The Left Berlin News & Comment

This is the archive template

Category: Articles

First as a tragedy, then as a farce

Fear and loathing in Austria: Will the FPÖ capitalise to produce the first far-right chancellor in the German speaking world?


28/09/2024

2024 is the year of the dragon. It is also the long year of elections, with elections being held in 72 countries and 3.7 billion people eligible to participate in them. That makes it the most electorally significant year in human history. The dragon of democracy is raining its cleansing fires on us all; people and planet are melting in the crucible. What pours out remains to be seen.

The grand prix of elections will be held in the United States in November, but this Sunday we will have to sustain our thirst for democracy with the dour drops of bile pouring out of the Danubian republic of Austria.

The old joke is that Austria’s greatest achievement was to convince the world that Hitler was German and that Beethoven was Austrian. Today, walking in a gift shop in Austria, you can find souvenirs saying “No kangaroos in Austria”. Clearly, they have taken the loss of empire better than their perpetually sore neighbours in Hungary. But this election cycle has seen Austria indulge in paranoid fears about decline, the need for restoration. In so doing it revived its longstanding flirtations with Nazism.

The country is prosperous; GDP per capita is higher than Sweden, the median salary for full time work is close to 48,000 euros per year (5% greater than 2021), the unemployment rate is just over 5%. However, inflation has been sharp, with the consumer price index rising by 20% between 2020 and 2023. By contrast, between 2015 and 2020 the consumer price index rose by 8.2%. Net migration had two sharp peaks in 2015 and 2022. That crossed the 100,000 mark in both years, yet overall net migration has been on a downward trend. One could be forgiven for thinking otherwise – based on the xenophobic tenor of every debate. Things can always be better, but these are by no means the conditions that foment a revival of fascism.

So why a mere 5 years after a damaging scandal is the Freedom Party (FPÖ) – a child born of rehabilitated Nazis – in a position to lead the next coalition to govern Austria? Why is a satirical party – die BIER Partei – led by physician-cum-musician-cum-kabarett artist-cum-politician Marco Pogo (real name Dominik Wlazny) – polling close to 4% only 9 years after its founding? Why is it that the communist party of Austria (KPÖ) is vying to scrape into parliament, despite winning just over half a percent in the previous election? We can posit theories. It is tempting to say that Austria simply enjoys being led by the currents it finds itself surrounded by. The idiosyncrasies of its politics are like hors d’oeuvres sampled from the political buffet of the continent.

Unlike its neighbour Germany, Austria is relatively unburdened by the need to feign repentance for its past, nor does it have to play the statesman on the international stage. The FPÖ is no stranger to government, having participated in a coalition as early as 1983, albeit as a much more conventional centrist party. It took a turn to the right in the 90’s under Jörg Haider, pipped the centre-right Austrian Peoples Party (ÖVP) by a mere hundreds of votes in 1999. It re-entered government, splintered and then revived itself under Heinz-Christian Strache to rejoin government in 2017 with Sebastian Kurz.

The Ibiza scandal saw the FPÖ unceremoniously dumped from government. Fresh elections led to the return of the ÖVP in a coalition with the Greens. The former Wunderkind of Austrian politics, was Sebastian Kurz. He weathered the storm of leading the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition as the youngest head of government in the world. But he was ousted because of a corruption scandal of his own a mere two years later.

In normal circumstances, this would pave the way for a third party to fill the void, either an upstart or a traditional mainstay of politics. Enter stage centre-left Andreas (Andi) Babler of the Austrian Social Democrats (SPÖ). Compared to Jeremy Corbyn, Babler is from the left of the party. He defeated the more conservative, anti-immigration Hans Peter Doskozil, only after a clerical error revealed that Babler, and not Doskozil, had won the party’s leadership. This was days after the contest. From relative obscurity as the mayor of Traiskirchen (population circa 21,000), he was raised in comical circumstances to the leader of a national institution. Babler struggled to grip the reigns of a party that was prone to infighting. The SPÖ have neither collapsed in popularity nor soared in the chaos of Austria. Like much of European social democracy, the SPÖ are seen but not heard, and barring deus ex machina will finish third.

It remains possible that the SPÖ might step in eventually to restore a sense of normalcy, but whether that will be with Babler at helm only time will tell. Doskozil remains a national figure, as governor of the Eastern state of Burgenland and a former defence minister. He successfully defenestrated Pamela Rendi-Wagner as leader of the SPÖ, the first woman to lead the party and also the first to be challenged mid-tenure. But he lost out to Babler in a shock upset. The strengthening of the far-right in Austria is likely to embolden Doskozil against Babler, but he will likely bide his time until the distaste left by his failed putsch against Rendi-Wagner fades into memory.

It is the self-styled Volkskanzler Herbert Kickl who has frothed to the top of the Austrian political imaginary. Kickl is best described as a sidekick whose time has come (in German). A party loyalist, he was a speechwriter for Jörg Haider before he split off from the FPÖ to found the Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ). Kickl held fast and became one of his mentor’s harshest critics. Later he served as interior minister in the Strache leadership as well as his lieutenant. Now he leads the party he served his whole political life under a set of ideas that can crudely be tagged as Orbanism with Austrian characteristics. By repute a master of media management, he has a history of pulling the national narrative to himself by pushing the threshold of acceptable language. Referring to himself as a Volkskanzler as opposed to a Systemkanzler in Karl Nehammer, he cleverly draws attention to himself. He used the allusions to Hitlerian propaganda as a cudgel to wield against censorious elites.

It is a well-worn garment and we need not dissect it too much. Two points are worth making however. First, the FPÖ has never come first in an election nor has it ever produced a chancellor in Austria. Should polls bear out, the FPÖ will likely form a coalition with the ÖVP as a senior partner and refuse to compromise on its hardline program. Secondly, the FPÖ is unlikely to breach 30% of the national vote, which the ÖVP and SPÖ did regularly achieve until the mid 2000’s. If the FPÖ produces a far-right chancellor, it will do so enabled thoroughly by parties of the centre, with a plurality of support but by no means a popular mandate, much like the previous Volkskanzler. The depressing reality of Austrian politics is that it is so derivative, and avoidably so.

Decades of grand coalitions between the SPÖ and ÖVP; xenophobic rhetoric preached from the bully pulpits of TV talk shows and national newspapers disguised as mature debates on immigration, weaponized Islamophobia and philosemitism; and an obtuse devotion to forgetting Austria’s sordid role in the Nazi period have – displaced the anger of voters away from neoliberal economic dogma. Austria was, is, and will remain a wealthy country. Yet listening to vox pops on the national broadcaster, a feverish terror of the foreigner prevails. People talk of invasions, Muslim criminals, the ruination of their country as they knew it. Kickl’s promises of restoration are all too predictable and he may as well ask for five years to make Austria unrecognizable. Austria’s diminished position in world affairs afford it the luxury to indulge in this pantomime revival of an episode borne out of the despair of defeat in the First World War.

If there is hope, it lies in obstructing the formation of an extremist coalition. Two glimmers are offered. First, the historic floods in central Europe two weeks before elections might bring climate change back on the agenda, mobilize or persuade voters against the prospect of an obstinately climate denialist government. Second, the parliamentary arithmetic might lock out the potential coalition if both the KPÖ and the BIER party cross the 4% threshold to enter parliament. This has become a focus of campaign messaging by the KPÖ in the final stretch.

That progressive voters in Austria are being urged to vote tactically in a proportional system to clog up the gears of extremism is a nadir by itself. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride – so for now these humble ambitions will have to do. History, however, waits patiently behind the curtain to repeat itself.

Germany’s migration politics and the abuses of solidarity

The new border checks further cement Germany’s and the EU’s move to the right. It is people on the move who suffer the most


27/09/2024

Do the SPD want to be part of the same club as Viktor Orbán? If you asked them, they’d probably say they don’t. But actions speak louder than words, and Orbán himself knows that: on September 10th, he welcomed Chancellor Olaf Scholz “to the club.” Which club? #StopMigration. Scholz was admitted to this less and less exclusive club because of Germany’s decision to reinstate controls on all its land borders starting September 16th.

In the European Parliament, the SPD and Orban’s Fidesz are part of political groups that claim to have little, if anything to do with one another. But Orbán is right to recognize what so many critical commentators have been saying for years, European migration policies and discourses are moving dramatically to his side of the political spectrum, regardless of who is implementing them. German border controls are only the most recent example.

Permanent crisis

When the SPD Federal Minister for the Interior, Nancy Faeser, announced that Germany will impose border control in the heart of the Schengen free-movement area, this came as a shock, but not a surprise. The move might be unprecedented in terms of scale, but it follows measures and declarations that have become increasingly strict and violent. Germany’s parties have been trying to manage the rise of the AfD by imitating its anti-migration stance. Although this strategy has been failing miserably, some still hold on to very dangerously misplaced hopes.

The SPD continue their attempt to lure the AfD’s voter base by promising that they, too, can be hard on immigration. Scholz’s promise to “deport on a massive scale,” made in October 2023, has not been empty. In the first half of 2024, Germany deported 30% more people than in the same period of 2023. The new “Repatriation Improvement Act” made proceedings harsher and faster, leading to the first deportations to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

All of these measures are legitimated by the invocation of security. Germany’s Islamophobic response to the genocide in Gaza made the Schengen border an important tool for policing and oppressing pro-Palestine activists. The knife attack that happened in Solingen on August 23rd, claimed by the Islamic State, brought a new wave of racist moral panic about the dangers of immigration in Germany. Although the number of people seeking asylum in the country has been decreasing, Germany’s borders are supposed to be in a state of emergency, and the situation calls for emergency measures.

According to its various governments, however, Germany has been in a continuous migration crisis for the last 50 years. Measures to combat this crisis are also nothing new. The border controls announced by Faeser are exceptional in name only; controls have been put in place at Germany’s border’s 44 times since 2015. In 2023 alone, those entering Germany from Austria, Poland, Czechia or Switzerland had to go through border checks for a total of 43 weeks.

Not that border controls affect all equally. Faced with criticisms that the new measures will unacceptably slow down traffic and trade, the German government already announced that its border checks are mobile and flexible. They do not target all commuters and travelers, according to a spokesperson from the Ministry of Interior, but only cars where officers notice “hints of people smugglers and cross-border crime.” This is being presented as Germany minimizing the effect that its new measures will have on freedom of movement, but critics have already noted what such “smart controls” will most likely mean: racial profiling and increased abuse against people of color entering Germany.

The fact that the SPD is borrowing from the right’s playbook while claiming to fight it is not the only apparent contradiction in Germany’s migration policy. The newest crackdowns come at a time when migrants are more important to the country’s economic development than ever. Just two days after Faeser’s announcement, the Federal Statistical Office released a report that showed a 25% increase in the recognition of foreign professional qualifications in 2023. It is not only skilled immigration that keeps the German economy running, poor Eastern Europeans are still overworked and underpaid on German farms. Another recent report showed that the second quarter in 2024 saw a record of worked hours in Germany, due in no small part to migrant labor.

As many Germans age out of employment, more and more foreign workers are needed to keep the country afloat and to ensure their retirement. The SPD is, of course, aware of this. Olaf Scholz did not stay at home to see the border controls come into force but was hard at work in Central Asia to solve Germany’s labor and migration problems. On September 15, he signed a bilateral migration deal with Uzbekistan, just one of a recent series of such agreements with Colombia, India, Georgia, Kenya, and Morocco. Besides making the immigration of skilled labor easier, all these agreements also include provisions for facilitating deportation procedures.

Attracting non-European labor force is not a move to increase the freedom of movement, but to make borders stronger as useful tools for racial capitalism. Fortress Europe, of which Germany is a core part, does not only keep people out, but enforces selective admission and control. The border is an instrument of differentiation between good and bad migrants. Good migrants need to be afraid of becoming bad migrants, and stay in their lane as productive, obedient capitalist subjects. There is no contradiction between sharpened border controls and increased reliance on migrant labor. Rather, the former makes the latter possible.

The perversion of solidarity

That is why, although the German border controls have caused a heated debate in European politics, both sides of these discussions are equally hostile to migrants and refugees. The other members of the #StopMigration club are all taking similar, or more drastic measures. Gerd Wilders’s reaction to the news was “If Germany can do it, why can’t we?” and the Netherlands’ government already claimed its own migration emergency and requested to opt out of EU asylum rules. Hungary followed suit while pointing out the hypocrisy of EU attempts to punish its own enforcement of border security while “no one says a word about” Germany’s border checks.

Most importantly, Scholz has the support of the European trendsetter in migration politics. Giorgia Meloni’s government expressed glee at the sight of (allegedly) left-wing parties becoming more aligned with Italy’s own approach to immigration. The appreciation is mutual. Italy’s crackdown on immigration and its project of processing asylum requests in Albania attracted praise from politicians throughout Europe, including Scholz himself, and ensured Meloni’s influence on EU migration policy.

While the Albanian project has not yet been put in practice, the EU has been externalizing its borders to Africa for years. European technology and funds are used by border guards and police forces in places such as Senegal to stop migrants’ journey to Europe, leading to the militarization of African borders and human rights abuses. Italy has been at the forefront of outsourcing European border security to Tunisia, where sub-Saharan migrants trying to reach the Mediterranean are now subject to horrible violence.

So, is the criciticism from other politicians towards Germany’s latest border measures driven by an outrage at the inhumanity of European border politics? Sadly not. Scholz’s detractors have no problem hardening their own borders. Prime minister Donald Tusk called the controls at Poland’s Western border “unacceptable.” On the other side of the country, Polish border guards are now allowed to use live ammunition in their violent response to Belarus’s weaponization of Middle Eastern refugees.

Gerhard Karner, the Austrian interior minister, resolutely stated that his country would not receive any of the migrants that Germany refuses. But Karner ignores Austria’s usage of the same EU mechanism as Germany to impose controls on Schengen borders with Slovakia and the Czech Republic, as well as his own sustained opposition to Romania and Bulgaria’s entry into Schengen due to their insecure borders. Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis also accused Germany of attracting too many migrants because of its welfare policies and declared that the new measures “damage the fundamental achievements of the EU.” The Greek coastguard killing dozens of migrants, however, does not seem to damage any EU achievements.

This is not, to be clear, a matter of hypocrisy or dissonance. Germany’s border controls are indeed widening the cracks within the European project. But they are, at the same time, showing that this project is fundamentally constructed on the instrumentalization, exploitation, and death of migrants. Debates about EU migration policy abound in mentions of “solidarity,” a solidarity that Germany is supposedly betraying. But who is the subject of this solidarity? It is not the migrants who spend years in camps, who are deported to countries where their lives are in danger, who drown in the Mediterranean. It is European nation states.

After all, no EU external borders are controlled by Germany. The new checks on Schengen borders have triggered a new round of discussions about non-European immigration because they affect, as the Austrian response shows, the distribution of refugees and asylum seekers within the EU. In European debates and policies, the matter of who takes in refugees, how many, who pays and who can refuse, are framed as debates about the peaceful and fair cooperation of member states. They are debates about the solidarity that EU government have the duty to show to other members by ensuring that all of them equitably share the burden of welcoming and integrating migrants.

Many, of course, (attempt to) exclude themselves from such mechanisms – and the new EU regulations approved earlier this year will impose a system of “mandatory solidarity.” Germany’s imposing of border controls have been seen as one of the EU’s richest, most powerful countries attempting to shirk its own responsibility for taking in migrants. By seeking to reject asylum seekers at the border and refusing to process them, Germany’s government washes its hands of the people whom, according to critics from the AfD to Mitsotakis, it has been attracting through its lax and generous policies.

Even for some supposedly left commentators, this is a lack of solidarity not towards migrants, but towards other EU member states. Germany refuses to fairly coordinate its policies with other member states and sets a precedent that could lead to a domino effect of closed borders and to the unravelling of EU migration policies. This scenario would obviously hurt people on the move. But calling on Germany to play nice at European politics and lean into the new migration regulations is not a solution. The new CEAS pact’s major shortcomings have been widely criticized, and they will cause only more deaths and detentions.

Within these debates, whose terms are set by murderous EU regulation, solidarity is oriented towards other member states and towards EU citizens. Asylum seekers and refugees appear only as objects, as numbers and bodies, as tools for power plays and political games. Criticism of Germany’s new measures is necessary, but as long as the critique remains within this framework, it is fundamentally limited. It continues presenting migrants as a burden, as an amorphous threat and competitor to Europeans citizens, whose damaging effects need to be minimized through the right combination of policies and politicking.

A radical reorientation of solidarity is needed, one that is based on a very basic concept: migrants, regardless of legal status, of citizenship, or of the reason why they are on the move, are people, and the discourse about migration should be about their needs and wellbeing. True solidarity is not the one that Scholz shows, or refuses to show, to Greece or Poland. True solidarity is practiced by movements and groups who protect and welcome refugees, and who have to fight against EU laws and institutions to ensure a minimal degree of justice.

Spain prepares for the first general strike in solidarity with Palestine

Day of action taking place today


On 27 September, workers in Spain are called to a general strike and day of action in solidarity with Palestine. The anarcho-syndicalist trade unions Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) and the Confederación Sindical Solidaridad Obrera (Confederación Sindical Solidaridad Obrera) are calling for the strike. Some 200 associations and groups, including political, feminist, student, environmental and Palestine solidarity associations such as Samidoun and Alkarama, Anticapitalistas, BDS Madrid and Ecologistas en Acción are participating either in the strike or in the day of actions. On Friday, rallies, actions, demonstrations and events have been called in 58 cities throughout Spain.

Solidarity with Palestine and Lebanon is the main focus of the day. An international solidarity of the working class that uses its best weapons, the strike and mobilisation in the streets to demand the Spanish government to cut all relations with the Zionist state.

In a video presented at the press conference sent from Gaza, Fayez, head of the Union of Independent Women Workers’ Committees, thanked the trade unions, social movements and all those who are fighting for the Palestinian people. In the video, he explains the terrible situation in Gaza and the right of the Palestinians to resistance, independence and self-determination.

He also points out the culprits and the shameful response of the international community and demands that international agreements be implemented and the culprits brought to justice.

Fayez asks not to remain quiet and act now, to do everything to stop the indiscriminate killing in Gaza.

Following his plea, a few days before the first anniversary of Israel’s accelerated genocide of the Palestinian people and after 76 years of occupation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid, participants of the strike and day of action will demand of the Spanish government to move from words to deeds.

The Spanish government’s recognition of the state of Palestine has had great repercussions internationally and has largely succeeded in concealing the fact that Spain ranks 5th among EU countries that have exported the most arms and ammunition to Israel since October. Despite Pedro Sánchez’s statements in Congress in April that ‘since 7 October, Spain has not been carrying out any arms sales operations with Israel, none’, Spain has not only continued to buy arms from Israel and award contracts to companies, but has also continued to send arms.

The government claims that the contracts and licences for the arms exported to Israel date from before 7 October 2023, but according to a study by the Delàs Centre for Peace Studies, to which Olga Rodríguez had access for eldiario.es, the purchase/sale of arms with Israel in the last year has not changed much compared to previous years.

In the months following October, for example, Spain sent ammunition worth almost 1 million euros. Moreover, it has not stopped importing arms from the Zionist state, transactions whose value and quantity are unknown thanks to national and international business networks and the Official Secrets Act. The government has also awarded public contracts to Israeli companies worth 1027 million euros. Among these companies are the military companies Elbit Systems and Rafael. This has led the Delàs centre’s researchers to state that ‘despite the extreme seriousness of Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip, Spain’s military relations with Israel have not changed substantially since 7 October’.

The number of arms ships that have docked in Spanish ports is also unknown. The Borkum scandal and the weeks that followed highlighted the complex international network employed by arms dealers that complicates scrutiny, as well as the lack of transparency of the Spanish government.

The opacity of arms trade with Israel is not new, as according to information published by Público, in 2014 the Spanish government signed a confidentiality agreement in perpetuity with the Israeli Ministry of Defence covering the arms trade between the two countries.

It is therefore hardly surprising the attitude of the current government that, although there are more than enough reasons and evidence for it to assume the obligations it has as a signatory to the Convention for the Prevention of Genocide, it does not establish a total arms embargo on Israel as requested by Spanish civil society and the United Nations rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese.

That is why people in Spain are going on strike and why they will take the streets in the hundreds of planned actions and demos. To demand an end to complicity with the genocide and for Spain to cut all relations with the genocidal state of Israel.

With a free Palestine already on the horizon, it is time for all of us to redouble our efforts and show the mercenaries of war that the people united will never be defeated.

“If they touch one of us, they touch us all”

An interview with Charly Fernandez by Cherry Adam and Ksenia Krauer-Pacheco discussing the role of Argentinian social movements acting as a force for social cohesion.


25/09/2024

Charly Fernandez is an Argentinian activist and a member of FOL (Frente de Organizaciones en Lucha), a social organization dedicated to empowering the most marginalized families within the Argentine working class. FOL strives to self-organize and advocate for the rights of these families, aiming to improve their material, social, and cultural conditions of life. 

Since the election of Javier Milei, who is known for his feverish anarcho-capitalist fantasies, there has been a widespread media and discursive campaign against social organizations. The attack has been centred on the belief that individuals receiving social aid do not work, painting them as barriers to Argentina’s efforts to overcome its socio-economic challenges. 

Nevertheless, FOL remains steadfast in its goals, which include advocating for fair employment with decent wages and working conditions, promoting gender equality, the emancipation of women and dissidents, and fighting for improved access to healthcare, education, housing and suitable living conditions. Additionally, FOL is committed to defending the rights of indigenous peoples, children, and youth, as well as advocating for human rights, access to culture, and recreation.

Tell us more about you and when you started organizing and advocating for the rights of the marginalised.

I have been an activist since I was quite young. I started during the process that began in Argentina with the 2001 assemblies. This was during the closing of the convertibility cycle, the first wave of strong neoliberal measures, and globalization.

Argentina’s exit was an exit from a lot of social conflict – very different from what is happening now. At that time, there was a tendency towards the left, where people began to register in popular assemblies, factories were taken over, and soup kitchens and work co-operatives were organized. 

It was a time of great political participation, and I was one of those young people who began joining resistance assemblies. We started organizing ourselves in a situation where our neighbors and families suffered the consequences of years of neoliberal policies and unemployment.

How was the political movement at that time? How did it evolve?

These assemblies rotated from more central locations to neighborhoods and the countryside, especially the city’s shantytowns. However, my activism was in Buenos Aires. The process in other provinces and even in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area was different, so we began to form a link with comrades who came from movements of unemployed workers who had started to organize long before.

From that experience, I became involved with a group of comrades until we formed FOL, Frente de Organizaciones en Lucha. This front is a mix of movements: the MTD (Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados), the MTR (Movimiento Teresa Rodríguez – also an MTD), and others. We are talking about the year 2000, 2001.

Today, we continue to build our organizations, but now we are in almost all the country’s provinces. We have developed work co-operatives where many comrades work, from services to productive units to housing. We also have comrades who live in rural environments, and in these cases, there are also food production co-operatives and other types of things that do not exist in the cities.

How is it today?

Today, social movements, and we, in particular, do complex territorial work. It is not that we only attend a soup kitchen or a popular dining room. We have a framework of different spaces of intervention and spaces of health, gender, and environment that promote rights and articulate struggles. 

For more than twenty years, we have been winning partial victories, and from those partial victories, we have been winning rights that have often been transformed into devices or public policies.

Are these organizations an alternative to what the State should do and provide for the people?

The lack of fundamental rights for colleagues to join the formal labor market and access to housing or health means that social organizations begin to take over this role. Many times, we’ve been accused of being a “para-state” or an outsourcing of the state. But what happens is that if we are not there? There is nothing. In reality, the alternative is narco-criminal gangs, as has happened in other places in Latin America.

One of the things that we are discussing today with all politicians is: look, the pandemic showed it. If social movements are not building territory, building community, and being part of the social network, there will be narco-criminal gangs. We, the social organizations, have limited and have acted as a barrier against the development of these gangs. The most robust movements are rural rather than urban.

Do you see parallels between Argentina’s form of social organization and other social movements in Latin America?

I have had the opportunity to travel to other countries in Latin America and talk to comrades about this. The role that we play is not against the government apparatus. The problem is that there is a territorialized, armed, millionaire force (narco-criminal gangs), and the state is impotent. So, what we tell them is: do you think that the drug traffickers are going to intervene, and then they won’t try to play in politics and to try to lead the country or lead states? 

That is what happens in many places in Latin America. We see that there is a minimum democratic consensus, the understanding that organizations are not part of the problem but rather part of the solution.

What is the situation of the social movements in Argentina and Milei?

We have achieved family allowances, access to resources on gender violence in companies, education, and financing for building popular neighborhoods. All these were achieved not because of the goodwill of the government in power but because there were comrades who died fighting in the streets for this.

They call us the “CEOs of Poverty.” We are “poverty managers.” That is the problem, isn’t it? But, if one looks at how the picket movement began, how the social movements began, and all the rights that have been achieved in the neighborhoods over the years, of course, they want to destroy us.

There was a minimum wage, and the only thing we did was raise the salary ceiling during all these years. We have achieved family allowances, access to resources on gender violence in companies, education, and financing for building popular neighborhoods. All these were achieved not because of the goodwill of the government in power but because there were comrades who died fighting in the streets for this.

And, well, this is what the political class, the establishment, and the capital seem willing to do: destroy and eliminate these rights. Milei has been sent to execute this plan. But if we ask other sectors of politics, they will say exactly the same.

Is there a possibility of co-operation between these movements from below? Does it make sense to co-operate, even with these structural differences? 

It is necessary. There is a clear coordination of the global far-right. It’s not a coincidence that Milei comes to Spain to meet with Vox (the ultra-right party in Spain), goes to meetings in the United States, or is invited to Austria to receive an honorary title. 

All these societies and think-tanks are part of the apparatus of these digital militias — devices and networks created to fight a cultural battle of aggression and social control. 

There is co-ordination, a kind of global far-right international acting, financing itself, and taking over states where they can. And they are saying it everywhere. Milei said it in Davos: we must break with everything progressive, gender culture, ‘woke’ or whatever you call it.

What is your wish or hope for the international left movements and the ones in Germany? How can they show solidarity with the popular movements in Argentina?

We see that there are no such networks of articulation on the side of left-wing progressivism. If there are, they have become old, bureaucratized, and institutionalized, as we see in the social movements in our region, Latin America, and here in Germany. We need to strengthen those ties. The advances we achieve in Argentina, or those achieved here in Berlin or Brazil, will depend on the levels of resistance we can build. 

We must build on the idea that ​​”if they touch one of us, they touch us all,” an old slogan of the international left, emancipatory movements, and national liberation. All movements try to survive, resist, and face daily state repression battles. But we must undertake this task because this is on a global scale.

The mission now is to talk with other comrades and ask ourselves: How do we build a roadmap, understanding our origins and the different ideological perspectives in the international movement? This is a central task.

We are strengthening ties with the comrades of El Bloque Latinoamericano in Berlin, obviously because we are close. Many of us have been activists, and we have known each other and our comrades in their countries of origin. Our actions range from concrete aid to raising awareness about what is happening in Latin America.

Charly with members of Bloque Latinoamericano
Debate Ferat Koçak (die Linke) and Charly Fernández (FOL)

Who is Björn Höcke?

The Nazi past (and present) of the AfD’s rising star


21/09/2024

This month, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) made history by winning its first state election in Germany. The party was led to success by Björn Höcke, a rising kingpin in the AfD. His influence has grown so much that the youth branch of the AfD, Junge Alternative (JA), once referred to themselves as the ‘Höckejugend‘. With a strong grass-roots following, Höcke has become one of the critical driving forces in the revival of the political far-right in Germany, and at his current trajectory, sights are set firmly on party leadership and even the Chancellorship. 

Höcke positions himself as a radical alternative to the ‘theatre politics’ of Germany’s centrist parties, while the AfD’s politics are rather a copy-paste smorgasbord of ideas shared by other populist far-right movements in Europe, including Euroscepticism, pro-Russian sentiment, anti-immigration and anti-Muslim views. What particularly distinguishes Höcke within the AfD is his extremism, characterised by a focus on historical revisionism and his nationalist agenda.

History

Born in 1972 in the Ruhr region, his family moved to rural Germany to enjoy “a quiet country life”. His own mother describes his school years as rather typical, boisterous and at times outspoken, with frequent challenges to authority. Already at the age of 14, he was politically active, briefly joining the Junge Union, the youth organisation of the CDU/CSU coalition, but quickly became dissatisfied with the “career politician” approach he witnessed there. 

Höcke was deeply politicised by his family, recounting how his grandparents inspired him with stories of their homeland in East Prussia. History is a key component of Höcke’s identity and politics, later studying it at university and then becoming a history teacher in 2004. In his own words:

“But politics could not be escaped there either … Every day, I was confronted with the terrible consequences of absurd ideology projects such as ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘inclusion’”

He proudly notes that he shares the same birthday as Otto von Bismarck, the infamous Prussian leader who unified Germany through military power and shrewd politics, consolidating state control and elevating the German empire into a global superpower. Given the AfD’s strong anti-multicultural stance, it’s noteworthy that 19th century East Prussia was a testing ground for the German Empire’s “Germanization” policies, designed to assimilate non-German ethnic groups by promoting German culture and settling ethnic Germans in the region. Höcke claims that sharing a birthday with Bismarck strengthens his “commitment to orient (himself) to his stately size and his love for the country and people”.

Bismarck was also used by the Nazis as a symbol of German nationalist ideals: a strong, decisive leader, a defender of the traditional order, a unified national identity and culture. For Höcke, this period of German history is particularly significant, as he believes it allows modern nationalists to draw pride from a time unburdened by the guilt narratives tied with WW2 and the Holocaust.

When the AfD was founded in late 2012, Höcke quickly took steps to quit his job as a teacher and by April 2013 he had co-founded a regional branch in Thuringia. His efforts paid off when, by autumn 2014, the AfD secured 10.6% of the vote, gaining seats in the state parliament. By 2019, support for the AfD in Thuringia had nearly doubled, with the party receiving 23.4% of the vote.

Meanwhile, in 2015, Höcke co-founded Der Flügel, a radical ethno-nationalist faction of the AfD, self-described as a “resistance movement against the further erosion of the identity of Germany”, who widely adopted racist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, xenophobic, revisionist and denialist discourse. In March 2020, Der Flügel was officially classified by the German state as a right-wing extremist organisation, after which the Chief of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution(BfV) described right-wing extremism as “the biggest threat to German democracy”. This made the leaders of the AfD pressure Höcke to dissolve Der Flügel, avoiding the entire party being banned outright. Controversially however, its founding members, including Höcke, were not asked to leave the party.  

Banned Speech

After the classification of Der Flügel as an extremist group, the BfV began monitoring Höcke, considering him a danger to German democracy. Since then, he has repeatedly been fined for using a banned slogan, firstly during a party campaign speech in 2021 and again in December last year where he also encouraged the audience to join. He was fined €13,000 & €16,900 respectively for using the phrase “Alles für Deutschland!” (“Everything for Germany!”), a slogan used by Hilter’s SA Stormtroopers, and engraved on their service daggers. Höcke, the history graduate and history teacher of 10 years, claimed he didn’t know the historical significance of the term, the same excuse used by fellow AfD party & Bundestag Member in 2020, and yet another AfD politician in 2017.

However, the slogan is seemingly a favourite for the AfD. Shamelessly dancing around the edges of banned speech, “Alice für Deutschland” was encouraged by AfD event moderators, written on banners and chanted by AfD supporters at a rally in Freiberg this year, in support of Alice Weidel, chairwoman of the AfD, who has also since joked that Höcke was saying “Alice” not “Alles”. To some, this is a harmless statement of patriotism, to others an undeniable dog whistle signifying the party’s true radical agenda. 

Höcke has previously criticised German hate speech laws as limiting free speech. A similar sentiment was expressed this year in a Twitter discussion with Elon Musk stating: “Germany is at the forefront of persecuting political opponents and suppressing free speech” on X. Elon Musk, X (Twitter) owner, replied by asking why that slogan was illegal in Germany. Höcke replied, “Because every patriot in Germany is defamed as a Nazi”.

Historical Revisionism

Höcke’s family influence is further evident in his other views, as it was revealed that his father subscribed to the Holocaust denial & revisionist literature. In 2017, Höcke spoke to the AfD youth faction, Junge Alternative (JA), in Dresden about Germany’s remembrance culture:

“We Germans are the only people in the world who have planted a memorial of shame in the heart of their capital”.

He went on by stating:

“This stupid coping policy is still paralysing us today. We need nothing other than a 180-degree turnaround in remembrance policy. We don’t need any more dead rites”.

Although later distancing himself from this sentiment, the intentional ambiguity, spoken in a neo-Nazi hotspot, clearly intended to provoke revisionist fantasies. Dresden is seen as a flash-point for victimisation narratives (i.e. that Germany was also a victim of the Second World War), and the AfD frequently commemorates the anniversary of the Allied bombing of Dresden. Furthermore, Höcke believes: 

“It should be reported to the same extent that the Americans starved German prisoners of war in the prison camps in the Rheinauen after the end of the Second World War.”

Later that same year, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Höcke continued his desire to discard the country’s historical guilt and pleaded for a more positive representation of Adolf Hilter, stating:

“Not everything was bad… The big problem is that Hitler is portrayed as absolutely evil. But of course, we know that there is no black and white in history.”

An Eco-Fascist Future?

One final note is evidence of the prerequisites to eco-fascism in Höcke’s rhetoric. Whilst the AfD is filled with climate denialists, Höcke has shown public support for Die Kehre magazine, which tries to reclaim left-wing environmentalism by rebranding “Klimaschutz” as “Heimatschutz”. His personal website also goes to great lengths to paint a picture of a grounded, nature-loving, everyday man, who is nevertheless willing to defend himself, if necessary. 

Outro

What is dangerous about Höcke is perhaps less his ideas, but rather how toothless the institutional antifascist mechanisms in Germany seemingly are. The so-called “defensive democracy” policies of the modern German state seek to protect the state from descending back into nazism. Let’s see how Höcke checks up with the Verfassungsschutz:

  • Surveillance by the state ✅
  • Fines for usage of banned speech ✅
  • Banning of extremist groups ✅ (Der Flügel dissolved prior to a ban)
  • Revoking political financing …
  • Prison sentences …

At this point, we have to ask what the red line is for Germany and Höcke. Is it already too late? After all, Hitler was democratically elected into power.

Until the root causes of extremism are addressed, and the needs of the left-behind seeking a different politics are addressed, right-wing extremism will continue to flourish in Germany.