Right, wrong & left
LAST Sunday, the state election in Thuringia for the first time propelled an extreme right-wing party to pole position anywhere in Germany since the end of the Nazi era 90 years ago. Efforts by its rivals to forestall the local triumph of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) mostly consisted of efforts to steal its thunder by emulating its vote-winning policies, not least its relentless hostility to almost any form of immigration.
In neighbouring Saxony, the AfD came second, hot on the heels of the traditional conservative Christian Democratic Union. Its aspirations to join state governments in either of these regions may come to naught, but in Thuringia the AfD has enough seats to halt any initiatives that require a two-thirds majority in the state legislature. The AfD also came second in the European Parliament elections in June, and its status in the Brandenburg state election less than three weeks hence will be closely watched.
It is no coincidence that the AfD’s electoral successes have transpired in regions that were part of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) for 40 years. In common with other Soviet satellite states in East Europe (and not excluding Russia itself), the putatively socialist baby was thrown out with the totalitarian bathwater. Excluding the abominable repressive tendencies that characterised Soviet hegemony, there were practices in the economic and social fields that ought to have been preserved in one form or another.
As German writer Carolin Würfel puts it, “the adults who brought me up [in Leipzig] were shaped by socialism and were considered losers after [the Berlin Wall] came down … for some, that shame has spiralled into anger and an urge to rebel against the status quo. Unfortunately, their means of protest is the far-right [AfD].” Under many Soviet-aligned authorities, indoctrination took precedence over education, and that offers one explanation why so many countries that were once behind the so-called iron curtain have veered towards the far right when reacting to the inevitable depredations of Western-sponsored neoliberal capitalism.
Germany’s history makes the rise of Nazi-fancying parties alarming.
Across Europe, the AfD’s fraternal parties stretch from UK’s Reform, France’s National Rally and Spain’s Vox to Golden Dawn in Greece, Law and Justice in Poland and Fidesz in Hungary, among others — not least key components of the Ukrainian as well as Russian military establishments. Germany has sought in recent years to purge the more obvious neofascist elements from its military and security forces, but the degree of its success is uncertain.
Germany’s 20th-century history makes the resurgence of Nazi-fancying political parties and military factions particularly alarming, but it’s worth remembering that the Nazis found willing allies across much of Europe (not least among the British royal family) and even in the US. American participation in World War II did not eliminate the local extremists. Barely four years after the fall of Berlin, there were rioters ranting: ‘We’re Hitler’s boys — here to finish his job’.
The objects of their venom were the blacks, Jews and communists who dared to flock to a concert held 75 years ago in Peekskill, New York State, in support of a civil rights organisation. It was headlined by Paul Robeson — globally the best-known African-American long before Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X or Muhammad Ali — who had fallen foul of Cold War ideology by publicly contending that the very idea of conflict between the US and the USSR was absurd, and African-Americans had bigger quarrels at home than with the Soviets.
The concert had to be cancelled in the face of extreme-right violence spearheaded by the Ku Klux Klan in collaboration with the police. Robeson insisted on rescheduling it for Sept 4, and it attracted a huge crowd. Ro-
beson was protected from snipers by a phalanx of union stalwarts, many of them war veterans. It was after the concert that the fascist violence kicked in as the returning attendees were bombarded with vile abuse and viciously targeted.
Donald Trump’s weirder acolytes may be unfamiliar with this particular demonstration of fascist outrage in postwar America, let alone be acquainted with the pro-Hitler proto-oligarchs of the 1920s and ’30s. But the echoes of that era resonate loudly in the 2020s as the world hurtles towards a climate catastrophe amid economic failures pretty much across the globe that the neoliberal centre-right has catalysed and the far right has feasted upon without offering any viable alternatives.
In Germany and elsewhere, the extreme centre tends to absorb and regurgitate the far right’s ideas. The electoral successes of both are a searing indictment of the left, which either fails to come up with appealing alternative narratives, or falls prey to the sordid machinations of an establishment devoted to sustaining an untenable status quo.
Published in Dawn, September 4th, 2024