In January 2017, to frantic cheers from his supporters, Höcke upped the ante, when he referred among other things to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin: ‘We Germans, our people, are the only people in the world that has planted a monument of shame in the heart of its capital.’20 He was not only kicking out at the memory of the six million murdered Jews and those from other marginalised groups, but was relativising the most serious crime against humanity in history.
In September 2015 Marine Le Pen used the refugee policy of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel to consolidate her ambitions for the French presidency. In a speech in Brussels she declared that the sovereignty of the EU countries was ‘threatened by an enemy […] who is working and plotting only a few streets away from here’. She meant the ‘Euro-dictatorship of the European Commission’. The Commission, she argued, was trying to conceal its true nature: ‘a machine for crushing peoples, a sower of austerity […] and now a receptionist for all the illegals on the planet’.21
If one is inclined, on the basis of Brunhilde Pomsel’s biography, to condemn her, the question naturally arises whether our behaviour in the present day is so very different from that of the people in the Third Reich. Have we not reached a much more dramatic form of ignorance and apathy if such inflammatory speeches have no consequences, even though we know where they can lead? Unlike the generation that saw Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini as the salvation from economic misery, or at least tacitly agreed when they assumed power, because of our knowledge of history we are aware of the consequences of such a dictatorship. In her reflections, however, Pomsel sees today’s youth as far less ignorant and naive.
Politics was largely uninteresting as far as we were concerned. When I see what schoolgirls get up to today, expressing their opinions and everything, I think to myself: my God, that’s a difference; that’s an incredible difference. Then I sometimes think: I’m not over a hundred years old, I’m three hundred years old. Their whole way of life is completely different.
But in a 2016 survey not even a fifth of all German and Austrian young people said they were interested in politics at all.22 Today’s young people are not the first generation to have grown up largely apolitical. The same applies to ‘Generation Y’, born between 1980 and the turn of the millennium. Former Daimler CEO Edzard Reuter insists that that generation is completely unprepared for the crises of the present as they have never been interested in politics, and even holds them responsible for the rise of the populists, who have had an easy ride since all they had to do was construct threatening scenarios whose contents were never examined. The generation of 1968 got a lot of things wrong, but they always argued, got engaged and involved. The former head of Daimler doesn’t say this without putting some of the responsibility on the democratic elites. Political debate is an indispensable element of any democracy. Controversies are only staged for the next round of elections, while genuine problems aren’t addressed. ‘No wonder young people don’t think anyone’s telling them the truth.’23
According to a survey by the University of Konstanz,24 fewer and fewer students in Germany are taking an interest in politics. If we look closely at the opinion polls we can identify a trend towards political apathy and passivity. A majority of respondents are chiefly concerned about their own future and career. They hope that their studies will give them not only good training, but also an interesting job as well as a decent income. These findings are very similar to those of the 17th Shell Youth Study,25 which shows that most young people are primarily concerned about their individual happiness and a materially secure future, and barely take any interest in politics and the common good.
In the United States the figures don’t look very different. In September 2008, 65 per cent of eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds said they took an interest in elections, and by September 2012 this had fallen to 48 per cent. And while in 2008 72 per cent claimed they had decided to vote, this had declined in 2012 to 63 per cent.26
The political indifference of the younger generation is also apparent from the referendum on the departure of the UK from the European Union. Young Britons who were eligible to vote on 23 June 2016 – but didn’t – admitted with horror that they hadn’t expected the result. They had simply assumed that those in favour of remaining in the EU would win in any case. The fact that they complained the following day about the loss of the advantages of being in the EU is a direct consequence of political indifference, because they could have influenced the result in their favour by making use of their right to vote.
For a large proportion of the younger generation, the need for self-expression is at the centre of everyday activity. The perfect stage for that is the internet, with its platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to satisfy their hunger for self-promotion; something once done only by those in the colourful pages of glossy magazines is now imitated by millions of young people on the internet. However, anyone who criticises the younger generation, as Edzard Reuter has, mustn’t ignore the fact that the young face all kinds of insecurities. Their relationship with the world of work is increasingly precarious, and since 9/11 they have been confronted with the threat of terrorism like no other generation since the Second World War. Yet in two respects they are distinctly at an advantage compared to the youth of the 1930s: they have had a far better education; and they have grown up with the concept of universal human rights.27
But it is also true that in spite of their education, many of the young barely have a chance of genuine participation. In Europe this applies particularly to countries such as Greece, Spain or Portugal – where, since the financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent euro crisis, youth unemployment has hit record levels – and also parts of East Germany. It is beyond dispute that many of the young in Europe and the United States have no positive expectations of the future. ‘They are the first generation since the Second World War that fears that they won’t be able to achieve or maintain the standard of living and the quality of life enjoyed by their parents,’ says the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman.28 This produces anger and hatred on one hand, and on the other a lack of interest in politics as well as resignation at not being able to improve their own situation through political engagement. Even if many young people seem different today – modern, networked and well educated – a good number are as apolitical, resigned or indifferent as Brunhilde Pomsel in her day, and just as preoccupied with themselves as the ‘clique’ she describes.
The young in Western democracies after 9/11 did not grow up in authoritarian conditions, but they did grow up with uncertainty and insecurity. Knowing the history of the twentieth century, their interest should be in the preservation of democracy. And to do that, online petitions will hardly be enough. Great waves of rage on the internet have no consequences for society, because this kind of protest has few political or social consequences – although the same cannot be said of rabble-rousing by demagogues. A statement in favour of an environmental protection project or against intensive farming leads to no obligations of any kind for its signatories. Activities such as online petitions fit with the general image of this generation – involving only fleeting involvement – and are essentially no different from hedonistic consumerism. ‘All too often it looks as if political activity is little more than a refined form of consumerism, which is chiefly popular with the affluent who can present their identity relatively simply, and show what a good cause they have chosen’,29 as the British political scientist Gerry Stoker observes in his book Why Politics Matters. The condemnation inherent in this statement should perhaps be viewed with scepticism, but its negative effect may be relevant for the maintenance of a democratic order.
The problem of every analysis of a generation is that it is conducted with the aspirations and value judgements of an earlier generation. From this point of view, Brunhilde Pomsel views the contemporary situation of young people in comparison with her own time, and confuses the present generation’s technical advances and greater access to knowledge with greater interest and p
olitical activity.
We were stupid in those days. There wasn’t time to think about everything – ordinary people would be thinking about when they had to go to work. In my circle we were largely untouched by problems. They didn’t burden or preoccupy us, the way they preoccupy me now that my life is behind me. I’m much more interested in them now. I’m just trying to explain to you how as a young person who is simply released into life there seems to be some kind of direction. But it doesn’t always need to be an influence. That’s easier to observe in the present day.
In Europe, the possibility of an active peace movement among the younger generation, of the kind seen in the days of the nuclear threat between East and West, is very remote. In spite of a precarious labour market, a rise in far-right activism in the streets, mass attacks on refugees, and terrible civil wars like the one being waged in Syria, large numbers of the younger generation seem resigned or indifferent. Brunhilde Pomsel also did not reflect upon the political situation of her time, and even today she doesn’t think much of the speeches delivered by the politicians.
If I had been able to guess or know everything back then, I certainly wouldn’t have gone to the Broadcasting Corporation or the Propaganda Ministry. For me, Goebbels was a politician who tended to shout a bit loudly. I didn’t think about it at all. I also never listened to all that codswallop, his speeches. Everyone was saying the same things. I don’t listen to speeches in the Bundestag either. It’s all just claptrap, what they come out with.
We might be inclined to judge Pomsel’s opinion about the speeches in the Bundestag against the background of her experiences – and yet she speaks for a majority of the population. Her perception doesn’t just demonstrate resignation towards the present on the part of the older generation, but shows a form of turning away from politics that had been summed up since the 1980s in the term ‘political fatigue’ (Politikverdrossenheit). This became the word of the year in Germany as early as 1992, and shows another form of ignorance and indifference on the part of the political elite itself, because the voters’ clearly observed disenchantment with politics did not lead to a change in the actions of politicians. For almost three decades this detachment from mainstream politics was ignored by the Western elites, and this has now became a dangerous mixture of radicalisation on the one hand and ignorance and political indifference on the other. Far-right attitudes didn’t suddenly appear in society, but had been anchored there for a long time, and the only question is what proportion of the population really holds far-right views, since the success of the right can also be explained with reference to a vague mood of protest among the discontented and anxious. They are primarily concerned with giving a sign, a warning to the elites, without supporting the radical demands of the populists. Dangerously, however, they don’t question them either. The fury and humiliation have reached a point where facts no longer count.30 Before we examine whether the democratic elites have themselves failed the voters out of ignorance and indifference, we should examine the socio-economic parallels with the 1930s.
In the 1930s the situation – in terms of material conditions, as well as the unemployment of large numbers of the population – was far more dramatic after the stock market crash of 1929 than it is today. The 2008 crash did not have such devastating effects, yet it created the greatest economic crisis and the worst recession since 1930, and there are fears that the effects of the 2008 financial crisis are still ahead of us in the form of mass unemployment and large-scale social decline. So far it has been possible to mitigate the impact of the financial crash and the crisis in the euro, but people sense that it could get worse at any time. Today, in parts of the population, even the fear of possible social decline as in the 1930s seems to be so powerful that the urge to survive emerges at the expense of social minorities – a fatal reflex that shows how torn society is. This is directly connected with the development of globalisation and the economic system that underpins it.
Among those who voted for the new right-wing populists there are some who feel overtaxed by the globalised world, even when they have so far suffered no material disadvantages from it, and yet they despise open borders and the ‘old elites’ who are untroubled by their concerns. People feel alienated and powerless, according to many analyses by the Western media. The excess of information, which is now digitally available to everyone, intensifies the perception of an excessively complex world and the longing for simple answers. The new bogeymen are the migrants; they too want some security and material comfort, but the protest voters are worried that they themselves will lose out as a result.
Such anxieties, and subjective emotions, often ignored, may be described as follows: if in Germany a mother of three children, who has spent her whole life working, feels that she will eventually be reliant on welfare, a problem arises – the feeling of humiliation. When an employee reaches the income level of a refugee, even though he may have paid into the social welfare system for twenty or thirty years, for many that is an unspeakable injustice. The fact that there may be good reasons why refugees receive state support seems irrelevant to them; they feel only that they are being treated unjustly and their own way of life is under threat.
The cause for the lack of interest in facts in favour of a ‘perceived truth’ – the socio-political process that was described in 2016 as ‘post-truth’ – lies in wounded feelings, expectations and incomprehension in the face of an unjust world. But in the end it may have less to do with ‘factual poverty’ than with ‘perceived poverty’, which in sociological terms is a complex phenomenon, since the feeling depends not only on socio-economic conditions but also on the personal environment of social experiences, social position and in the end of world view. The feeling of injustice seems to encourage a search for a scapegoat and a longing for simple answers. Even Brunhilde Pomsel refers to the humiliation that the Germans felt in the face of defeat in the First World War, which made it so easy for Hitler.
Is today’s world still not comparable with the 1930s? Then as now, the collapse did not occur from one day to the next. Misery and rage grew slowly. In the everyday experience of the economic crisis certain social classes could still live in a relatively carefree way, and what Brunhilde Pomsel describes for the Berlin of the 1930s also applies to post-crash Detroit, Athens in the wake of austerity politics or the regions of Germany that face social decline.
But while Berlin might have been praised to the skies, it had always had its dark sides, and particularly then, after losing the First World War. Unemployed people on every corner, beggars, poor people. Anyone who lived in good areas, as I did, in a good suburb, didn’t see any of that. Of course there were particular areas swarming with poverty and wretchedness; you didn’t want to see things like that, you just looked away.
Looking away runs through Brunhilde Pomsel’s biography like a thread – but in that she wasn’t and isn’t alone. The democratic parties of the Weimar Republic are often blamed for the collapse of democracy, because they lacked the courage to assume responsibility and a willingness to co-operate across party boundaries. The dispute between the parties was more important to them than the solution of the great problems of the time. People in the Germany of the 1930s did not look inwards, so they were ignorant of the real and emotionally felt decline of large parts of the population, and in the end they looked away as the supposed ‘enemy of the people’ was defined, persecuted, expelled and murdered.
Both then and now, upheaval and radicalisation were preceded by unhampered globalisation. In the 1920s, for many countries, there were no travel restrictions or visa requirements. As in the crash of 1929, speculation on the stock exchange in 2008 had fatal consequences. In both historical situations after the crash there were a few winners and many losers, although in 2008 these were more perceived than real. However, in both historical situations masses of people in Europe and the United States had either lost their jobs and were unable to earn a living or had huge concerns about the future. As in the present day, the forces
of globalisation, once unleashed, escaped national state control. The political institutions lost their ability to solve problems and a fatal vacuum was created, since the state was no longer able to fulfil its protective function towards its people, and Brunhilde Pomsel stresses that from then on things were easy for Hitler.
Attempts were made to mitigate the damage done to financial market capitalism in the present day through economic measures, but in spite of the crisis bankers’ bonuses continued to rise while the monetary policies of the central banks in Europe and the United States gradually devalued life insurance, the purchasing power of pensions and some other forms of public service. The European governments also undertook serious cuts in the welfare state, and labour market reforms made working relations increasingly precarious.
People in the 1930s did not necessarily grasp the complex connections between stock-market speculation and the global economic crisis, while today people are kept informed daily about both inequality and the inactivity of politics. Even today politics seems to be driven by crises rather than exerting control over a given situation; a hazardous vacuum has been created. In her reflection, Brunhilde Pomsel says of the time before Hitler:
After the end of the First World War Germany was leaderless. There were no personalities there, and that was why it was so easy for Hitler. Too many unemployed, and they were his whole support.
This lack of leadership has also been used by right-wing populists in the present day. For reasons of respect towards the victims of the Second World War the social conflict and poverty in large parts of the population and inaction on the part of politicians cannot be directly compared with the present-day situation. Not yet, anyway.
But by the end of the 1990s the fuse for the renewed scenario of a failure of liberal democracy as the result of an unregulated financial industry had been lit in the United States. Since the presidency of Bill Clinton (1993–2001), the Democrats – the left-wing and liberal forces in the United States – ‘New Labour’ in the UK and the Social Democrats of Europe had surrendered to the laws of neo-liberal globalisation, when the financial markets were deregulated in spite of urgent warnings from leading economists. In Britain under Tony Blair’s government this led to a policy of social indifference and under Gerhard Schröder in Germany to Agenda 2010, with massive cuts to the welfare system, a softening of labour market laws and the weakening of trade unions. The shrinking of the welfare state went hand in hand with an enormous expansion of the financial sector and growth in the low-wage sector. Step by step the left had betrayed a considerable proportion of their voters – working and lower-middle class, some of whom are now being radicalised. What appears more and more clearly is that the ignorance and the inactivity of the democratic elites are responsible for a division in Western societies, and have made it so easy for right-wing populists to gain a foothold.
The Work I Did Page 14