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- [00:05]
A
I was at a conference on culture early in February. It took place over an entire afternoon in a magnificent room at the Beaux Arts Building, which is the cultural hub of Brussels. Three of the big organizations that lobbied the European Union for culture funding were hosting alongside preserving monuments and libraries, championing dance and theater, and fostering diversity across the arts. These organizations describe their brief as keeping Europe's demons like xenophobia and nationalism at bay. They all promise to promote and strengthen a pan European sentiment. And therein lies a big problem for big culture. With the rapid advance of the far right, the tolerant and united Europe they envisage seems to be retreating rather than coming into clearer focus. Sure, there was brave talk at the conference about soft power, about transnationalism, about so called polyphonic safe spaces. But there was plain speaking as well. Too little had been achieved to advance European culture and belonging, despite nearly two decades of trying. That was the view of Andre Wilkins of the European Cultural Foundation. Also speaking, Marta Czynkowska from the Polish Ministry of Culture. There was reason for optimism, namely the ousting of her country's ultra conservatives. But the prognosis darkened when it came to the culture wars. Those, she said, were still being lost. Then there was Nicholas Schmidt. Until last year, he was a European commissioner overseeing EU employment and social rights. The battle over culture, said Schmidt, is with those who have read Gramsci. That's Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist who wrote his prison notebooks mostly in the early 1930s while jailed by Mussolini. And indeed, the notebooks have a lot to say about culture, notably that culture is more important than politics for revolutionary ideas to gain acceptance. Schmidt wasn't warning the audience about communism, of course. Instead, he was ringing the alarm about the power of the cultural strategy on the far right. The far right that's steadily gained ground in recent decades. The far right that's already placed first in elections in Italy, the Netherlands and in Austria. The far right that now holds more than a quarter of the seats at the European Parliament. And the far right that's now in charge of the United States under the belligerent leadership of Donald Trump, JD Vance and, it seems, Elon Musk. Now there are many competing and overlapping theories about the rise of the far right. But however you look at those theories, culture and Antonio Gramsci are a big part of the story. After the horrors of Nazism, the post war far right needed to proceed strategically and patiently if it were ever to stage a comeback. Some in Europe, particularly the French New Right, took Gramsci as their guide. Gramsci's teachings, culture first politics later were eventually absorbed by the US radical right too. And in recent weeks, JD Vance and Elon Musk have brought such tactics back to Europe. It is of course, a great irony of political thought that those who took Gramsci the Marxist most seriously include the far right. This history and how Gramscian thinking flows back and forth across the Atlantic and is of particular interest to Philippa Dorf at the University of Bonn. Philipp is the author of two books on the radicalization of the U.S. republican Party, and he's a leading analyst of the rise of the far right alternative for Germany, the AfD. Philippe has also closely analyzed how groups supportive of the AFD are drawing on Gramscian principles to prepare Germany for a far right future. Such tactics are helping to make what was once unthinkable for Germans, such as mass deportations, including of naturalized citizens, something that many Germans now are prepared to vote for.
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B
No migrants more in no Europe without Christianity. An alliance also with Russia.
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A
Welcome to EU Scream, the podcast that guides you through stories coming from the eu. We talk about the news a bit differently and with people who really know what they're talking about. I'm James Cantor. This is episode 113, Germany Gramsci and the Rise of the AfD with Philipp Adorf of the University of Bonnie.
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C
Philippe. We're in this beautiful townhouse in a very quiet street in Bonn, which is a famously quiet city. But Germany, Germany is anything but quiet right now. The far right is resurgent in the form of the Alternative for Germany party, the AfD, the most successful far right party since the Nazi era. But Bonn also is where Germany's previous far right era under the Third Reich was supposed to be laid to rest with the signing here in Bonn of the German Basic Law. That's Germany's post war democratic constitution. That was 75 years ago, right?
- [05:49]
B
Exactly. 1948, 1949. That's when it was signed and the Federal Republic, or West Germany, was established. So certainly with this anniversary, 75 years of the Constitution, I think some people were wondering, the next time we have celebrations, 100 years of the Constitution, will Germany be a different country? So certainly the AfD's rise over the past decade is something that's really influenced and in some ways shaped discussions concerning the state of Germany and the lessons from the post war era as well.
- [06:21]
C
The AfD, the Alternative for Germany. We know they are soft on Russia and on Putin. We know they play down, or at least members of the AFD have played down, Nazi atrocities and that they advocate mass deportations from Germany and We know that they want to weaken the euro and the European Union. In your view, how much of a threat are they to the basic law, to Germany's constitution? How much of a constitutional threat do you think they sort of represent?
- [06:54]
B
Well, I mean, there are questions to what extent the party could be banned at some point in the future. If the Constitutional Court, for example, decides that, yes, the party is a threat to the constitution. At the most basic level, I think the AfD as a right wing populist party, represents a threat to democracy in general, just like most other populist party in terms of the fact that they believe they are the sole representatives of the people's will. And in that sense, you could argue, these kinds of parties, whenever they come into power, they essentially believe there's no need to relinquish power anymore because now they are in charge.
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C
Pluralism is never there.
- [07:30]
B
Exactly. Exactly. So, I mean, practically every party, of course, believes that political opponents have got it wrong, that their solutions are wrong, but at least they acknowledge that political opponents have a legitimacy, they have a right to take over government. With regards to the AfD, we do see a radicalization trend over the past decade. I think that's an interesting development indeed.
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C
And let's review a little bit where the AfD came from and where it is now. We're in a very different place now.
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B
Exactly. I mean, when the party was established in 2013, the belief, at least initially, was that its primary competitor, for example, would be the Free Democrats, which is the sort of center right, free market, small government party, nominally the Liberals. Exactly. And the name itself, Alternativa for Deutschland, was based on the argument that Angela Merkel called her own policies with regards to the Eurozone rescue. Alternative laws. Alternative laws.
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C
There is no alternative.
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B
Exactly.
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C
That's what Merkel said. There's no alternative to the euro, so we have to support it. And a lot of German academics were particularly concerned about Germany spending money on this.
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B
Exactly. And from the get go, you already saw a certain kind of nationalism or resurgence of nationalism, this belief that we are working hard, not racking up debts, other countries are sort of spending beyond their means and this is why we should get out of the euro, or this is why should other countries should perhaps get out of the euro. And when we look at the party's economic policies, some of that has survived to this day. So the economic platform of the party, at least officially, is still quite center right. So it's still making the case for lower taxes, small government, solidarity, patriotismos, or solidarity based patriotism. Which is essentially another word for welfare chauvinism, which makes the case that we don't need to slash welfare spending if we only kept our borders secure. Because the argument there is that you've got foreigners coming in, they tend to be on welfare handouts, and if these people did not come in, then we could just afford a welfare state that was quite extensive.
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C
And that is welfare chauvinism, basically, for white Germans.
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B
Exactly. So for the people that would be deemed as deserving of welfare handouts.
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C
And then we get to the sort of 2015, 2016 years where. Where there's very significant substantial influx of migrants, largely as a result of the wars in the Middle East. And here we see a turn in the party, don't we?
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B
It's quite interesting to note that in the summer of 2015, Bernd Luecke, who was always an economics professor, one of the co founders of the party, one of its early leaders, actually left the party. And so we saw the first split of the party in the summer of 2015. In the polls, the AfD was getting around 3 to perhaps 4% of the vote, so below the 5% threshold. And then a few weeks later, Angela Merkel decided to say, we will continue to welcome refugees. We will essentially continue to keep our borders relatively open. Certain EU procedures won't be applied anymore for Syrian refugees. And almost immediately, the party began to recover, despite the fact that you had had this internal split. So really, 2015, the second half of 2015, essentially saved the AfD and also put it on a course towards focusing far more on immigration and the consequences of that.
- [10:56]
C
And this is where the AFD really comes onto my radar screen. That is when AFD member Beatrix von Stork, who was then an MEP, a Member of the European Parliament for the AfD, nowadays interviewed by big media like the BBC, that was when Beatrix von Stork, shockingly said German border patrol had the right to shoot irregular female migrants, including those accompanied by children. And I have to ask, do the BBC editors who interview her, do they even know this? Also for context, Beatrix von Stork's paternal grandfather was Hitler's finance minister. Her paternal grandfather was a member of both the Nazi Party and the sa. And also, significantly for our conversation, she and her family are involved in a large network of influential conservative organizations focused on spreading right wing ideas, and indeed, to that point, about spreading ideas. You've written a lot about how a loosely organized cultural dimension rather than economic factors are really key to understanding how extremist parties like the AfD and the German far right have been able to gain acceptance. And it's this that seems to have been underestimated over recent years.
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B
First of all, it's worth pointing out that when you, for example, poll AfD voters and ask them what is the sort of decisive issue? Why do you vote for the party? It is almost exclusively socioculturally. So cultural issues related to immigration are really important. Economics sometimes plays a bit of a role too. But really, when AfD voters are asked what's the defining issue for you? What are you most concerned about? It's always immigration and related to that, national identity and so so forth. So this is, I think worth remembering that when we ask that question, is it economics, is it culture? Of course it is to a certain extent a combination of the two, but I would say primarily cultural issues. And when it comes to the sort of questions concerning cultural influence, what's really important to understand is that a fair bit of work has been conducted there to sort of pave the path for the AfD to be more successful in certain ways. Ways or certain areas. And this is something that has been achieved or conducted and done by outside actors by. You mentioned von Steutch and her sort of activist network. There are plenty of different networks, far right networks, think tanks, for example, that have really tried to change cultural attitudes, shift the so called Overton window in a certain direction, make certain positions more acceptable. And I think this has allowed the party to also move to the right a bit more. Because what's fascinating about the AfD in a lot of ways is that the German domestic intelligence service has said that there are state branches of the party, for example, that can be classified as right wing extremists. Confirmed right wing extremist is sort of official name there. 20 to 25 years ago, that probably would have been the death sentence of most right wing parties. I mean, here in Germany, what political scientists have always said was that in order for a far right party to succeed, it has to credibly distance themselves from really the far right fringe of society, neo Nazi movements and things like that. But fact of the matter is that these kinds of classifications and referring to the party as right wing extremists and the general radicalization of the party that has taken place, appears to not have heard it all that much. And I think part of that can be explained by certain other factors. I mean, the fact that immigration plays a more important role today than it did 20 to 25 years ago. So I think people are more open to voting for an anti Immigration party. But part of that also has to do with the work that outside organizations, activists, strategists, have done in recent years and as I said, have sort of paved the path for the AfD to move in a more Viking direction.
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C
You wrote in January about how the IFDA works in a kind of parallel with external actors. These actors operate outside the party's formal institutional structure. And, and in particular, you wrote about the Voorfeld. We could sort of translate this word as a vanguard, exactly, sort of an.
- [15:16]
B
Ideological vanguard that really wants to shape society in a certain way. So that is quite literally just means the field in front of the party or something like that. And it's made up or composed of various different groups. For example, you have identitarian, the identitarian movement. You have right wing think tanks. And they see themselves or refer to themselves as the forfeit. They refer to themselves as actors that are outside the political party realm. And they relish that because they believe that within the political parties they might be too constrained, they will have to compromise. But outside of the political parties, they have the freedom to sort of shape the general ideology and conduct work, sort of shine a light on certain issues, popularize certain terms, move them into the mainstream. If you look at the identitarian movement, which has spread throughout Europe, they conduct large scale protests, they occupy buildings, they unfurl banners on these buildings, all with the intention of gaining attention for their causes. But their sort of overarching objective is to create an environment where the AfD can become more successful.
- [16:23]
C
And this presence of this ideological incubator, this vanguard, in what ways is that different to how other political parties operate? You know, is that really all that different?
- [16:38]
B
I mean, yeah, most political parties, of course, have sort of organizations and structures that are outside. They have political, they have foundations that do some work. I think what's different about the far right is that they really believe they have to, that they have a lot of work ahead of them, they have to change society, they have to shift certain narratives. And in that sense, they require the work of these kinds of outside actors. Whereas the sort of established political parties are in an environment where they don't really have to do that much work to change society. Right.
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C
The obstacles to acceptance are not as high for other parties. And in this context, you describe another concept called the Voorfeld Arbeit, the work of the vanguard. And I wonder if you can sort of break down that word too, and what that implies.
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B
So you have sort of younger activists, for example, that might stage protests in certain areas. You have think tanks that have conferences and academies where they do all this work. You have publishing houses that are related to these conferences, usually where a lot of right wing thinkers and writers are able to publish their works, which they wouldn't be able to publish in most other sort of established publishing houses. So younger activists might be more interested in taking the movement to the streets, sort of showing everybody, including or especially perhaps young people, that, hey, if you have far right beliefs, you don't have to be worried about that. Here's a big group, you can join us in protests, which is also part of the sort of normalizing strategy. And then you have these think tanks which have academies and conferences where they really think about, okay, what kind of policies can we or should we pursue? And that's sort of the work of this vanguard, that it's not just, in a sense, it's twofold, taking it to the streets, but also creating an ideological foundation for the broader far right.
- [18:34]
C
And I guess the idea is to get more and more voters to, or more and more citizens, more and more people to kind of think about voting for the original, the truly far right ifd, and fewer and fewer for a sort of weaker copy, like for example, a far right curious or far right adjacent conservative party that's part of this movement.
- [18:58]
B
I mean, there are some politicians within the AfD, for example, who also say our biggest sort of opponent is the cdu, the Christian Democrats. Their argument is this party has moved to the center. This party doesn't really have conservative political positions anymore. The party, the cdu, has become open to immigration as well. Every four years. The Christian Democrats still manage to win over some sort of voters that might be inclined to vote for the AfD. But the CDU, ahead of an election will say, okay, we need to also take strong steps to curtail immigration. And in that sense, the CDU sort of prevents a genuine far right shift in society because it is able to win back voters without ever delivering on these center right or even far right promises. So there are figures within the AfD who make the case that we want to occupy the entirety of the space that is to the right of center to push out the sort of mainstream center right party which you've, for example, seen in France, where the traditional center right party has essentially disappeared and Marine Le Pen and her party have to a certain extent taken their place. And that's something that the AfD would like to achieve here in Germany as well.
- [20:09]
C
When it comes to the Warfeld, you identify one of the most successful efforts of the Far right in mainstreaming its political preferences is to do with this concept of re migration.
- [20:22]
B
Exactly. I would say that the term has become popularized. The AFD has been using it for quite a while. So I think it was already present in the 2021 political platform. But having said that, it wasn't really attached to any sort of serious sort of policy profile. And this is where the work of the Forefeld comes in. And then the AFD has been able to sort of pick up different components of it. Having said that, different right wing actors have different interpretations of remigration. The AFD being a political party that has to be somewhat careful about possibly being banned. They interpret re migration in a very sort of legalistic sense, making the case that all we want to do is deport people whose asylum claims have, for example, been rejected, perhaps deport people without a German passport who have a criminal record. And that's all we're talking about. We're not talking about deporting Germans that have a non German ethnic background. And then there are some on the far right who will say, well, actually, in order to establish a better country, we also need to deport people that they that have a German passport that they would consider to be non assimilated. So this is where you have different interpretations of the term. But certainly the fact that we are talking about remigration, the fact that a term which sort of originated within the far right has become or has been adopted by the AFD to such a significant extent, really illustrates how successful the work of the Forefeld or the ideological vanguard has been in recent years.
- [21:54]
C
As you say, the term remigration wasn't so well known at the beginning of this decade, but it became rather better known in early 2024, early last year, when it was revealed by journalists at the Outlet Corrective that senior AFD figures attended a clandestine meeting of European extreme right figures. It was in Potsdam about a supposed master plan for deportations of millions of people, also including naturalized German citizens. Now, what followed was a huge outcry. There were very large protests, very big marches against the AFD in Germany, all across Germany. But that outpouring of revulsion, it hasn't really stopped the AfD. Alice Vidal, the AfD's leader, has embraced the term re migration. I mean, all of this seems like quite a triumph.
- [22:48]
B
Yeah, most certainly. I mean, the protests did lead to a slight decrease in the AfD's vote share in the polls, from about 22 to perhaps 17 to 18%. But it also illustrates that the AFD does have A pretty high floor nowadays. So it is illustrative of the fact that the AFD in the eyes of many voters can do no wrong, that even if there are large scale protests across the country, and the AfD certainly garnered a lot of negative attention during that period, a significant share of Germans continues to support the party. So it also illustrates that even beyond the term re migration, that there's been something of a shift, I would say, in German society over the past few years with the AfD having become normalized and with plenty of voters really believing that the AfD is the sole solution for their primary concern, which is immigration. And I would say there are also plenty of voters nowadays who actually support the core content concept of remigration and who would support the positions that, for example, Martin Sellner voiced during that meeting. And beyond that, just a word on.
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C
Martin Sellner, the Austrian identitarian Martin Sellner. He is a key figure in the Voorfeld that you describe. He pushes ideas about the superiority of European ethnic groups. His organization in Austria, the ibo, received donations from and communicated with Brendan Tarrant before Tarrant carried out consecutive mass shootings in 2019 on a mosque and Islamic cultural center in Christchurch, New Zealand that left more than 50 people dead. Sellner also has been supported by Elon Musk, who restored Sellner's social media account on X and amplified Sellner's posts. You describe how Sellner is abundantly aware of how his far right ideas, particularly on re migration, face this entrenched and powerful ideological opponent, particularly in the media. And he has this idea of a Meinungs Klimannlager, a climate control system for public opinion. Maybe you can describe a little bit more what this means beyond it being what is clearly an over elaborate, overwrought metaphor.
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B
It's sort of, perhaps you could also translate it as a thermostat, that in other words, there's the belief, and this is something that's present in the United States among some far right thinkers as well, that you have this dominant political left which controls all the levers of power. It controls not just governments, but it controls the media, it controls universities. Even the financial lead nowadays supports these positions. And it's sometimes summarized also a civil society in Germany, civil gesellschaft, so that society in general is to a certain extent controlled by these different actors. And what Sellner argues is that if you, for example, have terrorist attacks, people will get angry, the sort of temperature will go up, it will get hotter because people will be annoyed. They will want to call for less immigration for Example, and Zelander makes the case that the dominant political left has all of these tools at its disposal which will allow it to once again lower the temperature by demonizing the AfD, for example, by bringing people out into the streets. So the notion there is that all these protests, for example, after Potsdam, or even contemporary protests that we're seeing in Germany with regards to the AfD, that they are government funded, that there are big institution NGOs behind it that are financing these different protests, that they're not protests that are necessarily coming from within society, but that they are a reflection of the dominance of the political left. And all of these tools then allow the sort of the elite, if you will, to lower the temperature. And Sellner would then argue that a couple of weeks after a terrorist attack, people will once again sort of have relaxed attitudes, anger will have cooled down. And this is only achieved not because people have changed their mind, but because they are sort of bombarded by the elite, by the media, which tells them, no, your anti immigrant attitudes are wrong. And this is the sort of metaphor that he uses, that the temperature of a thermostat can be adjusted by an all powerful sort of all encompassing enemy.
- [27:14]
C
And that's a useful metaphor for Sellner because he uses it to say, well, this is why we need the meta politics to change the culture in order to in a sense destroy the climate control mechanism.
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B
It highlights the belief that yes, we need to actually have our own institutions, we need to become more present in universities, for example. This is where the thinkers of tomorrow are shaped to have our own, perhaps identitarian activists on university campuses and things like that, so that the all powerful enemy will eventually lose its power, will no longer be able to influence society. And part of that of course also is social media. The fact that Elon Musk took over Twitter or X, that has played a huge role or a substantial role, sort of destroying a central pillar of ever present ubiquitous enemy that you have. Because all of a sudden, not just Zelna, but different far right actors are the ones that are actually able to turn up the heat through social media. They're able to create more anger, they're able to drive animosity towards immigrants, towards migrants in general after these attacks.
- [28:17]
C
And that's what we saw Alice Vidal, the leader of the AfD, telling Elon Musk in that interview on X. Thank you Elon, for giving me my own frame. I'm not being reframed by others. What that really means is what you just said, which is it allows them to pour more fuel on the fire quite a lot of times when it comes to generating outrage.
- [28:43]
B
If I may continue a little bit, because now it's. Ellen, it's a complete new situation for me that I just can have a normal conversation and I'm not interrupted or negatively framed how that has been in the media. The case in the last 10 years, which is completely ridiculous.
- [29:13]
C
Your view is that the AP day is very effectively used a broader cultural strategy, and it did so following the game plan of, it turns out, other post war far right movements, this prioritization of cultural and societal transformation over immediate electoral gain. And I just want to highlight how this strategy reflects one of the great ironies, I think, of modern day far right politics irony. Because the far right has drawn explicitly from the theories and strategies of the political left, most notably from the Italian Marxist writer Antonio Gramsci, who was most active in the 1920s and 1930s. This is the same Antonio Gramsci invoked by the former European Commissioner Nicolas Schmidt at the culture conference that I attended in January. Sellner is among many on the far right to cite Gramsci. He does so in his book Regime Change from the A Strategic Sketch. What Philippe, is Gramsci's basic argument about diffusion of culture as a precondition for revolution.
- [30:24]
B
Gramsci expressed, and that has been picked up by a lot of far right thinkers in recent decades, is that in order to enact political change, you have to first of all change society. You need to have an ideological majority before you can obtain a political majority. And there are different ways to go about this, but at the most basic level, this probably requires a fair bit of work. So Gramsci talked about a war of position or a war of movement. So there are always these different periods where a sudden victory can be achieved if there's an upheaval. So you would have a war of movement where all of a sudden you can take over the government. But then when you have a war of position, that's usually in an environment where you have strong government institutions, you have a civil society with certain belief systems. And this is where you have a constant almost you could say war of attrition, where bit by bit you need to try and change society, you need to popularize certain terms, you need to try and win over different pieces of society before you can actually obtain political power. Eventually.
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C
I just want to go back a little bit to the origins of this thinking. There was this kind of zero hour of 1945, the Nazi disaster. Then in the 50s and 60s we have the advent of Christian democracy, liberalism, social democracy and post war Europe, the very significant civil rights gains and advances of the 1960s. So for the far right to make a comeback, it was more and more apparent that this would be a long game. And the one person who gets a lot of credit for laying the groundwork for this cultural meta political strategy is the French philosopher Alain De Benoit. His Nouvelle Droit, or New right movement, would by the 1980s come to be called right wing Gramsciism. And what seems most relevant is De Benoit's founding of an ethno nationalist think tank.
- [32:21]
B
Figures like Benoit realized that after 1945, the sort of traditional far right nationalism, fascism was simply no longer acceptable. It wasn't something that could actually win over people.
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C
You couldn't have brown shirts in the streets.
- [32:34]
B
Exactly. And there was a sense that, well, if we want to obtain political power, we can't do so through revolutionary means anymore. We have to actually apply sort of Gramscian logic, this war of position, long term. And this also went hand in hand with certain other sort of ideological shifts. So somebody like Deb Noir would describe himself as an ethno pluralist. So this notion of we are no longer believing in the superiority of any race or any ethnic group, but we are actually the defenders of diversity because we want every group to have their own homeland. And somebody like Debenoir has, over the decades, frequently attacked the political mainstream as almost being imperialist. This notion that nowadays Western politicians are still trying to impose their views and values on the rest of the world. We are different. We are telling people in other parts of the world, you can have your values, you can have your customs, you can keep them. We don't want to have those customs in our countries, but we also don't want to impose our own universalist, supposedly values, own liberal Western values on you either. You can sort of live happily ever after where you're living. So this was part of a conscious shift to move far right ideas in a more palatable, in a more acceptable direction, moving away from the traditional ethnic superior or racist positioning towards a position where you would say we're all essentially the same, but in order to preserve and protect diversity, we all have to be in our own separate, different countries. And this is something that has been pushed by De Benoit and thinkers of the French Nouvelle Droit for a number of decades. And something that has been picked up by contemporary activists and strategists as well.
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C
It's so interesting about De Benoit. I mean, he's sort of profoundly anti globalist right, anti universalist. Borders really matter to him. He also has this view that sort of late capitalism dilutes and destroys local and regional difference. And he also talks about, you know, returning migrants to their homelands where needed. All of this back in, back in the late 60s and in the 70s and all of which sort of sounds very familiar especially as well this strategy of having journals, having publishing houses, having think tanks and all sorts of fora to spread these ideas. And I have to say it also sounds a lot like what Viktor Orban supporters and his FIDEST movement is sponsoring in Brussels via think tank called the mcc. Magazines like the European conservative news outlets like the Signal. Also what Marion Marechal, Marine Le Pen's niece, is doing with her institute, l' Institut des Sciences Social Economic et Politique. Maloney Giorgio Meloni, the Prime Minister of Italy, she appointed a Culture Minister. Alessandro Giuli has a very long history of activism in the far right.
- [35:34]
B
Exactly. And the Italian Culture Minister Giuli has also written on Gramsci, he published a book on the topic where he also laid out his own plan and said, you know, we have to take some lessons, but we have to also perhaps shift our own positions a bit. We also have to present a somewhat acceptable ideology to the general electorate. We can't just be a movement that is against the political left, but we have to present our own vision of society and it should be something that is more acceptable. But yeah, it is a testament to the long term success of people like Debenois and his colleagues in the French New Right that practically every far right political actor has recognized that the realm beyond politics is really increasingly important. And this is where a lot of the groundwork, a lot of the preparation can be conducted for eventual political success. Of course, somebody like Viktor Orban already has a lot of success. He's been in power for a very long time. But even he recognizes that if he wants to perhaps hold on to power, if he wants to really entrench his own values, he needs to create an environment beyond Hungary as well, where people support these kinds of positions even long after he has left political office.
- [36:42]
C
And in Orban's case, to make sure that he changes some of the policies in Brussels itself through these meta political strategies so Brussels doesn't come back and be as aggressive against him.
- [36:55]
B
Yeah, I think definitely Orban recognizes that in today's environment, Brussels plays a very important role. And this is also why he, for example, welcomed Alice Weidel to Budapest. He wants to forge alliances with other European countries because of the relevance of Brussels. So the notion there is that you also need to normalize far right ideas. And far right positions within society in general across Europe essentially, not just in Hungary, because Hungary itself can do essentially very little when it comes to shaping European policies. But you need to normalize it across the continent. Continent. And that's what something that you can do between these different forefelled organizations, for example, whether it's in Hungary, whether it's in Italy or Germany, they can do the work and they can contribute to far right parties rising in other European countries as well and eventually moving the entire European Union in a more right.
- [37:44]
C
Wing direction, which of course will protect Viktor Orban and his cronies, if you like, over the long term. Philippe, you're also a noted specialist on the U.S. republican Party and some of its and how it's been evolving over recent decades. You've written two books on the subject. You're working on a third which will touch, I'm sure, on the Republican Party. So help me link what we've been talking about, especially the impact of the French New right, the Nouvel d', Art, on the US Radical right, the US Alt right.
- [38:20]
B
I think, first of all, it's fascinating that there is an increasing sort of ideological overlap and an increasing degree of cooperation between the American far right and the European far right. It's worth remembering, for example, the Breitbart doctrine, Andrew Breitbart, who also made the case that politics is downstream from culture.
- [38:38]
C
So Breitbart being the guy who Andrew Breitbart founded Breitbart News, which was a big thing ahead of Trump's first election victory.
- [38:48]
B
Exactly. I mean, during the Tea Party years. And of course, Steve Bannon worked for Breitbart. So you can see that American sort of far right thinkers, even a long time ago, sort of recognized the values of grumpian approaches and recognizing that through creating different networks, through creating alternative media networks, you could then shift society in a certain direction. And yet to this day, I think there is a degree of overlap between, for example, the American alt right, even though the movement has in some ways disappeared. There's not really an organization anymore that deserves the name alt right. But you have different figures that were relevant about a decade ago during the early years of the Trump campaign and presidency. But they also share the belief that, yes, we need to establish our own alternative realm, essentially, we need to go to college campuses, we need to have our own media outlets and so forth. And you do see influential thinkers, at least, who have attitudes or who have sort of ideological interpretations that are quite similar to what you see in Europe. For example, Curtis Yarwin. Yarwin has been cited by JD Vance as one of the figures that at least shape his own worldview to a certain extent.
- [40:06]
C
Curtis Yarvin, very interesting. He wants to replace American democracy with a sort of techno monarchy. He's defended the institution of slavery. He's compared Nelson Mandela and Anders Baring Breivik, the guy in Norway who carried out this awful, awful massacre more than a decade ago, as being equally guilty of terror. Breivik and Mandela equally guilty of terror. As Vanity Fair wrote, Yarvin is so radically right wing that it's just almost hard to comprehend unless you read his stuff. And yet Yarvin has been spoken of approvingly by Silicon Valley bigwigs like Marc Andreasen. He's close to Trump World. He's been funded by Peter Thiel, another Silicon Valley bigwig involved in Trump World. Yarvin attended a Trump inaugural gala in Washington D.C. and J.D. vance, as you say, J.D. vance, has cited Yarvin as an influence.
- [41:07]
B
Curtis Yarvin in his writings talked about the so called Cathedral, which is very similar to Sellner's positioning on the topic, this belief that there is this all powerful leftist organization which controls not just the levers of power but the media and so forth, is essentially opposed to democracy in its current form. He views democracy as an inefficient form of governance, believes that the country should essentially be governed almost like a monarchy, because as I said, in his view, democracy doesn't really lead to the desired outcome for many people. So Yarvin mentioned that in a lot of countries, people are opposed to more migration or they are opposed to open borders. Yet this is not something that has been enacted by politicians. So clearly to Yarvin, he would argue this is an example of democracy not delivering on its key promises. Only sort of semi authoritarian rule can actually deliver libertarian promises of free speech and free markets and things like that. I mean, you mentioned Peter Thiel who has said in the past that he believes maybe freedom and democracy are no longer compatible. So this is the sort of worldview that has in some ways perhaps influenced J.D. vance and other figures within the government.
- [42:21]
C
It's just so extraordinary that J.D. vance would be openly saying that Yarvin is among the people that he reads.
- [42:29]
B
Thirty to 40 years ago, when you look at academia, there were discussions, is there such a thing as a right wing populist party family similar to Social Democratic parties or Christian Democratic parties? And quite often the conclusion was that not really. These are all individual parties. They have some similarities, but they are somewhat different. But I think today there definitely is a very strong ideological overlap between Right. From populist parties in the United States and in Europe. They're anti globalist. They believe that there is a global elite. They're essentially also then opposed to free trade. They support varying notions of remigration, so they are deeply opposed to immigration. And that's something where you see definitely some similarities and also beyond the political party realm with regards to the different movements, the identitarians in Europe, the sort of far right white nationalists in the United States share similar positions. Some of them would also describe themselves in the United States as, as ethno pluralists, where they would say, all I'm asking for is to have my own white homeland. I don't have anything against Mexicans. I don't have anything against other people, but I just want them to stay in their own place. I don't want to impose my own superiority supposedly on them, but I want different ethnic groups to be in different countries. There's definitely, I would say, a fair degree of overlap ideologically between both continents nowadays.
- [43:44]
C
You know, I thought it was interesting how Vance brought this kind of culture war to the Munich Security Conference this year. Not only did Vance signal this partial withdrawal of the US From European security, not only did he scold the organizers of the Munich Security Conference for not having the AFD there, but Vance spent an inordinate amount of time focused on alleged threats to free speech in Europe, namely regulation of online hate speech, even though Europe has long had rules against hate speech. But Vance called this a greater threat to Europe than even Russia. And as absurd as that is, it certainly didn't come out of nowhere for those who know Vance's influences. Right. Yarvin is among the people that he reads.
- [44:34]
B
Exactly. And it's fascinating. I mean, in a lot of ways, I think JD Vance is more of a reflection of the sort of online right wing culture that we have today than somebody like Donald Trump. Even so, J.D. vance is clearly, he's read some of Yaravin's writings, but I think he's also somebody who is very much versed within the sort of online writing sphere. So that he, on Twitter or on X rather, he actually engages with certain figures from the far right and answers their posts and sort of presents his positions when it comes to the Munich Security Conference. I do know that he did reply to a German sort of far right blog who made the case that Vance's speech perhaps was directed at an American audience and that maybe it wasn't quite useful for a European AUDIENCE and JD Vance actually replied to this person who has something of a decent following, but he's most certainly not one of the more well known online personalities. So JD Vance is somebody who has been influenced and perhaps to a certain extent, almost even shaped by the online realm of the far right, who has picked up some of these positions and incorporated them. And we saw this at the Munich Security Conference where he did talk about, as you noted, free speech, which ties in with this belief that the left still dominates the airwaves. And J.D. vance accused the political elites of Europe of not just looking the other way, but of actively trying to bring in more and more immigrants, even though they might not contribute to the economy. In a sense, he used the sort of conspiracy theory of the great Replacement without really referring to it specifically. And that was quite something that he would use the stage to talk about a topic that is very near and dear to many far right figures. This notion of the political elite wants to replace us. They want to bring in more and more immigrants and in order to have an electorate that, for example, is more easily influenced, can be more easily shaped. Of course, he also contributed or he also made the case that there is no need for a firewall anymore between the sort of German establishment and. And the AfD, that in a democracy you cannot have firewalls. You need to cooperate with different parties. So I would say his speech at the Munich Security Conference was something that would have been unthinkable from an American vice president a few years ago or even just a few months ago. And even when Trump and Vance won the election. I don't think anybody could have predicted that JD Vance would deliver a speech quite like this in front of a European audience.
- [46:59]
C
He was doing Warfeld Arbeit meta politics at a very high level.
- [47:05]
B
Exactly. He was doing the sort of meta political world of tying immigration to a deterioration in domestic security, trying to normalize the AfD, of shifting attitudes and sentiments, shifting the Overton window. And really, I mean, you could say, well, if an American vice president accuses the political elite of Europe of essentially trying to replace the native population, how can you really describe this as a far right position anymore? So it normalizes people. And certainly online figures, activists like Zelner, who talked about extensively, were ecstatic about this speech. I mean, this is certainly a speech that I don't want to say it will go down in history, but it's certainly a speech that essentially delivered what the far right wanted to hear. I mean, I would say that if meta political activists from today's European far right had been asked to draft a speech for J.D. vance, it couldn't have looked much different.
- [48:08]
C
Have pro democracy Europeans, have centrist Europeans, have liberal Europeans, have progressive Europeans lost the culture war?
- [48:20]
B
I think it's interesting that early on we talked a bit about the question of why do other parties perhaps not need their own forefront. And I think what we've seen in recent years is illustrative of the fact that they probably do need their own forefront. They need to accept and acknowledge that sentiments appear to have changed and shifted. They can't take their own position within society as granted anymore. So they also need to try and have their own perhaps organizational structure outside of the political parties that talks about migration in a more positive light that makes the case for migration. We are seeing in a number of European countries in the United States as well, for example, that younger voters are increasingly turning towards the far right. In Germany, the AfD has in recent elections done incredibly well among younger voters, which is completely different from what happened even 10 years ago. So this notion that younger voters will always at least initially vote for the far left and perhaps they might moderate a bit going forward, that appears to no longer be the case. And that is indicative or that reflects the fact that sort of meta political work that young activists are doing from the far right is increasingly paying off for them. So in terms of losing the culture war, I think yeah, there are definitely factors that the political establishment that mainstream parties, that mainstream figures and political actors that they need to adopt and learn and maybe they just become a bit too complacent. We talked about the fact that for the past 60 to 70 years they've been. When we talk about democracy and what does democracy mean, these definitions have for the most part been centrist or maybe even center left interpretations. When it comes to immigration, when it comes to a variety of social cultural issues, the political left has really been quite successful even in Europe. For example, most center right parties probably subscribe to a position that 30 to 40 years ago would have been described as a left position. They are in favor of same sex marriage. They are making the case that traditional family roles should no longer necessarily apply, that women should be in the workplace and that the government should help women enter the workplace, things like that. Most centre right parties nowadays in Europe are open to immigration. So in some sense the political left might have been a victim of its own success.
- [50:37]
C
Can a sort of centrist establishment be meta political cultural organizations, think tanks, so on and so forth, who are closely associated with the center right, the center left with The Greens with the liberal parties, they have these very well established relationships with political incumbents. Can you develop metapolitical muscles if you have these relationships?
- [51:07]
B
That's a key question because, I mean, right now, I think in a lot of European countries, the right has been quite successful in saying that there's only one alternative. Looking at Germany, the alternative for Germany would say we are the sole alternative. If you are dissatisfied with the work of all of the other parties that essentially can enter coalitions with one another all the time, you can only opt for us. And that's something that probably needs to be changed, that kind of narrative. So other parties, I think, have to perhaps become more polarized. They have to really present themselves as parties that have different attitudes on a variety of topics. And that's something that is particularly relevant in a German context because of the political system that we have. The center right is open to ancient coalitions with various center left parties, which on the one hand you could say is sensible, because the argument is all democratic parties have to be able to cooperate when they are faced with a very strong afd. But at the same time it also plays into the cards of the AfD, which is able to then present itself as the sole alternative. And that's also, to a certain extent, part of the meta political work of other figures within the forefield, also making this case that, hey, if you are dissatisfied with the way things are going, you can only choose one party, whether that's meta politics or just sort of general political work. Other parties have to be more open to disagreements within each other. They have to sometimes perhaps readjust some of their own positions. As you mentioned, it's very difficult for, I think, political establishment parties to do meta political work because they have to a certain extent been quite successful within Gramsci's war of position. They have really dominated different parts of the establishment of the elite, and they have to find their own sort of approach, their own way of reasserting perhaps some of their dominance.
- [52:58]
C
And this is particularly difficult in the context of European Union politics, where you have a kind of inbuilt grand coalition, where even in the Commission, the European Commission itself, you have socialists and you have people from what is the acceptable far right and the conservatives and the liberals all working together for one end. There may be some dynamism, but there is the perception from the outside that they are all in it together. That does open the space, I think, particularly to Eurosceptic parties, to anti European narratives.
- [53:39]
B
I think that's a sort of general problem within the European Parliament. You don't have that traditional dynamic of the government and opposition where you, you know, as a voter, if you are dissatisfied with the government, regardless of your own ideological positions, you know that there is an alternative movement that you can vote for if you dislike government policies. And yeah, you don't have that at the European level because you have a shift in coalitions. And maybe that this is something that, where you can make the case that the European Union, the European Parliament, needs to become more like a traditional government with governing coalitions. But at the most fundamental level, I think a voter needs to understand that there is an alternative to a governing majority. And that alternative should be made up of not just right wing populist parties. That alternative has to be made up of other parties as well.
- [54:27]
C
And to that point, there are so many people in Brussels who occasionally talk about the idea, the moment when the socialists and the Democrats, when the center left will. Quotes go into opposition, they will not vote for a center right European Commission president like Ursula von der Leyen and, and become a very large opposition and not go for jobs and not go for high positions. The thing is that even though that's occasionally talked about, nobody really expects it to happen anytime soon. And I think that's a problem too.
- [55:01]
B
Yeah, most definitely. I think that it's very tempting to be in government. It's very tempting to have these different jobs and positions. But also, I mean, at the German level we are seeing something similar where if you look at various state governments here in Germany, the Christian Democrats have essentially been forced to enter coalitions with left wing parties. All of this in order to continue or to preserve the firewall, which at least on the surface it sounds sensible enough. But in my view, at Some point the AfD will simply become too strong and you're going to have to find some kind of solution there, whether it's incorporating them.
- [55:36]
C
But then we're facing the question. And by keeping up the grand coalition, by keeping up the firewall, by keeping up these rather sort of Frankenstein like relationships between, let's say the socialists, the center left and the center right. Are you preserving democracy by doing that? And I think for me that's the big dilemma. You know, should I be, should we be celebrating these sort of, this sort of grand coalition politics of center left and center right in cooperation as a bulwark, preserving our freedoms?
- [56:07]
B
Yeah, I mean, if you look at it from a German perspective, the two parties that used to form the grand coalitions, they're no longer the two strongest parties, which begs the question that, yeah, Is this really sensible for democracy if the traditionally largest parties enter government and voters are left with an environment where the sort of sole alternatives are parties at the fringes? And that's a huge issue, both at the European level, but also in different national electoral arenas. And it'll take some time for political parties to readjust their positions. But certainly I think one of the big conclusions is that all of these different parties, Whether it's the AfD, the Freedom Party in Austria, Marine Le Pen, these are all political actors that are here to stay. And it appears quite clear that in a lot of environments, retaining the firewall clearly has not had the desired result. I mean, here in Germany, we can say the AfD over the past decade has become more radical, but it's also become more successful. That's not solely due to the policies or the positioning of other parties. So I'm not saying that there's necessarily a very strict causal relationship between these two factors. I personally worry that at some point, 10 years from now, the AFD will be strong enough to form governments on its own and that the options that are on the table are no longer the AfD can disappear or the AfD grows stronger. But you're essentially facing the option of the AfD will become a governing party at some point, either governing by itself because it might have a substantially large share of the vote, or it will become a junior coalition partner in some other form of government. And the question becomes, in order to preserve democracy, what is the best path going forward? We would all agree that the perfect path for preserving democracy would be if anti democratic parties were not particularly strong. But we're just in an environment now where these parties have gained in strength and maybe we need to find ways to decrease their vote share by bringing some of them in from the cold. That has sometimes worked, sometimes it doesn't work. And of course you're faced with the issue that what happens if you bring an anti democratic party into government? Will this decrease democratic quality? And I know it's not a satisfactory answer, but I think the problem is that we're just faced with a bunch of really poor options and there is no great option anymore. There is no real blueprint for preserving democracy.
- [58:25]
A
That's it for this episode. But one more thing before you go. There's an easy way to become a material supporter of EU Scream. It's simple. You look for EU Scream@patreon.com and you pledge what you can. Now, EU Scream is non profit journalism. We might occasionally do partnerships and take advertising, and we're grateful to Full Beam Media for an annual grant, but here's the we need your support to bring you more content more regularly. It's your support that helps us delve into this new, darker era in our politics, into how the EU should be responding, and into the thoughts and experience of people who really know what they're talking about. Small donations to large ones, it's all incredibly appreciated. It also helps when we get a five star rating at Spotify or a review at Apple. Podcasts and passing on episodes to family, colleagues, friends. That's another great way to show support. For more details and for more EU scream do, please visit EU scream.com Thanks for listening.
- [59:33]
B
Sam.