The FT has an astute and worrying article in it today from Nikolaus Blome who is a member of the editorial board of Der Spiegel. In it he argues that the Pegida movement is reshaping German politics as the line between the conservative middle class and the far right is fading is fading fast. As he notes
Some of the organisers of the [Pegida] marches have dubious backgrounds. Many of those rallying behind them belong to openly neo-Nazi groups. But the majority of the 25,000 who took to the streets of Dresden on Monday do not. According to a recent study, they are middle class, well off and fairly well educated. Those middle-class people no longer feel ashamed to mix in the streets with extremist protesters . The clear red line between the conservative middle class and the far right seems to be fading. That is not good news.
I think that can go down as a classic understatement, but that is the style of the article, which is well worth reading (and limited access to the FT can be free). For me what Blome is arguing more lucidly than I have seen before is that a taboo has been broken: it is now apparently acceptable to be openly racist in some parts of society where this was previously unacceptable and from that some very clear, obvious and significant political risks follow.
More than a decade ago I well remember John Christensen and I sharing the view that the rise of fascism was one of the biggest risks Europe faced, although it seemed a long way off at the time even if it was the inevitable consequence of the rise of corporatism, which we were challenging. The risk assessment remains the same now, but it seems a great deal closer.
And yes, I am worried. There is a horrible familiarity in all this.
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‘…that the rise of fascism was one of the biggest risks Europe faced, although it seemed a long way off at the time even if it was the inevitable consequence of the rise of corporatism…’
In my opinion you and John were almost correct, Richard, and would have been if you’d removed the ‘if’ from the line, above. It IS one of the inevitable consequences of the rise of corporatism, as indeed is the inevitable rise of the one party state (even if the sham of multi party elections is maintained) – which I’d hazard a guess is one of the reasons Cameron and co find working with the Chinese government so attractive.
What you, me and pretty much everyone else could not have envisaged a decade or more ago was the speed and extent of the rise of corporatism. Indeed, I well remember not long after I became an academic in the mid 1990s reading a paper on something the authors referred to as ‘political opportunity structures’, in which they mapped the ability of citizens’ campaign/interest groups (such as much of the environmental movement at the time) to get their concerns and demands onto the policy agendas of various European states. If my memory serves me correctly the UK came out bottom, in large measure because of our electoral system when compared to that of countries that have PR systems. As far as a recall nothing much was said about the effect the capture of government and the policy process by big business has on that process.
Fast forward twenty years and what do we find. Hardly a government across the whole of Europe and beyond is free from the domination of corporate interests, and in countries such as the UK and US – not to forget Australia and Canada – we have or are only fractions away from what I see as corporate dictatorship. Quite simply, the primary purpose of almost every government policy is the advancement of corporate interests and those of the 1%. And that’s because the policy process in every policy domain, be it health, education, the environment, transport, sport, and even the arts, is now dominated by commercial interests and/or representatives of the 1%.
Clearly a country where its polity has reduced to this is a democracy only in name. But until this cancer is removed – and that will take a whole lot of brave politicians and well as people such as yourself – other cancers, such as the racism you highlight here, will grow and grow. In that sense a sick and diseased body politic is no different to a living body. With its immune system rapidly failing all manner of sickness and evil can enter.
And that evil is waiting to do just that
This is deeply worrying. As Hobsbawm points out in the ‘Age of Extremes’, the rise of fascism in the 1930s was due in no small part to the support it gained from the middle classes concerned about the rise of communism. We seem to be reliving a lot of the circumstances of the 30s at present (the economic parallels too are frightening), and I don’t think it’s a stretch to be concerned about where this could lead.
To confirm your assessment, but adding more detail from a perspective that you may disagree with:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/01/15/pegi-j15.html
More against than for. Petty bourgeois participation. German state actors aiding and abetting. It does sound familiar.
I know that you dislike the view from the Marxist classical tradition, but I can’t for the life of me find a better one.
My understanding of the growth of fascism in pre-war Germany is that to a large extent it was created by the compensation it had to pay out for it’s role in WW1 (I believe that Keynes wrote an essay warning that it was a mistake to make Germany do this and I believe that other histroianw disagree but there you go…).
Those compensation commitments by Germany caused economic problems from which emerged discontent and then the rise of Hitler etc.
Post-war reconstruction seemed to be aimed at making Germany an economic powerhouse as means to ensure that it did not go down this slippery slope again. I believe that Douglas MacArthur’s presence in post-war Japan was based on the same rubric: create prosperity and keep civil war/world war/ social unrest at bay.
In many ways this was a perfect case for capitalism and who could argue with it? I can’t. I wish we had that sort of capitlaism now but with a greener twist of course.
I saw a fascinating documentary based in Germany of a german chap (of course) whose job it was was to go into german schools and help German children to ‘remember’ those dark days. And his message was that the german people have the capacity to do this sort of thing (Nazism) again. It was a chilling indictment that seemed to leave the kids stunned.
I believe though at times such as these, all nations have the capacity to behave in a facist way especially when there is some sort of stress induced reason for it in society (economic or some other fear such as terrorism). I mean did anyone see David Starkey on question time last night? Ouch!!
Germany still seems better off than most nations but there has beea slow reduction in its welfare state and pay deals over the years. Maybe the German public have felt the results of this?
As I’ve said before, it is sad that people use such crises to settle old scores and resort to fascism, using fear and uncertainty as an excuse to have a go at immigrants, the disabled and certain religious groups whilst at the same time ignoring the strange behaviour of central banks, the all too cosy relationship between politicians and the rich and the undermining of democracy.
Thankfully blogs like this indicate that we are not all sheep.
@MarkS
Your understanding is pretty accurate. The humiliation and punitive reparations heaped on post-WW1 Germany were in no small part responsible for the collapse of their economy and decades of misery that ensued.
Where we have been misled, though, is in the picture of Germany that is drawn by the media and Politicians, both here and abroad.
West Germany was indeed a power house, created in the large, by huge and determined funding(mainly) by the US. Its purpose was to stand as a glittering edifice, a shining example of what the individual could aspire to, if one only rejected communism. That this often required the sponsorship of companies and individuals that had profited from the Nazi regime was of no consequence.
When the will of the people finally became to great to withstand the wall quickly came down and Germany became one again.
Except that it didn’t. With the war against communism effectively won the US had no appetite to repeat its efforts to bring the economic basket-case that was the former communist state up to the standards of its Western neighbour. Worse yet for the East German citizens it’s new leaders in Bonn were unable or unwilling to make the necessary investment in the East. (Given that the Unity Tax set up to fund investment in the former DDR is still largely resented such a move would have probably been political suicide). The consequent disparity in living standards was even more marked by the affluence of the West. I travelled extensively in Eastern Europe in the mid-1990s and on the road from Calais to Warsaw it was instantly apparent when you had crossed the old frontier. A travelling companion who had taught for several yearsin a West German University could pick out ‘Ostdeutsch’ infallibly, usually by the cheap quality of their clothing. Even now, more than two decades after reunification and more than £80bn investment, living standards, housing, employment and opportunities remain markedly below those of the former West Germany, a situation exacerbated by Western Corpocracies , who, where they have targeted the East it has largely been as a source of cheap labour. Even then East Germans have found themselves in a race to the bottom with their Eastern European neighbours, whose lower cost of living has made competition problematic.
Germany, of course, has a long and proud tradition of welcoming ‘Gastarbeiters’ largely from Turkey and Southern Europe. That many of those workers have settled and naturalised and now enjoy the West German standard of living is always going to be a thorn in the side of many East Germans who themselves feel disadvantaged and disenfranchised in their own country. And that as we know is always the most fertile ground for the extreme right.
Pegida is largely (but not exclusively) a phenomenon of the former East Germany. For historic reasons the rise of the right in Germany gives us cause for trepidation. But if we are to avert another global tragedy we must pay careful attention to the conditions of social exclusion, inequality and disenfranchisement that make Fascism attractive. And that starts at home.
Thanks for that Martin – I agree entirely with what you are saying but was under the impression that Germany was truly united.
Old habits die hard. It is a shame that once the battles of ideology have ended, it’s real people who actually get left behind.
Coming from a Jewish background (though now a Quaker) I was alarmed to read a report brought out by the Campaign Against Antisemitism that anti-Jewish stereotyping and animosity is still very much present in Britain as well as mainland Europe. Netanyahu’s call for European jews to abandon ship and go to Israel, I found deeply disturbing and unsettling.
Since Cameron started using phrases like ‘doing the right thing’ and Osborne came out with the atrocious and unforgivable ‘skivers and scroungers/those that get up in the morning’ narrative, I’ve felt the dank, fetid breath of fascism spreading like a bad smell.
I’m worried and unsettled. Is this another cycle of the ‘great forgetting’ that Thom Hartmann has written about in the ‘Crash of 2016’?
There is a fundamental flaw in your analysis.
You decry corporatism. The corporatism we now have is one in which the transnational financial services industry is the main driver and beneficiary. Transnational financial corporations are running the world – a useful starting point to recognise that
Such corporate power when it captures government, as it has done, is indeed usually accepted as fascism.
BUT that corporatism, and those actual agents, are also the main voice for having open borders, free movement of workers, the movement of temporary workers across borders etc. They might put it in terms of ‘skill shortage’ or ‘founding principles of the EU’, but it all adds up to an unlimited reserve army of cheap labour, pushing down working conditions and wages. It has allowed the dreadful zero hours culture to become the norm.
SO – fighting corporatism is having the nouse to recognise that and the balls to speak up against this major strategy.
References to ‘racism’, Facile, and stunningly holier-than-thou, as soon as people do speak up, PUTS YOU ON THE SIDE OF THE CORPORATES.
The self-silencing function of the anti-racism rhetoric has for many years allowed big business to push ahead with a program of undermining people’s rights generally. This rhetoric, by the masses for the masses, has been the trump card for big business – and looking at your blog, it seems it is continues. Foucault all over.
(A ‘Left’ group activist recently told me that 80% of people in Britain are racist…)
To go deeper, and maybe too deep for some, you accept or don’t accept an ancient connection between people and place and that there are inherent rights embodied in that connection. It is a connection that is never articulated but half the time in public discourse it is taken absolutely for granted, not least in common law, and half the time denied, inevitably by big business and our dodgy governments.
Denying or seeking to deliberately cut the connection between people and place is a complete capitulation to transnational corporate power.
To deny that it exists, or seek to destroy any concept of it, denies any rights beyond what the government of the day (as we know subject to big business) allows.
Once ‘they’ have manipulated to remove all other rights that they can remove ( we’re close – see the Deregulation Bill going through), you either have a residual fundamental right – or, if the concept of that right has been successfully eradicated, you have none whatsoever. All that is left is a mass of people existing only as a mass ‘resource’, like battery chickens, for big business, to be moved around to best advantage by big business to suit itself to maximise profit. We are well on the way.
Other people know these things even if you haven’t got there.
The constant silencing creates the pressure situation that you fear but are precipitating.
Do not seek to smother the discussion with name calling, and have a rethink overall.
I won’t smother discussion
Would you like to tell us what you are saying though?
Glad to see I wasn’t the only one that failed to get Linda’s point(s). Anyway, I wouldn’t disagree with the financial corporations argument (of course), nor what corporatism promotes in terms of labour. But I’ve no idea what the racism remarks and the last three points mean, at least not in the context of your blog, where I’d say you and plenty of your readers have ‘got there’ – and been there for a while.
I hope Linda will elaborate because I genuinely need it and if you do as well Ivan then I think explanation is necessary
If I may be permitted to interpret on Linda’s behalf, she seems to be saying that;
1) ‘Fascism’ is the capture of power by Corporate interests
(although some might argue that Fascism is a totalitarian system of governance, hallmarked by its behaviours, rather than its protagonists).
2) Pegida is not, after all, a Right Wing chauvinistic movement but a popular expression of anti-Corporate feeling. Moreover, to describe or perceive of them as racist or anti-immigration is to be a supporter of the Corporate Kleptocracy.
(Although this does of course ignore the possibility that the anti-immigrant feeling fomented by the Right Wing Media is nothing more than a diversionary technique used to great effect throughout history, not least in 1930’s Europe).
3) It is the free movement of human beings undermines the basic rights and freedoms of the workers.
(Although lesser minds might see this ‘free movement as facilitating the degradation of rights whilst not causing it)
4) Therefore, anyone set on opposing the Corpocracies, must also embrace populist groups who oppose immigration, regardless of how unpleasant their intentions may be.
(It can of course be argued that it is possible to fight Corporate vested interests without embracing racism. But, hey…)
5) Human beings enjoy a unique and insuperable bond with the place of their birth, with the place of their heritage. With the Father/Motherland.
(Although it is difficult to find any scientific evidence of this, and speaking as one who’s family arrived on these shores, admittedly, as economic migrants somewhere between the sixth and seventh century, I’m not entirely sure I agree).
6) As such we have an inalienable right to the space and resources of this country and should have the right to dictate who comes here or not.
(We got here first and the rest of you can go hang, regardless of how much we buggered up your country.)
7) The inability to perceive the metalanguage that lies behind the language that hides the true reality of modern existence is a by-product of that language itself.
(If you didn’t spend six months struggling with Foucault at University this is all probably a bit too much for you..)
I will not comment on the conclusions of Linda Kaucher’s post, other than to suggest that she read a little more about the role of the Corpocracies in the formation and actuation of the Third Reich.
Thanks
To me, Linda seems to be saying that the Fascism apparent in this particular issue is just a smokescreen for Corporatist strategies to destabilise and confuse the counter narratives of the status quo that are developed and explored in this blog.
Linda is obviously very impassioned about this, and believes that the emphasis of our concern should be on corporatism – not fascism, because focussing on the latter looks like we’ve all been hoodwinked by the former. It is also a more widely known topic than corporatism. It makes us appear to have been ‘taken in’. I feel she is portraying corporatism as fuelling fascism.
My opinion on that is that Linda may want to consider that both Corporatism and Fascism actually exist – they are both real phenomena by themselves in human society. They are both equally dangerous.
Historically I understand that corporations were bodies set up to serve a purpose – usually big projects – public works etc., but – like we have seen in the banking sector recently – corporations have increasingly been serving themselves. Fascism? – well – read the history books!
What we cannot ignore however is that Fascism is based on human traits that exhibit themselves particularly when there is some sort of stress imposed on society. Fascism always appeals to a certain amount of people under certain conditions (change, fear) – we have to accept that. Other people know that (like politicians and corporations) and will use this to their advantage to control the debate and create confusion.
Both Fascism and corporatism need to be challenged Linda and we should not worry about dealing with fascism openly because history tells that we should. They are both real.
Well said
Thanks from me too, Martin. Nicely summarised.
@Mark Crown
Quite right Mark.
I believe the most frightening thing you can ever hear is when otherwise decent people say ‘but they are right about some things’.
Incidentally, you might find the Wikipedia entry on IG Farben interesting. It highlights how closely the interests of Corporate giants and Fascism are aligned, and their involvement in the actual architecture of the Third Reich (and it’s worth remembering that a certain British tabloid invested a lot of energy trying to convince the public that ‘that Mr Hitler is actually an awfully decent chap’. The same tabloid that now spends much of its time trying to convince us that it’s all the fault of the Eastern Europeans Leopards and spots?)
The list of individuals at the end of the WW2 overview is of particular interest for the number of companies that are now household names. To save you looking it up Standard Oil would eventually become ExxonMobil