The current tendency of social development suggests that we are heading towards what could be called authoritarian tipping points.[1] The “green-capitalist” modernization, as the dominant answer to ongoing crises, is being blocked by the politics of austerity. Authoritarian populist campaigns are pushing the balance of political forces rightward. Large sections of Germany’s population no longer feel represented by the coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and (neo)liberals (FDP), and see the governing parties as offering no solutions to urgent crises and social tensions. Despite the ongoing social crisis, in the broader societal debate the question of class has been surpressed to a massive extent and thus made politically inert. Within this constellation, the AfD, with a significant neo-fascist wing, continues to grow in strength, and discontent is being channelled into racist and nationalist discourses.
Mario Candeias is Senior Advisor for Socialist Transformation Research and Left Strategies and Parties at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
At the same time, the outrage and anger about right-wing “re-migration” (i.e., deportation) plans led in the first months of 2024 to a massive counter-mobilization. But a progressive alternative to the governing coalition’s approach is nowhere to be discerned. What is sometimes referred to as Germany’s “firewall” against fascism is eroding, and the right is regrouping and making preparations for the period to come.
Where do we currently stand in the course of societal development? Are we facing a permanent political crisis, an authoritarian transformation, or even a dynamic of fascization?
My aim here is not to present a comprehensive analysis; much has already been said and written about the causes of the developments taking place on the radical right. These are not unknown. I therefore will simply go over several facets of this development, in order to then substantiate the main claim I make in this article, which builds on the theses I published last year (Candeias 2023b). The most important question is: why precisely now? What are the specific conditions that endow this tendency with social significance and historical potency? Sprung up in the organic crisis of neoliberalism and strengthened by the turmoil of the interregnum, the radical right is proving particularly effective in organizing a blockade of the transformation to a green-branded form of capitalist modernization (Becker 2023). My main claim is that fascization is an effect of an unsuccessful transformation to a new period of capitalist development after the interregnum.
Coining a Term for the Current Development
Terms like radical right, “right-wing extremism”, populism, authoritarianism, and hatred of men are imprecise, and only refer to partial elements of the process we are talking about here. What can be observed at this point is a tendency that is shifting society rightwards as a whole, and in doing so, generalizing the contempt for democracy and the hostility towards the racialized and disadvantaged. The development is taking on a new qualitative dimension.
It is no longer a question of the usual replacement of “one bourgeois government by another”, but rather of a movement away from a more or less functional democracy and its social and civil liberties. As democracy is stripped back, existing guarantees are dismantled, and everyday callousness and brutality increase. All of this is unfolding at a qualitatively new level and, in a certain sense, extending and perfecting the post-democratic tendencies of neoliberalism. The vanishing point of the process is the destruction of any prospect of, or aspiration to, a mode of living based on solidarity and democracy: a qualitative functional transformation of the forms of capitalistic governance, one which was already analysed in 1935 by Georgi Dimitrov (1958 [1935], 527). Even under neoliberalism, which section of the “neoliberal unity party” (Bourdieu) was in government was no indifferent matter. Even less so, the question as to who is to govern in the present conjuncture, with the institutions of bourgeois democracy undergoing a reactionary transformation. It is therefore a question of naming this qualitative leap, of declaring what exactly we are dealing with: a process of fascization.
But is not the “epoch of fascism” (Nolte) well and truly in the past, and fascism a term for historians? Of course, history does not simply repeat itself. Yet fascism, and the characterizing ideological elements, symbols and set pieces that shape it, are not just a historically determined form, a single epoch, so to speak. Its ideologemes serve as raw materials for a concrete and not arbitrary articulation that is always specific to the context in which it takes place. Even when fascism first appeared, it took on widely different forms, always according to the constellation of forces, traditions, and lines of conflict particular to a given country, and closely tied to the country’s level of capitalist development and its position in the international division of labour. In this sense, each particular form, with its “causes and peculiarities”, has to be placed in spatial and temporal relation to the specific societal conditions, periods of development, and transformations of capitalism.[2]
My concern in this article is not fascism itself, however (cf. Opratko 2023a), but rather a process of fascization, the “molecular” spread of typical ideological elements as they take increasingly coherent and historically effective form, even if they do not necessarily amount to a societally dominant, fully developed fascism. “The oscillation between a ‘still barely’ democratic arrangement” or democratic social attitudes and a “‘not yet’ fascist politics” is precisely what specifies a situation of fascization (Weber 1999, 146).
The right deploys an entire arsenal of monsters in order to generate approval and consent.
“It is less a question of whether we are . . . ‘still’ dealing with right-wing populism, or ‘already’ facing (neo-)fascism or proto-fascism, and more of whether a process of fascization can presently be discerned. What is useful about the concept of ‘fascization’ is that it focuses attention on processes and dynamics that are internal to bourgeois society.” (Rehmann 2020)
As the “disreputable siblings of neoliberalism” (Candeias 2015, 55), successful neo-fascist and new-right parties have been emerging in various European countries since the late 1990s (Candeias 2004, 337ff.). The latter, in particular, combined right-wing populist demands with economic liberalism and the stock visual identity of a “modern” democratic party, seemingly distinguishing them from the traditional radical right.
Yet in a situation in which neoliberalism has lost its hegemony (even if its proponents continue to fiercely defend its dominance; see Candeias 2009, 7ff.), the radical right is becoming increasingly prominent and effective, and is also radicalizing even further. In other words, a shift is taking place, from authoritarian neoliberalism via authoritarian right-wing populism, through to a rampant fascization affecting broader sections of society.
Aspects of Fascization
How are elements of fascization recognizable in the present development? Dramatically growing inequality is driving a reactionary “exploitation of resentment” (Nachtwey 2023), while the boundaries of respectability are ever more emphatically drawn, especially from above (cf. Candeias 2018, 36f.). Middle class people who sense their economic precarity are attempting to hive themselves off against those “further down”, while the established bourgeoisie produces popular images (think of Thilo Sarrazin, for example) that are meant to give legitimacy to an authoritarian disciplining of the unemployed, migrants, and other subaltern groups. For years now, conservatives like Paul Nolte (2008) have had no qualms about characterizing the sharpened polarization of income, education, consumption habits, and access to power as a recontouring of class society. Disgusted by the “dangerous classes” as he himself pictured them, Nolte even went as far as arguing that the bourgeois class needed to cultivate greater class consciousness with respect to its inferiors. Parts of the “threatened middle class”, but also people belonging to the precariat, adopt definitions of respectability handed down from above and turn them on themselves (generating feelings of failure and guilt to the point of self-hatred) and on others (enhancing their own position by devaluing that of others). Classism, racism, and sexism are the most societally effective ways of construing inequality, and produce a form of ideological and social compensation for the everyday experience of subordination.
This has been harnessed in the strategic populism of the radical right, which adopts and amplifies specific combinations of anti-liberal, anti-Muslim, anti-feminist, homophobic, anti-environmental, and explicitly racist positions, as well as those targeting other minorities (a combination known in Brazil as the “inverted rainbow”). This strategy has enabled the authoritarian and radical right, notwithstanding its actual class composition, to turn discontent “from below” into popular support (see Hall 1982, 114; in detail, Candeias 2018, 43ff.). The strategy broadly involves targeted denigration of specific groups, escalating to (first discursive, then real) disenfranchisement. The more success (and votes) this strategy garners for the far right, the more such positions begin to be espoused by other actors, including the established parties — to the right of the “centre” at first, but now also extending (to varying degrees) into the present governing coalition of Social Democrats and Greens. Aspects of this practice include:
1. Against “the other”: The strategy requires the continual production of “others”. This always takes the form of a specific linkage between new forms of classism, racism, and sexism, against the “lazy” and the poor, against “dangerous” groups (including the working class), “refugees and foreigners”, “Islam”, “gender ideology”, etc. It is almost as if the chauvinist right wanted to once again confirm the importance of an understanding of class, race, and gender, and of the intersectionality of oppression. Given the hard-won progress made by social movements in recent decades, it is notable that anti-feminist backlash, hostility toward trans individuals, and toxic masculinity all currently play a larger role than they did in historical fascism.
Everyday aggression is on the rise generally: whether it be a contemptuous disregard for the suffering of others on the grounds that they are refugees or poor, an incapacity to tolerate different opinions or the public presence of queer people and People of Colour, inconsiderateness on the roads or public transport, or everyday violence against women, refugees, queers, and others.
The right deploys an entire arsenal of monsters in order to generate approval and consent. The varying facets of a single political project are constituted by the positive invocation of an always specific combination of the following ideologemes: nationalism, the people (in the sense of ethnic rather than class identity) and/or the race, the traditional family, religion too, and other traditional forms of identity; but also work and “success”, traditional masculinity and femininity, duty and order, or ideals of (negative, liberal) freedom, the natural order. Above all stands a distorted nostalgia for “normality”, as in the AfD’s “Deutschland, aber normal”: Germany, but normal, the slogan that the party took to the 2021 Bundestag elections.
This is a strategy “that divides and mobilizes along lines of racism, nationalism, religion, sexism, or anti-environmentalism, reproduces bizarre forms of everyday understanding, and neurotizes the subjects to whom it is addressed” (Demirović 2018, 34). It unfolds as “a delusional worldview that nonetheless provides meaning. It offers people warmth, a sense of belonging, and solidarity distorted into camaraderie” (Negt 1976, 69). The central pivot is provided by a sense of “‘victimhood’ in the face of forces perceived as uncontrollable, and groups who are allegedly at an undeserved advantage — accompanied by rebellion against all this” (Goes 2024).
This sort of mobilization is linked with the projection of a kind of fantasized capacity for action on the part of the subalterns. Given the widespread experience of powerlessness, it operates with the promise of regaining “control” against and “security” from external and internal threats. Once the various elements are articulated and linked up in this way, it is a great deal harder to untie them again.
The new authoritarianism can thus be interpreted as an attempt “to create an alliance with groups from the petty bourgeoisie and the working class, without requiring any concessions from the bourgeoisie. It operates as a shortcut, linking the forces of the bourgeoisie with the subaltern classes” (Demirović 2018, 34).
In this process, the authoritarian and radical right are managing to effectively turn the whole discourse upside-down. Thus they are powerfully returning the social question to the political order of the day, as “exclusive solidarity” (Dörre 2013) only for Germans, while at the same time deliberately attacking unions (collective rights) and social and labour rights. In their struggle against what was dubbed Minister Habeck’s “heating hammer”, opposition forces — once again with a very heterogeneous social base — posed as defenders of the “ordinary people”, despite the fact that only an extremely small number of homeowners are on low or middle incomes, and owners would not have been forced to replace their heating systems in any case. Or else an inverted rainbow is generated — against purple, pink, and green, against diversity (in Germany, bunt, “multicoloured”, is used as a kind of political-symbolic shorthand for this) — a stance of resistance against the “moral reeducation” allegedly enforced by the ’68ers, who have in fact attained to many positions of power in politics, education, the media, universities, and NGOs. This is a right-wing tactic to split the subalterns, and to mobilize specific groups of subalterns by offering them “reactionary self-empowerment” (cf. Candeias 2018, 48, on this more below). Their use of social media is virtuosic in this regard; the AfD knows how to navigate TikTok like no other party. It is no mere coincidence that the party has become somewhat more popular among young and first-time voters compared to the rest of society on average. Fascization is therefore no longer a phenomenon of the older generations in the first place, but one with a “bright future ahead of it”.
The attack from the right is most often also directed against an alleged left-wing, liberal “elite”, “reprobate and degenereted ’68ers”, etc. Closely tied to this is the struggle against supposed “political correctness” as a relativization of the truth. Yet this involves the deployment of fake news and conspiracy theories; indeed, there are a great many “truths” on offer, including myriad self-validating, “do-it-yourself” ideologies (PIT 2007 [1980], 39). That’s why people reject to democratically dispute what is truth at all. Hence the right’s struggle against (freedom of) the press, against the Enlightenment, against academic independence — but also against the independence of the judiciary, which represents an institutionalized codification of truth claims. This often goes hand in hand with crude historical revisionism. The result — with deliberately, sanctimoniously staged “breaking of taboos” — is an extension of the bounds of the sayable. This too has now become a widespread practice.
In this, the authoritarian and radical right harbours an open antagonism to parliamentarism and parties, disparages democratic procedure, and merely uses the parliament (contemptuously) as a stage. The project goes further though, also targeting democracy and solidarity as quotidian modes. The expansion of the domain of the sayable leads directly to an expansion of the scope for action, from expressions of hatred on social media and in everyday life, through to acts of violence (from “below”), and finally — where such forces attain positions of power — to open repression (from “above”).
2. Reactionary Self-Empowerment: As already noted, “take back control” is in a certain sense the promise of a radical right-wing agenda. When linked with the activation of resentment, zeal, and even fanaticism, it leads to a kind of reactionary self-empowerment (increasingly mass-based), which translates a widespread fatalism and offers a space for the discharge of aggressive potentials (see Candeias 2018, 35–40, on the causes of the insecurity, fatalism, and rage that are in the background here). “Auto-alienation” gets “organized as zealous self-activation” (PIT 2007, 107). As we said, this license to take action can run from speech acts through to acts of violence. The incidence of violence against refugees and shelters has again risen;[3] so have attacks on the offices of left politicians. Last but not least, in 2023 there were as many as 445 incidents of violence against the homeless, up to and including murder (David 2024).[4] Violence is the outcome of a normalization of hostility and enmity.
The AfD is taking the lead here in terms of “beatings, threats, possession of weapons” — an investigation by the CORRECTIV network reveals that the party tolerates, at all levels, members (mostly men) with a history of “physical, verbal or indirect violence — many despite convictions. These include multiple members of state and federal parliaments.”[5]
In some parts of (Eastern) Germany, right-wing cultural hegemony is making it difficult for activists to maintain their work in the face of verbal attacks and overt threats. What happened to the teachers in Burg — who spoke out about right-wing incidents at their school, then later felt compelled to quit their positions and leave the town — can no longer be shrugged off as an isolated case. Mayors are stepping down, nurses quitting their jobs, students moving away. A schoolteacher in Cottbus physically attacked two racialized twelve-year-old pupils, and the schools board proved unwilling to take action against him — a truly alarming state of affairs.
The attack on unions and on worker’s rights is a common component in the political economy of the authoritarian and radical right internationally.
Everyday aggression is on the rise generally: whether it be a contemptuous disregard for the suffering of others on the grounds that they are refugees or poor, an incapacity to tolerate different opinions or the public presence of queer people and People of Colour, inconsiderateness on the roads or public transport, or everyday violence against women, refugees, queers, and others. Violent attacks on politicians’ offices, on antifascist activists, journalists, or politicians themselves, are practically the order of the day. The boundary between damage to property and violence against persons is increasingly being transgressed. The perpetration of right-wing and racist violence is now no longer restricted to clearly defined, organized, militant right-wing groups — the violence is becoming less and less subject to taboos and is spreading through broader society.[6] Here, there is a danger of a transition to an openly violent and fascist culture.[7] Right-wing conceptions of masculinity demand “affective excess” (Sauer 2023, 78). At the same time, there has been (for far too long already), and continues to be, a “[tacit] official toleration of right-wing violence” exercised by the state security and judicial apparatuses, and even a partial “penetration of the state apparatus by forces hostile to democracy” (Wiegel 2020, 51).[8]
One of the oft-repeated arguments against using the concept of fascization — which in turn fails to distinguish it from fascism — is that fascism requires a mass basis and mass organization. Yet if we consider factors such as the societal prevalence of attitudes of “cruelty and hostility” [Menschenfeindlichkeit][9], approval ratings for the AfD of up to a third in electoral polls, as well as mass-scale practices of resentment, not only in terms of attitudes but also explicitly advocated for and translated into real actions, then we have to assume that a mass basis is already in place.
Also, there have been fascisms that were less a kind of reactionary “Caesarism” with mass support (regarding Italy see Gramsci 1996, 239) than a form of Bonapartism (Marx on the French example in the Eighteenth Brumaire), with “autonomization of the executive” (Thalheimer 1930, 28), suppression of parliaments, and paying lip service to the masses and their putative support while in fact pacifying them with dictatorial violence. The fascist regimes in Spain, Portugal, and Greece relied primarily on the military (and partly on the clergy), less so on the Falangist movement (cf. Poulantzas 1976). This variant was especially the case for those countries in which fascism was precisely not a vehicle of capitalist modernization, but rather an obstacle to the modernization being pursued by workers’ or farmers’ movements. Once these fascisms had “become the state”, they were much more concerned with demobilizing workers’ movements.
3. Class hatred: This brings us to fascization’s capitalistic credo — “accumulate, accumulate!” is the watchword here too. Fascization involves targeted crackdowns on all oppositional and emancipatory forces, which are always directed against “collectivism” and “liberalism”, i.e., target both collective and individual social rights that present obstacles to capitalist exploitation. Attacks focus on unions and workers’ rights especially — with the aim of shifting the relations of power between capital and labour — as well as on the commons, the public sphere, and public services. In addition, communal land rights are attacked, especially in the Global South, in order to appropriate societal resources. The rights of minorities, women’s rights, and the right to unionize are the first things to come under attack from the authoritarian and radical right.
The attack on unions and on worker’s rights is also a common component in the political economy of the authoritarian and radical right internationally, cutting across other local differentiations (the exception here perhaps being Poland). On the whole, it is a question of clearing away the obstacles to the most intense forms of capital accumulation (from “extreme energy”, to an intensified economy of appropriation, to massive infrastructure projects, to the classic boosting of the rate of exploitation and squeezing of all societal and natural resources). Here in Germany this starts with concerted union-busting in many mid-tier companies as well as at Tesla, Amazon, etc.; we are also seeing renewed calls to restrict the right to strike in the context of “critical infrastructure” workplaces, or when third parties will be more affected by a strike than the immediate antagonists. This certainly constitutes an attack on the already weakened fighting capacity of the unions, and one which is enjoying a great deal of approbation from the right and the media.
The unionist–syndicalist variant of fascization appears in the increasingly “exclusive solidarity” of the waged, extended only to core workers, with immigrants tolerated, at most, as individual “good foreigners”. This is a phenomenon that is not only seen in electoral lists for workers councils that are close to the AfD (f.i. “Zentrum” at Mercedes), but also within the ranks of the official unions. Yet the axis of social conflict between capital and labour promises only limited political returns, with union membership and engagement declining. At the same time, an imaginary understanding of the people “below” against “elites” “at the top”, as well as against competition from “outside” and from (even further) “below”, gains ground.
The first targets of class hatred (Balibar 2024) are those who are unable to contribute to the extraction of value, the unemployed and people on public benefits. A broad phalanx of forces continually polemicize against those on benefits and object to their (already limited) rights. This sort of thing begins with calls to apply harsher sanctions to supposedly “work-shy” young adults, and ends, as in Italy, with the virtual dismantling of welfare by the Meloni government. The groundwork for the “social Darwinist fascization” of the subject (Haug 1986, 328) was laid well in advance by the bourgeois “forces of normalization” (70), who espoused neoliberal “Workfare” programmes, ran media campaigns against those on welfare with slogans like “responsibilities, not subsidies” (propagated by the BILD newspaper’s “Florida Rolf” campaign, for example), or, like Thilo Sarrazin, offered coldly repugnant advice on how the unemployed ought to behave – a “cumulative radicalization” (Theodor Mommsen, cited in Rehmann 2024, 2322) targeting all benefits recipients (“takers”) whether “local” or “foreign”, the poor and the refugees alike.
Post-Interregnum: The Confrontation between Two Societal Projects
We must now ask: what are the specific conditions lending this tendency global social significance and historical efficacy today? How has fascization become so prominent at this particular conjuncture? Sprung up in the organic crisis of neoliberalism, and intensified in the turmoil of the interregnum, one of its especially significant effects has been to organize a blockade of the transformation to a green-capitalist modernization process (Becker 2024).
Gramsci classically characterizes the interregnum as a situation in which “the old is dying and the new cannot be born” (1996, 33). Neoliberal powers and structures continued dominant after the great crisis of 2007–2009, but lost the active consensus of the ruled, with authoritarian measures increasingly replacing methods of leadership and persuasion. The project for a new boost to accumulation within the bounds of neoliberal logic petered out; the necessity for active state intervention collided with the neoliberal politics of austerity. From 2011 at the latest, space opened up for a diverse array of societal projects: left-wing awakenings with the movements of the “indignados” (and the “arab spring”), general strikes in Europe, the establishing of new and promising left-wing parties, the revitalization of left-wing social democracy with the movements around Sanders and Corbyn; but also, of course, the spread of radical right-wing projects. A new cycle of struggles had opened, which then also led to the large-scale climate change protests. Against this backdrop, no party with aspirations to govern could afford to neglect developing a programme for ecological modernization. If the project of a green capitalism had still been blocked in 2009 (Candeias 2012) — despite being the only feasible path out of crisis (including economic crisis) — ten years later it could demand to take the lead and “become the state”. Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen call this “decarbonization as state project”.[10]
Fascization is a phenomenon in which the bourgeoisie appears incapable of governing and organizing the necessary transformation (in the capitalist sense), while at the same time the majority of the wage-dependent classes are demobilized.
The old conservative forces on their own had little to offer to counter this. After the left-wing awakenings exhausted themselves pushing against the sturdy walls of the (European) institutions, the radical right, by contrast, managed to present itself as the sole oppositional counter-pole, making a powerful impact at the very moment when a green-capitalist project was emerging within the state. The transformation to a green-capitalist project is no ordinary transition between different periods of capitalist development, however (cf. Candeias 2004b). Rather, it reaches to the foundations of a fossil-based mode of production and living that has become deeply entrenched over multiple periods of capitalist development. That is why it unleashes so many counter-forces, affects and furor.
Between these two poles of the constellation, there is little room for anything else. If I may be permitted a self-citation: “We are no longer living in an open-ended social situation. There is struggle over the paths for development, but many alternatives have already been foreclosed and many routes barred” (Candeias 2023b, thesis 1). We have arrived on the scene of the contest between liberal-imperial green capitalism and projects of fascization.
In Gramsci’s time, a similar constellation of competing projects had formed, with “Americanism” on its Fordist basis, the “aspirational” Fordism in the fascist countries of Europe catching-up, and the “demi-Fordism” of the Soviet Union (and later, of real-existing socialism). The existence of a third option (even if state socialism was insufficient back then) is sorely lacking today; and yet it is so bitterly necessary for survival. What kind of situation might arise in a confrontation between a Trumpian project of radical fascization in charge of the state, and China, the (quite authoritarian) vanguard of green-capitalist development, is something that hardly bears thinking about.
Moral Panics and the Crisis of Governability
What we are seeing is the “convergence of a radicalized conservatism with the radical right”, involving an “aggressive defence of the fossil-fuel mode of life” and “hard-fought cultural struggles at every level” (Candeias 2023b). A changing cast of figureheads like Trump, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Modi, Meloni, Núñez Feijóo, and others represent this alliance. In Germany, this tendency has most recently (re-)appeared in fierce struggles over the proposed transformation of indoor heating systems. These nationalistic, right-wing authoritarian projects are symptomatic of the opposition within society to a green-liberal project of modernization, at least in Europe, the US, and Latin America. They harbour immense destructive potential. Yet these projects are devoid of any productive perspective — apart from an extreme exploitation of labour power and nature. The prospects for accumulation beyond extreme fossilism are limited, as are the options for moderating social and climatic crises without resorting to coercion.
Nor do the conservative parties have any appealing new projects that could bring about “accumulation on an extended scale” (Marx 2022 [1885]), deal with the most significant societal crises and contradictions, and generate active societal consent. After radicalizing its old agenda of “authoritarian neoliberalism” (Candeias 2004) during the 2009ff financial and debt crisis, they have been devoid of ideas or impulses towards a new politics. Even when Merkel was chancellor, everything was about managing the crisis. With Friedrich Merz, the conservative party CDU has a representative of a hand-me-down neoliberalism at the helm. The party hardly represents a way forward.
This happened to many conservative parties. It was into this “ideological” vacuum that the political entrepreneurs dived, beginning with Berlusconi, whose Forza Italia changed the country’s political landscape. Later figures like Trump in the US and Kurz in Austria took this as a role model, hollowing out the old parties from inside and leaving only the shell, which they filled with a cult of personality and the adoption of the radical right’s agenda. Elsewhere the conservative parties got ground down between a Macron-style (neo)liberal populism and the radical right of the Front National and its Rassemblement successor. Conservatism is trying to escape this crisis with radical populism. This can only be a halfway measure, because the radical right is generally more consistent, while the conservatives are unable to afford endangering their status as a party of the mainstream and of the most powerful factions of capital.
What is unusual is that these representatives of the old, conservative bulwarks of the state — and thus of the parties that precisely represent the ruling-class establishment — are now helping themselves to the anti-establishment rhetoric of the radical right. They continually are styling themselves as victims, as the defenders of “ordinary people” — from whom they could not be further removed (more than any other political actor). Behind this lies frustration at the rise of progressive neoliberalism in the ruling power bloc and its alliance with a new green-capitalist faction, preparing to occupy further positions in the power bloc at the expense of conservatives without a project. The latter hope that radicalization and fascization will save them, attempting to surpass the radical right in their proposals — showing contempt for legal principle with deportation plans styled after the Tories’ “Rwanda model”, or with still more cruelty towards those on social benefits,[11] and a markedly more punitive state. In the CDU’s latest draft of a basic programme, for example, they attempt to outdo even the policies of the AfD.[12] “In historically turbulent times, dynamics of fascization emerge in conservative milieus both inside and outside the parliament” (Strobl 2021, 143). A certain readiness for fascization (I am drawing here on Klaus Weber 2018, 13) is growing stronger, aimed at “authoritarian stabilization” (Brand and Wissen 2024, 36).
Fascization is thus a phenomenon in which the bourgeoisie appears incapable of governing and organizing the necessary transformation (in the capitalist sense), while at the same time the majority of the wage-dependent classes are demobilized. Current collective bargaining disputes and strikes remain a hopeful but limited moment; they do not reverse the trend (neither in terms of increases in real wages, nor of the general level of unionization among workers). Fatalism becomes a negative force, the fuel of fascization through the exhaustion and demobilization of solidary sections of the population and the reactionary self-empowerment and desolidarization of others.
For many, the world as it is has become, is illegible. The ruling worldview has become questionable and dubious, and no longer even receives a clear articulation.
In a sense, two forms of dissociated or authoritarian personalities emerge as important “social characters” (Fromm), as supra individual, structural patterns of action/behaviour, due to a lack of mechanisms for processing social impositions. Stress and exhaustion, auto-aggression, and fatalism then lead to a spreading political weakness of the political left. In particular, supporters of Die Linke feel exhausted — almost 60 percent, according to a survey conducted by the consulting firm Auctority (Guthier et al. 2024). The famous hamster wheel of increasing demands and impositions at work, the required flexibility, the growing insecurity of earning a living on a daily basis, the increased feeling of having to race against the descent on the social “escalator” (Nachtwey 2016), to keep up in terms of health, with the withdrawal of the necessary means for reasonable reproduction and care work as well as the decreasing ability to plan for the future. All of this is well known, the diagnosis of the “exhausted society” (Grünewald 2013) is not new; it applies above all to sections of the working class with low incomes.
In addition to the forced meritocracy, the general political situation is causing exhaustion, particularly on the social left (for almost 60 percent of those surveyed, according to Guthier et al. 2024, 34). The feeling spreads that little progress is being made despite often great efforts; on the contrary, social counterforces are too strong and progressive achievements of the emancipation movements (e.g. the women's or LGBTIQ* movement) like those of the workers' movement are even being regressively rolled back or even reduced to nothing. There is a frustrating sense that the granddaughter will have to re-fight battles that her grandmother had already won. Meanwhile, worries about unresolved crises pile up, reinforcing fatalistic feelings.
Almost as many people on the radical right say they are exhausted (52.5 percent, ibid.). However, the reasons given for this politically induced exhaustion reveal significant differences between the “social characters” in question. While voters for Die Linke primarily see a “lack of solidarity and cohesion” (90.9 percent), for AfD voters a “lack of trust in the system” is the most pressing factor (83.4 percent, ibid.).
It is often about subjectively experienced injustice that cannot be countered individually, which reinforces feelings of powerlessness. The insecurity stems from the challenge to the social individuals’ need for orientation and a secure existence. Here we are referring to a whole series of conflicts: around participation in social production and thus the earning of a sufficient income, around societal position in the context of declining social status or an absence of opportunities for advancement, over social rights, over gender identities (especially among men), over “cosmopolitan” vs. traditional modes of living, over immigration and associated discourses around security and law and order, over the reproduction of the next generation, etc. Tied up with all this is a crisis of the traditional values and ideological elements — (industrial) work, family, nation, gender, the social relation to natural in the context of the implementation of a new transnational and information-technology based mode of production and living (Candeias 2004b) — without a new articulation of social forms offering a comparably secure sense of identity in the neoliberal period. Added to this are the crisis of male subjectivity, as well as a crisis of female subjectivity (less pronounced but present in more traditionally oriented women), the change and pluralization of lifestyles, and perceived “threats from outside” due to “foreigners” and through de-democratization and organized irresponsibility (Candeias 2018, 37ff.). In the interregnum and in the present transformation, for some groups of people the generalization of a culture of insecurity (Candeias 2008) has become condensed to a nearly intolerable degree, into a sense of losing control (including emotional control). The subjects are experiencing transformation fatigue.[13]
For Ernst Bloch, fascization expressed “non-simultaneous contradictions”, which “objectively” appear as the continued operation of older (and in part anachronistic) modes of production and living,[14] and “subjectively” as “accumulated rage” (Bloch 1991 [1935], 254ff.); today this rage tends to become focused on challenges to the “normal” functioning of the world. “Things no longer fit together” (Strobl 2021, 7), as if the world had “cracked”, in the sense of becoming both broken and crazy. “Reserves of tolerance” are dwindling (Goes 2024), and certainly not only on the side of the radical right. Many developments defy clarity, shatter certainties, and lead to almost unbearable contradictions.
The complexity of the contradictory situation goes along with a “longing for clear oppositions and partisanship”, be it regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Ukraine war, immigration, or the interweaving of social and climate justice, etc. — “but the circumstances, they are not like that’ (Demirovic 2023), elude simple ’truths’. This leads some, nay many, to regard every issue as an expression of an opposition, even if these are often false oppositions. Opposing views are discredited, and plurality is no longer understood as a struggle for truth, but as a battle between mutually exclusive truths. The debates petrify.
For many, the world as it is has become, is illegible. The ruling worldview has become questionable and dubious, and no longer even receives a clear articulation. In crises of hegemony, the apparatuses and institutions of communication and knowledge also lose their seemingly natural authority. In fact, during the period of neoliberal hegemony, the media and academia did buttress and universalize this authority through communications and scholarly activity. For this, they are now on the receiving end of a rage that is at times justified and often exaggerated. This is particularly the case for the public broadcasters, but also for science and academia per se, as witness research on gender or the climate, or the handling of the pandemic. Their authority is called into question, they are no longer “believed”. Previously, their symbolic power tended to be tacitly accepted even when not actually given credence; now, public gainsaying has become much more common. In such a situation, argumentation increasingly marches into the void, and as a result, discourse becomes ever more moralistic. The opinion-forming and educative task of these hegemonic apparatuses will now sometimes be countermanded with the absurd statement (particularly from opinionated celebrities) that one “does not even have the right to an opinion any more”, merely because other more progressive critics were able to attract more attention in the framework of “progressive neoliberalism” (questions of gender-inclusive language are especially prominent here, and prone to occasioning outbursts of reactionary affect).[15] A variety of “rejection cultures” (Opratko 2023b) are establishing themselves, mutually supporting and increasingly difficult to reach with complex arguments.
Non-simultaneous contradictions, which cannot be ‘brought under control’ by normal means, induce a disarticulation between underlying societal problems and public “trigger points”. The latter coalesce around apparent banalities such as the gender asterisk in written German, the breakfast egg (a German nutrition board recently recommended that people eat only one egg per week, for reasons of both health and climate protection), the implementation of bus and bike lanes, or bizarre stories about refugees who only come to Germany for the free dentures, while “Germans” are not given appointments for fittings (per Friedrich Merz).[16] The ban on gender-sensitive language in schools and public institutions in Bavaria, and even earlier in Saxony — under a CDU–SPD–Green coalition — shows once again that it is not only the right-wing fringe who are trying to score political points with this approach. There is an ongoing attempt by the rulers to avoid facing the real issues of the time and to divert attention away from them — an attempt which is proving successful.
Under different social conditions, the insecurities and grievances concealed beneath these triggers could also be dealt with in a spirit of solidarity and egalitarianism.
The outrage has a real impact structure. Mau et al. (2023) categorize four relevant patterns of discourse: a) the sense of being treated unequally when other social groups or minorities receive special attention or alleged advantages. Those who feel this perceive a lack of recognition (and respect) on their own account, and experience their own position, language, or way of life as devalued (cf. Candeias 2018, 38ff.), leading to defensiveness against the claims of others, especially when this is a matter of alleged or actual special interests. This is especially the case with issues of diversity and integration; but it is also strongly reflected in the current campaign against unemployment benefits that are said to be “too high”: Rather than demanding higher wages, there are calls to bring back laws that would ensure social benefits remain lower than the minimum wage, “demanding equal hardship for all, so to speak” (Mau et al. 2023, 252). b) A second pattern concerns violations of a social order and the rules by which it defines what “normal” is, which are increasingly perceived as fragile and under threat from “exaggerated deviations” and the attention and significance (254) accorded to specific groups and individuals who are read as “foreign” or “different”. c) Closely linked to this are fears of losing control even in the face of the smallest changes: but where will that lead?, if everybody did things that way, but that opens the door to. . . — the idea that once the “door” has been opened, uncontrollable and escalating problems will follow. Change should take place, if at all, “in manageable steps and at a limited pace” (261) in order maintain continuity (so as not to be “overtaken”) and uphold the norm: caps on migration, not too much emancipation, not too many “special rights” for Trans people, no overly hasty climate measures. This is by no means simply driven by a generalized rejection of the new, the different, the foreign; it is also a symptom of unequally distributed opportunities to influence the course of development and the subjects’ own living conditions. d) Finally, a frequent pattern is defensiveness against what are perceived as “unreasonable behavioural requirements”, or a sense that “paternalism” is imposed by particular groups from “above” as well as from the social “margins”, coupled with the idea that one’s own rejection of these requirements is really just plain common sense, the articulation of what most people “secretly” think but are scared to admit to (267, also Candeias 2018, 38f.). This could be about a supposed requirement to vaccinate, changes in dietary habits, ecological sensibilities, ways of talking, etc. In reality, this is almost never a matter of genuine imperatives or prohibitions, but rather of alterations in societal mores and expectations. Violators of these new codes, even over matters that they consider minor or trivial, view themselves as exposed to the risk of accusations, perceived as exaggerated, of sexism or racism or climate-change denial — the risk of getting painted as right-wing (269). Grievance then takes the form of a sense of being shamed or disapproved of by others, precisely for being right wing or backward or even worse, a potential perpetrator. What was still “normal” yesterday now counts as “abnormal”; views, habits, ways of talking, ways of life, are considered passé.
Behind all the excitement drummed up about these topics in the media, there are genuine destabilizations (for more detail, see Candeias 2018) and multiple experiences of crisis, condensing into an uncertainty “which at times leads to panic” (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991, 226). In terms of social psychology, this now normalized “emotional state of exception” (Strobl 2021, 7) and, in a sense, the trigger points themselves, serve as “zones of condensation” (Brückner 1982, 12): occasions for the discharge of the deep-seated tension of social contradictions that remain unprocessed and are only able to be experienced as excessively complex. The effect is to allow the world to become decipherable again, clear, even when it’s just for a moment. Here, “the affective component of the attitudes predominates over the cognitive one” (Mau et al. 2023, 247). The triggers are an effect of “compensation and/or suppression of an irresolvable tension between problems that people recognize, and the socially blocked possibility of reacting appropriately to them” (Jaeggi 2023, 223). Fascization thus appears as a phenomenon of the failed transformation from the multiple crises in and of capitalism to a more coherent form of social development. In this process, there has been a successful refocusing of criticism of elites onto a supposedly “left-green” government (beginning with the heating bill), and the production of a sense of ungovernability and of Germany as the “sick man of Europe”. All of the “do-gooders” (referred to in German in this context as “Gutmenschen”) involving themselves in civil society, social movements such as Fridays for Future or Letzte Generation, etc., and Die Linke as well, are denounced as supposedly belonging to a left-liberal “bubble”: academic, urban, and out of touch with the rest of the population and its needs (cf. Ege and Gallas 2024, 20).
Of course, under different social conditions, the insecurities and grievances concealed beneath these triggers could also be dealt with in a spirit of solidarity and egalitarianism. However, the less that parts of the population have faith in material improvements (through politics), and the more the major social issues relating to wages, access to housing, health, etc. fade into the background and are barely addressed, the more prominent the “small and subtle” differences become essential. There has been a shift in the terms of outrage: internationally, the movement of the “indignados” of the square occupations beginning in 2011 were formative of a left-wing awakening, while in Germany — once the outrage over the introduction of the Hartz IV laws had almost faded from memory — the social question returned to the public debate, at least for a limited period of time, with the energy price crisis and inflation. However, outrage has slipped away from social (or ecological) questions, and rightwards towards an economy of resentment underpinned by social media. The housing crises, low wages, the nursing crisis, the shortage of teachers, the looming climate catastrophe, femicides, the persistence of a gendered pay gap — none of these genuinely scandalous social problems are becoming trigger points.
If this is also leading some working-class people ideologically to the right, then they are not acting “against” their own interests, but for a different version of these, precisely because decades of left wing focus on the social question appears to have achieved little against mounting inequality. The individual and social interests of these individuals are being restructured in the course of their (active) subjectivation from within the framework of nationalistic, authoritarian, and radical right-wing discourses and mental repertoires. They then judge what is useful or damaging to them from the newly won right-authoritarian standpoint. This process represents perhaps the most efficacious form of the “ideological transformation work” (Haug 1980, 47, and PIT 2007) that the radical right does in the process of fascization. It constructs a view of the world that challenges the dominant perspective. Unfortunately, this also means that the people undergoing this process cannot be won over easily to left-wing politics by appealing to their “real” social interests (and attempting to sidestep the culture war).
Crises and transformations are presently threatening hitherto stable aspects of the world with ever more far-reaching change.
Alex Demirović, following the cultural studies of Stuart Hall and Stanley Cohen, argues that the radical right stokes and mobilizes “moral panics” (Demirović 2018, 29). Intensified by the media, these panics and the “entrepreneurs of political polarization” (Mau et al. 2023, 278) encourage subalterns “to translate feelings that are increasingly disconnected from thinking and understanding into resentment, racist practices, coldness, and the refusal of solidarity — and are rewarded for it, with public attention” (ibid., 32).[17] Thus there is a reciprocal interaction between the “psychic apparatus” and the “ideological apparatus” (Horkheimer 1988 [1932], 59f.).
A common pattern is to offset one’s own devaluation, whether looming or actual, by devaluing others; feelings of personal dignity and social status are relational, after all. We compare ourselves with the positions of others. If I assign others a position further down the social hierarchy, I myself am not at the bottom; perhaps I am even part of the middle; I belong, at least as a member of a nation, as one of those who contribute, or as a representative of a superior “race” or gender. We know: classism, racism, nationalism, and sexism are the most socially effective forms of the construction of inequality. For the individuals, these are likewise attempts at self-stabilization through what Benedict Anderson called membership of “imagined communities”, ethnic or national constructions like “the people”, fatherland, the Christian West, etc., which function as ideological thought-forms that can assist in subjectively overcoming the experiences of competition and insecurity: against the impositions of modernization and transformation, not least against the challenges to a supposedly normal way of life. Nevertheless, “populism, not to mention fascism, have the passivity of citizens as their principle”. The radical right “does not overcome” the “underlying collective powerlessness. On the contrary”, it exacerbates this powerlessness and “forces it into a closed circle in which fear is hidden behind hatred and a willingness to resort to violence” (Balibar 2024, n.p.).
Repression, hardening, indifference, and lack of empathy towards other human beings. Men, especially, develop a “body armour” [Körperpanzer] (Reich 1933 and Theweleit 1977), seeking to stabilize themselves through rigour inflicted on themselves and on others, and reactionary self-empowerment feeds on this. The exhaustion (including its mental and spiritual aspects) and fatalism are turned into an aggressive stance towards others, serving the release of tension: aggression against individuals and groups that do not fit the reigning norm, serves as compensation for the aggressor’s own experience of coercion, subordination, and violence.
Crises and transformations are presently threatening hitherto stable aspects of the world with ever more far-reaching change. The overly complex, illegible, crisis-ridden, impersonal and globalized, chaotic, politically fragmented, and conflictual societal diversity of the reigning conditions is confronted by a longing for simple, authentic, original, or traditional (pre-modern) forms of societal intercourse, for cohesion and a community with clear order, one that provides an orientation.
The Great Regression
Exhaustion on the one hand, and fascization driven forward by right-wing forces on the other, lead to the danger of an enormous regression. The latter is not simply characterized by longing to return to “the good old days”. It is an effect in which thought and action “obdurate” against everything new (Adorno 2007 [1958], 4), hindering not only an appropriate processing of crises, but also mobilizing forces of opposition “that obliterate the resources required for a solution” (Jaeggi 2023, 218).
Individual and societal regression can be understood as an unconscious reaction to the impositions of transformation and the multiple crises that threaten the subjects’ own ways of life and identity, their forms of thinking and feeling, which then internally close themselves off against these threats. An “embargo on experience” (212), in a certain sense. This amounts to an “avoidance of reality”, which “hinders” people’s ability to deal with crises and problems (217). Energy is tied up in an attempt to “return to something, or a clinging to something, to which it is impossible (in this fashion) to return or cling to” (242).
“Leaving behind things we have grown to love, or time-honoured and practical forms of feeling, thinking, and acting, requires a crisis. Yet the spontaneous taking of sides can leave feeling and thought behind, on the side of the past, which is often glorified in retrospect. Socially progressive development, however, requires the break with the old forms as prerequisite for the new.” (Haug 2003, 63). Fascization is the expression of this, the attempt to prevent this break, whether in the form of ecological and societal modernization, or even more so in the form of an egalitarian, socialist alternative. This prevention is successful, not least because the costs of the transformation are unilaterally imposed on the wage-dependent classes, especially those at the lowest end. These subjects experience the changes as overwhelmingly negative. First the aftermath of the big crisis in 2009, then the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, spiking energy prices and climbing inflation, the intensification of the climate crisis — a slew of new demands, alterations, and adaptions, with no solution to the major societal problems or improvement in the situation of the wage-dependent. Ergo, many do not want to leave their old position within the system of social relations, “so as to remain capable of acting and to maintain privileges they have already obtained” (65), which admittedly appear to be under threat from all sides. Some individuals (those who can and want to) harden themselves in order to endure; others sink into despair and withdraw.
While the reorganization of production, infrastructure, and cities would require billions in investment and involve destroying enormous sums of fixed capital, with no certainty as to whether the new investments will pay off, the spatial fix can secure comfortable profits, at least for some, from existing investments in branches of production dependent on fossil energy.
Radical right-wing politics can be viewed as a quite conscious process of social regression, which uses precisely this obstinacy and deadlock to “compensate for the moments of reality that are obviously unendurable, that cannot be confronted” (Jaeggi 2023, 222) and to channel them into a reactionary and destructive project.
This development does not affect liberal democracies “from the outside”; its bases are to be found in its own “immanent deficits” (226), which the dominant classes and groups themselves have not tackled with real leadership, in the sense of taking into account subordinated social groups’ interests for the sake of building an active consensus. Active consensus during the neoliberal period was squeezed onto an ever-narrower class basis; in moving towards green-capitalist and liberal modernization, the German red-red-green coalition in government failed to seek a broader class compromise. Thus, it was the new hegemonic project itself that extended the groundwork for its own opposition, the counter-project of fascization, and for the hatred springing from liberal half-democracy[18] itself.
The Relationship between Fascization and the Bourgeoisie
In terms of the causes of this failure, we have to look at the role of the bourgeoisie, the capital-owning class, and the movement of capital itself. Ecological modernization is the only thing that promises economy wide accumulation on an extended scale. Yet this also represents a devaluation and destruction of existing fixed capitals. While investments in post-fossil-fuel production will determine the direction of the future development, this is conditioned by the maximal valorization of existing production facilities and infrastructure. Accordingly, capital is closing itself off from a prompt ecological modernization. Short-term interests in continuing fossil-fuel-based production outweigh interests in the long-term accumulation that green capitalism would enable.
Last but not least, the major car manufacturers are benefiting from the continuing rise in global demand for large and expensive cars, despite declining exports to China. The companies with the largest profit increases in 2021 and 2022 included the major car manufacturers Mercedes, BMW, and VW as well as the parts manufacturer Continental (Trautvetter 2024, 15f.). “It is becoming apparent that the age of the combustion car will last longer” than expected, according to Commerzbank.[19]
Nevertheless, the major “grey” companies in the energy sector are proceeding in a similar fashion. They are certainly all trying to give themselves a green image, investing more in green energies and getting rid of old branches of industry that offer little prospect of longer-term profit. Yet the oil companies and energy suppliers continue to earn disproportionately high profits from fossil fuel technologies, into which they have invested massively in terms of fixed capital in the form of plants and infrastructure and which are still an excellent source of value (cf. Trautvetter 2024). Weapons manufacturers, too, are racing from one broken profit record to the next.
While the reorganization of production, infrastructure, and cities would require billions in investment and involve destroying enormous sums of fixed capital, with no certainty as to whether the new investments will pay off, the spatial fix (David Harvey) can secure comfortable profits, at least for some, from existing investments in branches of production dependent on fossil energy. For others, especially smaller companies or suppliers, the means it would take to retrofit their production lines or risk a change of production model are entirely out of reach. Thus there are large elements of the various factions of capital that are in no hurry to ecologically modernize; this even includes companies that serve the world market and would have the financial clout to invest in the future, but do not want to devalue their highly productive fixed capital. In the end, the things that continue to count are short-term profits and the shareholder value associated with them.
The Struggle over an Ever Smaller Pie; or, the Limited Resources for the Production of Consent
From the beginnings of neoliberalism, generally stagnating and at times falling rates of profit on capital have been overcompensated for by massive redistributions from wages to income on capital and by the global spatial expansion of the mode of production, bound up in manifold ways with rampant precarity and super-exploitation, threatening the labour force’s capacity to reproduce itself. This has gone along with redistribution from more domestically oriented capitals towards globalized capital factions oriented to the world market. In this way, those factions that operate in the global market can realize growth, and even record profits. At the same time, there is an increasing tendency towards over-accumulation of capital, stagnation of growth prospects, and bankruptcies among the smaller capitals. Thanks to the liberalization of financial markets, and with the generous support of nation states, firms oriented towards the global market are able to avoid taxation. Because there is a shortage of tax revenue, nation states in order to keep the capital cycle going, tend to take on more and more debt. At the same time, however, they are not allowed to become too indebted, and government spending must remain subject to the oversight of financial markets. To this end, debt brakes and austerity policies considerably limit the scope of state investment, as well as the available means for wealth redistribution and the production of consensus, even in times of crisis.[21]
The coming climate catastrophes and economic crises to come will further limit the scope for action, as current modes of living and production cannot be continued — or only for shrinking sections of the population, both globally and within the capitalist centres.
Since the mass basis for capitalism is weakened, and, in Germany, self-limited by a quasi-religious adherence to the debt brake, the dominant capital factions are tolerating the emerging political power of fascization and are now developing an interest of their own in de-democratization.
To this extent, alongside crude attempts to deny and psychologically repress the climate catastrophe, a more or less explicit understanding is becoming dominant that there will not be enough for everyone. And that with this perspective, existing standards of living must be defended against those “outside” and “below”, pitting those who are seen as sustaining production and development (“makers”) against those who supposedly receive an income without contributing (“takers”). Here too we can see the effects of a deep fatalism, which rules out any thought of changing conditions in a different direction, let alone the thought of a different kind of society. “Overpopulation” is blamed for the ecological crisis, and these “excess” human beings want to migrate to Germany and are thereby threatening local living standards (cf. Callison and Söding 2023, 75).[22]
The weakness of the green-capitalist project, on the other hand, is that we are likely facing a deep crisis of capitalist reproduction, in which the tendency to increasing numbers of economic and social crises, dramatic ecological catastrophes,[23] and new geo-economic conflicts and wars make it doubtful whether a new, more or less stable period of capitalist transformation can even be expected in the middle term. There is no comfort to be found in the fact that previous transformations of this kind could only be completed by passing through the hell of world wars, the destruction of capital, and human brutality and barbarism. But if green capitalism, which is forming its own version of an authoritarian capitalism — with its outward face militarized and fortified, and its domestic face antisocial — is barely able to meet the challenges, or not at all, then it is only logical that a radical right-wing project does not even aim to deal with the profusion of crises. Instead the focus is on securing for its clientele whatever, under disaster capitalism, remains to be secured against “those from outside” and “those down below” — and against “treacherous elites” (Goes) who abandon us to globalization, bring cheap competition into the country, and pursue “crazy” climate politics and “gender lunacy” for “weird” minorities. Thus the reversal of the ban on registering new cars with internal combustion engines moves back from the right-wing fringe and onto the bourgeois-conservative agenda as a signifier of ideological identification: the chairman of the conservative group in the European Parliament, CSU politician Manfred Weber, promised to reverse this EU decision, and CDU leader Friedrich Merz confirmed this.[24] The (neo)liberal FDP is formulating a totally anachronistic programme, meant to incentivize the use of cars in inner-urban areas and a “transition to using cars”. Conservatives and the radical right are teaming up to roll back the European Green New Deal. European Commission President von der Leyen’s cosying up to the fascist Italian Prime Minister Meloni does not bode well for the continuation of a more ambitious green-capitalist modernization project in the EU.
The growth of the radical right in Europe and Germany is putting this modernization project on the defensive. To that extent, fascization can be seen in a double sense as the struggle over what remains of material and financial prosperity when the “pie” is shrinking both economically and ecologically. Of course, this shall not effect the high (surplus) profits of capital and the super-rich. Moreover, any form of downward redistribution has to be off the table through shifting of the vertical axis of conflict over surplus value into a horizontal axis of cultural warfare. A kind of reactionary turn to an imaginary past and to the maintenance of the “good old” way of life, of the “normal”.[25]
Fascization thus becomes comprehensible “as an overarching class alliance” (Candeias 2018, 47): between downwardly-mobile elements of the wage dependent segment of the population, skilled workers who have made the transition to the petit bourgeoisie and are threatened with downward mobility (and are defending their private homes and purchasing power), upwardly mobile economic individualists and the established petit bourgeoisie, families that own small and medium-sized businesses under pressure from globalization, tradespeople hit by rising costs and a shortage of new apprentices, industries (including those based on fossil fuels) threatened by upheavals in the mode of production due to digitalization or the (response to the) ecological crisis, and even those bourgeois intellectuals who feel underappreciated or marginalized (from Bernd Lucke to Alexander Gauland), or soldiers and members of the repressive state apparatus who feel sidelined in liberal democratic procedures. “For the downwardly-mobile class fractions, we can even speak of a transition from precarity to the threat or reality of being declassed.” (Ibid.) On top of this there is a renewed class of the ultra-rich, essentially abstracted from the rest of society, like Elon Musk,[26] who have little regard for democracy or its culture, and consider democratic rights as limitations on their capacity to exploit human beings and nature (with the Tesla “gigafactory” in Grünheide, for instance).
The consequence of the blocked transformation would likely be the German economy is lagging behind in competition with the increasingly green-capitalist, more or less authoritarian China, as well as behind the US (first because the Biden administration had huge spending programs in green technologies and infrastructure; second because Trump is threatening with high trade tariffs and a new economic war).
Since the mass basis for capitalism is weakened, and, in Germany, self-limited by a quasi-religious adherence to the debt brake, the dominant capital factions are tolerating the emerging political power of fascization and are now developing an interest of their own in de-democratization, in order to counter claims from “below”. Capitalism’s authoritarianism leads to an openness to the tendencies towards fascization.[27] A part of the political bourgeoisie is copying the positions and methods of far right while, at least rhetorically, explicitly asserting a commitment to democracy against the right-wing competition. The greater the danger to the German export-oriented model (Candeias 2023a), the more that some sections of capital will be amenable to protectionist and confrontational measures against the new rival China, and to nationalist appeals that the home market be shielded.
The CDU will continue to grapple with its options. An antifascist movement and the broader public should be putting pressure on the CDU/CSU not to accept experiments with the AfD at this point — after all, there are still forces within the CDU that hold to more of a conservative-liberal, and to that extent democratic, line.
There is also active political support emerging for fascizing tendencies on the part of other capital groups (especially those factions less oriented to the world market, like the Verband der Familienunternehmer, see Heine and Sablowski, 2013) and super-rich individuals. In other countries, these connections have long been more pronounced, including with regard to the financing of radical right-wing networks: from Barilla in Italy to the Koch Brothers or Elon Musk in the US. Germany is following suit, from the founder of Backwerk and shareholder of the Hans im Glück hamburger chain, Hans-Christian Limmer, to dairy billionaire Theo Müller.[28] As early as 2017, there was a scandal that involved undeclared party donations of 137,000 euros from real estate billionaire Henning Conle, who is said to have broken this up into small tranches via Swiss proxies.[29] In the lead-up to the 2021 election, the AfD received almost 7 million euros in donations.[30] However, in Germany, large donations still do not play anything like the role they do elsewhere. Instead, leading business associations (with a predominantly global orientation) such as the BDI or the DIHK have come out in defence of democracy and against the AfD, so as not to jeopardize their interests in free global trade and the international labour supply (which would be harmed, for example, by the impression that Germany is racist). In this respect, unlike in classical fascism, there is still no robust alliance between the “economically ruling” class and the political forces of fascization — even if they do commune over delaying the progress of green-capitalist modernization.
In this sense, it seems to me that we have not yet grasped what kind of project, or regime (with no project), contemporary fascization amounts to. A project with explicit pretensions to hegemony would also have to seek the consent of the ruled (through populism), but the resources for this barely exist (this was quite different for the modernization project under the NSDAP). The option left over is authoritarian government in the interest of a minority, with no particular social concessions and an ultra-liberal economic policy. In view of the amount of protest that such an arrangement could have to meet, this would tend to go together with more or less brutal repression and dictatorial violence (Candeias 2019) and/or corresponding instability. This would hardly involve modernization for the creation of possibilities for extended accumulation (with the more advanced capital factions), but kleptocratic redistribution and appropriation (with the retrograde or reckless capital factions, the Lumpenburgeoisie) would definitely be a crucial part of the programme. Malm et al. (2021, 223ff.) discuss scenarios in which, due to intensified crises and catastrophes, capital groups become open to a project of fascization. In terms of the stability of a regime, a successful project of authoritarian hegemony would perhaps be less brutal than kleptocratic rule through force, but also have essentially more chance of longevity, and be associated with deeper structural changes.
The trend is thus ambiguously flickering between an orientation towards authoritarian democracy in conformity with the market, with certain liberal freedoms, and the model of an “illiberal democracy”. The latter would not be a matter of abolishing democracy, but instead with its reactionary renovation. This is where old neoliberals à la Friedrich August von Hayek converge with the right, from the AfD to Meloni: think vaguely populistic referenda instead of parliamentarism and competition between parties; a presidential principle (in which the legal initiative for law-making is largely displaced onto the executive and the parliament is disempowered), with the maintenance of some democratic, “or rather: post-democratic rituals” (Burschel 2024), such as elections (with disadvantageous initial conditions and handicaps for opposition candidates, attempts to control the media, etc.).>[31] In any case, the relative consolidation of such a regime would endanger all the existing political and social rights and freedoms that have been won through the struggles of the workers’ movement and others; this would be coupled with the intensification of the exploitation of human beings and nature.
Autoparalysis of Liberal Democracy
Now for a dystopian thesis: in the 1990s, harsh neoliberal reforms were implemented in Germany’s East as in a laboratory, before then being generalized in the West (Candeias 1999). There is the threat of an analogous development in Germany today: at the municipal level, and in a few state parliaments, collaboration between the AfD and the CDU is being extensively tested for its resonance with the electorate. A study by Steffen Hummel and Anika Taschke recently provided more vivid evidence of this: they were able to research 121 concrete cases of such cooperation in East Germany during the period summer 2019 through to the end of 2023 — the vast majority of them with the CDU (Hummel and Taschke 2024).
After the rightward swing in the European Parliament elections, the three state parliament elections in Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg have resulted in a new constellation. Since the AfD is now positioned as a blocking minority, creating stable governing coalitions is likely to prove difficult. In Brandenburg, there is one vote missing for a “grand coalition” between the SPD and the CDU. In Thuringia and Saxony, the CDU is negotiating with the BSW, which only recently was still seen as a pariah party. Minority governments would be a further and generally unpalatable option, and one, which barely promises any political progress. A possibility that would be stable at least in terms of numbers would either be the AfD tolerating a minority government by the CDU, formally or informally, or even a formal coalition of the CDU with the AfD. At least this has already been thoroughly debated, with many calling for the demolition of the so-called “firewall”, which is anyhow riddled with cracks and holes. Contrary to protestations of incompatibility, many — and not only conservatives — dream of a governing majority beyond unpopular coalitions with the Greens or the SPD — to ‘disenchant’ the AfD when it has to prove itself concretely. This did not happened formally yet. In Brandenburg and Thüringen we have now coalitions between SPD/BSW resp. CDU/SPD/BSW, in Saxonia a minority coalition between SPD and CDU – three rather week governments concerning the very different programs and tactics. In any case, the dream of ”disenchantment” has already burst in Italy and in Austria, to give only two examples.
In the event, the radical right — despite the upheavals — has made considerable gains. If this development continues, supported by the actions of the conservatives, there will be no way to get around far-right participation in government at some point, possibly not even at federal level. Maybe it will continue in its relative hegemony in parts of eastern Germany, while the AfD remains contained at the federal level with a 15 to 20 percent share of the vote. Nevertheless, a scenario is also imaginable, in which the CDU/CSU, as the main party in the right-wing parliamentary spectrum, is successfully split, overwhelmed, and genuinely challenged. In Austria, the far right ÖVP is following this path, overtaken by the FPÖ, and in Italy as well, the “old” right-wing populist forces Forza Italia (led by Berlusconi) and the Lega now only play a minor role in the shadow of the neo-fascist parties. In this respect, what is happening now is also a struggle for the recomposition and leadership of the ruling power bloc. However, when playing for power, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that “dynamics of fascization cannot be controlled” (Strobl 2021, 149).
The CDU will continue to grapple with its options. An antifascist movement and the broader public should be putting pressure on the CDU/CSU not to accept experiments with the AfD at this point — after all, there are still forces within the CDU that hold to more of a conservative-liberal, and to that extent democratic, line.
An AfD ban, even if belated, would function as a kind of emergency brake. The discussion around this, and the various possibilities for steps in that direction, has shown that the danger of fascization is at least partly being recognized, and that many are putting aside considerations they had formerly given weight to.
What could we actually expect from a black–brown — excuse me: black–blue — coalition (see also Burschel 2024)? Firstly, the AfD would gain access to government ministries and administrative apparatuses, bringing hundreds of “authoritarian personalities” (Adorno) into positions within these. This would include things like the ministry of the interior or the ministry of education, the judiciary, police complaints and equal opportunities officers — figures hated by their base could be removed from positions or personally defamed. This is likely to be followed by the discontinuation of funding for civil society, anti-fascist, and left wing projects and structures, as well as of the (non-repressive aspects of) integration resources for refugees, and the criminalization of protests against right-wing extremism. The damage inflicted would likely further entrench right-wing hegemony in parts of Germany. Presumably, there would be attempts to exert influence on universities and colleges in terms of staffing policy, research funding, and restricting the scope of left-wing university groups (the ban on gender-inclusive language has already been mentioned). In contrast, radical right-wing think tanks could benefit from state funding, and right-wing networks inside the police, judiciary, administration, and civil society could be massively strengthened. The AfD might attempt a far-reaching restructuring of the state, the effects of which would persist even once it was later voted out of government. In the US, Donald Trump has declared these kinds of changes to be his most important task during his second term (although his first term was already very successful in this respect, as the composition of the Supreme Court shows). However, conservative state governments have also provided templates: police and public assembly laws in Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia have been tightened, and a future AfD minister of the interior could use the preventive detention used against climate activists in Bavaria as an instrument of repression. Under the pretext of fighting “clan criminality”, a right-wing state government could make life difficult for migrants and the already rising amount of deportations could reach new record levels (numerous references in Steinboes 2024).
At least the rightward shift is no longer goes unchallenged. The demonstrations following the sinister “re-migration conference” fortified the isolated opponents of ongoing fascization; many are learning that they are not alone with their fears and political convictions. Moreover, the demonstrations are unsettling the radical right in their belief that they are “the people”, putting the brakes on their upward flight, even if their power appears unbroken. In addition, these demonstrations are already strengthening progressive structures, with many initiatives experiencing an influx of activists, including thousands of new members for Die Linke.
At the same time, it is clear that the demonstrations cannot be maintained at this level in the long term. This reveals another kind of non-simultaneity many strikes and protests, including militant ones, but no convergence. There is a wave of protests with no project. At least for a few years, the “#unteilbar” coalition offered a platform where activities were brought together and coordinated. Currently the progressive forces in society have no unifying structure, and still lack any political idea for an alternative. Many consider the SPD, the Greens, and Die Linke as no longer being their representatives.
What remains is a self-paralysis of liberalism, not only because of a lack of political will to maintain “militant democracy”, as this was traditionally called after the experience of German fascism. The paralysis is also due to an unwillingness to discuss the social and economic fundamentals of fascization because that would mean examining in detail the actual policies of governments past and present. Instead, only a moral and “ideological” confrontation is being sought with the anti-democrats, this too while failing to examine one’s own authoritarianism or the adoption of positions from the radical right. “If what we are talking about is something like a democratic regression, then the counter-measure cannot consist in simply returning to democracy as it previously was” (Jaeggi 2023, 243), since the regression lay precisely in the “immanent shortcomings” of this prior condition (226). This applies not only to the SPD/Green coalition in federal government but also for broad sections of the anti-AfD protests.
An AfD ban, even if belated, would function as a kind of emergency brake. The discussion around this, and the various possibilities for steps in that direction, has shown that the danger of fascization is at least partly being recognized, and that many are putting aside considerations they had formerly given weight to. However, it is doubtful who in the executive and judiciary will ultimately stand up for a ban (especially as the legal path of such disputes is generally protracted). Nevertheless, the simple fact that it is being discussed makes it clear to everyone what is at issue. In 2025, no AfD voter can claim to have voted for such a party simply out of protest, without really knowing what it stands for. In view of the fact that the AfD’s election results in the three most recent state elections were not quite as strong as in previous polls, at least a small number of people seem to have grasped the point.
From “Helpless Antifascism” to Solidarity against the Great Regression
How then do we go from a “helpless antifascism” (Haug 1987) to a convincing political project, while ensuring that a left-wing position does not “simply become an appendix to eco-social liberalism” (Goes 2024)? A “substantial antifascism shows the connection between the fascistic, ethno-nationalist barbarity for which the right is striving, and structural inequality in the here and now; which means connecting a positive notion of defensive struggle with the longer term perspective of a society where freedom, equality, and solidarity are not just empty words, but realized to the greatest extent possible.” (Friedrich 2024) Or more simply put: when critiquing fascization and the forces driving it, we must bring the decades of neoliberalism and the catastrophic failure of the Social Democratic and Green government and green-capitalist modernization into the picture, from a left-wing perspective, and propose an alternative — articulate, following Thomas Goes, something like a social, or better, social-ecological antifascism. For this, within the democratic front, the left must cultivate the “spirit of secession” (Gramsci), against the aspects of domination and oppression in liberal democracy, and in the name of genuine freedom and equality.
Yet a broad alliance, a conscious, organized, and popular counter-project, does not need to represent the socialist alternative yet; perhaps now is not (yet) the moment. In broad civil-society alliances, much could already be gained if perhaps four minimal demands were brought into focus: 1. banning the AfD, 2. immediate monetary climate cost compensation for everyone (“Klimageld”), 3. an investment package for social infrastructure from health to education and from social housing to public transport, and 4. that this be financed through a reform of the debt-brake and a multi-millionaire tax, to make the rich once again take greater responsibility for financing the common good and to make greater societal cohesion and equality possible. These demands would of course first have to be worked out through a political process. However, this kind of approach could be a litmus test for broad democratic alliances[32] — and at the very least for independent initiatives from the left.[33]
An alternative is required, the alternative of social-ecological system change grounded in solidarity; or at the very least, steps in this direction that can make the future imaginable again.
If leading German companies position themselves against the AfD, then we welcome that. However, we will confront them with the above-mentioned programme and extend our demand for democracy to workplaces and the economy as such. Otherwise, ours will remain a helpless antifascism, arbitrary, because it involves those forces that are either blocking the green-capitalist modernization, or running the latter into the ground, by playing off spending for defence and decarbonisation against the social question. In Germany and elsewhere, fascization is proving an effective counter-project to contemporary transformations in a “capitalism at the limit” (Brand and Wissen 2024).
The broader left and Die Linke can function as forces for organizing a counter-pole to the “great regression”. This regression threatens to engulf not only liberal freedoms and the achievements of the feminist and ecological movements, but also those of the unions — historically acquired social and workers’ rights. There are legitimate reasons to be deeply worried. Nevertheless, the collective solidarity against regression can both mobilize people politically, and create an overarching experience that can provide a progressive counter-image to the supposed “Volksgemeinschaft” (national and ethnic community). For an alternative is required, the alternative of social-ecological system change grounded in solidarity; or at the very least, steps in this direction that can make the future imaginable again. An alternative that give space to people’s hardships and fear of change, and counteract these with a hope people can believe in, sketching a path to collective action, to the experience of solidarity’s “current of warmth” (Bloch). Following Horkheimer, it is a question of how to make pessimism — which people are right to feel — productive, so that it does not turn into fatalism.
This essay first appeared in the brochure Vom Horror zur Hoffnung. Translated by Sam Langer and Marc Hiatt for Gegensatz Translation Collective.
Bibliography
Adorno, Theodor. 2007 [1958]. Philosophy of Modern Music, translated by Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster, London: Continuum.
Arendt, Hannah. 1972. Wahrheit und Lüge in der Politik, Munich.
Balibar, Etienne. 2024. “Volksfront oder Kartell der Linken? Über den Aufstieg des Faschismus in Frankreich und den linken Nouveau Front Populaire”, neues deutschland, 30 June 2024, www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1183372.linker-widerstand-in-frankreich-volksfront-oder-kartell-der-linken-das-kommende-volk-n-teil.html.
Balibar, Etienne, and Immanuel Wallerstein. 1991. Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, translated by Chris Turner, London: Verso.
Becker, Lia. 2023. “Blockierte Transformation und rechte Offensive. Was folgt aus dem Scheitern der ‘Fortschrittskoalition’?”, LuXemburg, no. 2, pp. 14–21, zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/artikel/blockierte-transformation-und-rechte-offensive/.
Becker, Lia, and Mario Candeias. 2024. Vom Horror zur Hoffnung. Strategien gegen blockierte Transformation und Faschisierung, Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Berlin, www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/52656/vom-horror-zur-hoffnung.
Bloch, Ernst. 1991 [1935]. Heritage of Our Times, translated by Neville and Stephen Place, Cambridge: Polity.
Brand, Ulrich, and Markus Wissen. 2024. Kapitalismus am Limit, Munich: oekom.
Brückner, Peter. 1982. Psychologie und Geschichte, Berlin: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach.
Burschel, Friedrich. 2024. “Der Schoß ist fruchtbar noch”, neues deutschland, 16 March 2024, pp. 20–21, www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1180739.proteste-gegen-rechts-der-schoss-ist-fruchtbar-noch.html.
——— (ed.). 2018. Durchmarsch von rechts. Völkischer Aufbruch: Rassismus, Rechtspopulismus, rechter Terror, 3rd revised edition, Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/8811/durchmarsch-von-rechts.
Candeias, Mario. 1999. “Die Wende als Ausdruck neoliberaler Verallgemeinerung”, in Das Argument no. 5, 645–655, www.trend.infopartisan.net/trd7802/t127802.html.
———. 2004a. “Produktion des Neofaschismus und seine Nähe zum Neoliberalismus”, Neoliberalismus. Hochtechnologie. Hegemonie. Grundrisse einer transnationalen kapitalistischen Produktions- und Lebensweise, edited by M. Candeias, Hamburg: Argument Verlag, 2004, pp. 337–41; second, improved edition 2009, pp. 412–17, www.academia.edu/48947951/Candeias_Neoliberalismus_Hochtechnologie_Grundrisse_einer_transnationalen_kapitalistischen_Produktions_und_Lebensweise_Eine_Kritik.
———. 2004b. “Die letzte Konjunktur: Organische Krise und ‘postneoliberale’ Tendenzen”, in Candeias 2004, 337–41; 2009, 7–22.
———. 2008. “Verallgemeinerung einer Kultur der Unsicherheit: Prekarisierung, Psyche und erweiterte Handlungsfähigkeit”, Verhaltenstherapie und psychosoziale Praxis (journal of the DGVT), vol. 2, pp. 249–68.
———. 2012. “Hello..., does anybody rule? Die (Un)Fähigkeit der herrschenden Klassen und führenden Gruppen”, Gegen den Neoliberalismus andenken, edited by A. Demirović and C. Kaindl, Hamburg: VSA Verlag.
———. 2015. “Gegen autoritären Neoliberalismus und Rechtspopulismus – Perspektiven einer linken verbindenden Partei”, Rechtspopulismus in Europa – linke Gegenstrategien, edited by M. Candeias, Berlin: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, pp. 55–73 www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/8340/rechtspopulismus-in-europa.
———. 2018. “Den Aufstieg der radikalen Rechten begreifen”, Rechtspopulismus, radikale Rechte, Faschisierung: Bestimmungsversuche, Erklärungsmuster und Gegenstrategien, edited by M. Candeias, Berlin: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, pp. 33–60, www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/39174/rechtspopulismus-radikale-rechte-faschisierung.
———. 2019. “Aufstieg des Globalen Autoritarismus: 19 Thesen zu Ursachen und Bestimmungsmomenten”, LuXemburg, July 2019, zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/artikel/aufstieg-des-globalen-autoritarismus-19-thesen-zu-ursachen-und-bestimmungsmomenten/.
———. 2023a. Wirtschaftswende jetzt: Die Erosion des deutschen Exportmodells erfordert Elemente einer neuen Ökonomie, Berlin: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/50716/wirtschaftswende-jetzt.
———. 2023b. “Wir leben in keiner offenen Situation mehr: Thesen zum Ende des Interregnums”, LuXemburg, August 2023, zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/artikel/wir-leben-in-keiner-offenen-situation-mehr/.
Callison, William, and Tatjana Söding. 2023. “Leugnen und verzerren: Die Klimakrise als Treibstoff der AfD”, LuXemburg, no. 2, pp. 72–77, zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/artikel/leugnen-und-verzerren/.
Cohen, Stanley. 2002 [1972]. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers, London: 3.A..
David, Olivier. 2024. “Wohnungslosigkeit: Politische Gewalt, die Tötet”, in nd – der Tag, 16/4/2024, www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1181500.obdachlose-wohnungslosigkeit-politische-gewalt-die-toetet.html.
Demirović, Alex. 2018. “Autoritärer Populismus als neoliberale Krisenbewältigungsstrategie”, Prokla, vol. 48, no. 190, pp. 27–42.
———. 2023. “Gegen die Eindeutigkeit”, LuXemburg, no. 2, Dezember 2023, zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/artikel/gegen-die-eindeutigkeit/.
Dimitrov, Georgi. 1958 [1935]. “Die offensive des Faschismus und die Aufgaben der KI”, Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 2, pp. 523–625, Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
Dörre, Klaus. 2013. „Prekarität und exklusive Solidarität. Handlungsfelder von Gewerkschaften und öffentlicher Soziologie“, in: Sozialismus 40, 12, 9-18
Ege, Moritz, and Alexander Gallas. 2024. “Stimmung gegen links”, nd Die Woche, 31 August 2024, pp. 20–21.
Figuero Ibarra, Carlos. 1999. “Faschismus”, Historisch-kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus, vol. 4, edited by W. F. Haug, pp. 147–65, Hamburg: Argument.
Grünewald, Stephan. 2013. Die erschöpfte Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main.
Guthier, Christina, et al. 2024. Erschöpfung 2023: Eine Untersuchung zu Wahrnehmung, Ursachen und Einstellungen, www.auctority.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/AUCTORITY-Studie-Erscho%CC%88pfung_2023.pdf.
Gramsci, Antonio. 1996. Prison Notebooks, vol. II, edited and translated by Joseph A. Buttigeig, New York: Columbia University Press.
Friedrich, Sebastian. 2024. “Antifaschismus reloaded: Jetzt wieder alle zusammen gegen die AfD? Kann helfen, aber . . .”, Der Freitag, 15 March 2024, p.12.
Goes, Thomas. 2024. “Welche Strategie gegen den Rechtsruck? Für breite Bündnisse und sozialen Antifaschismus”, LuXemburg, Januar 2024, zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/artikel/mit-wem-gegen-rechts/.
Hall, Stuart. 1982. “Popular-demokratischer oder autoritärer Populismus”, in Wolfgang Fritz Haug and Wieland Elfferding (eds.), Neue soziale Bewegungen und Marxismus, Hamburg: Argument, 104–124.
Haug, Frigga. 2003. “Krise I”, Historisch-kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus, vol. 7/II, edited by W. F. Haug, pp. 2121–139, Hamburg: Argument.
Haug, Wolfgang Fritz. 1980. “Annäherung an die faschistische Modalität des Ideologischen”, Faschismus und Ideologie, edited by Projekt Ideologietheorie, vol. 1, Berlin: Argument, pp. 44–80.
———. 1986. Faschisierung des Subjekts, Berlin: Argument.
———. 1987. Vom hilflosen Antifaschismus zur Gnade der späten Geburt, Hamburg: Argument.
Häusler, Alexander, and Michael Fehrenschild. 2020. Faschismus in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Ein vergleichender Überblick zur Tauglichkeit eines umstrittenen Begriffs, Berlin: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/41996/faschismus-in-geschichte-und-gegenwart.
Heine, Frederic. and Thomas Sablowski. 2013. Die Europapolitik des deutschen Machtblocks und ihre Widersprüche: Eine Untersuchung der Positionen deutscher Wirtschaftsverbände zur Eurokrise, Berlin: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/7138/die-europapolitik-des-deutschen-machtblocks-und-ihre-widersprueche.
Heitmeyer, Wilhelm, et al. 2002 et seq. Deutsche Zustände. Folge 1-10., Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag
Horkheimer, Max. 1988 [1932]. “Geschichte und Psychologie”, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, pp. 48–69, Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer.
Hummel, Steffen, and Anika Taschke. 2024. Hält die Brandmauer? Studie zu Kooperationen mit der extremen Rechten in ostdeutschen Kommunen, Berlin: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/51762/haelt-die-brandmauer-1.
Jäger, Anton. 2023. Hyperpolitik: Extreme Politisierung ohne Folgen, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Jaeggi, Rahel. 2023. Fortschritt und Regression, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Kühnl, Richard. 1999. “Faschismustheorie”, Historisch-kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus, vol. 4, edited by W. F. Haug, pp. 165–86, Hamburg: Argument.
Malm, Andreas, and The Zetkin Collective. 2021. White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Facism, London: Verso.
Marx, Karl. 1956 [1852]. “Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte”, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke, vol. 8, pp. 111–207, Berlin: Dietz.
———. 2022 [1885]. Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Zweiter Band, Der Zirkulationsprozess des Kapitals, Berlin: Dietz.
Mau, Steffen., et al. 2024. Triggerpunkte: Konsens und Konflikt in der Gegenwartsgesellschaft, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Nachtwey, Oliver. 2016. Die Abstiegsgesellschaft, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag.
———. 2023. „BRD noir“, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 18, www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/kann-sahra-wagenknecht-die-parteigruendung-gelingen-19180382.html.
Negt, Oskar. 1976. Keine Demokratie ohne Sozialismus, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Nolte, Paul. 2008. «Wir brauchen ein neues Klassenbewusstsein!», in: ÖkologiePolitik (ÖP), Nr. 140, 10–12.
Opratko, Benjamin. 2023a. “Die Rückkehr des Faschismus”, Das Tagebuch, vol. 12, no. 1, tagebuch.at/2023/12/die-rueckkehr-des-faschismus/.
———. 2023. “Am Abgrund: Erleben wir einen faschistischen Moment?”, LuXemburg, no. 2, pp. 6–13, zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/artikel/am-abgrund/.
PIT — Projekt Ideologietheorie. 2007 [1980]. Faschismus und Ideologie, revised edition, edited by K. Weber, Hamburg: Argument.
Poulantzas, Nicos. 1976. The Crisis of the Dictatorships: Portugal, Spain, Greece, London: Verso.
———. 2020. “Trumps Amerika: Vorbote eines neuen Faschismus?”, Jacobin, October 2020, www.jacobin.de/artikel/donald-trump-prasidentschaftswahl-us-wahl-faschismus.
Rehmann, Jan. 2024. “Nazismus”, Historisch-kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus, vol. 9/II, edited by W. F. Haug, pp. 2303–30, Hamburg: Argument.
Reich, Wilhelm, 1970 [1933]. The Mass Psychology of Fascism, tr. Mary Higgins, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Richardson, Katherine. 2023. Planetary Boundaries, Stockholm Resilience Centre, www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html.
Sauer, Birgit. 2023. “Exzess der Affekte: Rechte Entwürfe von Männlichkeit”, LuXemburg, no. 2, pp. 78–85, zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/artikel/exzess-der-affekte/.
Steinboes, Maximilian. 2024. Die verwundbare Demokratie: Strategien gegen die populistische Übernahme, Munich: Hanser Verlag.
Strobl, Natascha. 2021. Radikalisierter Konservatismus, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Thalheimer, August. 1967 [1930]. “Über den Faschismus”, Faschismus und Kapitalismus: Theorien über die sozialen Ursprünge und die Funktion des Faschismus, edited by Wolfgang Abendroth, Frankfurt a. M.: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, pp. 19–38.
Theweleit, Klaus. 1987 [1977]. Male Fantasies, vol. 1, translated by Stephen Conway et al., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Togliatti, Palmiro. 1973. Lektionen über den Faschismus: Vorlesungen von 1934/35, Frankfurt a. M.: Institut für marxistische Studien und Forschungen.
Trautvetter, Christoph. 2024. Übergewinne richtig besteuern: Ein Update zur Debatte über Krisengewinne und gewinngetriebene Inflation, Berlin: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/51548/uebergewinne-richtig-besteuern.
Weber, Klaus. 1999. “Faschisierung”, Historisch-kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus, vol. 4, edited by W. F. Haug, pp. 142–46, Hamburg: Argument.
———. 2018. Resonanzverhältnisse: Zur Faschisierung Deutschlands, Hamburg: Argument.
Wiegel, Gerd. 2020. “Weimarer Verhältnisse? Rechte Gewalt im historischen Vergleich”, LuXemburg, no. 2, pp. 50–55, zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/artikel/weimarer-verhaeltnisse/.
———. 2024. “Völkische Planspiele: Die extreme Rechte zwischen Vertreibungsfantasien und Verbotsverfahren”, LuXemburg, Februar 2024, zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/artikel/voelkische-planspiele/.
[1] Tipping points are to be understood as an analogy here — not in the sense of a permanent irreversibility as discussed in climatological research, but certainly in the sense of an irreversibility of social developments in the medium term, as a transformation to a new period of development in which the conditions for left-wing strategy and for social progress become decisively constrained.
[2] According to Jan Rehmann, “despite all the differences between fascism variants, their commonality as a reactionary mass regime that opposes socialism and democracy already forms a solid basis for a general concept of fascism” (2024, 2323, with reference to Togliatti 1973 [1935], 8–16; see also Häusler and Fehrenschild 2020); “Nazism” is then the specifically German, extreme form (Rehmann 2024). Instead of giving a more or less fixed definition of fascism, the notion of fascization tries to grasp a specific articulation of ideological elements that becomes more and more efficacious the more it decomposes intersubjective, consolidated experience and knowledge, and thereby transforms thinking and feeling themselves in an authoritarian direction.
[3] See amnesty.de/inform/amnesty-journal/germany-attacks-on-refugees-are-increasing. In the first half of 2024, the police registered 519 assaults on refugees across Germany, including six against children; the number of unreported cases is likely to be much higher. The figure for the whole of 2023 was 2,450 assaults. This was revealed in a response by the German government to a question put by the parliamentary party of Die Linke (taz 12/08/2024, 6).
[4] See also “Alarmstufe Rechts”, LuXemburg no. 2, 2020, 18–19, zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/ausgaben/gegenhalten/.
[5] See correctiv.org/aktuelles/neue-rechte/2024/04/05/gewalt-als-alternative-14-verurteilte-afd-mandatstraeger-im-amt/.
[6] That being said, the “concrete preparations for a ‘civil war’” within the organized right “reveal a new quality” (Wiegel 2020, 54), with the involvement of right-wing networks in the police and security apparatuses.
[7] It is no coincidence that the self-designation fascismo comes from the authoritarian “‘fighting squadrons’ (Italian: fasci), whose name itself derives from the ancient Roman symbol of domination, the bundle of rods (Latin: fasces) with the axe as a symbol of the death penalty, which its bearer could ordain” (Rehmann 2024, 2312).
[8] “The Federal Republic is not Weimar, and yet” the “history of the Federal Republic . . . is marked by a trail of blood shed by the extreme right” (Wiegel 2020, 52). Only once the so-called National Socialist Underground broke cover — revealing that the group had murdered at least 208 victims (the number as of 2020, see LuXemburg, Gegenhalten, no. 2, 19) — was the public confronted with the reality of the fascist threat, as well as the dangers posed by incompetence, inaction, and malfeasance on the part of the state (Wiegel 2020, 52).
[9] Group-focused enmity (or Menschenfeindlichkeit) is a social science term that attempts to summarise attitudes in the areas of racism, extremism, discrimination and social Darwinism using an integrative concept developed by Wilhelm Heitmeyer and his research group (Heitmeyer et al. 2022 et seq.).
[10] At the presentation of their book Kapitalismus am Limit at the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung on 18 April 2014. However: “Conditioned by the capitalist mode of growth, decarbonization strategies do not equate to a reduction in the consumption of raw materials.” (2024, 169)
[11] For example, the CDU is calling for social assistance benefits to be cut for people who refuse “reasonable work”, or for community service to be compulsory after receiving benefits for six months; the AfD would require this only after twelve months. The Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) also tends to agree with such demands — and is deliberately relying on social majorities on the subject in various surveys.
[12] See the German newspaper nd – der Tag, 4/5/2024, 6.
[13] Transformation fatigue does not mean that people do not want change. Rather, it results from the fact that many changes in recent years, indeed decades, have been at the expense of people on middle and lower incomes. People are turning against the constantly growing demands to adapt, to be flexible, to perform better, with no accompanying recognition or respect. The “reforms” under neoliberalism were already wrongheaded, with the promotion of “employability” via Hartz-IV degenerating into the imposition of demands without any provision of support; sensible initiatives to reduce working hours (such as the 4-day week at Volkswagen) led to an intensification of work and informal overtime; permanent restructuring in companies began requiring greater individual responsibility from employees, while staff cuts, control systems, and labour intensification increasingly closed the pores of the working day, while at the same social guarantees were dismantled (Candeias 2008). More recently, the implementation of ecological modernization — which in principle enjoys broad support — has driven up energy prices and the cost of living, as well as bolstered the perception that people are being forced to change their way of life. Transformation, formerly a concept that referred to positive change, has acquired negative connotations, and now suggests outrageous impositions.
[14] Capitalist development transforms different parts of society to varying degrees of depth, and at different speeds. While new modes of production and living emerge and determine social development, others persist, get devalued, and/or fight for their continued existence. This results in a non-simultaneous coexistence of different stages of societal development. This is also reflected in the consciousness of the various classes and groups, leading to “imbalances” in the processing of contradictions, which run transversally to class formations.
[15] Instead of giving a more or less fixed definition of fascism, the problematic of fascization tries to grasp a specific articulation of ideological elements that becomes more and more efficacious the more it decomposes intersubjective, consolidated experience and knowledge, and thereby transforms thinking and feeling themselves in an authoritarian direction. Hannah Arendt (1972) puts it bluntly: “The constant lying does not aim to make people believe a lie, but to ensure that nobody believes anything anymore”, and to blur the distinction between “truth and lies, right and wrong”, to promote mistrust and conspiratorial thinking and to project it onto other groups. Deprived of coherent thinking, and thus also of the ability to judge things for themselves, individuals are all the more subject to the rule of lies.
[16] www.mdr.de/nachrichten/deutschland/gesellschaft/faktencheck-aeusserung-merz-gefluechtete-zahnarzt-leistungen-asylbewerber-100.html
[17] Following Wilhelm Reich, the openness to fascization can be deciphered as a “basic emotional attitude” (Reich 1970 [1933], 10ff.) of the individual battered by neoliberalism and destabilized by the crises of capitalism, an attitude which can veer into authoritarianism, oscillating “between rebellious emotions and reactionary social ideas” (ibid.).
[18] As we know since Marx, liberal democracy limits itself to politics, never touching the base of the capitalist mode production.
[19] See newspaper nd – der Tag, 30/3/2024, 6.
[20] At the same time, variable capital that is relatively expensive in terms of international competition, i.e., the employment of labour in German plants is being further reduced.
[21] In fact, the 40 DAX companies make 82 percent of their turnover outside Germany and therefore hardly suffer from the weakness of the domestic economy or its high rates of inflation (see nd – der Tag, 30/3/24, 6), while small and medium-sized companies, which rely heavily on domestic demand, face financial problems. In this way, the middle tier of the bourgeoisie is actually being thinned out considerably, as Thomas Sablowski notes in an interview (27/3/24).
[22] “The racist myth of ‘population exchange’ is developed from a specific interpretation of the social relation to nature, an important ideological building block of right-wing world views. These are based on a mystified idea of a natural connection, worthy of protection, between the people of a nation which is invoked and the nature enclosed within its territory.” (Callison and Söding 2023, 75)