The Right Conditions

Right-Wing Shift to the Abyss?

The physical limits of reality are not for the faint-hearted. The shift to the right in Germany and globally is, of course, not monocausal but has various reasons. The rightward shift in politics and society is likely permanent and certainly not stoppable by bringing seemingly incompatible positions together through coalitions or by declaring the AFD* alone as the ultimate evil while simultaneously inviting them as the only opposition to the mainstream in every talk show. While leftist positions, on the other hand, receive little space in the media. Quite the opposite, when genuine debates and narratives about the future are lacking, parties enforce lobby interests, and large sectors of public life cannot be democratically determined due to privatizations, we have created the perfect conditions for a long-term shift of society to the right.

Post-democratic Breeding Ground

News from around the world often reach us in the form of clickbait, turning journalism into sensationalism. At the same time, people perceive politics, especially the German coalition government, almost as textbook "post-democratic": current politics resemble more a management department than a place where we discuss how we want to live. Even the initial photos of coalition negotiations were deliberately smooth. Nothing seems to remain of the Greens clear values. With the overcoming of substantive differences between neoliberal party and the Green party, values are also overcome.

Instead of an exchange of values and negotiation about what kind of world the population wants to live in, politics takes place as if it were merely the administration of interest groups. While many people feel left behind and fear the future, the current system seems inevitable. The result is a general political disenchantment and, in fact, a strengthening of radical positions in theory (e.g. Mouffe 2011).

The unbalanced strengthening of the extremes in practice could be due in part to local contexts, such as in Germany, but also to the fact that leftist content is harder to digest, and the right has an edge in using social media. "Blame the foreigners" fits much better on a shareable image than a well-founded Marxist analysis of the prevailing conditions. The fact that, as leftists, we rightly distrust the Musks and Zuckerbergs of the world and often disdainfully don't want to engage with them further strengthens the dominance of the right. Algorithms further amplify the rightward trend. In the long run, right-wing agitators have many more advantages, some of them permanent.

With Stone Age Minds in the Anthropocene

The world has become increasingly complex; everything seems more complicated than a few decades ago. We live in the Anthropocene but still essentially have Stone Age brains. Group identities in the meantime provide an "interpretation offer for the perception of reality" (Scherschel 2006:51). For the individual, groups initially fulfill the function of locating oneself in the social world. Distinction is fundamental for the negotiation of the social and physical environment.

We live in a fast-paced world where people can easily lose their orientation, especially in the age of the internet. The sense-making aspect of racism appears for some experts as a necessity of modernity in particular. People attempt to compensate for their own mortality by continuity, namely, seeing themselves as part of national history/nation (Smith 2007). Anthony Smith describes the emergence of national identities as functional and therefore in a simplified manner. However, it is worth examining racism as a flexible symbolic resource. People have suppressed loneliness and loss, which they saw in the face of natural forces, by believing in a larger unity that surpasses their own existence, according to Smith (2007:46). While this cannot be completely dismissed, it is challenging to assess to what extent this justification was plausible for the broader population. After all, religion and existing myths can also fulfill such a function. In Germany in 2023, the number of those who do not identify with religions is at a historical low. We must take loneliness and loss as feelings seriously and understand that people seek orientation.

A Question of Status?

Identity becomes important not only when people search for meaning in the world but also in marking the differences between groups (Cornell and Hartman 2007:236). For Bourdieu (2006), racism is a meaning-making resource that allows the individual to "describe the world using socially differentiating generic categories," with classifications forming the basis for social action (Scherschel 2006:61). The frustration-aggression thesis sees racism as a displacement process, where every day experiences are not reflected but transformed. The functions of prejudices vary in relation to social position. In addition to justifying a superior status by a privileged group, they serve the function of maintaining group cohesion and social identity (2006:27). Competition among the economically weak increases vulnerability. However, racism cannot be explained in economic terms either.

A Future of Racist Resource Wars?

Climate change and the failure to live within the planetary boundaries mean that we have fewer and fewer resources. Additionally, the destruction of social security systems due to the neoliberal austerity policies of recent decades exacerbates distribution conflicts. Racism is primarily an ideology legitimizing social order, categorizing into different values justifies unequal treatment (Scherschel 2006:38). Social categorization and clear delineation are mechanisms that allow the use of the benefits of cooperation based on belonging while avoiding "excessive" costs through the exclusion of others. Particularly in discussions about climate protection and ecological footprints, the focus is on global justice and people in other countries bearing the consequences of our actions. Consequentially, even though Germany is the fourth-largest arms dealer and economically benefits from wars, the discussion about the admission of refugees is now, if not determined by racism, certainly driven by racists. In contrast, human rights must be universal and indivisible.

An instrumentalist approach assigns racism primarily the function of securing one's own interests. Just as the dehumanization of the culturally different legitimized much of European imperialism, structural racism today is primarily used to justify our imperial lifestyle and as a tool to refuse responsibility as a rich industrialized country and giant polluter.

This is not to say that we should stop fighting now. What should be clear, however, is that a Herculean task awaits all pacifists and human rights advocates. We must become more aware of the mechanisms and physical limits. Only if we understand the processes more precisely can we counteract them.

Sources:

Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. (Eds.). (2006). Reflexive Anthropology. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft.

Cornell, S., & Hartmann, D. (2007). Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press.

Mouffe, C. (2011). Postdemokratie und die zunehmende ―Entpolitisierung.‖ ApuZ, 1-2, 3-5.

Scherschel, K. (2006). Rassismus als flexible symbolische Ressource. Eine Studie über rassistische Argumentationsfiguren. Bielefeld: Transcript.

Smith, A. D. (2007). The Ethnic Origin of Nations. Cornwell: Blackwell Publishing."

* Ultra-nationalist party in Germany