 12th November 2019 to Labyrinth Global Health INC. for ‘COVID-19 Research’, at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19?
The shocking findings however, do not end there. The contract awarded in November 2019 for ‘COVID-19 Research’ was not only instructed to take place in Ukraine, it was in fact part of a much larger contract for a ‘Biological threat reduction program in Ukraine’.
Perhaps explaining why Labyrinth Global Health has been collaborating with Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, and Ernest Wolfe’s Metabiota since its formation in 2017.
This isn’t in the article, but I would add this from the Daily Mail, March 2022…
https://newspunch.com/german-govt-bombshell-alarming-number-of-vaccinated-are-developing-aids/
Who predicted this? Was it Gert van der Bosche?
https://linksharing.samsungcloud.com/ibdOCF2HLTSG