A tale of two Deutschlands: asshole society vs. diverse society

(source: stablediffusion.com)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Charles Dickens

Dear friends,

over the past few days, I have spent much, maybe a bit too much time at the Brandenburg Gate, that symbolic heart of Germany. Some of this time was spent on the (both spatial and political) right of the Gate, some on its left.

Deutschland No. 1: the asshole society

Ten days ago I was there to encounter and better understand the right-wing fringe of the farmers' protests - the "Free Farmers". There, a Germany was articulated in which all transformation, all encroachments upon the absolute freedom of the mostly white, mostly male owners of both land and capital are rejected as illegitimate, as authoritarian, as essentially un-German. Over and over again, speakers gave the impression that those present were convinced that, for example, all they had to do was overthrow the current governing coalition and lock up the climate activists of the Letzte Generation, then nobody, absolutely nobody, would spew any more climatecommunist drivel at them. Whether "transformation" here comes "from outside" or "from above" doesn't matter, they're assumed to be identical.

The Germany that was articulated here – Germany's asshole society – was one that exists in a multitude of imagined pasts, or wishes to return to them: the past of gender relations, climate and environmental policy, migration, sexualities, of health policy and geopolitics, not to mention of course agricultural policy. The fact that this is sometimes the past of the 1950s, sometimes the 1850s, and occasionally the 1930s, is also irrelevant; the right's imagined past is never a real past, but a mythical space in which, as already indicated, the privileged do not have to suffer the indignity of having any restrictions placed on their freedoms.

And this is precisely where the farmers' protests encounter the broader right-wing project, where a new right-wing incubator emerges: in the defence of mythological pasts against the present, overburdened as it is by multiple “imposed” transformations and changes, changes that point to an all too alien future. In this sense, today's fascism is the precise counter-project to the "For Future” subject I have occasionally spoken of: Fascism for Past.

Germany No. 2: the diverse society

Four days ago, I was back at the Gate, this time to take part in the anti-AfD "Defend Democracy" demo, that Fridays For Future had convened together with a raft of other progressive and centre-left organisations, where two previously separate... millieus? Projects? Let's call them: societies came together to jointly defend democracy against the fascist offensive.

First, the part of the country that the right wing refers to as “linksgrünversifft” (roughly: “the grubby ecoleft”), which needs must is always (somewhat) actively anti-fascist, for historical and cultural reasons as well as due to its own pronounced self-interest; and what I would cautiously describe as the "humanist centre", i.e. the part of the Verdrängungsgesellschaft (repressive society) that would never join our climate blockades - because it must continue to repress its ethical failure on this issue - but which nevertheless has a solid grounding in humanist ethics and does not simply want to sacrifice these to the advancing “arseholisation”. In other words, the part of the country that would never call itself "anti-fascist" because the term was (in the FRG) always left-wing and directed against Germany, but which wants to be functionally anti-fascist because it knows that fascism sucks.

I've written about how great it felt to be there, to be part of this "coming out" of this new political subject, which I call (working title) the "diverse society" for the time being: Diversity, "the open society", democracy - this is what we left-wing greenies can agree on with the humanist centre, this is what we can defend together against the fascists, and, in the spirit of classic left-wing strategy debates about anti-fascism, I am convinced that we need a "popular front" strategy again today: a strategy that brings left-wing forces together with centrist ones to defeat the common enemy.

But: I keep talking about the fact that politics (at least for the moment) is less about policies and positions and more about affects and "emotional labour". So beyond policies and positions, what sets us apart from the right-wing project, from fascism for the past? Our attitude to the future, of course. "We live in a time where change is the status quo," said our vice chancellor Habeck during the 2021 election campaign, and "change" here refers not only to geopolitics or climate, but also to sexualities, linguistic norms, to fundamental categories of reality.

We left-wing Greens have already done (some of) the emotional work necessary to prepare ourselves for the fact that change is really happening and that it will be enormously challenging; the humanist centre is currently doing this work, fuelled by farmers' protests, AfD poll results and the correctiv-exposé on that party's radical deportation plans. So we met on the basis of a common struggle not only against fascism and for democracy, but for a future in which we face change rationally rather than in the childish mode of defiance and rejection. Nb: There is very little real policy consensus in this, except perhaps in dealing with the fucking AfD. But it's not about policies.

The really existing future: struggle, not compromise

Instead, it's about the question of whose "normality" is the right one: the assholes' normality? Or the diverse and open one? In this dispute, which has been escalating rapidly since the turn of the year, policy concessions (such as those made to the farmers) will no longer egender social compromises, as is usually the case in Germany's political corporatism. We have already experienced this in the coal phase-out issue, where the 2018 Coal Commission was by no means able to pacify the long-running conflict, and are now experiencing it again with the farmers' protests, where farmers' association president Rukwied did not tire of emphasising this Monday, at the big Berlin closing demonstration of the protest week, that the tractors will only disappear from the streets when all cuts and other impositions on farmers are withdrawn.

If my analysis is correct, then social polarisation is breaking down the corporatist logic of negotiation that has been the dominant form of political practice in Germany for many decades. And I can understand how much this stresses out people from the centre who are not socialised as radical left-wingers, for whom ideas such as "anti-fascism" and "struggle", or more precisely: an ongoing, nay, permanent and occasionally militant fight against fascism, are not only extremely alien, but deeply repellent. I understand well from my own experience how incredibly exhausting it can be to say goodbye to an imagined future of quiet privilege and to recognise that not only "change" has become the new status quo, but also social struggle (this was one of the processes I went through during my depression). Because only through this can we ensure that we face these changes ethically and rationally, and not, under the fascists, in the permanent mode of rejection and denial.

This battle will decide which normality wins, which society, what kind of people we will be in the future. It is the battle that will decide everything: between an imagined, increasingly irrational and brutal past and a diverse, open and democratic future. And as I have said many times: this is a battle whose outcome is totally open; a battle that we can win. Every day.

Yours in humanistic-antifaschist solidarity,

Tadzio