The extreme center
Flight and asylum
By Tomasz Konicz|
[This
article posted on 1/10/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet, https://www.konicz.info/2024/01/14/die-extreme-mitte/.]
The
extent to which the crisis-related brutalization of the German
bourgeoisie has already progressed is particularly evident in the debate
on flight and migration. Almost all parties are copying the AfD, and
leading media are openly propagating social Darwinism.
The
safe haven of Europe is sealing itself off. Rally for the reform of the
EU asylum system in June 2023, shortly before hundreds of refugees
drowned in the Mediterranean in a single disaster. Photos: Jens Volle
The
safe haven of Europe is sealing itself off. Rally for the reform of the
EU asylum system in June 2023, shortly before hundreds of refugees
drowned in a single accident in the Mediterranean. Photos: Jens Volle
Before
the Greens once again fell over on one of their core issues,
Baden-Württemberg's Minister President went ahead. In October 2023,
Winfried Kretschmann called for a tougher approach to asylum seekers in
the migration debate. He said that “all measures” that “serve to curb
irregular migration” must be implemented, as the “overload situation” of
the municipalities is unacceptable. Kretschmann
was not only open to tightening measures such as the cash card system
and benefit cuts, which were decided in November with the involvement of
his party, but even to the introduction of forced labor for refugees
(“compulsory work for refugees with a prospect of staying”).
The
shift in discourse in the asylum debate – in which refugees are now
usually referred to only as “migrants” – reveals how far the hegemony of
the New Right has come. For
example, the German news magazine “Spiegel” used a heavily distorted
photo on the cover of its September issue to show a seemingly endless
line of refugees, accompanied by the question: “Can we do it again?” At
the time, it seemed for weeks as if almost all relevant political groups
and actors wanted to outdo each other in their attempts to whip up
anti-refugee sentiment – and in doing so, they ultimately copied the
AfD. A
party that is largely extremist in nature and has risen to become the
second-strongest party in Germany is driving the brutalizing discourse
and the entire party spectrum far to the right into the pre-fascist.
In
2015, it was smartphones in the hands of refugees that outraged the
regulars' table Nazis; now it is intact refugee teeth that are causing
resentment not only on the right-wing fringe, but also in the
middle-class mainstream. Opposition leader Friedrich Merz (CDU), for
example, complained that refugees were taking up German doctors'
appointments to have “their teeth done”. The
image of the enemy that is being created here has fascist tendencies:
the refugee is imagined as happy and overprivileged, whereas in reality
it is a socially weak, marginalized group. Consequently, this agitation
is not aimed at enabling all citizens to have proper health care, as the
millionaire Friedrich Merz enjoys. It is about cuts and slashing.
A campaign of envy against the impoverished
How
can this envy campaign, which is directed against the weakest and which
wants to literally see the misery of refugees in their teeth, be
topped? By re-evaluating all values. Former German President Joachim
Gauck has already sung the praises of cruelty. Further
sealing off against refugees is “morally not reprehensible”, one must
“discover scopes that are initially unsympathetic to us because they
sound inhuman”. There is less need for “fear of a brutally sounding
policy”, according to Gauck, politics must take leave of “wishful
thinking” so that the topic of migration – including the restriction of
immigrants' rights – is not only discussed on the “right-wing fringe”. In
other words, Gauck is adopting an argument that was criticized as
inhumane by large sections of the German-language media just a few years
ago: in 2016, the then AfD deputy leader Alexander Gauland demanded:
“We have to close the borders and then endure the gruesome images.” In
doing so, “we” could “not allow ourselves to be blackmailed by
children's eyes”.
Ultimately,
the current debate is leading to the formal abolition of the asylum
law, which has already been largely gutted. This was recently proposed
not by an AfD right-wing extremist, but by the former federal chairman
of the SPD, Sigmar Gabriel. The Social Democrat told the media that the
“attempt to respond to the modern phenomenon of mass flight with an
individual right to asylum and the Geneva Refugee Convention” was doomed
to failure. CDU
politician Jens Spahn argued along similar lines, calling for a “pause”
in Germany's “completely uncontrolled asylum migration” – while the EU
is in fact pursuing a policy of rigid isolation, making deals with
dictators to keep refugees out and using armed force to prevent people
seeking protection from crossing borders. But
many media outlets now prefer to cultivate the narrative of
uncontrolled mass migration instead of criticizing it as a distorted
image that is out of touch with reality.
From
the CDU to the SPD and the Greens – everywhere, actors in the refugee
debate adopted the language of the AfD. And it is probably only the
national-socialist supporters of Sahra Wagenknecht who believe that this
parroting of AfD ideology will undermine the party, which is
infiltrated by right-wing extremists. “Not even one percent of those who
apply for asylum actually have the right to asylum,” Wagenknecht
claimed last Monday. However, the actual recognition rate last year was 51.8 percent, according to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.
Perfidious: AfD poster not far from a refugee center in Backnang.
Perfidious: AfD poster not far from a refugee shelter in Backnang.
The competitive thinking is drifting to extremes
Ever larger sections of the supposed center are joining the right-wing movement. But what is giving the rat catchers a boost? The
tendency of the middle class to isolate itself, the fear of the citizen
that “unacceptably much is changing” (Gauck), as well as the “mass
exodus” deplored by Gabriel – these phenomena point quite concretely to
the profound social and ecological crisis in which the entire capitalist
world system finds itself. The new right produces ideology that adapts
to the crisis: It
provides simple, seemingly plausible answers to the ever-new crises
(economic crises, wars, extreme weather events, etc.) that result from
the late capitalist crisis dynamic.
The
right-wing extremists that people turn up their noses at for so long
that they themselves become wild animals are not from the dark side of
the moon. They are just taking to extremes what has become entrenched in
the center of capitalist society as the ideological mainstream. And
that is precisely what makes them so successful: There
is no need for a fundamental break with an existing world view, people
do not have to leave their well-worn path – and thus drift further and
further towards barbarism.
For
the past three decades, the center of capitalist societies has been
occupied by neoliberalism, with its emphasis on competition. Here,
competition is sacred, while the “underachievers” and “social parasites”
deserve nothing but contempt, and immigrants can only be tolerated if
they are useful to the economy as skilled workers. In
the crisis, the new right is working to further brutalize this logic of
confrontation, leading to open racism towards anyone who is not part of
the national meritocracy. The mechanism of personalizing the causes of
the crisis is crucial: in most cases, the victims of the crisis are
reinterpreted as the cause of the crisis.
This
course of brutalization is so successful because it – apparently! – is
right: “We” cannot take in everyone, anything else would be “denial of
reality”. The greater the misery, the greater the chaos, the more
irrevocable the practical consequence seems to be: close the borders!
The crisis should be kept out! Hundreds of millions of people are
sinking into misery, entire regions will become uninhabitable in the
unfolding climate crisis. Whose front garden should they camp in?
Capitalism is not a law of nature
A
simple, seemingly logical half-truth that is obvious to anyone who has
internalized the fundamental categories of capitalist socialization
(capital, state, market, money, wage labor) as second nature to human
life. And it builds on practiced behavioral patterns such as competitive
behavior and location thinking, which are now running wild. But these
forms of socialization, which are in the process of disintegrating, did
not come into being until about 300 years ago and are not set in stone. There
is no law of nature that dictates that people must destroy each other
through the ruinous competition of their economic activities.
Issue 660, 22.11.2023
Without scruples
By Anja Bartel and Meike Olszak
Maximum
deterrence – that is the motto of the refugee policy debate. From the
CDU to the Greens. The stage for this is provided by the media, which
only listen to those who shout the loudest. The Baden-Württemberg
Refugee Council is calling for an end to populism.
The
asylum debate, however, is a good example of where the extremism of the
center, fueled by the crisis, is leading. You don't have to read
right-wing extremist publications to see this. A glance at “Der Spiegel”
is enough. In
a background article on “Life in the Climate Crisis”, “crisis theorist”
and “futurist” Alex Steffen explains to readers that the climate
catastrophe is almost inevitable and that “we” must prepare for it in a
very pragmatic way.
“Realistically”
speaking, the “Spiegel” is issuing the panicked rallying cry: “Save
yourself if you can.” However, since not everyone can do this, according
to Steffen there will be a global “bottleneck” in terms of
“climate-proof” places of refuge – with correspondingly drastic
consequences: “Triage, a word that everyone has learned during the
pandemic, means deciding what has a chance and what to give up. Or
whom.” What
is being propagated here is the return to the evil German tradition of
selection, which lives are worth living. And which are not.
Who
will survive out of the billions of people whose ecological livelihoods
will be destroyed by the capitalist climate crisis, and who will have
to die a miserable death? Crisis theorist Steffen knows the answer:
“Places like Manhattan, where money, power and culture are concentrated,
will be defended at almost any cost.” The “time to leave nothing and no
one behind was 30 years ago,” says the horror futurist. The
“Spiegel” author, who completely abandons the distance to the expert he
is interviewing, melodramatically seconds: “Some things will be
defended. Others will not. Not everything can be saved.” And always
remain in the neuter when it comes to sending countless people to
climate death by means of selection.
A “carry on” leads to barbarism
These
are simply hard times that are coming for all of us, they will force
citizens to make brutal decisions, and it is a pity for those hearts
that are not hard enough for this. The
monstrous omission that underlies the half-truths of such
plain-speaking speakers can be seen quite simply in the fact that it
does not occur to the Spiegel author or his horror futurist to ask why
capitalism has not been able to respond to the climate crisis for more
than “30 years”. The
contradictions of capitalist society and its compulsion to realize
value (“growth”!) play no role in the entire text. The
matter-of-factness with which the climate crisis is linked to the
society that has created it is tabooed, in contrast to “pragmatic”
social Darwinism.
The
unwillingness to openly discuss the necessary transformation of the
system, which is particularly prevalent in the middle of society, thus
inevitably culminates in the toxic and potentially mass-murderous
thought-trash of the New Right. What is currently happening in the
Mediterranean is in fact only a foreshadowing of the impending barbarism
in which the capitalist world system must sink as the crisis
progresses. The
idea of wanting to protect oneself by sealing oneself off is thus
proving to be a fatal mistake. The crisis cannot be kept “outside”.
Conversely,
this means that the only chance of preventing the crisis barbarism that
is already looming on the horizon lies in a system transformation. This
crash can only be prevented in the context of a broad discussion of
alternatives throughout society, and only if the transformation into a
post-capitalist society that is no longer exposed to the irrational
exploitation of capital is successful.
Tomasz Konicz's e-book “Fascism in the 21st Century. Outlines of Impending Barbarism” will be published soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment