Tag: politics

Protectionist Revenants

~ OlIver Blackwell ~ 1 Comment
The lessons that the bourgeoisie learned from the great systemic crisis of the 1930s have long been forgotten in Trump’s Washington.

Tomasz Konicz

Want some more? When it comes to tariffs and trade barriers, the U.S. president is known to be extravagant. In response to the EU’s announcement of retaliatory measures for the U.S. tariffs on aluminum and steel, which include alcoholic beverages, Donald Trump responded by threatening astronomical punitive tariffs of 200% on European wine and sparkling wine. So far, this escalation strategy has worked: when Canada’s Ontario province announced a 25% tax on electricity exports to the United States as part of the North American trade war, Trump immediately threatened to double U.S. tariffs on all Canadian metal imports to 50% – Ontario then withdrew its export tax.

The U.S. actually has a strategic advantage in these trade wars because of its huge trade deficit ($918.4 billion in 2024). This is likely to tend to decrease in the course of the trade wars, while most of America’s trading partners are likely to see shrinking exports. Trump is speculating that he can ride out the short-term turbulence that the major protectionist turnaround will bring in order to achieve the hoped-for long-term return of a re-industrialization of the U.S. before the next election. In fact, the U.S. wants to reindustrialize itself at the expense of those countries and economic areas for whose export industries the U.S. trade deficits have thus far served as a credit-financed economic stimulus program.

In fact, the world economy, which is increasingly running on credit, also functioned like this in the neoliberal era: the U.S. resembled a black hole of the global economy, absorbing surplus industrial production and being able to borrow in the world’s reserve currency, the U.S. dollar, on the rapidly expanding financial markets. In the context of ever-growing deficit cycles, gigantic export surpluses flowed into the U.S. as the center of capitalism’s neoliberal financialization, while a flow of debt instruments and bonds began in the opposite direction, making China, for example, the largest foreign creditor of the U.S. for many years (currently it is Japan). The global total debt, which in the neoliberal era has increased faster than global economic output (from around 110% at the beginning of the 1970s to more than 250% in 2020), was the lubricant of globalization precisely through these deficit cycles.

This neoliberal construction of towers of debt, which gave rise to the illusion of financial-market-driven growth in the United States, spawned a veritable global financial bubble economy that became unstable with the bursting of the real estate bubble in 2008 and unsustainable with the inflationary surge that began in 2020. Trump is thus a product of the crisis, whose protectionism is supposed to provide an answer to the processes of social disintegration that accompanied deindustrialization and the collapse of the financial bubble economy. And it is no coincidence that the whole thing resembles the protectionism of the 1930s, when the world system was hit by the greatest crisis to date.

The internal barrier of capital, which gets rid of its own substance, wage labor, through market-mediated rationalization, is now openly apparent: since new economic sectors that would valorize mass wage labor are nowhere to be found, each economic area must try to protect its remaining industrial capacities, as everyone is trying to support their industries through exports. Trump wants a qualitative break with the credit-fueled crisis delay methods of the neoliberal era – and the contradiction is almost tangible, for example in Trump’s eternal zigzag. The system can only run on credit – and at the same time the consequences of this global deficit boom are no longer socially, economically and, above all, politically sustainable.

But what does Trump want? Ultimately, the White House is currently destroying the system of American hegemony established in the post-war period, since the U.S. can no longer or no longer wants to bear the costs of this hegemony. Instead, Trump is setting about building a U.S. empire that no longer relies on a global network of institutions and rules in the exercise of power, but will presumably assert itself through direct and ultimately military force. And that is not a sign of strength, but of weakness. Trump’s narrow-minded crisis-imperialist calculation, which perceives the deindustrialization of the U.S. as a result of fraud by foreign competitors, will be exposed as such when these competitors no longer see any reason to accept the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The systemic cause of the geopolitical upheavals that are now shaking what is left of the “West” is the openly apparent internal limit of capital.

Originally published on konicz.info on 03/28/25

Into the Crisis One Tariff at a Time

~ OlIver Blackwell ~ Leave a comment
With its protectionist tariff policy, the new U.S. government is ushering in the end of the age of neoliberal globalization.

Tomasz Konicz

Protectionism is likely to become the new normal. The first foreign policy reflex of the new U.S. administration was to instigate trade wars. At the beginning of February, just a few days after taking office, President Donald Trump imposed punitive tariffs on goods from China, Canada and Mexico.

At 25%, the import duties on goods from Mexico and Canada were much higher than for China, whose goods were subject to additional import duties of just 10%. The U.S. is by far the most important trading partner for all three countries, with each of them recording trade surpluses.

However, while the tariffs against China actually came into force, Trump suspended the implementation of protectionist measures against neighboring countries to the north and south of the U.S. for 30 days on February 3rd. At this point, the U.S. government entered into negotiations with Mexico and Canada, during which the threat of punitive tariffs remains in place. In fact, Trump has already been able to secure significant concessions: both Canada and Mexico agreed to tighten controls on their borders with the U.S. Mexico wants to mobilize around 10,000 troops to secure the border so as not to jeopardize the economic position of its northern border region as an extension of the U.S. workbench.

In fact, Trump’s alleged economic protectionism is a geopolitical instrument of power that can be used to extort concessions. In the case of Mexico, which is particularly susceptible to economic pressure from the U.S. because of its increased economic dependency on them as a result of the U.S. nearshoring strategy, the aim is for better defense against migration movements. Canada, on the other hand, is apparently actually being forced to integrate more closely into the U.S. economy – the foreseeable struggle for the resources in and trade routes through the rapidly thawing Arctic make Trump’s bizarre annexation demands regarding Canada and Greenland at least understandable.

China immediately announced retaliatory measures: Tariff increases now introduced there include 15% on energy sources and 10% on agricultural machinery, spare parts for trucks and similar products from the U.S. However, the Chinese government has the short end of the stick in such trade wars. In 2024, the U.S. trade deficit amounted to the gigantic sum of $918.4 billion, of which China alone accounted for $295.4 billion. Even if both sides initially suffer economic disadvantages in a trade war, especially in the current stagflative crisis phase, for example in the form of higher inflation, an escalation would always hit the economy with the export surpluses harder than the deficit country, which can at least hope to substitute imports burdened by tariffs through increased domestic production.

The European Union is in a similar situation, having aligned itself with the export-focused German economic model since the euro crisis and achieving a trade surplus of 235.5 billion euros with the U.S. in 2024. Around 20 percent of all EU exports go to the U.S., its most important sales market. The special tariffs of 25 percent on steel and aluminum, which Trump issued in mid-February, were immediately described by the EU as illegal. It saw “no justification for imposing tariffs on its exports,” according to the EU Commission, which threatened countermeasures to “protect the interests of European companies, workers and consumers from unjustified measures.”

Only Trump’s First Salvo in the Transatlantic Trade War

This was effectively only Trump’s first salvo in the coming transatlantic trade war, as only a few manufacturers in the EU are substantially affected by this. The EU’s trade surplus is primarily generated with cars made in Germany, machinery and pharmaceutical products – on February 18th, Trump consequently threatened punitive tariffs of 25% on cars, semiconductors and pharmaceutical products. Added to this is the EU’s agricultural sector, which is incurring the wrath of the U.S. government due to some EU trade restrictions – for example against the infamous chlorinated chicken. The EU agricultural sector knows exactly what to expect. At the turn of the year, agricultural exports from the EU to the U.S. climbed to their highest level in 15 years. “Mountains of butter, pyramids of cheese and lakes of milk” are currently being laid out for export in anticipation of the coming trade barriers, reported the Austrian newspaper Der Standard.

Trump has already indicated to media representatives that his government is working on a comprehensive protectionist offensive that is likely to hit the EU particularly hard. In principle, the upcoming U.S. tariffs are to be imposed on individual EU countries and not on the entire economic area in order to promote divisive tendencies in the EU, make a joint EU counter-strategy more difficult and reward countries governed by Trump’s ideological allies, such as Hungary, with exemptions. The U.S. Department of Commerce is currently drawing up a list of countries that use “unfair trade practices” in order to impose “reciprocal tariffs” on them.

It is almost certain that Germany’s beleaguered car manufacturers will face new burdens, as the EU car import tariffs of 10% are far higher than those in the U.S. (2.5%). The spreading panic was already evident in the public announcement by VW CEO Oliver Blume that he intends to hold direct talks with the U.S. government. The German mechanical engineering industry is also likely to face tariff increases. If the trade conflict with the U.S. escalates, forecasts predict an additional economic slump of up to 1.5% of gross domestic product for Germany in particular.

What Retaliatory Measures Remain for the EU?

Bourbon, jeans, Harley-Davidsons, peanuts – what retaliatory measures are left for the EU? Brussels and Berlin are certainly aware that the EU is at a disadvantage in trade disputes due to its export surplus. So far, leaders have signaled a compromise proposal and a counter-threat to the U.S. government. The EU appears to be prepared to buy larger quantities of liquid gas from the U.S. and to reduce tariffs on U.S. vehicles in order to reduce the U.S. deficit.

Building on the protectionist experience gained during Trump’s first presidency, the EU had already issued a regulation at the end of 2023 that allows for swift retaliatory measures should “economic coercion” be used against the currency area. This time, it is not just about the import of goods, but also services. This could cause difficulties for U.S. IT giants such as Alphabet, Meta and Amazon in particular, who have very quickly come to terms with Trump’s authoritarian efforts.

However, in terms of economic policy, one can hardly speak of an about-face turn in U.S. policy. It is more a further intensification of the previous restrictive trade tendencies, as Joe Biden’s administration also continued the protectionist measures from Trump’s first term in office in a modified form – especially in the form of the economic stimulus programs that benefited domestic producers. And it is precisely in the increasing protectionism that the crisis process becomes evident. The fight for trade surpluses is a concrete expression of the inner barrier of capital choking on its productivity, which has so far been overcome within the framework of neoliberal deficit economies, especially in the U.S.

Trump now appears to be ushering in the final break with the era of neoliberal globalization, which gave rise to gigantic deficit cycles fueled by speculative bubbles. The U.S., with the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, forms the center of this financial bubble economy, in which U.S. trade deficits act as a global economic stimulus program – until the accompanying deindustrialization led to widespread social disruption and political instability in the U.S., which in turn elevated right-wing populist forces to the White House. In their second attempt, they now seem more determined than ever not only to drive forward fascization in domestic policy, but also to stage a revival of the devastating protectionism of the 1930s, which exacerbated the crisis at the time.

Originally published in jungle world on 02/27/2025

For a Piece of Land

~ OlIver Blackwell ~ 1 Comment
Trump’s move will probably lead to an end to the war, but how much will Ukraine have to pay?

Tomasz Konicz

Are the imperialists in the Kremlin on the home stretch of their war of aggression in Ukraine? With right-wing populist Donald Trump taking office, Ukraine’s already hopeless military situation appears to have deteriorated abruptly on a geopolitical level. Immediately after taking office, the Trump administration froze all foreign aid – including aid programs for Ukraine. Trump has now entered into direct talks with Vladimir Putin.

He has now also specified what a geopolitical “deal” to end the war could amount to: Russia receives large parts or even all of the claimed territories in Ukraine (he is not particularly interested in which territories Putin gets, Trump said), the U.S. gets access to the mineral resources of the attacked country, the Europeans are to take care of security guarantees, and NATO admission for Ukraine is off the table. The EU states reacted with alarm and demanded to be included in the negotiations. However, the Trump administration does not appear to be willing to grant it a role in the negotiations, nor Ukraine.

Putin’s strategic calculation – which was based on a protracted war of attrition and Trump’s election victory – therefore appears to be working. The last time Russia’s head of state was challenged was back in November, when long-range Western missile systems were deployed against Russia. Putin declared this a “red line” in the fall of 2024, which would effectively drive the Kremlin into a state of war with NATO.

But Putin did not escalate at the end of 2024 because he believes he is on the road to victory in his war of aggression against Ukraine. And this in two respects. On the one hand, the protracted war of attrition means that Russia’s greater resource potential is increasingly coming to bear. It has already become apparent in recent months: Russia’s territorial gains in the east are accelerating, while the Ukrainian army is barely able to mobilize enough manpower for the front. Drones and information technology function as the great equalizer on the battlefield of the 21st century, making offensive warfare more difficult – similar to the machine gun during the First World War.

What remains is the firing of material and people on the largely static front until one of the warring parties collapses. This is why Russia’s gradual successes in the east are so decisive, as the best-developed defense lines in Ukraine have been overcome. Every other Ukrainian front line is weaker. Since the West will in all likelihood not intervene directly in Ukraine, the bloody law of war mathematics dictates that Kiev must lose the war of attrition if it is fought to the last consequences.

Logic of Escalation and a War of Attrition

The only realistic chance of a military victory for Kiev was a shake-up of the Russian power vertical, i.e. the loss of important decision-makers below Putin. This possibility briefly emerged during the revolt of the Wagner group around the mercenary leader Prigozhin. However, he has since been removed by the Kremlin, meaning that the opposition within the Russian elite lacks a military-organizational core that could spark an oligarch uprising against Putin’s disastrous war – which is also a socio-economic and demographic disaster for Russia.

The Kremlin is speculating along similar lines. Russia’s winter terror campaign against the Ukrainian infrastructure, especially against Ukraine’s energy sector, aims to erode the morale and resilience of the Ukrainian “home front” in order to minimize and ultimately destroy the mobilization capacity of the Ukrainian army and society. The increasing desertion in the Ukrainian army shows that this tactic is successful in the context of the war of attrition.

What both sides – realistically speaking – can aim for is the erosion of the statehood of the opposing warring party. Another form of victory, especially against Russia, is hardly conceivable. The enemy state should become a failed state – this war aim is indeed realistic because it is woven into the crisis-ridden course of events. The crisis of capital causes the brutalization and disintegration of state apparatuses – war only accelerates this tendency. Military conflict, as the ultimate form of geopolitical crisis competition, is the means by which this crisis process will be consummated.

However, the Kremlin has its sights set on victory primarily due to Donald Trump’s new term in office. During the election campaign, Trump repeatedly stated that he would be able to end the Ukraine war quickly through negotiations. For the Kremlin, the prospect of a victorious peace at the negotiating table therefore seemed realistic – especially since the U.S. is now entering into open fascization, complete with a reactionary political climate and an oligarchic power structure, which is also characteristic of Russia under Putin. It is obvious that the crisis of capital in the Western core has now progressed so far that they are approaching the shattered power structures of the post-Soviet semi-periphery. A dirty geopolitical deal on the corpse of Ukraine, concocted by authoritarian leaders of highly corrupt, fascist, oligarchic statesmen, is what the Kremlin is hoping for this year, and it now seems closer than ever to this goal.

Which brings us back to the Kremlin’s aforementioned red lines, which were crossed by the West at the end of 2024 in the form of long-range missile strikes on the Russian hinterland. From Moscow’s perspective, it seemed that these attacks only had to be accepted until January 20, when Trump took office. Why risk a nuclear war when victory seems so close? In the West – in Washington as well as in many EU capitals – the panic of closing the door was spreading. Much of the foreign policy initiated by Washington or the EU after Trump’s election served to make geopolitical processes and developments irreversible. The new faces, who are now allowed to live out their nationalism and imperialism in Washington, should be deprived of as many options as possible. Ukraine was supplied with weapons for the last time and its negotiating position was to be improved through far-reaching military options.

New Cuban Missile Crisis

In fact, however, it is only a matter of damage minimization, as the West’s defeat in the battle for Ukraine has long been openly discussed, even in the West. How much of Ukraine will have to be thrown at Russian imperialism in order to end the war – this is now the logic that is finding its way into Western think tanks. The only question still being discussed is whether it will be possible to give the “rest of Ukraine” any kind of sovereignty.

The crossing of Putin’s last red line, the release of missiles that can reach Russia’s territory, was a clear escalation at the end of 2024 that was sought by the U.S. in the interregnum between Biden and Trump. In practice, it only served to drive up the price that Russia had to pay for its victory in Ukraine. It was a kind of nuclear Russian roulette that both sides played at the end of November 2024. Largely unnoticed by the Western public, the world was on the brink of nuclear escalation for days. The difference between this and the the Cuban Missile Crisis, however, was that in 1962 the world held its breath in shock, while in 2024 Putin’s threats were merely annoying and barely noticed. Putin threatened nothing less than the use of nuclear weapons.

The new volatility in the geopolitical sphere, the increasing tendency towards war as a means of politics, even in the core, and the willingness to take ever greater military risks are an expression of the new crisis phase into which the capitalist world system is entering after the exhaustion of the neoliberal deficit cycles. The crisis era of neoliberalism with its construction of global debt towers, the corresponding speculative bubbles and its world wars in the periphery is finally coming to an end with Trump’s re-election. What now follows is a phase of open authoritarian crisis management, state erosion and military conflicts at all levels – including between the world’s political and economic centers. Putin’s state-oligarchic Russia, authoritarian Belarus – both manifest the future of crisis management in their unstable authoritarianism.

Originally published in analyse & kritik on 02/18/2025

Cancel Culture USA

~ OlIver Blackwell ~ 1 Comment
The purges and deportations threatened by Trump have already begun.

Tomasz Konicz

It seems that what follows neoliberalism is based on the methods that neoliberalism used in previous decades to implement its infamous structural adjustment programs. They are fascistoid decay products of neoliberalism that are now unwinding the neoliberally deformed constitutional state in the U.S. The shocking implementation of controversial neoliberal austerity programs, taking the public by surprise with far-reaching deregulation measures; these tactics find their equivalent in the shock strategy that Trump and Musk are now using to eliminate any potential for opposition in the state apparatus. It’s all happening in quick succession – and these are just the first steps.

Immediately after taking power, in its first week in office, the Trump administration abolished all equality programs (DEI or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) and introduced a whistleblower system in the U.S. administration.[1] Not only have all programs that were intended to give minorities greater representation in the state apparatus been abolished without replacement. The White House has also set up an email address where whistleblowers can report incidents that “circumvent” the new regulations, as the New York Times (NYT) put it.

What does this mean in concrete terms? The DEI programs, hated by the racist U.S. right, ultimately amounted to giving preference to candidates from socially disadvantaged or underrepresented minority groups in applications, provided they had the same qualifications as their fellow applicants. If this continues to happen, it could be interpreted as a continuation of the DEI measures, which could prompt losing applicants to report this to the Trump administration. Ultimately, this means that it is safer for decision-makers in the U.S. public administration and state apparatus to hire white men in the future in order to avoid career-damaging accusations of “woke” activities.

It is a thinly disguised racist regulation designed to expand the dominance of white America in its power apparatus. At the same time, it creates an atmosphere of tattle-tailing and suspicion based on racism, which is conducive to the control of large power apparatuses. At the beginning of February, lists of “targets” in the public sector were published online, containing names and photos of mainly black public sector healthcare employees who are accused of “woke” thought crimes, such as using pronouns, supporting Democrats or working on DEI initiatives. It is unclear where these right-wing denunciation sites (“DEI Watch List”) get their information from.[2]

The fight against the “woke” DEI measures functions as a versatile ideological vehicle for the return of racism – and climate change denial. Meanwhile, in response to climate disasters (fire in Los Angeles) and accidents (plane collision in Washington), the White House has even established the narrative of blaming the DEI programs.

Everything Must Go!

On the surface, Trump and Musk want to implement an extreme form of neoliberal austerity policy. The Orwellian construct of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), led by Elon Musk in a legal gray area, wants to cut the U.S. budget, which totaled 6.7 trillion dollars in 2024, by two trillion dollars.[3] To this end, the Trump administration has sent emails to all 2.3 million public sector employees asking them to look for “higher productivity jobs” and to accept a severance package by February 6th that provides for continued pay until September 2025.[4] Shortly before the deadline, only 20,000 employees agreed to this arrangement.[5] In a first step, ten percent of public sector jobs – more than 200,000 jobs – are to be eliminated, which points to tough disputes in the coming months that are likely to provide the Trump administration with further opportunities for the reactionary politicization of the shrinking state apparatus.

The richest man in the world also had his crosshairs on the U.S. aid organization, USAID, which Elon Musk described as a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists.”[6] For decades, USAID not only acted as a humanitarian aid organization, it also flanked U.S. interests globally as part of a standard “soft power” approach. The imperialists in the White House clearly want to do without this in the future. Nearly all 10,000 employees of the U.S. government’s aid agency have been laid off, and most programs in developing countries have been discontinued.[7] The U.S. State Department will now only directly control and manage a few selected aid programs.[8] In addition, around 60 U.S. foreign policy front organizations involved in promoting civil society and democratic structures in authoritarian states such as China, Russia, Iran and Hungary have lost their funding, according to the NYT.[9] Hungarian ruler Viktor Orban in particular – who was granted an audience with Trump in mid-September – has vehemently criticized these projects.

Another priority of the Trump administration is the education sector and the Department of Education, which he wants to deprive of most of its funding – not that it is particularly necessary. According to the report, the Department of Education is not only to be stripped of funding, but all its functions that are “not explicitly stipulated in its statute” are expected to be distributed to other departments, according to reports in the U.S. media.[10] This is expected to happen as early as the end of February. In addition to alleged cost-cutting constraints, the Biden administration’s programs for equality and tolerance in education appear to be the main motivating factors behind this move. Trump seems to be seeking a fundamental, authoritarian-reactionary new beginning here.

U.S. universities, which often have a liberal reputation, are also already in the Trump administration’s crosshairs. Hundreds of millions in state funds are on the hit list, so university leaders are avoiding public criticism of the previous revision of equality programs. Professors and university leaders prefer “not to provoke the president,” according to the NYT, as the financial screws are already being tightened.[11]

Hand on the Money Lever

Elon Musk’s biggest coup to date came in his capacity as a “special government employee” (the White House’s official term for the oligarch) in his attack on the Treasury Department’s payment system, which handles a large proportion of U.S. payments.[12] The so-called Bureau of the Fiscal Service is a mere executive body run by civil servants who are not political appointees. It handles nearly 90 percent of all federal government payments, such as social programs and tax refunds. It stores data on more than 100 million U.S. citizens and most government employees, which previously only a “handful of top non-political officials” had access to, according to the Independent.[13]

But now Musk has managed to access the data stream using his DOGE construct, and he has the support of Trump’s Treasury Department. The oligarch seems to be less concerned with the efficient processing of payments than with controlling them and possibly blocking any payments. This would simply mean that Congress, which provides the legislative basis for the payment office, would be undermined by the Trump administration. Musk has wanted to gain access to the payment system since December, but was refused by the now resigned head, with his team exploring the possibilities of payment stops in particular. In disputes with recalcitrant parts of the state apparatus, in repression against “ideological enemies,” as Rolling Stone put it, the Trump administration and its oligarch are now in the driver’s seat.[14] Anyone who doesn’t do their part is – without an ounce of bureaucracy – cut off.

If Musk’s actions are reminiscent of oligarchies such as Ukraine or Russia, where it is common to abuse state power to enforce particular interests, then this is because late capitalism in the United States is entering its oligarchic stage as part of crisis-induced brutalization.[15] In the meantime, a number of lawsuits have been filed against these actions by – let’s say – the Trump administration,[16] but these proceedings will be carried out in a judicial system that has been deliberately infiltrated by Republicans and right-wing groups for many years by means of political appointment campaigns.[17] The staunchly right-wing Supreme Court, which has already granted Trump general immunity for his second term in office as a precaution, is only the tip of the reactionary iceberg in the judicial system.[18] And it is precisely here that many of the Trump administration’s plans will be decided, as they operate in a legal gray area. For this reason, the Biden administration tried to fill as many judgeships as possible by the end of 2024 in order to counter the right-wing offensive in the coming judicial war.[19]

Fight For the “Deep State”

The fight against the so-called “deep state,” against informal networks in the ministries of power, which Trump has taken up the cause of,[20] is a classic right-wing projection.[21] The U.S. right wants to seize the “deep state” as part of its fascist impulse and,  if necessary, build it from scratch so that it never has to leave power again. The Trump administration’s attacks on the FBI and CIA serve this very purpose. It is not about destroying or weakening these state agencies, such as the Department of Education or USAID. Trump wants to turn them into his personal instruments of power – another characteristic of oligarchic, authoritarian systems.

The capitalist rule of law is practically on the brink of collapse. The subjectless form of capitalist domination mediated by the state and judicial apparatus, as implemented by the FBI and CIA at home and abroad, is thus degenerating into potential prey for particular interests. Which oligarch will win the next “elections” by spending billions to push through his interests via the FBI and CIA? This is the future that threatens the U.S. if Trump succeeds in his grab for the “deep state.” The suppression of any opposition movements by the United States’ highly trained and militarized repressive apparatus would be possible almost without interruption, regardless of the rule of law.

Trump is planning a comprehensive purge of the FBI, in which FBI officials who have investigated Trump and his supporters are on the hit list. This right-wing “cancel culture” targets all those who appear to be disloyal. Here, too, there is formal talk of “cuts”[22] to which six FBI leaders have already fallen victim.[23] The purges could affect “hundreds, if not thousands” of agents, according to U.S. media.[24] Every FBI investigator involved in the investigation following Trump’s attempted coup d’état in January 2021 is effectively at risk. In the meantime, FBI agents have even gone to court to obtain an emergency court order to deny the Trump administration access to their identities.[25]

At the CIA, however, which has a tense relationship with Trump due to his preference for despots, the usual threatening emails with severance offers were sent out – this applied to all CIA people without exception.[26] A spokesperson for the notorious intelligence agency explained that this approach was intended to bring the CIA into line with the goals of the new administration. As early as November 2024, CIA insiders warned that Trump wanted to politicize the intelligence service and transform it into a personal “weapon” to be used unlawfully against political opponents, for example.[27] Musk’s empire is already closely intertwined with the U.S. state apparatus, for example with space programs and intelligence services.[28]

Guantanamo For Migrants

This Trump crusade, in which the separation of powers and all checks and balances of the U.S. political system are to be undermined in the fascist tradition, is taking place against the backdrop of extensive deportations of migrants by the new administration. The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was instructed at the end of January to achieve a daily arrest rate of 1200 to 1500 “illegal” migrants.[29] Countries such as Colombia, which refused to grant landing permits to deportation flights from the United States, were threatened with tariffs by Washington and brought into line. The same applies to Mexico, which is deploying around 10,000 soldiers to the border to secure it following comprehensive U.S. tariffs, which have been suspended by Trump for a month. The Trump administration is also deploying Army and Marine units to the southern border.[30]

The ICE migrant hunt, which is supported by large sections of the U.S. population,[31] is now proving too successful:[32] At the beginning of February, interned migrants sometimes had to be released because the detention centers were overcrowded.[33] But the Trump administration seems to have found a solution for this too. The infamous military base at Guantanamo, which served as a detention and torture center for Islamist terrorists during the “war on terror,” is to become a – well – concentration camp for all the migrants detained by ICE who cannot simply be deported. The capacity of this camp is said to be up to 30,000 people.[34]

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[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/25/us/politics/trump-immigration-climate-dei-policies.html

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/federal-health-workers-terrified-dei-website-publishes-list-targets-rcna190711

[3] The White House stated that Musk was a “special government employee.” https://www.golem.de/news/doge-weisses-haus-aeussert-sich-zu-elon-musk-2502-193042.html

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/us/politics/federal-workers-opm.html

[5] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/04/trump-buyout-offer-federal-workers-deadline/78208851007/

[6] https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/04/usaid-marxists-once-again-elon-musk-again-displays-his-invincible-ignorance/

[7] https://time.com/7212938/trump-administration-pulling-almost-all-usaid-workers-off-job-worldwide/

[8] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/us/politics/usaid-trump-musk.html

[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/us/politics/democracy-human-rights-fired.html

[10] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-administration-to-take-steps-to-defund-education-department/ar-AA1ylYd4

[11] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/us/trump-executive-orders-universities.html

[12] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/elon-musk-us-aid-social-security-data-heist-trump.html

[13] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-doge-treasury-payments-b2691375.html

[14] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/elon-musks-attempt-to-control-the-treasury-payment-system-is-incredibly-dangerous/ar-AA1yka77

[15] https://www.konicz.info/2014/12/05/oligarchie-und-staatszerfall/

[16] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/03/unions-sue-block-musk-treasury-payment-00202243

[17] https://www.konicz.info/2021/12/25/amerikas-justizkrieg/

[18] https://exitinenglish.com/2025/02/26/a-country-for-old-men/

[19] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/senate-confirms-bidens-235th-judge-beating-trumps-record-rcna182832

[20] https://www.uspresidentialelectionnews.com/2024/11/donald-trumps-10-point-plan-to-dismantle-the-deep-state-revisited/

[21] https://www.konicz.info/2019/02/11/ich-will-wo-es-ist/

[22] https://www.yahoo.com/news/fbi-launches-wide-ranging-round-202334950.html

[23] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/30/politics/senior-fbi-leaders-demoted-wray/index.html

[24] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/01/trump-fbi-revenge-firings/681538/

[25] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/us/politics/fbi-names-trump-jan-6-lawsuit.html

[26] https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/cia-offers-buyouts-to-entire-workforce-to-align-with-trump-priorities-sources-say/ar-AA1ytjkq

[27] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/former-cia-officials-worry-trump-politicize-weaponize-intelligence-age-rcna179024

[28] https://www.yahoo.com/news/retired-general-no-idea-got-222433140.html

[29] https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/02/04/everything-to-know-about-trumps-mass-deportation-plans-first-flights-to-guantnamo-bay-underway-white-house-says/

[30] https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-marines-southern-border/

[31] https://abcnews.go.com/538/americans-support-trumps-mass-deportations/story?id=118194123

[32] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/fear-spreads-in-immigrant-communities-as-raids-and-deportations-escalate

[33] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-releases-some-migrant-detainees-detention-facilities-reach-109-percent-capacity/

[34] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-wants-to-hold-up-to-30000-detained-migrants-at-guantanamo-bay-heres-what-to-know

Originally published on konicz.info on 02/06/2025

Handing Over the Keys

~ OlIver Blackwell ~ Leave a comment
How the democratic center of crisis-ridden Germany is paving the way for fascism

Tomasz Konicz

The ease and smoothness with which the fascization of Germany is taking place in the 2025 election campaign is downright dizzying. It is happening in rapid succession, and it is almost impossible to take a breather or pause for reflection. Erich Kästner compared the fascist dynamic before the transfer of power in 1933 to a snowball that grows over time into an avalanche that can hardly be stopped. Germany has now been caught up in such a brown avalanche. Last year’s large-scale anti-fascist demonstrations, which were initiated in response to unconstitutional deportation plans in AfD strongholds, remained ineffective.[1] Banning the AfD via legislation is pretty much inconceivable now – and the AfD has now openly included the mass deportations known as “remigration” in its election manifesto.[2]

A decidedly fascist regime seems quite realistic from the 2029 legislative period after next, as the AfD also envisages in its strategy papers. In the land of the perpetrators, their political heirs are getting ready to “seize power” again. But this is not actually the decisive factor. For it is precisely the forces of the democratic center that enable an effortless, frictionless transition to fascist crisis management. The womb from which this crawled is still fertile – but this time there don’t even seem to be any birth pangs.

On the one hand, there are the democratic right-wing parties such as the conservative CDU and the economically liberal FDP, which have long been in a fascistic competition to outdo the AfD. But the other parties, such as the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party, have also long since capitulated to right-wing hegemony and adapted their rhetoric accordingly. The ridiculous figure of FDP leader Christian Lindner, who writes quasi-right-libertarian love letters to Elon Musk[3] only to see himself ousted from the limelight by the AfD, is just one symptom of the general trend towards fascism in the neoliberal center – which is ultimately devouring it.[4]

The CDU is expanding the fascist demand for mass deportations of people with a migration background to include demands for the revocation of citizenship for dual nationals who have committed criminal offenses.[5] The permanent tightening of the internment regime for refugees, which is being pursued by all parties under pressure from the AfD, has now arrived at the motto “bed, bread, soap.”[6] Criminal responsibility starting at age 12,[7] forced labor for the unemployed, which has already been introduced jointly by the CDU and AfD in Schwerin,[8] public attempts to rehabilitate the SS, etc. – these things are no longer scandalous when civilizational taboos are broken on a daily basis after German society has been fully engulfed by the fascist avalanche.[9]

The AfD was able to achieve its final ideological victory after the Islamist attack in Solingen in the fall of 2024 when Federal President Steinmeier declared not extremism, but the refugee to be public enemy number one.[10] In doing so, the Federal Republic’s supreme greeter was simply following fascist logic, the personification of the causes of the crisis – and this in a year in which right-wing extremist crimes reached a new historic high, far above the level of Islamist crimes (not to mention the fact that Islamism is just a form of fascist crisis ideology specific to the Islamic cultural sphere, which is triggered in times of crisis using similar mechanisms – extremism of the center, identity mania, crisis competition).[11] The slogan “Refugees out!” is now German state doctrine.

All of this has its evil internal capitalist crisis logic. The global crisis process is causing the capitalist valorization machine to increasingly stutter in the core, including in the FRG – and among the ranks of the functional elites, an almost frictionless handover of the keys is being organized, ultimately changing the mode of crisis management. This time, frothing fascism, as a terrorist crisis form of capitalist rule, is accompanied by an opportunistic transformation of the entire political system, which is trying to adapt to it through authoritarianism, resentment production and populism. The fascist “handing over of the keys,” to stay with the metaphor, is also taking place within the democratic parties.

How Democracy Feeds on its Children

It is particularly shocking to the liberal middle classes and democracy-believing constitutional patriots that the transition from democratic to authoritarian-fascist crisis management is so seamless. This applies not only to the FRG, but above all to the U.S. The crisis theorist Robert Kurz already described this development at the turn of the millennium in his essay “Democracy Feeds on its Children.”[12] Capitalist democracy is based on universal market competition, which ultimately perfects the fetishistic process of boundless capital valorization. The whole democratic discourse of “competition between democratic parties,” revolves mainly around the economy, i.e. the optimization of capital valorization. The absurd, Orwellian constitution of capitalist democracy is based precisely on the fact that the occupants of the capitalist treadmill perfect their exploitation and submission to the premises of capital’s valorization process on their own initiative.

However, as soon as the system begins to stutter due to the intensifying internal and external contradictions of the valorization process, as soon as the material gratifications of its subjugation cease to exist for substantial parts of the middle classes, corresponding efforts to drive the logic of valorization to a barbaric extreme begin almost naturally – out of the inner logic of democratic discourse. Increased subjugation to the crisis-induced intensification of the constraints of capital then goes hand in hand with the exclusion, and ultimately the eradication, of competitors or economically superfluous sections of the population – who are ideologized as personifications of the crisis process.

Two population groups are caught in the crosshairs of these permanent right-wing smear campaigns: In addition to refugees and people with a migration background, it is primarily the unemployed and marginalized sections of the population who are once again turned into enemy stereotypes – as was the case at the beginning of the 21st century with the application of the infamous Hartz IV labor laws.[13] The tightening and increasing repression that has been practiced on refugees, especially during the smear campaign at the end of 2023, is now also to be used against marginalized “locals.”[14] Potentially, however, all economically “superfluous” groups will be targeted.

The renewed dynamization of fascism in the Federal Republic, the now almost blurred boundaries between the center and the “extremists,” can therefore only be understood in the context of the recent surge of crises in the Federal Republic – fascism is above all a crisis ideology.[15] Germany is in an economic crisis that is being exacerbated by its export-fixated economic model.[16] The crisis surge triggered by the pandemic has shaken the globalization on which Germany’s export world championships were based.

The stubborn inflation that emerged from 2020 onwards meant that central banks had to end their expansionary monetary policy, which had been the basis of the neoliberal financial bubble economy and the corresponding global deficit cycles for decades. The global system entered the crisis era of stagflation.[17] With the supply bottlenecks and the overloading of globalized production chains, tendencies towards protectionism and deglobalization were finally able to assert themselves during the pandemic – with the U.S. at their center, which increasingly relied on vertical integration,[18] nearshoring[19] and reindustrialization. The Ukraine crisis acted as a further disruptive shock to the globalization process.[20]

German Ideology in Crisis

The German economic model, which since the introduction of the euro and the implementation of Hartz IV had been aimed at achieving export surpluses – i.e. exporting debt, unemployment and deindustrialization – has thus run out of steam. The crisis of globalization, to which Germany, Inc. adapted, forms the actual background to the accelerating economic crisis in the Federal Republic. However, with the export industry on the defensive, those forces within the German ruling elite that opposed the rise of the extreme right out of their own economic interests are also on the defensive.[21] Trump’s election victory is particularly devastating in this context, as it largely removes the external pressure to combat fascist tendencies in the Federal Republic.

Until now, the ideology of the AfD has been in conflict with the interests of the export industry, which has always had to ensure a good international reputation for the Made in Germany brand –which was damaged in 2018, for example, by the crystal meth-fueled Nazis in Chemnitz during their pogrom-like riots against migrants.[22] This has largely come to an end since the crisis in the German export industry and the ongoing economic malaise: while neoliberalism preached the blessing of open markets, all relevant players are currently outdoing each other with calls for border closures, isolation and immigration restrictions after the long-standing export boom has collapsed.

It is obvious that this is simply an ideological reflection of the upheaval in the unfolding global crisis, which is giving a boost to German pre-fascism.[23] Seen from a distance, the whole thing looks downright ridiculous. For years, Germany benefited from globalization due to enormous trade surpluses as part of its beggar-thy-neighbor policy of exporting debt and unemployment.[24] The contradictions of the crisis of capital were simply exported, while German economists were outraged by the mountains of debt abroad that German trade surpluses inevitably produce. Now that these export surpluses and global trade imbalances have brought with them the corresponding protectionist fallout, the crisis is also returning to the former export surplus world champion – and a feeling of betrayal is spreading among the crisis-ignorant middle classes, the causes of which are in turn being located outside the German meritocracy and now also outside the national community.

Germany has suffered, tightened its belt, starved itself to death in order to adapt perfectly to the rat race of neoliberal globalization – and now it will suffer particularly badly from the major turnaround towards deglobalization. The right-wing hatred of ideological personifications of the rapidly intensifying crisis dynamics triggered by this paradigm shift focuses, in the tried and true tradition, on refugees, people with a migration background, the unemployed and the socially disadvantaged. In the context of the fascist extremism of the center, which bubbles up in times of crisis, the social Darwinist, nationalist and sometimes simply racist crisis competition now largely coincides with the reality of the late capitalist crisis. While the entire liberal discourse, according to which Germany needs many immigrants, is increasingly disappearing from the public sphere as the economic crisis progresses.

Almost all forces across the political spectrum in Germany have now followed the AfD’s line in order to hallucinate migration and refugees as a fundamental evil of the ailing Germany, Inc. –which means that the capitalist systemic crisis and the role of the Federal Republic in its development can be conveniently ignored. This also applies to the Greens, whose candidate for chancellor openly wants to deport unemployed refugees.[25] And it also applies to the so-called Left Party, which is trying to copy Wagenknecht’s populism – which was the mere ideological accompaniment to the formation of the Querfront – in all opportunistic seriousness in the form of social demagogy.[26] On the refugee issue, the uniformity within the entire political spectrum seems to have taken on a downright totalitarian flavor. There is hardly anything left that could stop the AfD’s path to power now that the civilizing effect of large trade surpluses on German domestic politics is increasingly dwindling.

However, the agitation against the second major enemy after the outbreak of the economic crisis – the unemployed – will no longer be able to contribute to the development of a sustainable economic policy: The provisional and timid abolition of forced labor in the Federal Republic, which was implemented by the so-called traffic light coalition of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP, is to be reversed again under pressure from the right. In fact, the Hartz IV labor laws will be reintroduced in 2025 if the CDU, SPD, FDP, AfD or BSW have their way.

The Subject in Crisis

The crisis reflex, which is being promoted by the right in a number of smear campaigns against the socially marginalized – from the FDP to the CDU to the AfD – consists of a resurgence of the sadistic methods of disciplining and lowering the costs of the commodity of labor power, as implemented at the beginning of the 21st century as part of the Hartz IV program and Agenda 2010.[27] The fascization of the Federal Republic is in fact returning to its place of origin on an even higher level, because the German right instinctively senses that this subjugation program was at the beginning of its political ascent. And it is indeed an authoritarian reflex that is surfacing in broad sections of the population in the face of the economic crisis, as it did around a quarter of a century ago.

The social psychologist Oliver Decker summed up this economization of authoritarian and right-wing ideologies, which was fueled by Agenda 2010, as follows:

“The constant focus on economic goals – or more precisely: the demand for submission to their premises – reinforces an authoritarian cycle. It leads to an identification with the economy, in which the demands for renunciation in its favor lead to the kind of authoritarian aggression that erupts against the weakest.”[28]

The greater the pressure on the authoritarian wage-earner, the greater his need to see weaker people squeezed and exploited in the same way as he himself is. This “authoritarian cycle” also forms the quagmire that, in mediation with the crisis surges of the 21st century, paves the way for German fascism. The causal connection between the impoverishment and disenfranchisement of the unemployed and the worsening of their own working conditions is ignored and gives way to irrational reflexes of hatred and sadism, which prepare the ground for neo-fascist crisis ideologies.

The neoliberal “renunciation policy” at the beginning of the 21st century – submission to the premises of the valorization process – thus promoted the authoritarian aggression against the victims of the crisis, on which right-wing populist and right-wing extremist ideologies are equally based. The neoliberal ideology of subjugation, which often instrumentalized a hollow concept of freedom, formed the breeding ground for right-wing crisis ideologies. The concepts of extremism of the center and conformist rebellion are therefore indispensable for understanding the success of the New Right and neo-nationalism as the heirs of neoliberalism. This is precisely where the right wants to return to in the face of the worsening crisis of 2025. And this program of subjugation will cost them something – the tightening of the “citizen’s income” already decided at the end of 2024 will not lead to savings, but to additional costs in the hundreds of millions.[29] The talk of widespread fraud being committed by the unemployed is just an ideological chimera.

Capitalism as a death cult animated by the fetishism of capital,[30] as a secular religion demanding human sacrifice, comes fully into its own.[31] Through suffering, through the sacrifice – preferably of the weakest, most defenseless members of society – Germany is to regain the favor of capital in its contradiction-driven movement as an automatic subject, which socially and ecologically devastates humanity and the world in its endless compulsion to valorize. Forced labor, starvation, abolition of paid sick leave, labor camps, reduction of wage costs – the whole old program, the same talk that was based on agitation against the lazy unemployed when Hartz IV was implemented, can be heard again.

And it’s not just the right-wing parties, here too we are dealing with an almost totalitarian uniformity. Again, the whole thing has a touch of the ridiculous, for example when SPD politicians use exactly the same phrases to incite hatred against the unemployed as their predecessors did at the beginning of this millennium. “There is no right to be lazy,” this inflammatory phrase, which was spouted by then Chancellor Gerhard Schröder[32] was also repeated by SPD leader Lars Klingbeil in autumn 2024.[33] Of course, the SPD can also imagine supporting the total reduction of citizens’ benefits and the reintroduction of forced labor, as demanded by the CDU.

New German Dysfunction

The internal capitalist problem with this knee-jerk resort to labor sadism is that – from a purely economic perspective – it is now dysfunctional. Hartz IV and Agenda 2010 were successful because they lowered the average price of labor in Germany during the rise of globalization, thereby reducing unit labor costs in the Federal Republic. In the era of globalization, this enabled the veritable explosion of German trade surpluses at the beginning of the 21st century – especially with the introduction of the euro. However, this way out of the crisis, in which economies seek refuge in a beggar-thy-neighbor policy, has been blocked in the face of increasing protectionism and the deglobalization of Germany, Inc.

These measures will only exacerbate the social crisis, without any “return” in the form of an export boom. Neither the non-European sales markets nor the countries of the eurozone, which are suffering under Germany’s top austerity sadist Wolfgang Schäuble, will allow such extreme German trade surpluses again. What this sadistic repetition of the Hartz IV system will certainly bring about, however, is the final establishment of forced labor in the FRG – with which another characteristic of fascist crisis management is likely to find its way into the manifest systemic crisis.

As already explained several times, this fascist dynamic, which is growing into an avalanche, gains its apparent inevitability from the fact that it arises quite naturally from the prevailing late neoliberal ideology[34] and the late capitalist national identity.[35] Ignoring the irreversible social and ecological crisis, which capital cannot address because it is its cause, the ideology and practice of German pre-fascism seems almost inevitable; it also seems to take into account the interests of the wage earners, who can hope that it will affect the others – the marginalized, the foreigners, the refugees, the minorities, the elderly, those unable to work, the gays, the transgender people, etc., etc., who are reviled as “anti-social.”

The monstrous, simply suicidal lies on which this fascist extremism of the center is based only become visible through radical reflection on the crisis process – which must always go hand in hand with an escape from the ideological and identitarian thought prison of late capitalism. Deportations, repression, border closures and authoritarian state formations will not overcome the crisis of capital in either its economic or ecological dimension.[36] The crisis does not come from outside, it is home-made. The global productivity level, the climate crisis – they cannot be locked out or deported at the borders.

Even the calculation on which the European and American isolationist mania is based, according to which the global South will become uninhabitable first in the climate crisis and the North will therefore have to isolate itself now, is illusory in view of the many unknowns of the coming climate catastrophe. A collapse of the Gulf Stream, which could happen within a few years, would hit Europe and North-East America particularly hard – the very regions in which the right has been particularly successful in popularizing its potentially mass-murderous isolationist delusions.[37]

If there were still a left that acted as a progressive force in accordance with its own concept, it would address this simple, obvious truth and make it the basis of an emancipatory transformation practice: Any hope of maintaining the process of civilization can only be sustained if capital, which is in agony, is overcome.[38] This is the Archimedean point that would enable a successful anti-fascist mobilization based on the reality of the crisis. Only through this could the fascist death cult be successfully combated. The only interest that can be rationally formulated in the permanent crisis of late capitalism is the interest in a rapid transformation of the system.

I finance my work mainly through donations. If you like my texts, you are welcome to contribute – either via Patreon or Substack.

[1] https://www.konicz.info/2024/01/31/ein-letztes-mal-antifa/

[2] https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/innenpolitik/id_100571646/afd-parteitag-in-riesa-alice-weidel-laesst-die-maske-fallen.html

[3] https://nachrichten.ag/deutschland/lindner-verteidigt-musk-deutschland-braucht-mut-wie-milei/

[4] https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/bundestagswahl/parteien/weidel-musk-100.html

[5] https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/pass-weg-fuer-kriminelle-cdu-legt-nach-laesst-aber-entscheidende-fragen-offen_2de31ee3-ca90-435a-9f8d-ead567469fdc.html

[6] https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/deutschland/merz-asylpolitik-migration-cdu-csu-wahlprogramm-100.html

[7] https://www.n-tv.de/ticker/CDU-fordert-schaerferes-Jugendstrafrecht-article25055763.html

[8] https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/nach-thueringer-vorbild-schwerin-verhaengt-arbeitspflicht-fuer-buergergeld-empfaenger_id_260607674.html

[9] https://www.morgenpost.de/politik/article242439534/Nach-Krah-Aussagen-AfD-Politiker-normalisiert-SS-Verbrechen.html

[10] https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gesellschaft/anschlag-solingen-104.html

[11] https://www.konicz.info/2021/08/17/von-gruenen-und-braunen-faschisten-2/

[12] https://exit-online.org/textanz1.php?tabelle=autoren&index=29&posnr=49

[13] https://www.konicz.info/2013/03/15/happy-birthday-schweinesystem/

[14] https://www.kontextwochenzeitung.de/debatte/667/die-extreme-mitte-9310.html

[15] https://exitinenglish.com/2023/03/08/radicalism-vs-extremism/

[16] https://www.konicz.info/2024/01/25/leerlauf-der-exportdampfwalze/

[17] https://www.konicz.info/2021/11/16/zurueck-zur-stagflation/

[18] https://www.konicz.info/2024/01/09/vertikal-gewinnt/

[19] https://www.konicz.info/2023/11/20/neue-kapitalistische-naehe-2-0/

[20] https://exitinenglish.com/2022/08/12/a-new-quality-of-crisis/

[21] https://www.konicz.info/2023/12/26/konjunktur-fuer-faschismus/

[22] https://www.saechsische.de/kultur/5-jahre-nach-den-ausschreitungen-neonazi-achse-chemnitz-dortmund-ist-eine-einbahnstrasse-YBFWXIHAFEKUJYZXU3RS2674SY.html

[23] https://www.konicz.info/2022/05/24/eine-neue-krisenqualitaet/

[24] https://www.konicz.info/2012/12/21/der-exportuberschussweltmeister/

[25] https://www.msn.com/de-de/nachrichten/politik/robert-habeck-macht-klare-ansage-an-syrer-ohne-arbeit/ar-AA1x1UyM

[26] https://www.konicz.info/2022/11/07/rockin-like-its-1917/

[27] https://www.konicz.info/2013/03/15/happy-birthday-schweinesystem/

[28] https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article10442527/Wirtschafts-Fixierung-schuert-autoritaere-Aggression.html

[29] https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/plus254289756/Buergergeld-351-Millionen-Euro-fuer-Zusatz-Termine-der-heikle-Preis-der-neuen-Haerte.html?utm_source=pocket_reader

[30] https://www.konicz.info/2022/10/02/die-subjektlose-herrschaft-des-kapitals-2/

[31] https://www.konicz.info/2014/01/07/die-prophezeiung/

[32] https://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/artikel/a-126811.html

[33] https://web.de/magazine/politik/spd-chef-buergergeld-ansage-recht-faulheit-40110276

[34] https://www.kontextwochenzeitung.de/politik/376/neo-aus-liberal-wird-national-5145.html

[35] https://konicz.substack.com/p/europa-im-identitaetswahn

[36] https://www.konicz.info/2022/01/14/die-klimakrise-und-die-aeusseren-grenzen-des-kapitals/

[37] https://www.konicz.info/2024/02/23/von-oekonomischen-und-oekologischen-sachzwaengen/

[38] https://exitinenglish.com/2023/02/22/emancipation-in-crisis/

Preprint of passages from the essay “The Crisis Economy of German Fascism. Observations on the Interaction of Economic Crisis Development and the Fascization of Germany in the 21st Century,” which will appear in the upcoming issue of the value-critical theory journal Exit! Crisis and Critique of the Commodity Society in Spring 2025. (see: exit-online.org)

Originally published on konicz.info on 01/28/25 and updated on 02/01/25

The Biologization of the Social

~ OlIver Blackwell ~ Leave a comment
The world undergoes a new kind of “disenchantment”

Robert Kurz

The modern world defines ancient societies’ relationship with nature as irrational. The notion that mountains and rivers, animals and plants have souls seems to modern consciousness as ugly as the idea that someone can be bewitched by magic. Max Weber, as we know, spoke of the “disenchantment of the world” by Enlightenment reason, by the rationality of science and technology.

However, this contrast between modern rationality and pre-modern irrationality in dealing with nature is far too simplistic. Firstly, ancient societies were not at all irrational in their “process of metabolism with nature” (Marx), as they had to provide for themselves. In addition, they created admirable artifacts and bequeathed knowledge that modern people still use. Secondly, modern society is not guided by strict rationality in relation to natural objects. The scale on which the current mode of production destroys its own natural foundations of life leaves us in doubt about Max Weber’s statement.

Rather, we should be referring to a “second disenchantment” of the world by modern society. This disenchantment, in fact, surpasses all the previous ones, because its magical pretension is total and unconsidered. The splitting up of feelings, sensitive experiences and dreams by abstract reason has given rise to a sphere of “irrationalism” divorced from rational ends and ideas – and this both in individuals and in society in general. Autonomized abstract reason itself is only rational in its means, not in its end.

That end is the “economization” of man and nature under the dictates of money, which in turn has no rational origin, only a magical one. Not only are the social relations of modernity permeated by the modern magic of money and its irrational end in itself, but also modern science and technology as well. The instrumental rationality of economized consciousness is therefore in eternal danger of turning into irrational affections.

This modern irrationalism doesn’t just make itself known in the guise of religious movements. Just as often, it can be seen in the rational guise of political ideas and even supposed scientific knowledge. This correlation is expressed most clearly when human society and history are reduced to semi-natural objects. Now, if nature is in itself more than it appears to be to the objectifying gaze of the natural scientist, man is also more than just nature, otherwise he would be incapable of conceiving of it. The reductionism of the natural sciences can only know nature unilaterally; human society, however, is entirely ignored. The apparent objectivity of scientific rationality comes across as wild irrationalism as soon as it tries to dissolve social relations into semi-physical or semi-biological factors.

But it is precisely towards this reductionism that modern science tends. Unable to solve “metaphysical” questions, it has thrown philosophy into the dustbin of the history of ideas. The philosophical and revolutionary 18th century still devised reckless critical thinking in order to give a certain legitimacy to the nascent capitalist society. The 19th century, as the “century of the natural sciences,” sought to trim the claws of social theory and placate its mordacity with pseudo-scientific doctrines. At a time of relentless and widespread misery, it was urgent to lend capitalism the dignity of natural laws in order to make it invulnerable and snatch it out of its historical context. Thus, economics became the “physics” of the total market and its supposedly eternal laws, and sociology began to conceive of itself as the “biology” of social relations, in order to cover up the social contradictions of modernity under the cloak of natural necessities.

The universal competition between individuals, social groups and nations, that existed because of capitalism, was increasingly given a biological interpretation backed up by these “scientific” ideologies. Count de Gobineau, a French diplomat, created the so-called “races” of humanity and elaborated a theory about their “natural” inequalities – evidently a pseudo-scientific legitimization of European colonialism, whose empire over the colored population was to be founded on the alleged biological superiority of the “white race.”

When Darwin discovered the history of biological evolution, his theory of natural selection in the “struggle for existence” was immediately transposed to human society. Darwin himself did not fail to take sides. In some of his letters, he criticized the then incipient trade union movement, since its demands for solidarity hindered the process of natural selection and burdened society with specimens unfit for competition.

This social Darwinism maintained an obscene link with the “physics” of the market. At the end of the 19th century, they were joined by what was known as eugenics or “racial hygiene,” which advocated the hereditary transmission of social qualities. The lower classes of criminals and disqualified people were labeled as “hereditarily inferior” men who should be prevented from reproducing. On the other side of the coin was the acclaimed “victorious type” of the beautiful, strong man with a “healthy heritage.”

At eugenics exhibitions held in Germany, England and the United States, entire families were paraded like farm animals as specimens of good stock and “pure blood.” Not even the workers’ movement escaped such madness. Karl Kautsky, the social-democratic theoretician, wrote with all candor in favor of “social hygiene,” and the already well-off specialized workers based their repudiation of the “sloppy lumpen-proletariat” on biological and eugenic arguments.

In this pseudo-scientific imbroglio of ideologies that permeated the whole of Western society around the turn of the century, two distinct sociobiological images gradually gained prominence. On the one hand, a social racism developed that labeled people of color, the sick, criminals, the disabled, the ragged, etc. as “inferior men.” The construction of industrial society fell exclusively to strong white workers, and all superfluous “ballast” had to be thrown away. This malevolent irrationalism went hand in hand with the contempt and degradation of women, who were accused of a certain “physiological imbecility.”

On the other hand, a new anti-Semitism began to spread, without any religious basis. “The Jew” was imagined as the “negative superman,” as a kind of prince of darkness and the antipode of the nouveau prince of labor. This Manichean conception reduced the perniciousness and catastrophes of the monetary economy to the biological constitution of “Jewish finance capital,” which the “good” money of venerable white labor had to confront. The anonymous and non-subjective laws of the expanding world market were therefore translated into the folly of the alleged global conjuring of a “foreign race.”

As everyone knows, National Socialism took the dual biological ideology of the “inferior man” and the “negative superman” to the extreme consequence of annihilation on an industrial scale. After the horrors of Auschwitz, no one wanted to commit themselves to such ideas, which then slipped into the historical background. In the period of great prosperity that followed the Second World War, they flickered only as specters of an inauspicious past that was believed to be banished forever. The economic and social sciences, however, were in fact only superficially cleansed of the conceptual dross of biologism and social Darwinism. More than ever, political economy used a type of social science that was averse to “dim lights,” setting itself up as a “rigorous” semi-natural science.

While growth and evolution beckoned with a global perspective of well-being, the lemurs of social biologism remained locked away in the netherworld. From this perspective, the flowering of critical sociology and neo-Marxism in the 1960s and 1970s was illusory, as it merely repeated the emancipatory ideas of the past and found itself unable to survive periods of economic boom. When the economic crisis made its comeback, left-wing social critique disappeared significantly from the big public stages in Western countries. At that time, the theory of post-modern deconstructivism based on Foucault, which suited the casino capitalism speculation of the Reagan and Thatcher era, was all the rage. The world – including the market system – seemed to dissolve into “discourse” that could be played with at will.

But in the refuge of the jovial and neurasthenic “risk society,” as German sociologist Ulrich Beck called it – referring to the development of the 1980s – the turbulence of a new racism erupted. Since then, racist power has spread around the world in a torrent of bloody excesses. In Germany too, immigrants and refugees have been coldly killed by mobs of right-wing radicals in arson attacks. To this day, the public sphere downplays such crimes as the work of a few disaffected youths. In reality, however, the racist power loose in the streets is the harbinger of a turnaround in the world’s atmospheric conditions.

In the factories of ideas themselves, other winds are blowing. The last decade has seen the biologism of a new “natural science” creep wolfishly into academic discourse, which increasingly mirrors the legacy of the playful, “post-sociological” fashion of deconstructivism. At first glance, it seemed that genetic research would be able to debunk racist nonsense with scientific arguments. Researchers such as the Swedish molecular geneticist Svante Pããbo proved that men from the most diverse nations, by virtue of their DNA sequences, can be genetically more “related” to each other than to their closest neighbors. But these findings are now increasingly strained under the weight of a new “biologization” of social conduct, for which, incidentally, the geneticists themselves are ready to provide the ammunition. American neurologist Steven Pinker claims that language is “congenital to man like an elephant’s trunk,” and that there must therefore be a certain “grammar gene.” For Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick, from San Diego, free will itself is nothing more than “neurological reactions.” Scientists at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin say they have found a virus that supposedly triggers melancholy and is transmitted by domestic cats. And Dean Hammer, an American molecular biologist, attributes homosexuality to the Xq28 gene, located at the end of the X chromosome.

As is always the case, these are unproven hypotheses that say less about nature than they do about the ideological preferences of scientists. These scholars are often naïve from a social point of view and so perhaps don’t realize how their “purely objective” research is influenced by ideological currents that undermine society. It goes without saying that the reduction of human culture and sociability to the standard of molecular biology provides arguments for the legitimization of a renewed barbarism. The American social scientists Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, in their study entitled The Bell Curve, had already created a correlation between “race, genes and IQ” that excluded black Americans from the “cognitive elite” in a pseudo-biological way. Soon, the ill-fated scientists will provide us with a “crime gene” or a “poverty gene.”

The discovery of genetic underpinnings to people’s social destiny fits the neoliberal policy of cutting costs like a glove. The new academic discipline of “medical economics” is gradually providing carte blanche for the poor, sick and disabled in Western countries to be given “aid in dying” for cost reasons. Debates on the subject are taking place in broad daylight in Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. The Australian philosopher Peter Singer, whose grandparents died in German concentration camps, now advocates the National Socialist thesis that defective newborns should be immolated for being “unworthy of life.” In China today, a bill is being passed to legalize euthanasia.

This social-Darwinian brutalization on a global scale is matched by a new wave of anti-Semitism in all corners of the globe. Half a century after Auschwitz, synagogues are once again being burnt down in Germany; from the Atlantic to the Urals and even in Japan, the smear campaign against Jewish communities is flourishing; and to top it all off, Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the “Black Muslims” in the United States, is exercising his defamation in anti-Semitic tirades. All social groups, including civil rights movements, are succumbing more and more to biological arguments in the fierce battle of competition, in order to differentiate themselves from humanity. Under the influence of the globalization of capital and based on the academic arguments of geneticists, we may be facing the threat of a “universalist” biologism that considers all people inept at competing within monetary society to be “inferior individuals” and that, at the same time, wants to blame the future catastrophes of the market economy on a “Jewish conspiracy.”

Neoliberalism, with its ideological pseudo-physics of market laws, has loosened the shackles of all the demons of modern barbarism and thus harked back to the irrationality of 19th century “social scientism.” The naturalization of the economy, however, has the logical consequence of bestializing social relations. Neoliberal thought leaders are not only responsible for the advent of fundamentalism, but also for the current return to social Darwinism and anti-Semitism.

Originally published on 07/07/96

Crisis Management in Times of Change

~ OlIver Blackwell ~ 1 Comment
The end of neoliberal globalization is giving a boost to neo-fascist crisis management – especially in the former “export world champion”

Tomasz Konicz

It would be wrong, and reminiscent of the bad Marxist tradition, to postulate a one-sided causal inevitability between the development of the economic base and the political-ideological superstructure. Economic development, the unfolding of the internal contradictions of capital, does not unilaterally determine the political system. There are clearly interactions between the two, and the capitalist functional elites have various options open to them when reacting to the consequences of the crisis. Here – and this is crucial – the further course of the crisis can actually be influenced by politics, even if it is, of course, not in a position to overcome the systemic crisis from within capitalism. Many of the emergency measures discussed by politicians in response to crisis episodes can be implemented by governments or regimes of various political orientations. This is particularly evident in the severe crisis phase of the 1930s, when protectionism, labor programs and statism were pursued by states as diverse as Roosevelt’s U.S. and Nazi Germany.

Nevertheless, the latest phase of the crisis, which began at the latest with the pandemic and the surge in inflation, makes a fascist option at least viable, especially in countries with corresponding “traditions.” The fundamental upheaval in the process of crisis and its handling of contradictions was initiated by the pandemic-induced crisis surge. The war in Ukraine is in fact a reaction to this new crisis phase, which is putting an end to neoliberal globalization. This phase is characterized by stagflation, deglobalization, protectionism, active industrial policy, nearshoring and vertical integration.

The four decades of neoliberalism – from the 1980s to around 2020 – were in fact a reaction to the crisis, and they prolonged the unfolding of the internal contradiction of capital. This fundamental contradiction of the capitalist mode of production unfolds as follows: Productive wage labor forms the substance of capital, but at the same time the process of capital valorization strives to displace wage labor from the production process through competitive rationalization measures.

Marx introduced the ingenious term “moving contradiction” for this auto-destructive process. This contradiction of capitalist commodity production, in which capital minimizes its own substance, wage labor, through competition-mediated thrusts of rationalization, can only be maintained by “moving,” by the continuous expansion and further development of new fields of exploitation in commodity production. The same scientific and technological progress that leads to the melting away of the mass of expended wage labor in established branches of industry also gives rise to new branches of industry or production methods.

The result of this is precisely the kinds of change to the overall industrial structure – the ability of capital to constantly “reinvent itself” – that the bourgeois apologists of capitalism are so proud. Since the beginning of industrialization in the 18th century, the capitalist economy has been characterized by a structural change in which the textile industry, heavy industry, the chemical industry, the electrical industry and, most recently, Fordist vehicle manufacturing served as leading sectors that exploited wage labor on a massive scale. With the advent of automation and the IT revolution, the process of changing the structure of industry began to fail in the 1970s and 1980s. These new technologies created far fewer jobs than were rationalized away by their application to the economy as a whole. The productive forces thus burst “the fetters of the relations of production” (Marx) and capital came up against an “inner barrier” (Robert Kurz) to its ability to develop.

How Neoliberalism “Rescued” Capitalism

That capital as a moving contradiction had reached its inner limit was demonstrated very concretely in the crisis period of stagflation that followed the post-war boom, as no new leading industrial sector with mass valorization of wage labor could be developed. The late 1970s and early 1980s were characterized by anemic economic growth, frequent recessions, rapidly rising mass unemployment and an inflation rate that sometimes reached double digits. From a historical perspective, the stagflation of the 1970s – a portmanteau formed from the words stagnation and inflation – was precisely the period of crisis that paved the way for neoliberalism, as Keynesian crisis coping strategies has failed.

In addition to destroying or disempowering the labor movement (Great Britain, U.S.), which led to a long-term stagnation of wage levels in the U.S., neoliberalism reacted to the crisis by removing the “safety nets” from capitalism, with a flight forward in which the markets – especially the financial sector – were deregulated. In order to avoid collapsing due to its internal contradictions, capitalism effectively left the ground of labor exploitation during the neoliberal turn of the 1980s in order to take to the lofty heights of an economic structure dominated by financial markets. The system reacted to the failure of a change to the industrial structure by establishing the financial system as the “lead sector.”

Capital valorization was thus increasingly simulated on the financial markets under neoliberalism. Since no real capital valorization can be carried out within the financial sphere in the long term, growth in the four neoliberal decades was ultimately fueled by a historically unique boom in the most important commodity that the financial sector has to offer: credit. The capitalist world system thus runs on credit, on the anticipation of future utilization, which is pushed further and further into the future through lending. Credit generates the demand that sustains capitalist commodity production, which is choking on its productivity. This can be seen in concrete terms in global debt, which has risen much faster than global economic output in the neoliberal era: from around 120% in the 1970s to 238% in 2022.[1]

The central mechanism that transformed the increasing financial market-generated debt into real economic growth was the speculative bubble. Since the 1980s, the system has thus been increasingly based on the “hot” air of various speculative bubbles that are constantly forming anew: from the dot-com bubble at the turn of the millennium, when the emergence of the Internet led to wild speculation in high-tech stocks that crashed in 2000, to the real estate bubble in Europe and the U.S., to the large liquidity bubble maintained by central banks, which was only brought to an end by inflation in 2020. When a bubble would burst, there would be a threat of a more widespread crash, which would then be prevented by the emergence of a new speculative bonanza. One could speak here of a veritable transfer of bubbles, in which all the fiscal and monetary policy measures used to combat the consequences of a burst speculative dynamic contribute to laying the foundations for the formation of a new bubble. Ultimately, capitalist financial policy can only put out the speculative fire with gasoline.

The End of Neoliberalism

However, this was not a linear process, but a dynamic one. The costs of stabilizing the global financial system increased more and more as each bubble burst until, in the inflationary phase of monetary policy, outside of the U.S. with its world reserve currency, there was no alternative but to stop the expansionary monetary policy that had been at the root of the boom in the financial markets. Capitalist crisis policy has ridden its financial market-driven, neoliberal horse to death after using this horse to flee from the inner barrier of capital for over four decades. The neoliberal postponement seems to be coming to an end, and the stagflation that has been forgotten for decades is returning on a much higher level. The most important difference between today’s wave of inflation and the historical phase of stagflation is that a phase of high interest rates, such as that initiated by Fed Chairman Volcker from 1979, no longer offers a way out in view of the unstable financial sphere.

With the end of the global deficit economy, the global deficit cycles, which in fact formed the base of neoliberal globalization, were also damaged. Not all economies became equally indebted in the neoliberal era; export-oriented locations were able to export their production surpluses to deficit countries as part of these cycles. The largest, namely the Pacific deficit cycle between the U.S. and China, was characterized by the fact that the People’s Republic, which was rising to become the workshop of the world, exported gigantic quantities of goods across the Pacific to the de-industrializing U.S., thus creating enormous trade surpluses, while a financial market flow of U.S. debt securities flowed in the opposite direction, so that for a time China became Washington’s largest foreign creditor. A similar, smaller deficit cycle developed between Germany and the southern periphery of the eurozone in the period from the introduction of the euro to the euro crisis.

Globalization was thus not only characterized by the establishment of global supply chains, it also consisted of a corresponding globalization of debt dynamics in the form of deficit cycles, which, as mentioned, grew faster than global economic output – and consequently acted as an important economic engine by generating credit-financed demand. The globalization that brought about these gigantic global imbalances was a systemic reaction, a flight forward from the increasing internal contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, which is choking on its own productivity.

The Return of Protectionism

The euro crisis is, to some extent, a good case study for what is now unfolding globally: As long as the mountains of debt are growing and the financial market bubbles are on the rise, all of the countries involved seem to benefit from this credit-based growth. However, as soon as the bubbles burst, the battle over who should bear the costs of the crisis begins. In Europe, as we know, Berlin has used the crisis to pass on the costs of the crisis to southern Europe in the form of Schäuble’s infamous austerity dictates. Now, on a global level, the collapse of the much larger debt-financed deficit economy, which has recently been kept alive primarily by the expansive monetary policy of the central banks, is imminent. Rising nationalism and neo-fascism, the acute threat of world war: they are an expression of this very crisis process. An analogy can therefore be drawn with the pre-fascism of the 1930s, when the fallout from the global economic crisis that broke out in 1929 was exacerbated by a rapid rise in protectionism.

Which brings us to Germany’s misery. With the erosion of globalization, the long-term economic strategy of strict export orientation pursued since the introduction of the euro by the Federal Republic, whose economic “business model” was based on achieving the highest possible trade surpluses within the framework of the aforementioned deficit cycles, is also failing. With this so-called beggar-thy-neighbor policy, debt, deindustrialization and unemployment are exported to the target countries of the export surpluses. After Berlin had ruined the European crisis states through draconian austerity policies, this export strategy was directed at non-European countries – such as the U.S.[2]

However, this export-focused strategy is increasingly coming into conflict with the protectionist tendencies in Washington, where the Biden administration is effectively continuing Trump’s economic nationalism aimed at reindustrialization. Washington is no longer prepared – precisely because of increasing domestic political instability – to continue accepting the high trade deficits that stabilized the hyper-productive world system during neoliberal globalization. These deficits were, of course, only made possible by the dollar serving as the world’s reserve currency. As early as mid-2023, the Financial Times described this change in Washington’s economic policy strategy, which was initiated by the Trump administration and further promoted by Biden. At its core, it is a protectionist rejection of globalization. By means of a “foreign policy for the middle class,” the White House wanted to counteract the “hollowing out of the industrial base,” the emergence of “geopolitical rivals” and the increasing “inequality” that threatens democracy.[3]

A visible expression of the full onset of deglobalization is nearshoring, in which the U.S. is seeking to replace its economic dependence on the Chinese export industry by building up industrial capacities in Mexico. In addition, German automotive suppliers continue to face the threat of exclusion from U.S. production chains due to provisions of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act. A substantial concession from Washington is also unlikely, as protectionism appears to be working. German companies in particular are increasingly investing in the U.S. in order to benefit from Washington’s subsidies. In effect, there is an economic decoupling between the U.S. and the EU, with Washington pulling away economically while the Europeans in particular have to bear the consequences of the crisis.

The Danger of “Authoritarian Revolt”

Berlin thus spent the 21st century orienting the Federal Republic – and from 2010, in the wake of the euro crisis, the eurozone – towards an export-fixated economic model aimed at achieving trade surpluses in the globalized world economy of the neoliberal era. With the onset of deglobalization, the former export surplus world champion has found itself in an economic policy impasse, which in the medium term not only calls into question the political stability of the Federal Republic of Germany, but also the continued political existence of the eurozone. And it is precisely this return of protectionism that is giving the New Right an additional boost. The properly functioning export economy acted as a kind of civilizational safety mechanism in Germany, with its terrible authoritarian-fascist tradition, as it provided a solid economic argument against nationalism. After all, Germany was a “winner” during the process of globalization.

However, it is the German export industry that is currently experiencing a downturn, which is actually just the beginning of the end of the export-focused German economic model. The sharp decline in exports in 2023 has contributed significantly to the poor economic development in Germany, with little improvement expected in the coming years. This also means, however, that the prosperous years made possible by export surpluses will inevitably come to an end for the Federal Republic. The power-political weight of the German export industry will therefore diminish at a time when, for the first time in a long time, Germany will also enter a long-lasting crisis phase, from which the New Right once again threatens to benefit.

Yet it was precisely the functionaries of the large-scale export industry who repeatedly took a stand against the New Right. The AfD and the dull Nazis were seen as an image problem that was damaging the “Made in Germany” brand in its quest for global success. The BDI (Federation of German Industries) and top managers such as Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser were able to cite real economic interests in their arguments against the right. The capital faction that is most resolutely opposed to AfD participation in government is therefore the German large-scale export industry, which is currently losing influence due to the crisis. The reactionary avant-garde within the functional elite, which made pacts with the AfD and the Querfront very early on, consists of small business owners and SMEs, as can be seen from the links between the association of “family entrepreneurs” and the AfD. Capitalists focused on the domestic market (“Müller Milch”) also appear to be more inclined to consider far-right options.

The AfD is already the second strongest force at federal level. The fact that the rise of the AfD took place during a phase of relative economic prosperity shows just how thin the civilizational ice has become in Germany; it was fueled by German fear of crisis, not by an actual outbreak of crisis, such as the one southern Europe had to endure during the euro crisis. Since the refugee crisis, the entire bourgeois-liberal anti-fascism, which was largely in line with the arguments of the export industry, has emphasized the economic “usefulness” of globalization, open borders for the movement of goods and immigration: refugees are economically useful due to the ageing of the Federal Republic, the export country must remain attractive for skilled workers, at least according to the common arguments. However, these narratives cultivated in the liberal mainstream will disappear as soon as stagnation and recession become entrenched in Germany, while exports will continue to decline in order to give further impetus to the “German fear” that so readily turns into hatred of the socially disadvantaged.

The crux of the matter is that this authoritarian revolt will never come to power unless a substantial part of the ruling elite opts for this fascist option. And there are signs of an open split within the German ruling elite regarding the participation in government of a party that is drifting towards the extreme right. This is the decisive breach in the dam: will entire factions follow the previous AfD sympathizers such as Mr Müller von der Müllermilch or the Mövenpick billionaire Baron August von Finck? In the middle class? Among family entrepreneurs?

Fascist movements only come to power in times of crisis when the shocks and upheavals have reached such an extent that functional elites perceive these movements as the “lesser evil.” To put it vividly: only when capital managers are so deeply mired in the crisis that they are up to their necks in water do they hold their noses and reach out to the extreme right. And then there is no stopping them, as the fascist authoritarian revolt, which always craves the approval of the authorities, is further fanned by this (which, incidentally, also defeats the left-wing intention of shaking up their supporters by unmasking the powerful fascist backers. Authoritarian characters are not deterred but attracted by the cronyism of AfD functionaries and billionaires).

[1] https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/09/13/global-debt-is-returning-to-its-rising-trend

[2] https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c0003.html

[3] https://www.ft.com/content/77faa249-0f88-4700-95d2-ecd7e9e745f9