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Natascha Strobl on radicalized conservatism

2021-10-16T12:15:53.562Z


Conservatism is in crisis, also in Germany. In the past few years it has already become apparent in very different countries what happens when he becomes radicalized.


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Ex-Chancellor Kurz and Ex-President Trump: It's always about winning the next 24 hours in the media

Photo: HELMUT FOHRINGER / picture alliance

What has actually happened in the last few years?

They seem like an endless series of scandals and rubbings on the screen of real and existential crises.

Conservative parties actually play a key role, but they no longer behave in the way one is used to from conservative parties.

The Republicans in the USA, the Tories in Great Britain or the ÖVP in Austria are actually classically conservative parties. But they adopt the language, rhetoric and ideological elements of the extreme right. Any claim to consensus and reasons of state is thrown overboard and exchanged for a desire for polarization. This dynamic has given rise to an intermediate political spectrum - radicalized conservatism.

Radicalized conservatism is not an independent ideological spectrum, but a dynamic within conservatism, a shift in normality. The various, cumulative crises mean that acceptance for the established political system is waning. The great promise of the post-war period - it gets better from generation to generation, and there is more prosperity for everyone - can no longer be kept. And we live in a time of many crises: The financial and economic crisis of 2008 has not been overcome, the climate crisis is only just becoming tangible. In addition, there are social crises related to representation and identity.

Accordingly, the parties that have given this system stability seem at a loss.

There is long and wide talk about the crisis in social democracy.

But the conservative counterpart also tries to deal with the threat of its own irrelevance.

So radicalized conservatism is a crisis phenomenon.

It doesn't matter at all whether men like Kurz, Trump or Johnson are deeply ideological perpetrators of conviction or not.

The result is that there are conservative parties who work with the resources of the extreme right and are successful with it.

This happens on a strategic, ideological and also a technical level.

This radicalized conservatism has an absolute claim to power that it is no longer willing to share in balance, in consensus. In the post-war democracies, two system-stabilizing parties developed, one conservative and one (social) democratic. The conservative party is now leaving this consensus and leaving the (social) democratic party to play the sole role of a system-preserving (conservative) party.

At the same time, the radicalized conservative party presents itself as a new, fresh alternative to an outdated post-war consensus.

She has recognized that the system is crumbling all over the place and that it is a time of multiple crises.

In this time of crisis, the window of opportunity for new things is more open than usual.

At the same time, serving the interests of different capital groups in the old system is becoming more and more precarious.

They now see an opportunity to consolidate it and rely on the radicalization of conservative parties and also actively support them, for example in the form of donations.

Political retention of power and the retention of power by certain capital factions therefore go hand in hand.

An arsenal of strategies

In order to enforce their politics and their claim to power, radicalized conservatives use different strategies. Firstly, this includes the calculated violation of rules. These can be formal rules, such as laws. The ÖVP under Sebastian Kurz, for example, almost doubled the allowed campaign budget for the 2017 National Council elections. They paid a comparatively minor fine for this, and the damage to their image was also limited. Because the real goal was achieved: The ÖVP became first and Sebastian Kurz became chancellor.

Second: breaking the informal rules. This is less easy to grasp. It is about questions of morality, decency and etiquette. It was a specialty of Donald Trump not only to sound out the limits here, but to cross them regularly. This leads to the opponents falling into a (rather conservative) role of defenders of social values ​​and decency. It is also a rub-down strategy that means permanent employment for opponents and the media.

Third, these parties are centered around a leader. This leader is worshiped almost religiously and is given absolute power within the party, both formally and informally. This power is being shifted from the existing democratic structures to a network of advisors and confidants that is not democratically legitimized. "Family" can become a broad term here.

But this does not only happen out of nihilistic power calculations, but a political agenda is being pursued. Fourth, this political agenda is the erosion of all democratic structures. This can be seen in the rapid restructuring of the welfare state, but also in attacks on the independent Jusitz and critical media. As an adviser to Trump, Steve Bannon made it clear that the latter are the real enemy. Fifth, the emotion level is always kept to the limit.

Radicalized conservative parties are in permanent election campaigns.

It's always about winning the next 24 hours in the media.

This is how exciters and headlines are produced on the assembly line, regardless of whether they have substance or not.

Sixth, this creates a parallel world.

The staged and asserted reality has less and less in common with a factual reality.

This was shown by the Brexit vote, which the Tories have long charged to fight against a fictitious liberal or left-wing agenda.

A global phenomenon

It is a misconception to regard single proponents as accidents or anomalies in history.

This is dangerous and overlooks the fact that the roots of this development lie in the increasing crisis proneness of the political post-war systems.

And on the social level, too, there is a development that the sociologist Wilhelm Heitmeyer describes as "brutalized bourgeoisie".

Radicalized conservatism is its equivalent at the parliamentary level.

The system remains in place even if the person at the top experiences (electoral) defeat or has to step back (or "to the side").

Symptom, not cause

Radicalized conservatism is therefore a symptom, not a cause, of times of crisis. It has long been a worldwide phenomenon. As different as the respective political systems and their histories may be, in many countries it is conservative parties that install (or at least try to) (semi-) authoritarian systems: Poland, Hungary, Brazil, the USA or Austria. In Germany, too, there are calls for a "German Sebastian Kurz". The head of the Junge Union, Tilman Kuban, saw it as the answer to the election defeat, as did the chairman of the CDU regional association in Hamburg, Christoph Ploß.

In all countries, the judiciary is the last line of defense of democracy.

If it falls, the democratic constitution of these countries falls too.

This is particularly evident in Poland, where the Constitutional Court is being made compliant.

The price for the electoral success of these conservative parties is democracy and the rule of law.

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2021-10-16

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