Remarks on the development of late capitalist democracy in authoritarian Germany.
Tomasz Konicz, 20.03.2025
Originally published on konicz.info on 01/28/2025
It is a primitive, obvious scam that anyone who wants to can see through immediately: Every time a person with a migration background, a refugee or a foreigner commits a crime, a new round of fascization of the Federal Republic begins – even if the mentally deranged perpetrator was driven by splinters of right-wing ideology, as in Magdeburg, for example. Even if a new record for right-wing motivated crimes was registered in 2024. The long line of victims of right-wing terror since the 1990s, the activities of the NSU, the right-wing coup preparations and mass murder plans – everything is suppressed just as much as simple historical facts and parallels to the 20th century. It doesn’t matter, if necessary, facts and connections are distorted until they fit. Almost everyone wants to believe that the crisis comes from outside, that refugees and foreigners are “our misfortune.” Otherwise we would have to radically question the crisis-ridden society, in whose middle-class center fascism is maturing.
Link: https://exitinenglish.com/2025/02/27/black-brown-breakthrough-as-the-election-campaign-heats-up/
A totalitarian moment emerges here, as already described by Hannah Arendt in her reflections on 20th century fascism: The distinction between truth and lies has lost relevance. The mercilessly distorted reality now only functions as a quarry to produce ideology and delusion. It is a veritable hysteria that is spreading among the German public as the election campaign heats up – increasingly fanned by the CDU, FDP and AfD (there is hardly any difference anymore). And this scam can theoretically be repeated until fascism is in power. The boundaries between a killing spree and an act of terrorism are becoming increasingly blurred in this manifest crisis. Of the millions of people with migration experience or backgrounds living in Germany, someone will always go berserk, lose themselves in murderous crisis ideology (whether in a nationalist or Islamist form) and break psychologically from the escalating contradictions. Just as people without a migration background do – with little public attention.
It’s so simple, everything literally flies to fascism now that right-wing hegemony has been largely established by personifying the causes of the crisis. In Germany, the victims of the global crisis of capital have been stamped as its causes for a good two decades – now that the crisis is also affecting the German center, it is rehearsed authoritarian reflexes that are being called up almost automatically. All the CDU has to do is continue to agitate and parrot the fascist filth of the AfD in order to form the next government. But that is not enough for the German Mr. Burns, the Dimitroffian real-life satire of a fascism-promoting finance capitalist. Friedrich Merz is really taking a risk as the election campaign heats up, putting a lot on one card in order to win everything. And this kind of “putting everything on the line” is characteristic of German fascism.
Instrumentalizing the knife attack in Aschaffenburg, the CDU has introduced a far-reaching “tightening of laws” as the election campaign has heated up, aimed at further sealing off borders, expanding the powers of the federal police and mass internment of refugees and “illegal” non-Germans.[1] Merz can push through this legislative package – which builds on the preliminary legislative work of the traffic light coalition – before the election, even if the SPD and Greens vote against it, as he can be sure of the votes of the FDP and AfD. And the CDU’s candidate for chancellor also made it clear that this constellation, in which the conservatives together with a largely far-right party push through further “tightening,” will not stop him from doing so.[2]
The path is the goal here, Merz does not want to wait until the CDU is in power, which is already as good as certain, because something else is important to him. What the former Blackrock man wants to achieve before his chancellorship is a joint vote by all parties for a further step towards the fascization of the FRG – together with the AfD, in order to remove before the next legislative period the crumbling taboo of cooperation with the AfD at the federal level. Everyone, not just the CDU, should vote with the AfD in favor of sealing off borders and further disenfranchising refugees, as the AfD has been demanding for years. In this way, the taboo of voting with fascists in favor of fascist policies would be democratically extended to all parties in the Bundestag. This vote at such a crucial time in the election campaign should act as a wrecking ball to tear down the wall to the far right.
Merz wants to use the double homicide committed by a mentally ill refugee in Aschaffenburg to normalize cooperation with the AfD – a largely fascist party. It is actually an unnecessary risk, as the CDU’s election victory seems certain. But Germany’s millionaire candidate for chancellor, who has excellent connections to finance capital and is happy to adopt Wagenknecht’s national socialist rhetoric about the housing and health crisis caused by migrants, wants even more: Merz wants to promote the strategic option of cooperation between the CDU and AfD, and the vote, which he wants to take place before the election, would be the first step in this direction. This approach is risky as it could also backfire, as the cornered SPD and Greens could seek refuge in a camp-style election campaign. What if the SPD and Greens do not give in to this blackmail tactic – then the CDU, FDP and AfD vote for a new “Foreigners Act.” The black-brown united front would then be a reality in the middle of the election campaign.
At the same time, Merz’s push towards fascism can build on the right-wing hegemony that has been established in recent years, particularly on the issue of migration. The public discourse has been shaped accordingly, and it was not least the Social Democratic Federal President Steinmeier who declared “illegal migration” to be the central threat to Germany on the occasion of the Islamist terrorist attack in Solingen – since then, Berlin has increasingly cooperated with Islamists in their actions against refugees. The Nazi slogan “Foreigners out,” initially restricted to refugees, has already become the German raison d’être. As a result, March’s initiative is already being dutifully normalized in public opinion, not only in right-wing newspapers such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine[3] (where AfD leader Gauland has been known to paraphrase Hitler speeches[4]), but also in liberal papers such as Die Zeit[5] (where there is a relaxed debate about letting refugees drown).[6]
When AfD leader Weidel declares the migration issue to be the fate of Germany in her jubilation over the crumbling firewall against the far right, she can build on years of ideological groundwork, especially in the center of German society.[7] There has hardly been a crisis in recent years (from the real estate bubble to Sarrazin, the euro crisis, the refugee crisis, the pandemic and the current export crisis) that has not been projected onto villains outside the German meritocracy. This is now the norm.
However, the authoritarian moment is also decisive in the fascism of the 21st century. Trump’s election, Musk’s crazy promotional tour for European right-wing populists and right-wing extremists, they are blowing all civilizational fuses in Germany. The fascist authoritarian pseudo-revolt is currently craving the favor of the powerful – when a billionaire advertises for the AfD, it has an attractive effect on the authoritarian personality, he sees himself confirmed and encouraged. Trump has an effect, Musk inspires the AfD – precisely because he is the richest man in the world. What’s more, the external pressure to keep fascism in Germany down has now largely disappeared. Why bother? In the U.S., whose search engines suddenly claim to have discovered a “Gulf of America,” migrants are already being arrested en masse.[8] The opposition of once influential capitalist factions to the AfD is consequently waning. In the meantime, it is no longer a scandal when entrepreneurs publicly – for example, in the democratic assault weapon that is the newspaper Spiegel – openly declare their support for fascism.[9]
Trump’s second election is a disaster whose fallout will be truly global. It has always been a naïve, illusory notion, nurtured particularly in the alt-left, that all you have to do to take the wind out of the sails of fascist movements is to unmask the rich and/or powerful profiteers behind them. This approach – which usually goes hand in hand with the borderline obnoxious talk of class and interests that seems ineradicable even in the manifest systemic crisis – simply ignores the fact that fascism is a genuine mass movement that makes a clear socio-political offer to the angst-ridden middle classes: get rid of foreigners, minorities and the useless leaches and we will be better off. This is especially true for Germany with its terrible authoritarian tradition. And America, in particular, is historically responsible for this: by aborting denazification due to the emergence of the Cold War, it tolerated countless Nazis in top positions in the “frontline state” of West Germany, who shaped it accordingly.
This lingering post-fascism laid the foundations for the current pre-fascism. There is no inevitability between the crisis and the drift towards far-right ideology and authoritarianism. The example of Greece, which was led to a real socio-economic collapse by former German finance minister Schäuble, shows just how weak Germany is in this area. In Greece, the fascist party “Golden Dawn” never got above 10%. There is no automatism that leads from systemic crisis to fascism. History and the course of the crisis are open. The AfD can be fought successfully – even in authoritarian Germany.
But this would require the unvarnished truth to be communicated to the people. The simple truth, which is now really out in the open and can only be covered up by means of permanent fascist agitation, is that the crisis in which late capitalist societies find themselves cannot be overcome within the capitalist economy. Closed borders will not keep out floods, storms or droughts. The heat, the fires, the rising sea levels – they will not stop at the panic-stricken borders. The next economic crisis, the next inflationary spurt, the next resource bottleneck will not be conjured away by deportations.
Instead of agitating against the victims of the crisis, we need to initiate a transformative debate to look for ways out of the permanent capitalist crisis. On a planet with finite resources, the compulsion to valorize capital is simply self-destructive. What fascism preaches is in fact the death of civilization.
However, there are no relevant social forces that – building on a radical awareness of the crisis – would lead the fight for a progressive transformation process. This is why the fascist crisis management is gaining momentum and asserting itself – almost inevitably, almost effortlessly. Transformation is inevitable, with no alternative, because capital has reached the end of its possibilities for internal and external development, and is tearing itself apart. And it is fascism that is currently leading this basically open-ended process of transformation in a barbaric direction, almost unchallenged.
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Originally published on konicz.info on 01/28/2025
[1] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/messerattacke-in-aschaffenburg-familie-von-opfer-wehrt-sich-gegen-vereinnahmung-durch-rechte-parteien-13096006.html
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/world/europe/germany-afd-merz-cdu-migration.html
[3] https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/bundestagswahl/cdu-vorschlaege-zur-migration-friedrich-merz-ist-nicht-hindenburg-110256240.html
[4] https://www.konicz.info/2018/10/12/tanz-den-adolf-gauland/
[5] https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2025-01/migrationspolitik-union-friedrich-merz-verschaerfung-afd
[6] https://www.konicz.info/2018/07/18/absaufen-pro-und-contra/
[7] https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/die-brandmauer-ist-gefallen-afd-chefin-weidel-begruesst-merz-ankuendigungen-zur-verschaerfung-der-mi-100.html
[8] https://www.br.de/nachrichten/netzwelt/nach-trump-dekret-golf-von-amerika-kuenftig-in-google-karten,UbABQFW
[9] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/galeria-miteigner-bernd-beetz-haette-wohl-donald-trump-gewaehlt-a-583d56e4-db37-4892-8b14-7a8b5653f19c