The handover of power by Tomasz Konicz, 1/18/2025

The handover of power

by Tomasz Konicz

[This article posted on 1/18/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.exit-online.org/die-schluesseluebergabe/.]First published on January 18, 2025, on konicz.info

### How the democratic center of crisis-ridden Germany is paving the way for fascism

The ease and smoothness with which the fascistization of the Federal Republic is taking place in the 2025 election campaign is downright dizzying. It’s happening so fast, with hardly a moment to catch your breath or pause for reflection. Erich Kästner compared the fascist dynamic before the 1933 transfer of power to a snowball that gradually turns into an avalanche that is almost impossible to stop. Germany has now been engulfed by such a brown avalanche. Last year’s large-scale anti-fascist demonstrations,1 which were initiated in response to unconstitutional deportation plans in the AfD camp, had no effect. There are no signs of a ban on the AfD – while the AfD has now been able to openly include mass deportations, referred to as “remigration,” in its election program.2

A decidedly fascist regime seems entirely realistic from the 2029 legislative period onwards, as the AfD also envisages in its strategy papers. In the land of the perpetrators, their political heirs are setting out to “seize” power once again. But this is not really decisive. For it is precisely the forces of the democratic center that are enabling an effortless, frictionless transition to fascist crisis management. The womb is still fertile from which this crept – 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 engaged in a fascist-like competition with the AfD to outbid each other. 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-wing libertarian love letters to Elon Musk3 only to be pushed out of the limelight by the AfD4, is just one symptom of the general trend toward fascism, especially among the neoliberal center—a trend that will ultimately consume it.

The fascist demand for mass deportations of people with a migrant background is being expanded by the CDU to include demands for the revocation of citizenship for dual nationals who have committed crimes.5 The constant tightening of the detention regime for refugees, which is being pursued by all parties under pressure from the AfD, has now reached the point of “bed, bread, and soap.”6 Criminal responsibility from the age of 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,9 etc. – there are no more scandals when civilizational taboos are broken on a daily basis after German society has been completely swept up in the fascist avalanche.

The AfD achieved its ideological final victory after the Islamist attack in Solingen in the fall of 2024,10 when Federal President Steinmeier declared not extremism but refugees to be public enemy number one. In doing so, the Federal Republic’s top figurehead simply followed fascist logic, personifying the causes of crises – and this in a year in which right-wing extremist crimes reached a new historic high, far exceeding the level of Islamist crimes (not to mention that Islamism is merely a form of fascist crisis ideology specific to the Islamic cultural sphere,11 which is triggered in times of crisis by similar mechanisms – extremism of the center, identity mania, crisis competition). The slogan “Refugees out!” is now German state doctrine.

All of this has its own evil intra-capitalist crisis logic. The global crisis process is causing the capitalist exploitation machine to increasingly stutter, even in the centers, even in the Federal Republic of Germany—and within its functional elites, a virtually smooth handover is being organized, in which the mode of crisis management will ultimately be changed. This time, the frothy fascism as a terrorist form of crisis of capitalist rule is accompanied by an opportunistic transformation of the entire political system, which is trying to adapt to it through authoritarianism, the production of resentment, and populism. The fascist “handover of the keys,” to stay with the metaphor, is also taking place within the democratic parties.

### How democracy eats its children

The liberal bourgeoisie and constitutional patriots who believe in democracy are shocked that the transition from democratic to authoritarian-fascist crisis management is proceeding so seamlessly. This is true not only for Germany, but above all for the US. Crisis theorist Robert Kurz correctly predicted this development back in the 1990s in his essay Democracy Eats Its Children: Remarks on the New Right-Wing Radicalism12. Capitalist democracy is based on general market competition, which ultimately perfects the fetishistic process of boundless capital valorization. The entire democratic discourse, the “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 inmates of the capitalist treadmill perfect their own exploitation and subjugation to the premises of the process of capital valorization.

However, as soon as the system begins to falter due to the intensifying internal and external contradictions of the process of exploitation, as soon as the material rewards of their subjugation disappear for substantial sections of the middle classes, corresponding efforts to drive the logic of exploitation to barbaric extremes begin to emerge, quasi naturally, out of the internal logic of democratic discourse. Increased subjugation to the constraints of capital, which are intensifying as a result of the crisis, is then accompanied by the exclusion and ultimately the elimination of competitors or economically superfluous sections of the population—which are ideologized as personifications of the crisis process.

Two population groups are caught in the crossfire of these permanent right-wing smear campaigns: in addition to refugees and people with a migrant background, it is above all the unemployed and marginalized sections of the population who are once again being turned into enemy stereotypes, as was the case at the beginning of the 21st century with the implementation of the notorious Hartz IV labor laws. The tightening of restrictions and increasing repression, which were practiced on refugees, especially during the smear campaign at the end of 202314, are now also to be used against marginalized “locals.” Potentially, however, all economically “superfluous” groups will come under fire.

The renewed rise of fascism in Germany, the now almost fluid boundaries between the center and the “extremists,”15 can therefore only be understood in the context of the recent crisis in Germany—fascism is above all a crisis ideology. Germany is in an economic crisis that is being exacerbated by its export-driven economic model.16 The crisis triggered by the pandemic shook the globalization on which Germany’s export world championships were based.

The persistent inflation that emerged in 2020 forced central banks 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 world system entered an era of stagflation.17 Supply bottlenecks and the overloading of globalized production chains during the pandemic finally allowed protectionist and deglobalization tendencies to gain the upper hand, with the US at their center, increasingly focusing on vertical integration,18 nearshoring19, and reindustrialization. The war in Ukraine served as another 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—in other words, exporting debt, unemployment, and deindustrialization—was thus running out of steam. The crisis of globalization, to which Deutschland AG adapted, forms the real backdrop to the accelerating economic crisis in the Federal Republic. However, the export industry is also putting those forces within the German functional elites that opposed the rise of the extreme right out of their own economic interests further 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 at odds with the interests of the export economy, which has always had to maintain the good international reputation of the “Made in Germany” brand—a reputation that was damaged in 2018 by crystal meth-fueled Nazi rioters in Chemnitz during their pogrom-like attacks on migrants.22 This has largely come to an end since the crisis in the German export economy and the ongoing economic misery: while neoliberalism preached the blessings of open markets, all relevant players are now outdoing each other with demands for border closures, isolation, and restrictions on immigration after the long-standing export boom collapsed.

It is obvious that this urge toward isolation, populism, nationalization, etc. is simply the ideological reflection of the upheaval in the unfolding global crisis,23 which is giving rise to German pre-fascism. Viewed from a distance, the whole thing seems downright ridiculous. For years, Germany profited from globalization through 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 expressed outrage over the mountains of debt abroad, which were inevitably caused by German trade surpluses. Now that these export surpluses and global trade imbalances have brought with them the corresponding protectionist fallout, the crisis is 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 performance community and, once again, the national community.

Germany has suffered, tightened its belt, starved itself in order to adapt perfectly to the rat race of neoliberal globalization – and now it will suffer particularly badly from the major shift toward deglobalization. The right-wing hatred of ideological personifications of the rapidly increasing crisis dynamics triggered by this paradigm shift is focused, in a tried and tested tradition, on refugees, people with a migrant background, the unemployed, and the socially disadvantaged. In the context of the fascist extremism of the center, which flares up in times of crisis, the social Darwinist, nationalist, and sometimes simply racist crisis competition is now largely in line with the late capitalist crisis reality—while the entire liberal discourse that 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 fallen into line with the AfD in order to hallucinate that migration and refugees are the root cause of the ailing Deutschland AG – which conveniently allows them to ignore the capitalist systemic crisis and the role of the Federal Republic in its unfolding. This also applies to the Greens, whose candidate for chancellor openly wants to deport unemployed refugees.25 And this also applies to the so-called Left Party, which is trying to copy Wagenknecht’s populism—which was merely ideological accompaniment to the formation of the cross-front—in all its opportunistic seriousness in the form of social demagoguery.26 On the refugee issue, the uniformity across the entire political spectrum seems to be taking on a downright totalitarian flavor. There is hardly anything left that could stop the AfD’s rise to power now that the civilizing effect of large trade surpluses on German domestic politics is increasingly waning.

But even the agitation against the second major enemy since the outbreak of the economic crisis – the unemployed – will no longer be able to contribute to the development of a viable economic policy: the temporary, half-hearted abolition of forced labor in the Federal Republic, which was implemented by the so-called traffic light coalition of the SPD, Greens, and FDP, is to be abolished 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 promoted by the right wing in numerous smear campaigns against socially marginalized groups—from the FDP to the CDU to the AfD – consists of a revival of the sadistic methods of disciplining and reducing the cost of labor as a commodity, as implemented at the beginning of the 21st century under the Hartz IV program and Agenda 2010.27 The fascistization of the Federal Republic is effectively returning to its place of origin on a higher level, because the German right instinctively senses that this program of subjugation was at the beginning of its political rise. And it is indeed an authoritarian reflex that is emerging among broad sections of the population in the face of the economic crisis, just as it did around a quarter of a century ago.

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

“The constant focus on economic goals—more precisely, the demand for submission to their premises—reinforces an authoritarian cycle. It leads to identification with the economy, whereby demands for sacrifice in its favor result in authoritarian aggression that breaks out against the weaker members of society.”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 that he himself is. This “authoritarian cycle” also forms the morass that, in interaction with the crisis shocks 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, giving way to irrational reflexes of hatred and sadism that prepare the ground for neo-fascist crisis ideologies.

The neoliberal “politics of renunciation” at the beginning of the 21st century—submission to the premises of the exploitation 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 submission, which often instrumentalized a hollow concept of freedom, formed the breeding ground for right-wing crisis ideologies. The concepts of middle-ground extremism and conformist rebellion are therefore essential to understanding the success of the New Right and neo-nationalism as the heirs of neoliberalism. This is precisely where the right wants to return in the face of the escalating crisis in 2025. And this program of subjugation comes at a price—the tightening of “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 Talk of mass abuse by the unemployed is just an ideological chimera.

Capitalism as a death cult animated by the fetishism of capital, as a secular religion demanding human sacrifice, comes into its own here. Through suffering, through sacrifice—preferably of the weakest and most vulnerable members of society—Germany is to regain the favor of capital in its contradiction-driven momentum as an automatic subject that, in its boundless compulsion to exploit, devastates humanity and the world socially and ecologically. Forced labor, starvation, the abolition of paid sick leave, labor camps, the reduction of wage costs—the whole old program, the same rhetoric that was used to push through Hartz IV by stirring up hatred against the lazy unemployed, can be heard again.

And it is not only the right-wing parties; here, too, we a, we are dealing with an almost totalitarian uniformity. Once again, the whole thing has a touch of the ridiculous, for example when SPD politicians use exactly the same phrases to agitate against the unemployed as their predecessors did at the beginning of this millennium. “There is no right to laziness,” this inflammatory phrase, uttered by then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder,32 was repeated in the fall of 2024 by SPD leader Lars Klingbeil.33 Of course, the SPD can also imagine supporting the total cut of citizen’s income and the reintroduction of forced labor, as demanded by the CDU.

### New German dysfunctionality

The intra-capitalist problem with this reflexive resort to work sadism is simply that, from a purely economic point of view, it has become dysfunctional. Hartz IV and Agenda 2010 were successful because they lowered the average price of labor in Germany during the rise of globalization, which in turn lowered 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 national economies seek refuge in a beggar-thy-neighbor policy, is being blocked by increasing protectionism and the deglobalization of Germany Inc.

These measures will only further exacerbate the social crisis without leading to any “return” in the form of an export boom. Neither the non-European sales markets nor the eurozone countries, which have been sorely tested by Germany’s chief austerity advocate Wolfgang Schäuble, will allow such extreme German trade surpluses to happen again. What this sadistic repetition of the Hartz IV system will certainly achieve, however, is the definitive establishment of forced labor in the Federal Republic of Germany—which is likely to introduce another feature of fascist crisis management into the manifest systemic crisis.

As has been explained several times, this fascist dynamic, which is growing into an avalanche, derives its apparent inevitability from the fact that it arises quite naturally from the prevailing late neoliberal ideology and late capitalist national identity. Ignoring the irreversible social and ecological crisis that will inevitably lead to the collapse of capital, since it is the cause of this crisis, the ideology and practice of German pre-fascism seem almost inevitable. they also seem to serve the interests of wage earners who can hope that it will affect others—the marginalized who are labeled “anti-social,” foreigners, refugees, minorities, the elderly, the disabled, gays, transsexuals, etc.

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 be accompanied by a breakout from the ideological and identitarian prison of late capitalism. Deportations, repression, border closures, and authoritarian state formation will not overcome the crisis of capital in either its economic or ecological dimensions36. The crisis does not come from outside; it is home-grown. The global level of productivity and the climate crisis cannot be locked out or deported at the borders.

Even the calculation underlying the European and American obsession with isolation, according to which the global South will become uninhabitable first in the climate crisis and the North must therefore isolate itself now, is illusory given 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 Northeast America particularly hard—precisely the regions where the right wing has been particularly successful in popularizing its potentially genocidal isolationist delusion.37

If there were still a left that acted as a progressive force in accordance with its own principles, it would aggressively address this simple, obvious truth and make it the basis of an emancipatory practice of transformation: There can only be hope for the preservation of civilization if we overcome capital in its death throes.38 This is the Archimedean point that would enable a successful anti-fascist mobilization based on the reality of the crisis. Only in this way can the fascist death cult be successfully combated. The only interest that can be rationally formulated in the late capitalist permanent crisis is the interest in a rapidly initiated system transformation.

Preprint of passages from the essay “Crisis Economy of German Fascism. Observations on the Interaction between Economic Crisis Development and the Fascistization of Germany in the 21st Century,” which will appear in the upcoming issue of exit! in spring 2025.