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History As It Happens
Who Are AfD?
00:47:28
The right-wing Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) is now the second-most popular political party in Germany after a strong showing in national elections. The party is unapologetically pro-German, vehemently opposing the presence of Muslim immigrants...
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- [00:01]
Roger Griffin
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- [00:59]
Roger Griffin
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- [01:02]
Martin DeCaro
Claim your place in history with dot vote history as it happens. March 11, 2025 who are afd Friedrich.
- [01:12]
Roger Griffin
Mertz is the man expected to be the next Chancellor. The Far Right Party AfD looks set to make historic gains and arguably the.
- [01:20]
Martin DeCaro
Biggest winners with 20%, its biggest result ever. Werden wir die Grand Centralie vataland.
- [01:32]
Roger Griffin
The economy has not been doing well for at least two years. People feel that every and rising prices within society.
- [01:38]
Martin DeCaro
There are a lot of people supporting.
- [01:39]
Roger Griffin
AFD and I think it's okay to be proud to be German. This is a very important principle.
- [01:44]
Martin DeCaro
Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There's no room for firewalls. Germany's far right populist party Alternative for Deutschland finished second in national elections, the strongest showing for the country's extreme right since the Second World War when, yes, that guy ruled the Third Reich. Who leads AfD? Who votes for them? What does the party's rise tell us about the future of liberal Democracy in Europe 80 years after the defeat of the Nazis? That's next with Roger Griffin as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.
- [02:25]
Roger Griffin
They want Germany for the Germans, which is a mythic idea because what about a third generation Turkish German or Muslim German or a Jewish German or whatever? I mean, so you can't be a German. It actually said in 2016 program of the air Islam does not belong to Germany. Now that can either be seen as an echo of saying Jews don't belong in Germany and you have pogroms and you have concentration camps, or it can Just say we are losing our Germanness. Most populists feel American populists feel that America has somehow. It's been too much of the world policeman. It's been too generous, it's been too nice. It's allowed a whole load of freeloaders to destroy what American. And we're going to make America not just great, but we're going to allow real Americans, and that's the dangerous concept, to feel good about themselves again.
- [03:19]
Martin DeCaro
As they sat silently in their seats, Vice President J.D. vance lectured the delegates at the Munich Security Conference about democracy and freedom, about values. He zeroed in on something called the firewall against the far right. But what German democracy, what no democracy, American, German or European will survive, is telling me millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered. Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There's no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don't. The firewall is a pledge by Germany's mainstream political parties not to work with Alternative for Deutschland, which the Associated Press reports is under observation by the domestic intelligence agency for suspected right wing extremism, something the AfD strongly objects to. In national elections at the end of February, AfD nearly doubled its support, finishing second, the best showing for a far right party in the country's post war history.
- [04:34]
Roger Griffin
Black, red and gold, the colors of the German flag celebrated by a party.
- [04:39]
Martin DeCaro
That has wrapped itself in it.
- [04:42]
Roger Griffin
The AfD are the rising insurgents of.
- [04:45]
Martin DeCaro
German politics, shunned by the political establishment, but not by an increasing number of voters.
- [04:53]
Roger Griffin
Led by Alice Weidel, an openly gay.
- [04:55]
Martin DeCaro
Former Goldman Sachs banker and now the.
- [04:58]
Roger Griffin
Darling of the populist hard right.
- [05:00]
Martin DeCaro
Die grandson Schliesen. On day one, we'll close the borders of our beloved fatherland, said Alice Vidal at a party rally. We will protect our borders against illegal immigration. Enough is enough. We will simultaneously deport all those who are obliged to leave the country. Now some right wing Americans are big fans of afd, apparently Elon Musk, who addressed party members via video link recently.
- [05:41]
Roger Griffin
I think some things that, something I think that is just very important is that people take pride in, in Germany and being German. This is very important. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's okay to be proud to be German. This is a very important principle. I think there's like frankly too much of a, of a focus on, on past guilt and we need to move beyond that. People, children, should not be guilty of the sins of their parents. Or even let alone their parents, their.
- [06:11]
Martin DeCaro
Great grandparents, maybe even Anyone familiar with 20th century European history understands why talk of German national greatness and pride is so unsettling. It evokes memories of a very dark past. But AFD is a new political party founded in 2013. And what do you do when you want to learn about something? Quickly, consult your Encyclopedia Britannica's entry on Alternative for Deutschland says it was formed during the rise of Euroscepticism in the wake of the eurozone debt crisis. But since then, the party's adopted a platform based on German nationalism and fear of Islam. AfD started out protesting the euro as the EU's sole currency and rejected bailouts of EU member countries. And then in 2015, the party started focusing on a different issue, immigration. AfD opposed Angela Merkel's open borders policy as refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere entered Germany. AFD called it an invasion of foreigners. Amid rising populist and xenophobic attitudes in Europe, the party's rhetoric also became explicitly anti Muslim. In 2016, it called for a ban on Islamic symbols of power in Germany, which included minarets, the public call to Islamic worship, and full body veils. In the 2017 general elections, AfD received enough votes to form a bloc in the federal parliament. The party is unapologetically pro German. The Central Council of Jews in Germany says it is an extremist party that embodies Nazi ideals, which AFD strongly denies. Nazi, neo Nazi, or something else? Alternative for Deutschland is now the second most popular party in Europe's largest country as the far right across the continent builds on its gains at the ballot boxes, eroding the foundations of liberal democracy. So the argument goes, these right wing parties are the problem, not the mainstream parties whose firewall was criticized by Vice President Vance. Roger Griffin is Emeritus professor of Modern History at Oxford Brookes University and is one of the world's foremost experts on the socio historical and ideological dynamics of fascism. And he is one of my favorite guests here on the podcast. Roger Griffin, welcome back my friend.
- [08:27]
Roger Griffin
Thank you.
- [08:28]
Martin DeCaro
Know that old line from Godfather Part three? I think it was Part three where Michael Corleone says every time I try to get out, somebody pulls me back.
- [08:36]
Roger Griffin
In, but I'm not too eager to get out and you don't send me too many horses heads.
- [08:42]
Martin DeCaro
Except you just gave a talk at a. Well, I'll let you explain it. You were invited somewhere in Europe to discuss fascism again. What happened there?
- [08:52]
Roger Griffin
Yeah, well, of course, as I'VE explained in an earlier podcast. I owe my career to the fact that fascism keeps on mutating and cropping up again in the media, etc. When I started being a student of fascism, I was told it was a dead topic to look at. Why did I bother? But it keeps cropping up in different forms. It's like some sort of multi headed hydra. Yes. I got this invitation in England. If you've gone to Oxford, it's called the Other Place. It means Cambridge University. Both Oxford and Cambridge have a university union where you have debates. And there was a famous debate in the Oxford Union shortly before the Second World War where the House, as it's called, the Oxford body of students, said that they wouldn't fight for Britain if there was a war. And Hitler, apparently, who was the Putin of the time, found that very encouraging. But in Cambridge, they decided to actually debate whether Trump was a fascist. And it took the form of a motion which said this House believes that Trump is the extreme fascist of the 21st century. And I was invited to oppose the motion. Incidentally, the motion won. There was a packed house and it was a great atmosphere, but like a. Not even a boxing match, more. More like a sort of a football match atmosphere.
- [10:09]
Martin DeCaro
Yes. And I read your remarks and I tend to agree with your position. I've adopted the Roger Griffin definition of fascism. The key being the palingenesis, notions of rebirth. But in your remarks I want to ask you about something because it's related to our coming conversation here about alternative for Deutschland. You said that today's right wing populists, and we can debate that definition too. But you said today's right wingers, what do you call them? Monocultural nationalists? Populists. You say that they're actually. Yeah, they're more dangerous than the 20th century fascists.
- [10:45]
Roger Griffin
No, I was trying to say in the present context of contemporary history, they represent a greater threat to democracy than fascists.
- [10:54]
Martin DeCaro
Oh, I see.
- [10:55]
Roger Griffin
Now today's fascists, in the interwar period, the threat to democracy was posed by fascists, but now the main threat to democracy is not posed by fascists. Even though fascists are more extreme, as I hope I'll be able to explain, their ideology is more extreme. But they are so marginalized and they're so minimal in their actual populist strength as a body of fanatics and so less a threat than populism, which. That they are the main threat to a healthy democracy, apparently.
- [11:26]
Martin DeCaro
I did not read your remarks very carefully.
- [11:28]
Roger Griffin
Don't worry, that's what I was trying to get at the basic thrust of what I said was that Trump is technically, if you apply academic definitions, not a fascist. But actually that's irrelevant to the fact that his type of politics poses a greater threat to democracy and civil society and probably world stability than contemporary fascism, which is limited really to what I call fantasy fascists, of which there are probably over a million in the world who, a bit like political pornography, fantasize about fascism, like fantasy football. And then there are real fascists who, if they go into action mode, become terrorists or lone wolves who take out a synagogue or a homosexual dance or something, but they are not, they're not a major threat to the structures of democratic society, whereas I'm arguing that right wing populism is.
- [12:19]
Martin DeCaro
Why don't we talk about AfD? The alternative for Deutschland Capital, a lowercase FD, came in second in the German elections because this is related to your remarks at Cambridge about the threat to the liberal world. Today, AFD is a. Is a favorite of Elon Musk. Vice President Vance seems to have a liking for them as well. One of their leaders, a co leader, doesn't really fit the mold in our minds what we expect from a right wing extremist. She's a lesbian who was first attracted to the party because of its opposition to the euro. Not any kind of, you know, hatred of Muslims, for instance. So who is afd? Why do they matter?
- [12:59]
Roger Griffin
ROGER Griffin well, beautifully named Alternative for Germany. It doesn't have a title that evokes Nazism or racial hatred in any way. Now, this Alternative for Germany has a lot of connotations. One is it is not part of the old gang of parties that made up familiar German politics with alternations between the CDU and the CSU and all this sort of stuff. So instead we are new and we are suggesting, and this is the deeper subtext, a different sort of Germany. And then you have to drill into what is this deeper sort of Germany? Well, the, the bigger elephant in the room for millions of ordinary Germans, especially after Angela Merkel learning from her German understanding of the Hitler past, was the admission of over a million immigrants, not all of whom were Syrians, not all of whom were refugees from torture or war. Some of them were economic refugees. There was no sort of checking to make sure that they all deserved it. And quite very interestingly, sociologically, this million, they were greeted as they got off the trains, having done a lot of heavy lifting and walking across Europe. They were then put on trains when they got to southern Germany and taken to Berlin and other places where they were greeted by members of the German public. So there was this great self congratulatory sense that liberal Germany has never been so liberal, it's anything but racial, it's put all the ghost of Hitler to rest, etc, etc. But there was an enormous backlash. Now of course, migration wasn't new to Germany at all. There's a very strong Muslim Turkish segment in the German population in West Germany and that had already caused some racism. But they were extraordinary. They were originally called Gastarbeiter or guest workers, but the guests didn't go home. They were a bit like a foil racist. They were like a nightmare guest who then decides to not go home at the end of the dinner party. The guest workers, second generation, third generation, became very integrated into Germany. But of course that was West Germany. We've got to remember that in 1991 when the wall went down and eventually East Germany was integrated into a single Germany, that there was a huge population of Germans, ethnic, cultural, German speaking Germans, who had been brought up in a communist led type socialist so called republic. And they were told that capitalism was fascism and that Nazism had been defeated the most thoroughly by the Soviet Union. And that in a way West Germany was an example of the decadent capitalism that socialism was meant to protect you from. And several generations of East Germans never really were taught to come to terms with what the Nazis actually did. And they came into a united Germany where they lost their familiar reality. A lot of the industry in East Germany was taken out. There was a big migration to West Germany, but nevertheless those who stayed in big cities like Leipzig or Dresden and all these wonderful Weimar, all these former East Germans, there was a lot of unemployment, a lot of unrest, a lot of identity crisis. And what you actually bred in Eastern Germany was a racism, especially the Syrians who'd just come into Germany. There were, there were attempts to burn down asylum hostels, et cetera. So that first phase of backlash was exactly when the AfD was created. And even though it started off in the mind of its founders as a pushback against the euro and the EU and a sort of sense that the EU was watering down Germanness, what really turbocharged its populist support was the perception that here were a million people from a different culture and a different background who were suddenly going to not only have to be integrated, but get jobs and houses and all the familiar charges.
- [17:00]
Martin DeCaro
That's right. If not Nazi or neo Nazi, they are xenophobic and they're considered by the German mainstream to be an extremist. Party that's actually been under state surveillance. According to a website, counterextremism.com, a group of economists, as you alluded to Roger Griffin, a group of economists established AFD in 2013 out of concern that the European Union's economic policies were weakening Germany's economy. In 2014, just a year after it was established, AfD won 10% of the vote in local elections in the German state of Saxony. Its co founder, that's Germany. Yes. Its co founder, Berndt, Lucky my German pronunciation stinks. Quit in July 2015, declaring the party had become xenophobic. Later that month, Frauke Petrie took over as the party's leader and shifted its focus from economics to immigration. In 2016, Petrie stated her belief that German police should, if necessary, shoot at illegal immigrants trying to enter Germany. And the AFD deputy leader, Alexander Gowland stated that most Germans wouldn't want to live next door to German soccer player Jerome Boateng because his father is from Ghana. So there's a little bit of background. But let's go to its base of support today. You were talking about East Germany and its history under Communism during the Cold War. That is its biggest base of support today. The New York times reporting that 46 out of 48 voting districts, so only two did not or should say were not won by the AfD in the former East Germany outside of Berlin. So they dominate that part of the country.
- [18:43]
Roger Griffin
This is where language is important. You said that it's been considered an extremist party, et cetera, et cetera. Now, let's be clear. Germany's got a rather interesting bit of government that I wish was more widespread. And it's called the Office for the Defence or Protection of the Constitution. And literally you've got people there, women and men in suits and not in suits, sitting at a desk in a room or in several rooms scrutinizing political parties and movements and organizations to see whether they are constitutional. Now, if they are radical, radical, which means going to the roots, they are legal. It is legal to question immigration policy in Germany. I could say as a German, there are too many migrants in England. That's exactly what the Reform Party is saying in in Britain. And very few people are calling it extreme. If you talk to somebody like Farage, yes, you can hate him, you can do what you like, but he's not a sort of fascist figure. But there is a category of attitude that is illegal, which is non constitutional and that's called extreme. If you are a radicala party and people vote for you, you get funding from the state because they give money to democratic parties in order to oil the wheels of the democratic process. But if you are extreme and you're uttering opinions which are forbidden by the constitution and by the legal apparatus, then you are extreme and you are banned as a party and you do not get funding and you can't participate in elections. So it's extremely important whether a party as a whole is categorized as extreme or radical.
- [20:28]
Martin DeCaro
Roger, let me interject here before you continue. This is what the American right and others have been criticizing about Germany. JD Vance, his speech at the Munich Security Conference brought this up. You know, this is anti free speech. This is anti democratic to penalize parties because you disagree with their views. I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections or shutting people out of the political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy. And speaking up and expressing opinions isn't election interference.
- [21:10]
Roger Griffin
I get where they're coming from, but they are extraordinarily ignorant people. Or some people would say they're willfully ignorant because it is perfectly permitted in Germany to vote, have poster campaigns to appear on debates, no question at all of anybody trying to stop the free speech of the AfD. Absolutely not. But when somebody is calling for extreme measures, when you are photographed making a Hitler salute in front of an old bunker of the Second World War with a uniform on, when you are invoking the Third Reich as being a good idea and you are still a member of a party that is illegal. So what is banned in Germany is the extreme manifestations of racism, xenophobia, etc. And nationalism, which can be hosted by a radical party. And that is exactly what has happened. There was a guy called Lut who actually said he was a fascist. But far more interesting, there was a Flugel, a wing of the AfD, but it's being monitored by this Office of the Defence of the Constitution, led by a famous guy in German politics called Bjorn Hooker and the Hooker Flugel. The Hooker wing is overtly fascist in its language, in its private conversations. If Wanz knows that, then he's just literally becoming a propagandist for the AfD. If he doesn't know that, then he's extremely dangerous. Because to actually encourage the extremist wing of a radical legal party in the name of free speech, it is illegal in America, I hope, certainly is in Britain, what's called hate speech and to incite people to racial violence or to celebrate in Germany, it's Extremely elaborate the legislation against any attempt whatsoever to rehabilitate the Nazi party, deny the Holocaust, use swastikas, use memorabilia. The memories of Third Reich created this measure that only a certain percentage of the budget could be spent on military spending. And that's exactly what the new German administration has to overturn.
- [23:20]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, I was saying I can understand why, because of its history, Germany has these rules. You asked about the United States incitement to violence is illegal, but the bar for proving that, in my view, is correctly. Very, very, very high. We have among the most liberal free speech laws, and I'm happy for that in the world here in the United States, case law from the 20th century. You know, right now we have the Trump administration saying they're going to deport and defund universities where they have protesters who support Hamas. Well, what does that mean? Does that mean, mean college students shouting slogans? So I'm very well.
- [23:57]
Roger Griffin
There's an extraordinary.
- [23:58]
Martin DeCaro
Let me just say. Yeah, I'm just very sensitive to any, any rules, regulations about.
- [24:03]
Roger Griffin
In Orwellian terms, America is becoming the home of doublethink. I mean, in other words, a Moscow Vance can attack Europe for eroding its values and for becoming the enemy within. But of course, this is part of a very important discourse of the far right, which is an intolerance of what's called wokeism. If you are too liberal, if you are, if you allow or celebrate gender fluidity, encourage Mexicans to come and settle in your country. If you have a whole load of attitudes that they consider to be part of the woke lies, then they won't tolerate that free speech. So it's really important that we distinguish between the office of the Constitution, it hasn't even banned it, but it's monitoring the Hurka wing, which has been judged to be extreme. There's a wonderful pamphlet written by a left wing political commentator demonstrating that Hooka is an unreconstructed neo Nazi who is very carefully, because we must never think of Nazis as stupid. Some of them are very bright. He very carefully uses language in the public arena to cover his genuine fascist convictions. But the mainstream AfD is not a revolutionary party. Its voters are made up of many different types of German citizens and vote for different reasons. And for some, it's a question of a hatred of the eu, which is holding back the German economy. For some, it's the issue of migration. For some who are moving further to the right, it's the presence of Islam in Germany and the idea of an identity crisis. For some, and they're the fascists. It's a nostalgia for when Germany was great. And of course, it's not like when America was great or even when Brit was great, unless we go back to the 17th, 18th centuries, when there was slavery, etc. It was the greatness of the interwar period, when we were allies against Hitler, when we. When we had powerful leadership as leaders of the free world. But the people who have nostalgia for the 30s are actually nostalgic for a strong Germany, an expansionist Germany, and a Germany that doesn't have to apologize for anything in the past. And these are also voters. And for some, it's purely economic. They can't get a job, they can't get flats, they're unemployed, they see migrants getting social help, et cetera. And so there's a variety. But the vast bulk of the party encounters no restraints on their freedom of speech whatsoever. And the idea that they are somehow protecting something important. If we decode that idea in Vance and Musk and the support for the AfD, it's because ultimately they project onto the AfD the idea that they are fighting immigration, mass migration, they're fighting weak government, they're fighting for the same issues as Trump populists. They're fighting for Europe, which is proud and strong and has secure borders, is not held back by too much charity and too much generosity towards the underclasses. And in particular, it cuts back. The state does not hand over power to this overblown, overinflated EU as they see it. And so they identify with the populist parties in Europe as being on the same wavelength as the Trumpists are in America.
- [27:48]
Martin DeCaro
It's an illiberal nationalism in the us, in Germany, in France and Hungary and other places where the far right is electoral gains. Right? Yeah, you're right. There are factions within the AfD, some further to the right than others. You cannot, in Germany, be a Nazi. Right. The party is illegal. Nazi symbolism.
- [28:08]
Roger Griffin
You can't even show a swastika on the COVID of a book. You would not believe the degree. I had a book with a picture of a. A Nazi maypole. It was a Nazi celebration of May Day, and they did a maypole, and on the top there was a little swastika. And it could not be printed with that cover in Germany because they're so sensitive about the past. But the idea that there's suppression of free speech is just another Trumpian lie. And we never know how much it's ignorance or how much it's actual cynical propaganda.
- [28:40]
Martin DeCaro
You mentioned the swastika. I Have William Shire's book here, the Rise and Fall, the Third Reich and Ival, an old edition. I found that a used bookstore and there's a big swastika on it, so.
- [28:53]
Roger Griffin
It had to be changed in the German edition.
- [28:55]
Martin DeCaro
I won't bring that one on the plane ride.
- [28:57]
Roger Griffin
So this leads on to the point I was trying to make, which is that what really frustrates me. And it's partly an academic puritanism about language, but it's partly a deep political point. By constantly going on about the extremism or fascism of a populist party, it distracts us from what I think is really going on, which is much more sinister, much more dangerous. And it's the deliberalization of liberal democracy.
- [29:24]
Martin DeCaro
Incurvation.
- [29:26]
Roger Griffin
Well, I could, I could bore your listeners with that concept, but I might even.
- [29:29]
Martin DeCaro
We already did that one, but.
- [29:31]
Roger Griffin
I know, I know, but we can't assume that people have heard about it and it's still not a happy phrase because it's, it doesn't evoke what it is. But what I would really like to stress, and this is where history comes in, people use fascist and illiberal almost as synonymous. But a liberal democracy has historically nothing to do with fascism. And I'd like to explain why. If you look at Greek democracy, if you look at early American democracy, if you look at 18th, 19th century British democracy, all these democratic states had their legislations and their elections and their representatives of different factions. And there was a certain type of legal system, et cetera. There were the trappings of what we call democracy, but there were groups who were excluded from the democratic process. Slaves, indigenous Americans, first nation peoples in America. Britain still had a slave based empire till way into the 19th century. Women didn't have the vote, the poor didn't have the vote. In other words, democracy has never been originally liberal. Greek democracy was a slave society. So the liberal in liberal democracy is never to be equated with democracy. Democracy is not intrinsically liberal. It's nice to a group, either an ethnic group or cultural group or religious group within society, and it marginalizes other groups. The struggle for a genuine liberal democracy is the struggle for extending not just voting rights, suffrage, but human rights to for example, medical service, schooling, et cetera, et cetera, to more and more underprivileged groups in society. Now what is for me a crucial moment in recent history of Europe or Europe's right wing is Viktor Orban, who a few years ago proudly told the Hungarian people that he had created an illiberal democracy if you go to Hungary, it's a very prosperous place, very energetic, etc. Etc. If you just hung out in the cafes. So this isn't the Third Reich, there aren't paramilitaries around, there isn't a propaganda machine, there's still free newspapers, et cetera. But if you drill deeper into Viktor Orban's Hungary, it's pro Putin, it blocks attempts to support Ukraine in the eu, it has created a fortress Hungary with extraordinary measures against immigration, it's refused immigration into Hungary to share the burden of mass migration from Syria, etc. And it continues to marginalize and some would say persecute the Zinta and the Roma, the Romanes, the Gypsies or whatever you're going to call them. And there is a very strong streak of antisemitism in Hungary, so strong that Hungary's preeminent European style university, the Central European University, which was founded by Soros, who was a Jewish philanthropist, philanthropist, had to move to Vienna because it was banned from Hungary. So Hungary is an illiberal democracy and Orban is free from it. And what a very good book about this process calls the deliberalization of democracy is Orbanization. Now the urbanization of democracy is very, very different from anything envisaged or activated by Mussolini or Hitler.
- [32:57]
Martin DeCaro
Let me just share with you a couple of lines from a Reuters article. It focuses somewhat on how Elon Musk was trying to help AfD in its election fortunes. The article states AfD Alternative for Deutschland. Growing popularity illustrates a phenomenon spreading across Europe as populous far right parties make their biggest gains in decades. Once on the political fringes, they now hold or share office in Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Slovakia, Finland and Croatia. They are either the largest or second largest parties in the parliaments of Sweden, Austria and now Germany and have surged in polls in France. Support for the far right has also grown in Romania, Belgium, Spain and Portugal. They have been boosted by high immigration, economic stagnation and perceived restrictions on free speech. As we've been discussing all issues Elon Musk has amplified in his X posts as he is want to do. I do believe that Elon Musk and Donald Trump are are mentally ill. There's something wrong with anyone who lies as much as they do. Deliberately spreads this poison into the atmosphere. But you know Roger Griffin, I think Vladimir Putin would love to see far right parties, anti liberal, anti democratic authoritarian parties take power in a number of European countries. It makes it easier for him to exert Russian influence in those places. Is that.
- [34:21]
Roger Griffin
Well, actually one of the Curious links between Musk and Putin is the fact that both of them have encouraged far right wing parties. Putin only a decade ago actually funded a major conference of far right wing neo fascists and extreme populists in Moscow. Why? Not because he himself is a fascist, but because it subverts. I mean, let's get clear, the bugbear of Putin is a strong Europe. Partly, I think we've got to accept the fact that people like Putin have a set of genuine beliefs and convictions like Hitler did. And then the outer layer in their public performances is propaganda. But it would be very dangerous to dismiss everything they say as only propaganda. There is a public presentation of the ideas, but they have core beliefs. And I believe that Putin genuinely believes that Russia has a massive destiny as a nation, that it's been, first of all, it was attacked by the Nazis and they fought this heroic patriotic war to defeat Nazism. And after that, the west ganged up on the Soviet Union and created an arms race and a Cold War which was a threat to Russia. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't anti communist, it was anti Russian. And then Putin is trying to make the country great again, but the EU and NATO can be seen from Moscow as a West that couldn't wait to bring Ukraine into its fold. A country that till recently within living memory, been part of the Soviet empire.
- [35:53]
Martin DeCaro
And feelings of humiliation are important here.
- [35:56]
Roger Griffin
Yeah. And a deep sense of. I mean, in a way, another thing that links Putin to Trump, though, I'm not putting them on the same level because they are not the same type of ideology, but they're both products of a sense of national decline and national humiliation. The loss of the American dream, the decay of the heroic phase of American industry, farming out of your production to China, the loss in Vietnam, the. Also, and I must say here, I'm very divided. I mean, it is true, objectively, if I was American, even if I was a liberal American, that Europe has allowed itself to live under the military and defense umbrella provided by America, its nuclear threat and its militarism and its organization of NATO for far, far, far too long. And if you think of the amount of money pouring out of America to Israel, to charities, to aid, and to NATO and to Ukraine, I can see why. And the sheer size of the US debt, you can see how the irritation with the EU and with liberal democracy and with countries that allow in the very sort of people that America wants to keep out of its nation as a drain on resources that you can see there's a certain rationale here. So I Don't want to demonize Trump. All I want listeners to come away with is the realization that when we say that somebody like Trump or even Putin are fascists, they represent forces that liberal Europe, democratic Europe, has fought only two generations ago. We've got V E Day coming up soon. But illiberal democracy is born within our democracy. It's a throwback to a pre liberal phase of democracy. It is a genuine enemy rather than something from outside. When we, when we call Trump a fascist, we other him and it becomes like some sort of virus from outside. But what we do not notice is the degree to which liberal democracy itself is in crisis. And it's a time to rally a pushback among genuine liberal Democrats.
- [38:06]
Martin DeCaro
We have our 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year and Donald Trump will be president. So I was going to ask you before your answer there, where is this going? The center, the center left, even conservative parties that are not on the far right, they form coalitions in many of the countries I listed before. So that the center, if you will, can hold. Are we looking at a future where the right will be not just second place or the largest opposition party in many of these countries, but in power in many, if not most of the European states in the European Union, which would be a rejection of the new Europe, post 1945 Europe, the post Cold War Europe, with a respect for human rights, respect for borders.
- [38:51]
Roger Griffin
But let's remind ourselves the fact that Slovakia and Hungary and for a time Poland all had right wing populist governments and they started creating a very uncomfortable society for homosexuals, for cosmopolitan liberals who wanted to spend more time on. Don't forget ecology, very important element here. Don't forget that part of the anti woke thing is also an attack on the idea of the ecological crisis as sort of apocalyptic myth. When Trump says drill, baby, drill, you know, there is this extraordinary nexus of associated but very different issues for the populist mind. And there's a subterranean link between being disturbed by fluid gender politics and being disturbed by people who believe we're heading towards an ecological breakdown or who believe that a certain amount of the resources of a first world country should be naturally go into helping people in Sudan or Yemen or whatever. One of the anomalies in this is that Meloni, who is habitually called a fascist because her party has a fascist origin, a she's a populist and not a fascist just because Italy had the first major fascist party, but also she is pro Ukraine because that's another part of this cluster. Most right wing populists in Europe are also certainly suspicious of the EU helping Ukraine and some of them take it to being actively pro Putin. Now, what would happen if in country after country you actually get. It would have to be a majority. One of the most encouraging reactions or pushbacks against the rise of the populist right is in most of the major countries there is a tacit or explicit understanding that when it comes to forming coalitions, the radical right, let's call it extreme right, you can never form a coalition with a radical right party. And that blocks it in France, and it certainly has done recently in Germany. But there are have been cases in Austria and again Hungary where the centrist party has teamed up with the populist party. And what you get there instantly is a much harder line on migration. But also that gives the green light to anti migrant activists. So you get more anti immigrant violence and you get more overt racism. In other words, one of the more disturbing features of having an active populist party which gains a fifth of the vote only, I mean 20%, the AfD. Nevertheless, it emboldens those who are covert racists to be explicit races. If you interview, if you do in depth vox pot interviews with people from different religious or ethnic backgrounds living in European societies or in America, especially when they're married to an indigenous member of that society, so Assyrian married to an American citizen, a Ukrainian married to a French citizen, they will all tell you they're exposed to racism, bullying, marginalization, etc. Etc. So if this populism carries on spreading and Trump has given a massive green light to populists, it's like not workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains. But populace of the world knight, you have nothing to gain but your freedom. And freedom in the right wing context means freedom to be a racist, freedom to say no to immigrants, freedom to ban abortion or to stop positive discrimination. All these subtle things that try to make society more liberal, more humanistic. So you have democracies in danger of becoming more and more hostile, of undoing all the rights, all the basic civil rights to what we call a welfare state in Britain being gradually undone, positive discrimination, active aid for the underprivileged, etc, etc. All sort of disappearing, encouraged climate of extreme nationalism, racism, xenophobia, anti Islam, anti Jewish feeling or whatever. But the worst thing for me is the only way the human community is going to somehow solve the ecological crisis is if the world is informed by a general sense of humanistic and human community. And that's precisely what populism is threatening a universal humanism which extends to an understanding of the fact that ecologically we're all in the same boat wherever we live on the planet.
- [43:32]
Martin DeCaro
And that's for me, nationalism is dangerous. Populism, yeah, this populist nationalism is not conducive to cooperation. Look on the bright side. It's not like AFD and the National Rally are threatening to make war on their neighbors. So we have that over the 20th century. You know, that is one missing element here when we look back to the dark.
- [43:52]
Roger Griffin
But that's. We come back to the fact that they are not fascists.
- [43:55]
Martin DeCaro
Yes, they're not looking to conquer the neighbors.
- [43:58]
Roger Griffin
They want Germany for the Germans, which is a mythic idea because what about a third generation Turkish German or Muslim German or a Jewish German or whatever? I mean, so you can't be a German. It actually said in 2016 program of the AfD, Islam does not belong to Germany. Now that can either be seen as an echo of saying Jews don't belong in Germany and you have pogroms and you have concentration camps, or it can just say we are losing our Germanness. Most populists feel, American populists feel that America has somehow. It's been too much of the world policeman. It's been too generous, it's been too nice. It's allowed a whole load of freeloaders to destroy what American. And we're going to make America not just great, but we're going to allow real Americans, and that's the dangerous concept, to feel good about themselves again. And we've got to stop apologizing. We've got blah, blah, blah, so big danger. But as I say, the danger is not a new breed of Hitlers and Mussolinis which we fairly easy to deal with, but people working within the constitution to actually poison the society. And I want to end with a reference to a brilliant American writer called Ray Bradbury, who wrote a magnificent short story which gives rise to the phrase the Butterfly effect. And in this story, people go back in time and can hunt dinosaurs on a magic flying carpet which allows them to go back to the past and then come back to the future. But in the course of one of these hunting expeditions in the past, one of them takes a step off the magic strip and kills a butterfly. And when he comes back to the present, everything looks the same, except that a right wing politician has come in and there's a slight paste in the atmosphere. In other words, it's very, very subtle. This is not 1984. This is not Big Brother. This is not a totalitarian state. I think it's more dangerous because this is a poisoning. It's like getting used to poisoned water. It's like getting used to food that's that is killing you once the oxygen is sucked out of a liberal democracy, humanistic democracy, and a universal vision of human rights, as was sanctified by the 1948 foundation of the United nations in the Universal Declaration of Universal Human Rights. Once we move away and we start categorizing people as more or less human, more or less valuable, their lives more or less worth preserving, as we've done, for example, in Gaza, where Palestinian lives, there's a sort of exchange rate for Jewish lives. And then we are slipping into a nightmare world which is a total travesty of the democracies that fought Hitler and created major international organizations like Amnesty International and save the children, etc. And we're getting to a point where the very people who are the most kind hearted and generous hearted are marginalized and the monsters of egotism and racism and nationalism take over. And I don't want to live in that sort of society, even if it's not as bad objectively as the Gestapo run totalitarian state. It's a destruction of the deepest freedoms that we can enjoy. And it is extremely perverse to hear people like Musk and Vance talking about, for a start, rewriting the history of the occupation and attack on Ukraine, but also perverting, as in 1984, perverting words so they come to mean their opposite. So defense of freedom starts to sound as if it's a defense of prejudice or the defense of lies and vice versa. So that is the threat for me. Let us stop talking about Trump being a fascist. And even though illiberal democrat is not very sexy as a headline, when we think about what's going on in the world, it's much more accurate to think about it as a process happening within democracy and not against democracy.
- [48:01]
Martin DeCaro
On the next episode of history as it happens. With the US commitment to European security seemingly up in the air, now an old idea is kind of making a comeback. Will it go anywhere this time? That idea is a European army. That's next as we report history as it happens. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. My newsletter every Friday. Sign up@historyasithappens.com or just go to Substack and search for history as it happens.