Reaction
An international anti-fascist show run by a Scandinavian nerd, a Slavic alcoholic and an American unc that takes you to the darkest corners of the internet to help you understand the footsoldiers of online right-wing mobilization - content creators.
Reaction
Episode 21 - Germany (ft. ThreeArrows)
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Join the boys on a little (metaphorical) trip to germany, with their guide Dan aka ThreeArrows, to discover it's rather unsubtle reactionary currents.
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I'm incredibly happy to welcome onto the show one of the old heads of the YouTube antifascism scene, one, if not maybe the creator that most influenced the way I make my videos. A fellow history and politics creator, and another European to help us even out a podcast that's talked a lot about America so far. Welcome to the show, Dan Arros of the YouTube channel Three Arrows.
SPEAKER_04Hey guys, excited to be here. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Thank you very much. So let's start out uh before we even begin. Uh you must allow us to, to an extent, tokenize your identity slightly, as are obviously resident German. Uh could you please try to introduce us to the niche particularities of the German right? What makes it different and similar to the American counterpart, and not only, but that of France, the UK, and other European nations?
SPEAKER_04I think this is very dependent on when you ask that question, because up until fairly recently, what kind of set apart the German right in its form of a political party, the AFD, was uh that they were uh much more radical than their European counterparts, um, except for maybe the FPE in in Austria. And what I mean by that is that the European far right in general, in in their uh I'm always talking here in realms of their political parties, they have kind of realized that the way to their success is a sort of state affirmative pivot that accepts the broad conditions that the EU puts on its member states and to kind of work within those constraints and not actively work against them. So this is this is often like called like melonization, referring to the Italian prime minister, who of course uh is part of a post-fascist party, but typically plays ball with the EU countries and the broader supranational organizations like NATO.
SPEAKER_02And apparently lover of Albanian Prime Minister. The Albanians keep telling me that. I don't know. Uh, we're throwing uh rumors around, but yes, sorry. I love the thought of it.
SPEAKER_05It's like the true Do Cuba connection, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Dating an Albanian makes you into a fascist. That's uh there you go. I said it. No roots, no connections to me being a Serb. None at all, not at all.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and apart from that, uh, where I was going was that there has been in the last couple of years uh a big fight among the far right. What should be their road to success? Should it be one of total opposition uh and not bending anyway and just uh waiting to get a big enough majority with the program as it is, or should there be a sort of uh more cooperative attitude towards working with the other parts of the right, like the Christian Democrats, and kind of mellow out uh a lot of their positions, like being against the Euro, being against NATO, uh, and those sort of things. And I think the the the sort of neoliberal translanticist part has broadly uh won that fight within the party itself. Uh, that doesn't mean that they have uh gotten rid of the uh what you might call more um more ethno-nationalist wing of their party, it's just that it they don't hold the reins at this uh point in time.
SPEAKER_03Just to tell you what I see from across the Atlantic, seems to me that they've kind of accepted the institutions, as you mentioned, NATO and the EU, as uh platforms for projecting American power, and they have almost incorporated like a whiteness into European identity. So instead of being like the font of German nationalism, it is like accepting a European nationalism and serving the interests of the American Empire and building their own, like almost fortress Europe, instead of having these like strict national boundaries that were you know about European ultranationalism, which is like kind of a derivation of whiteness being imported from the United States and cooperation with like Trumpism and Bannon, Steve Bannon, who is one of his advisors, and almost like a an evolution of fascism, as you rightly pointed out, Maloney, or even like I would say, I would argue personally that Macron is a key innovator in this space, which is like we're gonna use this Islamo communism as the as the big bad, or you know, Russia as the big bad. So do you see that as kind of the future of the far right, almost absorbing these facts of American Empire and being like the willing servants, joining in, you know, becoming pro-Israel, extremely pro-Israel as an example?
SPEAKER_04It very much depends. And this is actually uh a very a very interesting thing that you bring up, sort of just accepting this. I don't want to say uh vassal status of the US, but that's uh essentially what it is. Uh but I think it's important to realize that it's not just something that uh is about accepting American dominance and uh just accepting American supremacy, but what uh the the change that Germany made after World War II and what kind of the entire post-war Western state is structured around is not that Germany shouldn't pursue a nationalistic interests or its own interest, but that those are best pursued within those supranational institutions, within NATO, within the EU, and with the blessing of the United States. And especially when it comes to like the inter-European rivalry that exists between, let's say, Germany and France, all the German parties know that their position, their dominant position within the EU, and their dominant position in the in the Western hemisphere is largely based on the blessing of the United States. And you're saying related to the far accepting this, it it it very much depends. I think now with Trump in the White House, there definitely is uh an acceptance of that. But I could see uh I could easily see that uh shifting again uh in the future.
SPEAKER_03Right, like if AOC were to be president, exactly, yeah. Like maybe they would want to accept American dominance and they would try to pull toward a independent European model, maybe, or even go back to the old nationalisms.
SPEAKER_04I think ultimately, at their heart of hearts, their project is still very much in favor of destroying the EU or at least hastening its downfall and bringing Germany back to a new, independent, completely independent great power that pursues first and foremost its own interests.
SPEAKER_05Going off of that then, because you're seeing like the AFD basically or the German far-right, they're not necessarily, you know, doing the the sort of very obvious ethnonationalist stuff anymore. They're not doing like the the things that would in Germany get your party shut down, right? Like they're they're being pragmatic, they're maneuvering within um both the national context that they have to maneuver in and also the international context to attain this like German great power status you're talking about. But I want to talk about the or ask you rather about the the act uh limitations that Germany puts on like far right and also far left um actors uh because of Germany's uh very peculiar, I think, constitution. Could you like tell us uh or at least tell like the audience a little bit about like what that like forever clause and the uh articles one through I think twenty of the constitution do to like how politics works in Germany?
SPEAKER_04Well, ultimately everything has to take place within the bounds that the set states. So if you're a political party uh or a movement or an association, you really can't work against what's uh sometimes called like the free democratic order. And what that exactly means has been interpreted differently by the courts. But ultimately, uh the German state does have the means to ban associations, ban parties if they are working towards that free democratic order and are realistically assumed to be a threat to it. And um the AFD is is very scared of that, they're very conscious of that threat, and our Constitutional Protection Agency, which is basically domestic intelligence, has recently classified them as secured as a right-wing extremist party. That judgment has been uh overturned by a court and now it's sort of being like re-evaluated. But I think this is sort of something that like the German left, liberal left broadly hopes for uh that the state will intervene there. I'm um much more skeptical of this sort of uh anti-fascism via the state as a sort of socialist myself, and we and we can kind of see this um in Germany's past as well. We really don't have to speculate about it. There are two parties that have been banned post-war. One was the Socialist Reichsparty, which was the successor party to the NSDAP, and which legitimately worked towards overthrowing uh the Free Democratic Order, and who in the state that I live in, Lower Saxony and some uh districts, were receiving up to 30% of the vote, and that party got banned, and it's a sort of, I think this is pretty uncontested in the historical record, to not appear too biased and to sort of preserve the illusion of this neutral state. The KPD, the Communist Party, was also banned, even though it barely broke like the 5% hurdle in terms of votes. So I think if if this were something that was actually going to be pursued and to happen, I think not only does it not rip out the cause at its root, but it also has the potential to come back at uh the left in a in a very negative way, I think.
SPEAKER_05Do you think that it could also potentially kind of embolden elements of the far right or rather like radicalize elements of the the far right? The sort of the people who join parties like the AFD because they're more like you know concerned about free market economics and stuff like that. Um I don't know like how how many of those people exist in the German far-right parties, but that's there's like a sec uh a significant wing of that in in the Norwegian far-right party, uh, the Progress Party. Like, do you think any of the uh like a sort of band like that will be viewed as like unreasonable state repression and kind of like galvanize people? Or or do you think like it it would just shut it all down, like the project would then move on to you know the slow build-up of a new party?
SPEAKER_04Um so building up a new party um i is not very easy. It took the KPD and the Socialist Reichsparty 12 years um to do something like that, because not only is the party banned, but also successor parties are banned. So that's it's not very easy to just work around uh that ban for an affected party. In terms of radicalizing, I think that the amount of people that are in the AFD for its economic positions, uh, I don't think is very significant. But in terms of what it could lead to, I do think it it could lead to an outpouring of violence, a sort of like uh rejection of the state as as tyrannical. But the question is where would that go? Would it just be suppressed by state force or would it just peter out? Would uh it kind of would the would people go into different parties and put their ideas into practice over there? It's very it's very difficult to predict.
SPEAKER_02Because it is uh objectively far more difficult to define what a far right or even right wing extremist party is or political organization than it is to define as a left-wing quote unquote extremist organization. You know, there's very, very I guess, strict uh means through which you can, if you wanted to as a state, say that okay, these are left-wing extremists, usually you know, orienting around class and orienting around a call for revolution, be it violent or reformism, then eventually leading to revolution. Like these are set in stone very, very classic definitions of what it means to be a at least from the perspective of uh you know a very typical European neoliberal state. What is a left wing extremist? Well, as Fred also pointed out in you as well, a a right wing extremist is uh very ironically a very loose definition. Like is is a right wing extremist one who believes that I don't know uh through the will of the free market, we must ensure that only high-grossing individuals are left in the country, which means that people of uh you know you know direct descent from immigrants or people who are immigrants themselves should no longer be allowed to stay in the state. You're basically saying, you know, only uh white Germans get to be German, but you're saying it through in through, for example, an economic model. Very stupid example, but you get what I mean. There's seven million ways through which you can enshrine a, let's say, hyper-racialized or very, very hierarchical, ethnic kind of category of us versus them inside of a party structure without it literally being I am Adolf Hitler 1488. Then this is what lends itself so much for the right to potentially co-opt any of these policies because on the left it's much more difficult to kind of camouflage the pitch. While on the right, everyone who is not uh literally a member of the Nazi Party or uh representative of of very, very niche definitions of what, for example, uh Italian or German or Spanish or whatever fascists wanted to represent, a new reinterpretation because fascism always reinterprets itself. Uh it's very it would be very difficult even for a let's imagine we live in fairy tale land, for a very well-intentioned state to call out as appropriately fascistic and therefore put in the means and execute a particular order of law in order to ban. So it's it's always the with this sort of regulation, well I would say intentionally, it's always the left who ends up uh eating shit, pardon my language.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, because I mean I I was gonna bring up because I looked at obviously the constitution and the articles I I mentioned, and you know, those articles establish, as you mentioned, then the the free democratic order, like what what this means. And uh Article 7 there, for example, provides the right to establish private schools. Now, let's say I was principally opposed to the right to establish private schools, which I personally am, and I were to like I guess organize towards the uh to the towards changing that. That's not allowed by the constitution, right, then?
SPEAKER_04Well, not necessarily. So the constitution can be amended and has been in the past if you get a a two-thirds majority in parliament. So you would be allowed to, you know, um argue against it, argue in favor of changing it by democratic means. Um it's really like the the free democratic order itself that is not allowed to be touched, which means democracy and rule of law, pretty much. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Oh, okay. So it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't like actually encompass every single one of the articles or every every element of those articles. Because I tried to look into like what some scholars are saying about how one would go about like changing that to sort of like forever clause, and that it would require like the introduction of a new article to the constitution, potentially.
SPEAKER_04Exactly. For the forever clause, it's it's it's a sort of different beast. But just to add on what Gotnick was just saying, in terms of classifying right wing extremism or private politics to be against a so-called free demographic or left-wing politics, I think it goes even a bit further than that because uh left-wing politics, and by the by that I mean anti-capitalist politics, i in the long term always is supposed to overcome the nation-state. And uh far-right politics are usually state affirmative. You know, the state in itself is an entity that we want to uh control ourselves that's been corrupted by uh whatever forces we are demonizing at this moment. So from the state's perspective, left-wing politics are much more dangerous, they're much more explicit in their rejection of the state. And added uh on top of that, even though I might get some shit from German leftists for saying this, but if you read the report put out by the Constitutional Protection Agency on the statements that are supposed to prove the hostility towards the free democratic order and a sort of uh ethno-nationalist basic thought within the party, if you read those statements, they really are not that far removed from what a Christian Democrat would say, let's say, in the 90s. And no one no one would have made the argument that those people are against the free democratic order. And this is also partially why a court has has overturned that classification.
SPEAKER_05Did you think that like vagueness then basically just lends it very much to like the politics of the moment, to whatever the status quo is at the time? Like the definition of what is actually like against the free democratic order. Do you think it just adapts to the politics of the the time? So like it sh adapts to the current sort of status quo of like the the period you live in, or do you think it's like therefore not like is just so nebulous so as to be used by whatever I guess is the dominant way of like thinking in that period?
SPEAKER_04Or I think if I can just be like a little bit cynical, I think being against a free democratic order, like the person who decides whether that threshold is reached is the state itself, it's the constitutional courts. So I I think it will be interpreted in a way that the state sees as beneficial pretty much.
SPEAKER_02He made a brilliant point about almost every far right idea still evolves inside of the confines of the state, that this very regulation is trying to uh protect the nation state in particular, as you said. While almost any quote unquote more let's say uh forward-thinking anti-capitalist idea de facto wants to overturn said nation-state, said bourgeois state, whatever definition you necessarily want to uh use, and therefore would always be in contradiction to this particular regulation that is trying to protect it. So you have you have one which would overturn like 95% of the uh definitions of what you know a democratic way of life is from the right that can still be interpreted as not necessarily against it, while a left-wing movement that wants to change the economic system in which uh the particular uh you know society operates in will not be tolerated because it is questioning the very model through which said democracy is being is being questioned. Very good context, yeah. I never looked at it that way.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it it is a profoundly conservative constitution, then it is a uh you know I mean as most of them are, I suppose, but just de facto, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, exactly. And if I can just add on to that real real quick. So you I think if we're just taking those three pillars of the three of the German basic democratic order on their face, which I as I said are democracy, uh the rule of law and human dignity. That is that is very key. So I think you could make the case that all of those things are really not guaranteed in the existing state order as it is, and the only way to really achieve them would be by you know uh an overthrow of the econom existing economic order. But I'm very skeptical if you know a German court would accept that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I I I get the feeling they maybe would not be too sympathetic.
SPEAKER_03My reaction to this is is kind of like a political scientist's thought, which is these are words on paper fundamentally, right? And as we're learning in America, just because you have laws on the books or you have the constitution that says you can't do X, Y, and Z thing, unless there is a polity that's willing to like stand up behind it and fundamentally fight for it, it doesn't mean anything. And you can't protect your freedom or or even the you know the sense of like liberal values, so-called in a broad sense, unless you have a political like norms and conditions that are going to defend it against challenges from these groups. And I don't I feel like, you know, maybe this is just my perception, but in the West in general, there is kind of a flaccidity toward liberalism or the values of liberalism. And we almost have an inertia that's ready to be challenged. And, you know, seeing in America what has happened with you know the ICE funding and and people getting shot on the street and there being no prosecutions, or the way that they have directly targeted people based on race, and that's against the Constitution and against equal protection, and the way Trump has taken bribes, and there has basically been no, you know, movement as far as the institutions. Aren't we really talking about fundamentally whether the German polity itself is giving up on liberalism? Like the population is giving up on liberalism out of desperation, or rather than like the idea of these institutions or laws you know holding back.
SPEAKER_04I think in general when you say they're giving up on liberalism, I think that is that is broadly correct in a sense, but not in the way that it's that you're seeing it in the United States, where there is this assault on the sort of liberal state that is without consequences. I think in Germany it is actually a much broader uh consensus in the population. Um, the sort of left liberal uh part of the country likes to paint the rightward shift as a phenomenon that mostly surrounds the AFD, while in my view, and many on the left view, it's actually a phenomenon that persists through all major parties. You know, the AFD is not in power right now, and uh Germany is uh for for months now has set up border checks to reject asylum seekers, which have been deemed illegal under EU law. We have an immense militarization outward and uh strive towards a sort of new confrontation with our geopolitical rivals while at the same time undergoing a strong disciplination inward in terms of social spending and the idea of what you have to sacrifice for your state. And all of this is happening without the AFD even in power. So I think it's a little different, but uh the idea of uh liberal values losing meaning over time definitely holds true for Germany as well.
SPEAKER_05I want to ask actually, you're talking about how these uh protections pretty much just kind of serve uh the protection of the state. And what if because we've seen all these like the Reichsberger movement, for example. What are you gonna do? Yeah, yeah, the it's good, it's a funny name, but you know, it's uh a little sinister.
SPEAKER_04Explaining explaining sovereign citizens in American, imagine a bur Reichsberger.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, exactly. Yeah, imagine a burger, yeah. Imagine burger, but it's it's a right, it's because they are they are uh uh basically sovereign citizens, but like the stupidest kind of sovereign citizen who's like actually, you know, the government isn't real. Like they, you know, we still live in Imperial Germany, technically, or you know, whatever. Like I it's a it's a broader movement than there's obviously on uh different currents in it. But with that, there were a bunch of police officers, uh, people in the military were found to have like sympathies and be like very overt in in their you know their sympathies towards these movements who were investigated. Do you think like uh the right could in theory do their like slow march through the institutions and just kind of like infiltrate things and there therefore you know use all of this to just kind of basically not even like declare you know we we are now f living in fascist Germany? It's just you know we're still just living in Germany and everything is the same, but uh they're just protecting the uh the the interests of um and now fascist controlled states. Like do you think um these these constitutional protections against fascism, ostensibly, can be just used to protect fascism at one point?
SPEAKER_04That uh the the in the example of the Reisberger movement, I think they're they're too small and they're too insignificant uh for that to ever be a danger. But for the German right more broadly, I think there is generally an accept uh a growing acceptance um among the far right and within the AFD that they actually don't need to overthrow the existing state to achieve their goals. Um that they perfectly are able to uh create Fortress Germany, Fortress Europe, uh increase militarization, all the stuff that they want to do within the boundaries that the state already operates in. So there is really no need to pick that fight against the so-called free democratic order if you can just achieve your goals, uh, supposedly working within it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that I mean that should really be a profound criticism of the Free Democratic Order, such as it is if the AFD think that that is perfectly fine to like exist within the U.S.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely. I mean, it's an indictment on the entire German system. Also already said the rightward shift is not limited to the AFD at all, but it's broadly the German sidecast at the moment.
SPEAKER_03I feel like don't we don't we just like kind of see this as a repeating pattern all over the world, right? Where you have this kind of radical centrism that refuses to reckon with the crises and contradictions of the neoliberal order and just you know they're they're continually like doubling down on the status quo, as if these like radical movements that are coming up due to the disillusionment of the population with the status quo is gonna go away like it's a sentiment, like it's a passion, like it's a fad. Right? Like almost everything is great. Why are you complaining? And if they just kind of put their heads down and and they do these sanitaires, cordon sanitaire, as they say in France, or you know, the neoliberal combination that's happening in Canada, you know, whether the SPD is doing a Unity government or you know, that with the conservatives, and they did that for decades. Like we have seen this kind of like refusal of the elites or the status quo or whatever, the mainstream parties to address like any problems. Like they just cannot do it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. For an earlier question of yours, I kind of shied away towards the broad country comparison, but I think here it's actually pretty appropriate because of course all these countries are different, all these countries have different politics. Um, but if you look at just the the big Western democracies, there is actually this pattern where they are sort of like in lockstep on these big political developments, right? You just mentioned the SPD, which together with the Greens in the early aughts went the uh what you might uh in the UK might call like the new labor route or the Bill Clinton neoliberal turn, where it's formerly, you know, the supposed left wing of the spectrum in power, but they are actually the ones who enact all these, what's called, you know, the liberalization of the market for employment, slashing social benefits, um, and so on. And I can't really say if it's a repeating pattern, but what you're definitely seeing in all these countries is a sort of crisis of liberalism, in my opinion, uh, since 2008, where there's really no way for the uh let's say establishment powers to uh combat the rise of the far right, because the far right really is the only major political force that exists that if for lack of a better way of phrasing it, believes in politics. You can find their their vision um that they have disgusting as I do, like uh in the in the instance of the German far right, an ethnically pure, sort of autark, uh independent, new great power, but it but it is a vision. And the neoliberal or center right, uh other center-right parties don't really have that vision for for uh the future. They really just have more of the same. But maybe if you are uh of the Greens, there is a subsidy for electric cars, or if you're a social democrat, like workers' rights might be a little bit better, or if you're a Christian conservative economy, might be a little bit better, but there's really no there's no larger vision, there is no larger project that they're able to sell to the people. Um, and that is ultimately why they're so ineffective at countering the far right.
SPEAKER_03I mean it's it's just the death of a grand narrative. It's it's it's it's kind of the the belief, uh, you know, almost that progress as it is, like major progress, is dead. And, you know, a Fukamian perspective of the end of history, right? And and in fact, like the conservatives are saying no, you know, there is a grand narrative to history. There is this nation or this culture that is, you know, there's some sort of throbbing humanity to it, even if it's like the base version, there's at least something of the animal there, as opposed to the liberal, neoliberal alternative, which is like an amoral machine of capitalism that if it grinds you down, you deserve it, right? And doesn't have any, you know, dissolves all those bonds of affection, you know. It they don't give a shit whether they're selling Kentucky fried chicken or versed, like it doesn't mean anything. To them, it's profit. And so everything that makes humanity like the subjective life of being a human being is being ground down, and there's nothing to grab hold to to you know give you a sense of purpose or meaning in life. How could you be surprised that people are turning away from that, especially as their material conditions deteriorate? There's nothing human about it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. People are searching for a positive um like vision. Uh, and it is a pulsative or a pulsative politics, something that promises anything. And I'm I don't say pulsative asn't like, you know, this is good. I'm saying because like fascism has a pulsative vision for what they want to create instead of just like just reaction, pure reaction. And I guess like the far right are promising that. Yeah, difference between, by the way, our far right, uh like our parliamentary far right, and like the far right that's you know parliamentary in German and and in uh British politics, for example, is that uh our far right is much more similar to like the like the CDU or the uh the conservatives that are like the Tories. They're kind of like more like Reagan Republican types, like just you know, they're like deregulate and keep things going. They're not they don't have a positive vision, which is uh I think what like makes you know reform and I guess like restore Britain and AFD more scary to us at least.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's scale. It's it's always scale, scale, scale, scale, hence why reaction trademark develops in the way that it does. Uh the as a particular system that you find yourself in goes into higher and higher scales of crisis. Uh the way you put a band-aid on top of a band-aid on top of a band-aid on top of a massive tumor uh has to change. So the first band-aid might, for example, be a very classic uh neoconservative response to the current state in the economy and so on and so on. And all the way at the end of, let's say, the spectrum, you have uh, you know, motherfuckers uh Zekiling. So uh depending on what particular level of decay that the the particular liberal order of a country uh experiencing, let's say capitalism is in, the the definition of what vision is and what it is not will vary. Nobody really wants to wake up in the morning and subscribe to something that will completely change the world except when they find themselves uh literally at the end of the alley and they're looking for any sort of response to this chaos that they see brewing around them. And as we always a thousand and ten times, and we'll continue to say it on the show, reaction finds itself exactly with you in the deepest shadows of that alley, and wants to make sure you do not focus on the main reason why you're in the alley in the first place, but more on who you are sharing that alley with, and as it's getting tighter and tighter around you, tells you that it's not the alley getting tighter that is the problem, but it is your neighbor, your your friend, your colleague, or that guy that looks a little bit uh a little bit different to you. But uh, I know this is all cliche, and I hope our audience at this point uh understands this particular mechanism that reaction works in. But why this conversation is very important and interesting is is because uh it's not it's not just uh you know the pathway to potential, let's say, reactionary overthrow of whatever the current definition of the status quo is in a country, doesn't jump from one to a hundred overnight. The stages of how radical the far right is, of how radical the right is, at least in the mainstream, coaligns with uh the stage of decay of the particular uh society you find yourself in at that current moment, usually very deeply linked to to the economy, but also as you guys said to how much people relate to the potentiality of getting out of the root problems that we're in by following whatever we were taught is said status quo. So yeah, it grows and grows and grows and grows. And there is a direct link between your friendly neighborhood, Christian Democrat, and so on, because uh he will unironically and very often they do historically end up joining whatever the future interpretation of the vision of a of a greater Germany, greater I don't know, Croatia, greater Nigeria is when uh Bush comes to said shot.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, exactly. And if I can just add on to that, just so people don't get the wrong idea of uh the point of me s s uh saying this in terms of the far right uh enabling or having like this vision that other parties don't have. I think it's very important to emphasize, and I think this also very to communicate if you consider yourself part of the left that uh at the end of the day, both projects, the far right one and the liberal technocratic one, really do serve the same existing order and don't try to replace it. Both movements in their own way are very skeptical towards democracy itself. You see this within liberal societies where questions that are usually down to uh a national democratic process get kind of outsourced to let's say the EU level, or they get outsourced towards contracts like whether we are at war or whether we are not at war is really not something that you know the average German gets to decide over. It's purely depends on the contracts that the state has made. And um to to really come out of the crisis that both both past the liberal technocratic one and the far right one, don't offer uh a path out of the existing crisis.
SPEAKER_03This is something that I I I would like to introduce, which is you know, it comes to mind is there's a guy by the name of David Adler, who's like a French American political uh economist, and he has been studying for a long time that actually people that identify with the center are more hostile to democracy than even the far right. Like it is that liberal technocrat who despises the democratic input even more intensely than even the far right. So it is a natural alliance, right? Because obviously, far right people support the strongman and clearing away the bureaucratic and the liberal you know safeguards and red tape. So there is an alignment that's um that's that's happening there. And for me, like what's interesting to me about Germany and and the rise of the far right is how same it is. Meaning, like the experience of Nazi Germany, the experience of the Holocaust, and even important, and more importantly for me, the experience of the utter defeat, humiliation, and division of the nation, its full subjugation is not enough to stave off the far right for even 100 years. Like, like Germany was brought low, its cities flattened, its armies crushed, its country divided and occupied, its laws written and imposed, and yet within a hundred years they're like forgetting that, and they're spending more money than ever on the military, and they're focusing on the scapegoat again in living memory. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_04It's almost as if there are uh societal and economic contradictions that ultimately always lead to a collapse of the existing order.
SPEAKER_02We we disagree with that because we are a proud centrist podcast, please.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah, we're centrist podcast, no.
SPEAKER_04I was just sort of thinking out loud, you know.
SPEAKER_02But this be careful with that class, yeah. That yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, that call me bullshit here. Yeah, go.
SPEAKER_03No, I just think it's because no, you know what it is? I think it's because Germans are bad.
SPEAKER_04Well, that too. That too, of course. Yeah, that too, of course. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I mean, they came up with Marx and Hitler, like, come on. There's something wrong with them.
SPEAKER_04Well, you know, Hitler was Austrian, some might say.
SPEAKER_05Oh, true, actually, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04The true radical, the German. They don't claim them. Did you see how fast that defense came up? Like, I'm used to saying this. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh, legendary.
SPEAKER_01Germany's far right AFD has been rocked by allegations of nepotism. And this question: how did the father of a leading AFD politician land a 90,000 euro a year job in Parliament?
SPEAKER_02Now, my friend, let's go online uh to the actual talking heads. What's the German or if you know wider European digital far right ecosystem like? Keyword on digital. When it comes to you know, the UK, it's just bland copies of what the Yanks do, podcasts or talking heads yapping on and on and on about culture war issues and blah blah blah. Germany, as from our conversation we already found, is the cradle of the wackiest and most quote-unquote successful reactionary ideas of all time. So please don't tell me we lost that to Americanization as well. Can I can I has like original fascist uh 21st century interpretation, or are you just uh burgers?
SPEAKER_04I think to a large extent we actually are burgers. So the the the the media ecosystem is definitely on the far right shifting towards uh in Americanization. And you see this, and it makes a lot of sense because the head of Axel Springer, which owns Bildzeitung, which is uh Germany's largest tabloid, far-right tabloid newspaper, and also largest newspaper sold, he also owns Politico. Uh they're one of the uh most powerful media houses in the world. So that you see a sort of assimilation from uh Germany's biggest right-wing media house uh to the American way of doing things makes a lot of sense. But in terms of the ecosystem, I think it broadly exists uh within the ecosystem that was there prior. So you might have, you know, the the AFD would just be more present in the existing in the existing media sphere. Although I might also be the wrong person to ask this question because unfortunately I don't spend that much time uh watching far-right German YouTube channels. Um fair enough. What?
SPEAKER_05I apologize.
SPEAKER_04So do you do you uh do you not have like what do you call like a uh like a German Joe Rogan equivalent or like that kind of like weird podcaster guy, or like oh yeah, we do have, but it's very much like I mean if you're if you have like the American brain psychosis, uh a severe case of it as I have. Yeah, all of us do, yeah. Like all of this is like kind of old news, you know. So there is, of course, there are these sort of talking heads who go on YouTube and do uh a three-hour interview. Sorry, I just looked this up. Uh four-hour 36 minutes interview with the furthest to the right um leader within the AFD, and you know, uh sort of cloak it in this. You know, I just want to explore their ideas, they're never heard out there. I just want to talk. Like the show is literally called like without a script. And the the tagline on the YouTube channel that has uh one million subscribers, which is a whole lot for a German YouTube channel, is just like dedicated to free speech. Of course, every time. Hell yeah. So this is what I mean by this is like such old news if you know anything about like the American fire ecosystem. It's pretty much the same just 10 years later.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Universal Maga like Strikes Again.
SPEAKER_02Okay, now to slightly off topic, but it's still on topic. I'm slightly general uh jealous of uh their grindset because uh you you can literally uh make an entire career being a German, a Bosnian, a Filipino, whatever far right uh personality who opens up YouTube, goes back like two, three years on the Daily Wire or a Jordan Peterson channel, or even to an extent Joe Rogan, and go back like again two, three years and just like word for word recycle the type of particular like right-wing talking points that existed over there and make crazy bank. Because as we all love to make fun of our American friends, me of Mike, of course, especially, uh, it they they are they are at the forefront of uh the global right, at least when it comes to the pitch, you know, to an extent it it blossoms there and then it is it is carried on the wind everywhere else. But as it's carried on the wind, it takes quite a while sometimes. I'm talking six months plus, sometimes multiple years plus to become a relatively mainstream talking point at home. So you don't have to come up with shit the the way our our beautiful ops in the state have to when you're trying to do the right-wing pitch in the in the rest of the world. You can just recycle it and sell it as content. It's it's uh it's uh IP theft, but uh, but racist equals millions of dollars in the bank. I really hope nobody listening to this uh goes ahead and does it. They're like, Yeah, you you got it, boss, I'll do it. Yeah. But I can already see it. I I I can already see like it's it would be super easy. It would be super easy. And I know people in the Balkan space, for example, that do it. I know a lot of people, as you said yourself, in the in the Western European space that they do the same. They talk about shit that you know the c the classic Ben Shapiro would talk about two years ago, and it gets crazy views, it gets crazy coverage, it even to an extent enters mainstream conversations. You're like, motherfucker, bro. More asshit, man.
SPEAKER_05It's it's crazy. Like the the the the young um uh sections of the uh the Christian Democrat Party in Norway, which is not like the the CDU, it's like a very marginal party, but uh the young uh like uh party members of that party uh started bringing up like you know, should we uh restrict abortion rights? And most of the party was like, what the fuck are you talking about? With this is settled, like what where does where is this coming from? And they're all like young people who are like terminally online uh consuming so much American media. Yeah. Where like all the Christians there, yeah, all the Christians there are like talking about abortion.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's it's it has been such a success story in the United States in limiting the right to abortion.
SPEAKER_03It's something that we talked about in our traditional Catholicism episode where I talked about how the Catholic Church uh official position on evolution is theistic evolution, right? Like the belief that you know humans came through natural selection, but God was guiding the process, right? So it's a way of trying to align a spiritual religious belief with the science that exists, right? Not denying that evolution occurred. But if you ask conservative Catholics in America what they believe, they will say young earth creationism because that's the political milieu of right-wing thought. Like creationism is part of that political package. So it doesn't surprise me to see that kind of like, again, like the importation of Southern Confederate beliefs of like being anti-abortion, like you're a Southern Baptist coming to Norway, even though there is no theologic or other tradition to back it up. Yeah, it makes no sense.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. But guess what? It's funny, it's happening. Yeah, no, but those insane young Christian people, they're winning in the party. Like they're consuming the party because all the uh like because people in Norway aren't very religious, like the the old uh people.
SPEAKER_02Yes, they're all watching Asmongold. But they're also, yeah, the the voters are watching Asmongold.
SPEAKER_03They're all watching Asmold, so you're just importing and and that's why I asked you guys about you know, before the stream started, I talked about the Confederate flag, right? Yeah, in the stream, yeah. He's still streamer brained. Before the stream, sorry, before the before the pod. Like uh the Confederate flag, you know, represented a failed insurrection for four years in America in an attempt to defend chattel slavery, of you know, and they were crushed ruthlessly and they were defeated. And yet you'll see Confederate flags flown all over Europe. Now in America, people will say it's heritage, not hate. What's the heritage of the Confederate flag in say, you know, Bia? What's that? What's the heritage of the Confederate flag in Northern Ireland or Norway, yeah, or or Germany? It is a it's it is this like it's muscle cars and barbecue, baby.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, exactly. I think that's that is exactly the context in which I've seen that flag where it's just sort of this like rockabilly cosplay, uh hot rods, that sort of shit. Yes. I'm pretty sure like most of people don't even know what that flag actually means. They just think it's like an old US flag.
SPEAKER_03But it's the American cultural hegemony.
SPEAKER_04Yes, yes. But before sorry, before we move on, I this is really important. I really do want to call this out. I don't I I don't think it's okay that Yugopnik just framed Joe Rogan as a sort of airhead dumbass who doesn't talk about you know important things, just brings up Banshee Piro talking points. Just five days ago, Joe Rogan had a conversation with a man about the uh Kandahar Giant, which if you don't know is um a 15-fall red haired 600 cryptic which uh the Marines killed in Afghan in the mountains of Afghanistan in 2002. So you might want to check your facts before you make these black end statements. Oh my god. I apologize.
SPEAKER_05Rogan Heads, I'm sorry. It's uh believe uh like a leftover Soviet super soldier from uh from the invasion, right? Yeah that's that's what I've been hearing.
SPEAKER_04I this is like a pet peeve of mine, but I just love like these like some like semi-viral uh Twitter posts that pop up sometime like oh did you know that like during the invasion of Iraq the US forces like uncovered ancient zigarettes uh in the desert and shit like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05No, it's fucking funny. Like, like I we gotta do the um the part the Joe Rogan part two, because we were planning on like doing one where we literally just look at his dumbest conspiracy theories and stuff, which could be like a blast, yeah. It's absolutely brilliant.
SPEAKER_02We we needed the the the Yank soldiers to come and uh dig up our ancient history. Yeah, before we move on, just to make make careful what you wish for. Make it extremely oh god to make it extreme, like finding finding pyramids in Bosnia. Bosnians be like, Man, it's a pyramid. I don't know if you know about this. There's a guy that found a very rectangular mountain, and he was like, It is a pyramid, and then uh nobody agreed. Why does it sound like Trump? They're look like this is just a rectangular mountain. I don't know. Uh but Bosnians all sound like Trump, but that's you would that's actually surprisingly correct, but whatever. And they and um uh and you know, nobody believes them, and then Americans come invade and occupy because I think Bosnia has a very high dense uh ore of lithium, for example. Uh and one year after that, everybody's like, man, this is crazy. We just discovered a pyramid in Bosnia, and I can just imagine this fucking guy going completely schizophrenic. Nobody believed me until a white American said it's a pyramid, right? But but back to what we were talking about before we move on, you have no idea, just for the especially for the Western audience to understand just how far-reaching this this uh this uh right-wing American, especially internet uh brain rot, is going to. I live in a place where there's like, I don't know, one percent of the population are are you know people of color, let's say, and everybody is fucking talking about black mermaids, and oh my god, you know the in the Odyssey they they put the you know that they're engaging in the cringest, most fucking like mainstream three years ago kind of conversations about muk black person in movie in a place that is that is that is so far removed from this particular issue that you could act that you can imagine, and I'm a hundred percent sure the same conversation is happening somewhere in Thailand, the same conversation is happening in fucking Argentina or something. How why why is why is this perpetu like literally like uh locked into our consciousness 24-7 to such an extent that again people from so far away will sit uh at a bar and drink beer and and and and talk about it. This is my thesis. The only thing that makes toxic uh reactionary culture war bullshit worse than what it is, what it could be is the fact that it's all American. Okay, I want I want some I want some spicy conversations coming to me from Central Asia. I want some spicy like Mexican reactionary hot takes. Not why why do we have to talk about fucking black mermaid all the time? Please, somebody else give me some shit to to to to grill.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I was hoping we were gonna like really get this. I mean it we kind of did get like something that wasn't just American when we did Alexander Dugan. And I know that's why you were so excited about that episode, but like it was he ended up just being a regurgitator again. It's so he's literally just an original like just Ebola and stuff, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean ultimately I think what this goes back to is that these aren't actually you know ideas that conquer the world, but ultimately they're just a market item that is being you know sold in different markets.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. And and Dugan is uh great at selling and marketing. That's like kind of the thesis of that episode that we did, like the our previous podcast episode. Yeah, that's why he's an effective fascist.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Rebrand and resell. Same shit, different package. But speaking of same shit, different package, for decades, Dan, there have been often, of course, substantiated correlations between so-called Eastern influence uh and the European far right. Russian money and European politics is usually seen as a way for Moscow to help grow parasitic parties in the EU as a play at destabilization. What's almost never touched on though is the metric ton of cash that flows in from Washington for every backpack that comes from Moscow. How do you view the ideological, but more importantly, material alliance between American fascism and its European counterparts?
SPEAKER_04I think this is actually something that transcends uh the sort the sort of far-right movement. Uh the the German state and the American state are just so bound at the hip via all these organizations like the Transatlantic Bridge, Transatlantic Council, all these uh sort of uh think tanks and pressure groups that have that carry that that wield a huge amount of influence within German society and who do will do their best to let the Americans maintain their dominant position within the country. And I think this is true not just for the far right, who of course sees their ideological peers in power in the US, so they're looking to uh make this connection even stronger. Uh but pretty much transcends the parties, maybe except for uh the left party, but even but also like the supposedly left wing parties like the Green Party are are totally transatlanticists, so like pretty also pretty much like the entire boomer generation, if they aren't you know uh communist old heads. Like the the transatlanticism is kind of the water they swim in, and it's very difficult for them to even think uh or consider any ideas outside that perspective.
SPEAKER_03To build on this, it's your entire political class. You have no ability to challenge the United States on literally anything.
SPEAKER_04Well, and and also just to add this on, and it's and it's also from the perspective of the German, it's not even within the interest of Germany doing so. So there's not just it it it cannot, but shouldn't, uh pretty much.
SPEAKER_03Well, yeah, what I was gonna say to to build off that is like even when the United States was saying we're gonna take Greenland by force. I was literally about to talk about that. Right, like they they they have no ability to do it. Like the best they could do is like try to negotiate a better price. Right? And I know there was like some noises made about maybe sending some European, you know, uh group of fifty soldiers to Greenland.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, they send like 15 guys, yeah, or something, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Right, as a kind of symbolic resistance, but there isn't like if Trump wanted to, he could take Greenland, and absolutely nothing would change. I am of the opinion that there is very little, there is just not a mechanism in your politics to oppose America. You don't have the ability to do it, like within the within the normal range of political parties that are even on offer, even if something as dramatic as Greenland was taken. And by the way, I don't think the US would use force, they would just put a lot of pressure on on Europe until they sold it or whatever. Like and and uh you know Trump has continued to bring it up, you know, as the as the you know Iranian uh conflict is is firing out of control. If there's ever any kind of resolution, he's gonna turn his eyes back towards something like Greenland. And if you want to know why I say that, like Trump wants to be on Mount Mount Rushmore, and in America, Mount Rushmore, the presidents on there were the presidents that expanded America's geographic extent, um, that made America physically bigger. And that's like he's serious about that.
SPEAKER_04Being able to take Greenland uh 100%, Europe really couldn't do anything about it. In terms of nothing would change, um, I don't I don't think I agree. Um, but just like as a side note, I don't think a lot of people in the United States knew how serious that moment was for let's say Denmark. They they actually were preparing explosives on the runways and were transferring uh large amounts of blood donations to Greenland. So they were they were openly preparing for that confrontation. But yeah.
SPEAKER_05And Scandinavian countries were also like basically rallying around Denmark saying, like, you know, if if this happens, then we know who we're standing with. Because the the the idea is that like you have to present this this face to the Americans um and if you don't, obviously uh the Americans if you blink twice basically, uh uh the Americans are gonna do it. If you don't blink twice and you you know kind of like uh create the situation where if the Americans do this, it's gonna be so destructive to American interests, then that's like the only way to sort of resolve it. So even if like the Americans weren't gonna, you know, bomb the shit out of Greenland and invade Greenland, uh, you have to do these things so that the Americans know that like, well, you know, it's gonna happen if you if you do it.
SPEAKER_04I think if it were to happen at one point, I think there would actually be like a very significant shift in in German and European attitudes more broadly. And for me saying there are all these NGOs and pressure groups that exert pressure uh on German society, that is of course true, but it doesn't mean that it has them in a that that like the United States is able to dictate uh what European countries or Germany in that case do. And we see that sort of uh limited in some sections, like uh the United States was always always against uh Germany trading or integrating its economy or getting closer to Russia, which which for Germany always was kind of sought as a way to emancipate itself from the United States. The United States was against Nord Stream, for instance, that got built regardless. And I think if And then it got blown up, and then it got blown up, exactly, but it was what it was built despite the US's objections. And if there actually was an invasion of Greenland, I think you would just see NATO fall apart. I think the Europeans wouldn't, you know, declare war on the United States or maybe even you know enact dramatic sanctions, but I think they would develop uh away from the United States more rapidly, where yeah uh up until this point the European project has always always worked within the blessing of the United States. So you always saw NATO expand before you saw the EU expand, and I think it would just move move away from that status quo towards something new.
SPEAKER_05In terms of like defense and stuff, um Norway, just after the sort of Greenland crisis, I don't know if you want to call that, but whatever you you call it, like after that whole thing began, uh Norway started like reorienting its like defense priorities, like how you know where are we gonna buy our like ships from, where we're gonna buy our planes or whatever, and started talking more seriously about like more closer integration with Scandinavian partners and also European partners. And I know that France and Germany also, I believe, like immediately afterwards started talking more about remilitarization as a result of this as well, and defense core uh like coordination in in an EU context, not just because of like Russia, but also because of Greenland. Yeah, although there is a big limit to that, and this is This podcast is 100% financed by you guys, the listeners, and we have to pay our editor. As such, you can find the rest of this episode over at patreon.com/slash the reaction podcast, or just use the link in the podcast description. We are incredibly grateful to all of our supporters.
