Sunday’s election in the German states of Saxony and Thuringia

Sunday’s elections in the eastern German states/provinces of Sachsen (Saxony) and Thüringen (Thuringia) at the current writing show the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as the leading party but far from a majority, followed by the middle-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in second. And in Saxony, the CDU is showing in second place with the AfD very close. It was no doubt a strong showing for the AfD.

Broad explanations and specific ones

I tend to lean heavily on the analysis that modern societies have strong authoritarian tendencies. Max Horkheimer, head of the Institute for Social Research (“Frankfurt School”) at the time, famously wrote in 1939: “those who do not want to talk about capitalism should also remain silent about fascism.” (1)

That sentence comes in the following context:

No one can demand that the emigrants [from Nazi Germany to democratic capitalist countries] hold up a mirror to the world that generates fascism out of itself precisely where it still grants them asylum. But those who do not want to talk about capitalism should also remain silent about fascism. Their English friends of today have better experiences [with intellectual refugees from Nazi Germany] than Frederick [the Great had] with the blasphemous Voltaire [when he was a refugee in Frederick’s Prussia]. The song of praise that the intellectuals sing of liberalism may often come too late, since the countries are transforming into totalitarian ones more quickly than books find publishers, they do not give up hope that somewhere the reform of Western capitalism will take place more lightly than that of the German and that well-recommended foreigners still have a future. But the totalitarian [fascist] order is nothing more than its predecessor [liberal-democratic capitalism], which has lost its inhibitions. [my emphasis]

The Frankfurt School combined a democratic Marxist perspective with Freudian social analysis in analyzing the phenomenon of authoritarianism, with particularly reference to the fascist form of it. Both of those perspectives may give good liberals today the heebie-jeebies. But their work on authoritarianism has nevertheless held up well. As a matter of historical fact, fascism in Italy and Germany did develop out of capitalist economies and societies. Weimar Germany in the years leading up to 1933 was widely seen as a model of a liberal-democratic, constitutional form of government operating under the rule of law. And rightly so.

But it was very notable to everyone in 1939 that the Great Depression had provided the immediate context of Hitler’s rise to power as German Chancellor, initially by legal means – with essential support from the conservatives who didn’t think much of this whole democracy thing anyway - although that legal phase really lasted only a few weeks. Libertarians and devoted inflation-hawks still like to pretend that it was the German hyper-inflation of 1923-4 was the real culprit, a view that one has to credit with impressively creative imagination.

They were also influenced by Sigmund Freud’s work in general, and in particular by his sociological ideas in works like Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), The Future of an Illusion (1927), and Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). Freud’s social analysis isn’t specifically targeted to capitalist societies, but rather to the increasing complexity of our social world which creates more need for social conformity and the suppressing of individual desires. That would apply to economies with full-blown socialist economies like the old Soviet Union or today’s China, as well. Capitalist societies generate tendencies to authoritarianism. But that doesn’t mean the tendency is unique to that particular form of economic organization.

The Frankfurt School’s work had some similarities with the work of the Freudian-Marxist Wilhelm Reich in his work of the early and mid-1930s, like The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933) and What Is Class Consciousness? (1934), and The Sexual Revolution (1936). After that, Reich took a sad turn and embraced a crackpot theory about “orgone energy” and wound up in federal prison in the US for defying a court order related to “orgone accumulator” machines he was producing for which he made unfounded claims of medical benefit.

In the Frankfurt School’s 1936 Studies in Authority and Family, the Institute presented the results of an extensive survey on how family life, social condition, and government policies may affect authoritarian, anti-democratic attitudes, with major introductory essays by Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse. Fromm later adopted a somewhat different approach than the Frankfurt School that also recognized the temptation among many people to reject democratic government in his book Escape From Freedom (1941), UK title: The Fear of Freedom. (2)

The Frankfurt School’s later studies in the same vein sponsored by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) produced a five-volume series of books on the topic Studies in Prejudice:

1. The Authoritarian Personality (1950) by Theodore Adorno, et.al.
2. Dynamics of Prejudice: A Psychological and Sociological Study of Veterans (1950) by Bruno Bettelheim and Morris Janowitz
3. Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder (1950) by Nathan Ackerman and Marie Jahoda
4. Rehearsal for Destruction: A Study of Political Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany (1949) by Paul Massing
5. Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator (1949) by Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman

Prophets of Deceit is a rare look at the Trumpista predecessors of World War II hardcore “isolationists.” It’s also a good reminder of why the “isolationist” labels carries such a stigma even today, though war advocates now apply it to anyone who doesn’t support their favorite war of the moment.

These are available online at the AJC Archives (2), but not in as user-friendly a way as they were several years ago.

But both broad perspectives and specific focus on issues in their political context are necessary. We could certainly look at how major economic developments and government policies around them contribute to creating opportunities for anti-democratic demagogues. The neoliberal dogma of deregulation, privatization, and concentration of private wealth have certainly contributed mightily to general discontent and cynicism about politics and politicians.

But individual political contests, both in democracies and no-so-much democracies can depend on a variety of very specific events: scandals, wars, natural disasters, unusual crime outbreaks, surges in immigration/refugee flows, outbreaks of diseases like COVID, surprise resignations like Joe Biden’s late exit from the US Presidential race this year.

In current German politics, immigration and more particularly xenophobic agitation around it is still potent. The AfD and smaller far-right groups are promoting it most heavily. But the center-right and center-left parties and even a big part of the far left (the Bundnis Sarah Wagenknecht, BSW) have jumped on the bandwagon. There are now at least two decades of clear experience in various countries that this strategy is far more likely to strengthen the far-right groups than to politically defang the far right’s use of it.

In Germany and Austria, somehow the idea of knife attacks being particularly associated with Muslim immigrants has taken hold on the right generally. On August 23 in the city of Solingen in western Germany near Cologne, an attacker identified as an asylum-seeker from Syria fatally stabbed three people and wounded eight others at a public event. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, but they are known to glob on to incidents like this to make themselves sound more intimidating.

With the possible terror motive, it’s understandable that the incident attracted international attention. But for an American, it’s kind of surprising that even a single non-fatal stabbing incident in a large city can become national or international news. Much less that it might be immediately incorporated into centrist parties talking about disregarding international law in the treatment of the suspects. This is a real sign of how badly the centrist parties have been fumbling the immigration/refugee issue by letting the far-right define it. It’s downright pathetic, actually.

Getting down to specifics

But that’s a good example of how a broad theme (Refugees! Muslims! Aii-eee!!) has to be operationalized politically into something vivid and specific like “dark-skinned Muslim foreigners stabling innocent white people in Solingen! Deport! Deport! Deport!”

In the US the Harris Presidential campaign at the moment is successfully translating the broad theme of Trump Is A Threat To Democracy into “Trump’s Supreme Court appointments are forcing hospitals to deny life-saving medical treatment to pregnant women!” That one having the substantial virtue of being obviously true.

Much of the media likes to roll out the old favorite explanations for far-right surges: alienation, “economic anxiety,” rapid social change, status anxiety (a frequent explanation by American liberals in the 1950s and early 1960s for the appeal of McCarthyism), losers from the digital revolution, “I feel like the politicians don’t listen to us,” gender confusion, “these kids today,” too many foreigners, people don’t talk to each other anymore, toxic partisanship, etc.

All these can give journalists and commentator a hook to talk about specific controversies, issues, and elections. But as broad generalizations, they serve well as excuses for laziness. The kinds of descriptions often floated in the daily press and mainstream podcasts and cable talk shows all too often fall into this category. A German example from early August was a report by ZDF’s Eva Schulz, “What Thuringia really thinks about Höcke: Eva Schulz talks to Supporters and Opponents.” (3) (Bjorn Höcke is head of the AfD in the province.) But at least she’s perky and entertaining, so there’s that. But Schulz doesn’t seem to have been prepared to push back when her respondents give what sound like well-practiced evasions in which they minimize the actual policies and specific demagoguery from the AfD.

She even does a version of the US press favorite: talking to random folks at the local diner! (Or café, in this case.)

One interesting note in her report is that she interviews a voter at a Höcke speech who insists that the most important thing for him about Höcke is that he has children. “For me, that’s a very big point, [that a politician should] have children. Angela Merkel didn’t have any children. She couldn’t understand it at all without having children. [What the “it” is she needed to understand isn’t clear.] And for me that is the most important point. A person who has no children also simply can’t understand what the future means.” (my translation)

Obviously a guy after J.D. Vance’s heart!

Also, he says he's totally for free speech. He’s not gonna be intimidated by the George Soros Lügenpresse, no sir-ree.

Another Höcke supporter is particularly concerned about all this here “gender” talk.

Free helpful tip to guys whose personal appearance and style scream “comic book villain”: maybe you might consider not sounding like one, too.

There has also been excellent reporting and analysis on how the rightwing-authoritarian trend in the US in the last couple of decades that is far more substantive. Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000) was a serious look at how traditional links to community like social clubs in American society were in transition or faltering. Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein gave an excellent description of the rise of toxic partisanship in the US Congress in their 2012 book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism. American journalists and academics including Dave Neiwert, Rick Perlstein, Joe Conason, Gene Lyons, Will Bunch, Heather “Digby” Parton, Jeet Heer, Timothy Snyder, Jason Stanley and many others have done excellent work describing the development of extremist currents and anti-democratic tendencies.

In the European context, journalists and scholars like Timothy Garton Ash, Thomas Beb richer, Annika Brockschmitt, Wilhelm Heitmeyer, Maximilian Pichl, Nina Horaczek, Walter Otto Otsch, Anton Pelinka, Hans-Henning Scharsach, and Natascha Strobl have given us substantive analyses of how far-right politics in the last two decades.

Lothar Gorris and Tobias Rapp recently did a cover story for Der Spiegel on the contemporary European far right, called “Die Heimlichen Hitler” (The Concealed Hitler”), featured on the cover as “How Fascism Begins,” featuring drawings of convicted felon Donald Trump, France’s Marine Le Pen, and Thuringen’s Bjorn Höcke.

John Dean, who has spent most of his life since the Nixon Administration trying to understand and warn about the authoritarian developments in the United States in books like Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush (2004) and (with Bob Altemeyer) Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers (2020).

So we don’t have to be content with superficial, golly-gee takes on how and why there is a far-right surge in Europe and the US – and, of course, not only there.

Notes:

(1) Horkheimer, Max (1939): Die Juden und Europa. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 8:1/2, 115-137. My translation from German.

(2) Studien über Autorität und Familie (1936). In: Schriften des Instituts für Sozialforschung, Fünfter Band. Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan.

(3) https://ajcarchives.org/Portal/Default/en-US/RecordView/Index/383

(4) Wie Thüringen wirklich über Höcke denkt: Eva Schulz redet mit Anhängern und Gegnern. ZDF 05.08.2024. <https://www.zdf.de/politik/deutschland-warum-bist-du-so/eva-schulz-mit-der-frage-wie-thueringen-wirklich-ueber-hoecke-denkt-100.html> (Accessed: 2024-01-09).