Wolfgang Streeck on German politics and immigration

German political theorist Thomas Biebricher has done a detailed look at the experiences in Italy, France, and Britain with center-right parties trying to win votes from the radical right parties by coopting some of their hot-button themes, expecially xenophobia focused on immigrants and refugees (or “migrants,” as some of the rightwingers prefer to call them).

I posted about Biebricher’s book on the subject in June. He makes an important point about how “cultural” issues when they treated as purely cultural/emotional ones give the right – and particularly the far right – an argumentative advantage:

Conservatives may believe that they have an advantage over leftists on cultural issues, but authoritarians also have an advantage over conservatives: these conflicts do not reward middle ground, nuance, and differentiation; they are structurally oriented not towards balance, but towards escalation, and the resulting bidding competition is ultimately always won by the far right, with the regular collateral damage that the center-right, which has gotten involved in it, is itself approaching the right-wing fringe and at the same time providing its positions with the long-awaited legitimacy. (1)

I was reminded of this when I saw this interview the Quincy Institute did with German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck And Quincy’s own Molly O’Neal about German politics, with references as well to French politics and Ukraine, as well. (2)

Streeck is a prominent, left-leaning academic and commentator. But in this short interview, he talks mainly about immigration in Germany. From the questions posed by Quincy’s Anatol Lieven, they seemed to be looking for a broader analysis of what the recent strength of the vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in three eastern German states (Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg) signifies for national politics there.

I’d have to say Streeck didn’t seem to be well-prepared for the interview generally, because he gives only a vague description about what happened in the recent elections in question, so that only someone already fairly familiar with the results would know what he’s talking about. And even then, that part was kind of garbled.

For instance, he says oddly, “elections are always very difficult to read it's like battles in in in war you never know who has really won.” Say what? The results of state elections in Germany are normally known by the following day at the latest.

And he comments that the Social Democrats all over Europe are “almost pulverized in elections.” Did he pay any attention at all to the recent elections in Britain and France?

(If you’re wondering, he turns 76 next month. He would still be young enough to run for President if he were a natural-born US citizen.)

Streeck does then talk about the upcoming image of national budget and how the SPD (Social Democratic) Chacellor Olaf Scholtz may approach that. He also explains, again rather garbled, that Scholtz may decide to fire the Free Democratic (FDP) ministers of his coalition government, in order to end the current coalition government and force new election in the hope of taking votes from the Greens, in particular.

Quincy’s Molly O’Neal steps in at around 11:00 in the video to give a general summary of the recent elections in question. And she gives a decent summary of the political situation those three states. O’Neal introduces what she calls the “migrant” issue in passing in her comments. And she references the strength of the far right in France and Italy.

At around 38:00, Lieven introduces an audience question about “migration.” (I put it in quotation marks because in Germany and Austria and some other EU countries, xenophobes refer to “migration” as a way of lumping together regular immigrants and refugees as dangers to the Fatherland.) This doesn’t seem to have quite caught on in the US, where “migrants” still seems to be a more neutral term. We even hear references to the “migration” of white conservative Californians to Idaho.

And Lieven focuses his question in particular on the question of the centrist and left parties of trying coopt anti-immigrant rhetoric, the trend Thomas Biebricher has studied in Italy, France, and Britain. Lieven appears to be asking if the cooptation strategy is effective.

But Streeck, unfortunately, responds by repeating a lot of the rhetoric of the centrist parties who try to do that without talking about its effect on improving the position of the center parties. And if this interview is representative of his views, he seems to be pretty clueless about how the whole issue around refugees, immigration, and xenophobia actually works. And that

Streeck kind of rambles along the lines of how, you know, the center parties need to aware of the fac that some people feel apprehensive about all these here foreigners, and some of them are scared, they feel their culture is under threat, and people think they’ve lost control of who comes into their country, and so on. Not a word about what actually works in politics for nonn-far-right parties, which is pushing back directly on the xenophobic nonsense.

Streeck’s disjointed rambling about what a pain immigrants are is a good example of how successful the xenophobes have been in getting people to focus on isolated events and silly clichés as a way to associate fears and resentments with immigrants generally.

Xenophobia lives on lies and anecdotes: but politicians can call out the lies and provide a real-world context refuting them. That may not win every election. But it’s better – both politically and in terms of basic responsibility – to push back on the nativist demagogues and not try to come up with a kinder-gentler form of their nativism.

Notes:

(1) Bierbacher, Thomas (2023): Mitte/Rechts. Die Internationale Krise des Konservatismus. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag.

(2) The Transformation of German Politics. Quincy Institute YouTube channel 09/25/2024. <https://www.youtube.com/live/4198Z-Ej_rI?si=2jPdvy4ui6s3b1N> (Accessed: 2024-26-09).