Review of “Von Wutbürgern und Brandstiftern” by Hajo Funke (ISBN 9783945256640)
This is a book review, but it’s not entirely that.
The title of Hajo Funke’s book translates to roughly “Of Angry Citizens and Arsonists” – which describes the break with polite center-right politics and an embrace of angry rhetoric and violence by native Germans, and the rise of neo-Nazi and xenophobic groups. This is a shockingly familiar story in Germany but one also familiar in almost every Western nation.
Author’s Introduction
Funke introduces the German Extreme Right: Pegida, the NPD, and the AFD. Pegida is now also a political party and is in Denmark. The AFD cultivates the appearance of a dry, conservative economics-focused party but its base is the radical right consisting of members of the NPD (a barely-legal party that never got much traction), Pegida (primarily a hate group for xenophobes), the German “Identitäre Bewegung” (white supremacist “Identitarian movement”), and the “Institut für Staatspolitik” (the National Policy Institute, founded in 2000), which sees itself as the voice of Germany’s “New Right.”
But Germany’s New Right is not so different from the old in its connection to Nazism. In the USA Richard Spencer’s “National Policy Institute” (founded five years later) seems to be a knock-off of the Institut für Staatspolitik – and virtually every feature of German neo-Nazism exists in the United States. This is one reason I found Funke’s book so fascinating and chilling.
Funke frames the political climate in Germany. He paints a picture of alienated young Muslims sitting in chat rooms and working themselves up to acts of violence. But this is also what happens with angry white Germans. Both seek online confirmation for their beliefs and become angrier by the minute. And for the Wutbürger somebody has to pay. Germans found an example in Jörg Haider of the FPÖ in Austria, who offered simple solutions – get out of the EU; kick out foreigners; and shut the borders. Then Austria would be great. Sound famliar?
Of course real reasons are more complex. Geopolitical issues – such as Western nations destabilizing the Middle East – created refugees. The rise of ISIS was a consequence of Western nations creating failed states. The economic meltdown of 2008 wasn’t created by Syrian asylum seekers, nor was income inequality within Western nations, nor were the bankruptcies of southern European nations. Global Capitalism, globalism, and unstable markets are not a refugee issue. But simple minds cry out for simple solutions.
Funke cites Oliver Nachtwey’s book on economic decline in Germany – the end of the “German dream” that has shaken those who thought their place was secure in the modern BRD. Low-paying MacJobs are proliferating just as elsewhere in global Capitalism, and the social safety net has disappeared. People are on their own and they’re angry.
Economic inequality engenders political inequality and political instability. Funke points to Armin Schäfer’s work on participatory democracy. Das Volk may be dumb, but they’re not stupid. They know that the big decisions are not made by little people – even in a benign liberal “democracy.” Consequently voters often sit out elections. Why bother? It’s all been decided. And the press? They’re run by elites, right-populists tell voters.
Funke cites Wolfgang Streeck’s “Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism.” Streeck writes of the frequent crises of Capitalism, the profit-taking that occurs even when markets fail, and of the austerity programs and the sacrifices citizens must make in order to prop up the markets. The”elites,” say right-wing populists, always manage to suck money out of the system while the little guy suffers. And this is correct, although one right-wing “populist” is himself a billionaire sucking money out of the system. But the rightwing-populist cannot – and will not – repudiate Capitalism or point fingers at the real criminals. Another enemy must be found.
As the economic middle class becomes thinner and more vulnerable, the stability of the political center of the middle class becomes weaker and it can move in unexpected directions. Zick and Klein’s book “Fragile Mitte” describes this phenomenon and offers reasons for the country’s move to the right: although economically weaker, they slavishly align themselves with the ruling class.
Finally, Funke enumerates a few of the right-wing demagogues busy at work in Europe: Norbert Hofer and Heinz-Christian Strache in Austria; Marine Le Pen in France; Geerd Wilders in the Netherlands; and Nigel Farage in Britain.
Right-wing demogogues claim the EU takes jobs away from workers; that the EU imposes quotas on refugees. Globalism is your enemy, say the populists, because it imposes a second set of laws over nations, injuring sovereignty and productivity. As for NATO, only the NPD in Germany is opposed. For the AFD the Defense industry is nation and business friendly. Foreigners are the problem. Never is it global Capitalism because neo-Nazis don’t really want to fix an unjust system. They just want to be the ones to run it.
Against Human Dignity
The section describes how easily hate speech becomes acts of hate. When the far-right start calling for the expulsion of foreigners, it’s not long before supporters start fire-bombing them. The “Mitte-Studie” from the University of Leipzig showed that the middle class (AFD members especially) were increasingly likely to be hostile to foreigners and evinced anti-democratic and authoritarian attitudes. A surprising number also approved of a dictator. In the German states where right-wing parties were politically strongest there were more physical attacks.
PEGIDA – Unleashed resentment
Pegida’s first demonstration was in Dresden in October 2014, where over 10,000 people protested foreigners and the nation’s asylum laws. It was founded by Lutz Bachmann, who apparently loves Hitler, and has grown to at least 40,000 members, at one point having 200,000 Facebook page supporters. The University of Göttingen did a study of the typical Pegida member: 80% male; 70% without religion; 80% in a relationship; average income, most late thirties to fifties. 90% were unhappy with the way democracy worked. And they were angry. This is a Trump supporter.
AFD: Alternative for Germany – Populist in form, Extreme Right in substance
In the preceding chapter Funke goes through a list of Pegida organizations in each of the German states, as well as showing links to the NPD and the AFD. The AFD is a party whose platform is a bland enumeration of mostly economic policy, which seems to place it on even footing with the CDU. However, the AFD has a “wing” of extremists who regularly coordinate work with Pegida and the NPD. In many ways, they are all interchangeable.
Originally the AFD was constituted as an economic opponent of the Euro and as a political opponent of the CDU. It was formed by an economics professor, Bernd Lucke, and a former IBM (Europe) executive, Hans-Olaf Henkel. Both opposed the Euro but found the international company they were in – Marine Le Pen in France, for example – distastful.
But it wasn’t long before they were deposed (see the “Erfurt resolution” of March 2015) by extreme right-wing members Björn Höcke, André Poggenburg, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, Alexander Gauland, and Frauke Petry, who replaced “technocrats” and those “without vision” with “patriots” capable of taking the fight to the mainstream parties, the media, and “social experimentation.”
Funke footnotes a voting rights survey with figures on attacks against foreigners, mainly Muslims. On the “wahlrecht” website there is a page that shows percentages each party would get if an election were held today. In Baden-Württemberg, Saxony, Thüringen, and Sachsen-Anhalt the AFD is running second place behind the CDU. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern they lead. They are not yet ready to take on everyone and take over the government. But they’re gaining on the CDU.
Björn Höcke, one of the party leaders, is the motor driving the extreme right transformation of the AFD. Höcke has been trying to Nazi-fy the party by making it more Völkisch – a racial adjective meaning organic, tribal, and “native” in a genetic sense. Even Frauke Petry, the telegenic, well-spoken and English-fluent face of the party, has defended the use of this old Nazi adjective. It is a perfect example of a German dog whistle. The neo-Nazis for whom the party speaks know exactly what the term really means. The party is also unapologetically anti-Semitic, although it keeps trying to appeal to Zionists on the basis of shared commitment to nationalism and ethnocentrism.
Despite the many links between the AFD and the NPD and Pegida, AFD leadership has sought to keep a safe distance from more violent elements of the other two movements. In May 2016 the party passed a resolution playing down these connections. But Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, the party’s “go to” man for all things anti-Islamic, condemned the move while praising Pegida: “Pegida exudes calm and discipline, equanimity and sensibility.” Tillschneider sees the AFD’s role as carrying Pegida’s protests into parliament. Alexander Gauland, another AFD leader, describes the relationship this way: the AFD and Pegida are “naturally linked.”
Funke offers many examples of fuzzy lines between the three extremist groups. Pegida and the NPD have strong relationships to resurgent Nazism and a cadre of neo-Nazi members. The AFD takes pains to distance itself from them, creating “deniability,” but the AFD’s message is still crafted to appeal to them, and AFD leadership praises their extreme brethren. The AFD also refuses to condemn violence against foreigners. Bottom line – neo-Nazism is a unified movement in Germany. Only at the top is there a thin veneer of respectability – and even that is often unmasked by leaked internal documents or YouTube videos of private meetings. Americans should recognize the frightening similarities between German and US politics.
The extreme “New Right”
As if all these angry xenophobes were not bad enough, Germany has a problem with white supremacy. The Identitarian Movement and what we call the “Alt-Right” here in the USA have found a home in Pegida and the AFD.
In 2000 Götz Kubitschek founded the “Institut für Staatspolitik,” which publishes “Sezession,” and sees itself as thinkers of the “New Right.” Both journal and founder have close relationships to all three extremist organizations as well as the Identitarian Movement. Sezession regularly attacks the “lying press” and majority-elected political “elites.” The American Alt-Right happily reproduces these materials, although Americans now have their own Kubitschek in Richard Spencer who has a similar journal. In Austria, where voters narrowly rejected an Identitarian candidate, a 2014 Sora Institute poll showed 40% think Nazis weren’t so bad and 30% liked the idea of a Führer – numbers that doubled since the 2008 economic crisis.
Kubitschek is a disciple of Armin Mohler, credited as an “early thinker” of the New Right. Mohler described himself as a fascist and deserted from the Swiss army to join the SS. He was also an admirer of Mussolini. Kubitschek is a pal of the extreme-right publisher of the short-lived Compact magazine, Jürgen Elsässer. One issue of the defunct magazine featured a roundtable with AFD members on white supremacy.
In Germany the Identitarian movement was resuscitated from outlawed French neo-Nazism, “Génération Identitaire,” which again has its American admirers. Alain de Benoist developed a racist ideology for the Nouvelle Droite (New Right) and was embraced by both German New Right and American Alt-Right. He advocates a type of Apartheid and cultural hegemony: “What the ND wants is a federal Europe, founded on the principle of subsidiarity…” This Catholic concept on the surface sounds a bit like federalism, but it really means turning your back on the rest of society. Many Catholics are appalled at the corruption of the principle, but it is part of the AFD’s platform.
Kubitschek is also knee-deep in the Identitarian movement, along with Pegida supporter Felix Menzel, editor of the “Blaue Narzisse” and whom American admirers would call a Christian Identitarian. Kubitschek has close relationships with Austrian neo-fascists and neo-Nazis. To Identitarians the problem is “population transfer.” They see themselves being replaced. The former head of the Deutsche Bundesbank, Thilo Sarrazin, had a catchy title in his book, “Deutschland schafft sich ab” (Germany does away with itself). But if the problem is “population transfer,” transfer is also the solution. Identitarians believe multiculturalism must be fought and foreigners expelled. Trump has promised the forced expulsion of 11 milllion foreigners and 53% of Israelis support the forced expulsion of Israeli Arabs. Ethnosupremacy is not just for Nazis anymore.
Limits to opposing the Right
Germany’s “liberal democracy” can’t (or won’t) fight the extreme right as it once did – despite an uptick in rightwing terror attacks. In Brandenburg rightwing groups have started doing “evening strolls” – intended to send a chilling message to immigrants. AFD parliamentarians propose the most hateful policies in the Bundesrat. Is this “democracy at work? Or”democracy doing away with itself?” And both local police and national security agencies now have extremists within their ranks. When a permanent state of emergency is declared, you can bet it won’t be by moderates.
This is a terrifying book, but at the end of the day it’s a German problem. Germans had better wake the hell up and crack down on these groups before it’s too late.
Ditto for us.
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