German Re-Nazification, Neoliberalism and the Climate Movement

Why history in the end does rhyme

If a popular quote attributed to Mark Twain about history not quite repeating itself is correct, then history does not only rhyme, it tends to play back in elaborate fugues and counter-fugues. So what happened? Two days ago (29 January 2025), a law was passed in the German parliament with the help of an openly fascist, extreme-right political party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The law had been initiated by the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU), and voted through also by MPs of the AfD and the liberals (FDP). Its passing had been fully dependent on the support of the far right.

This was the first time this had happened since the 1930s. Back then, the German Nazi party NSDAP had advanced from only 2.6% of the vote to 37.3% in no more than four years. Today, the AfD is polling to rise from 10.3% in 2021 to well over 20% in the forthcoming elections. And just as back then, the most meaningful opposition comes from the Social Democrats (SPD, currently presiding over a minority government with the Greens), and the catholic and protestant churches¹.

What is happening now is the ultimate embrace of a once despised protest movement by the pro-business, neo-liberal establishment, at a time when the movement has softened its original anti-capitalist rhetoric and started concentrating on the enemy within. In the same way, the NSDAP must have looked much less threatening to the established order when it was antisemitic rather than anti-capitalist, and we know which of those two wings of the Nazi party ultimately won. In other words, promoting autocracy, xenophobia and hate are perfectly acceptable for the neoliberal establishment, as long as the established capitalist order is not questioned. Witness the difference between the ways the old EU guard treats Hungary’s Victor Orban – of the anti-EU branch of right-wing populism – and the neo-fascist but moderately pro-EU Italian premier Giorgia Meloni.

And here comes the counter-fugue: the climate movement seems to have moved in the exact opposite direction compared to the right-wing populists. If we exclude the older, established NGOs like Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace engaging in climate awareness campaigning, the modern climate movement probably started with Greta Thunberg’s school strike in front of the Swedish parliament, culminated in Extinction Rebellion’s street protests pro-pandemic, and resulted in the collective applause for Greta by euro MPs just after she had shouted at them angrily – and of course the various climate emergency declarations.

The climate movement began decidedly without any obvious revolutionary intent, and therefore its embrace by the business-as-usual establishment was total – and resulted in nothing but grandiose net zero pledges placed in the far future. Once the inaction become apparent, however, a more radicalized and angrier climate movement – with groups such as Just Stop Oil or Last Generation – started engaging in more disruptive, albeit still non-violent protests. As this was rightly seen as an attack on the established order, the protesters had to face the full force of the law in a way the hard right never had to. While Germany’s “Letzte Generation” was investigated for forming a criminal organization based on an anti-terror law from the 1970s, Just Stop Oil activists in the UK were jailed for up to five years in prison for participating in a zoom call.

Leading climate scientists see the climate denial of the far right, and the civil disobedience the climate movement engages in, as simply two extremes. While members of the elite see themselves as the guardians of reason, the extremes may be either rejected, or treated paternalistically as their “little brothers”.

I believe there are two take-home messages here for the climate movement. One is that the thrust of the political debate in the so-called West is moving away from it fast. There seem to be only two major forces left at play at the moment, a populist-right to neo-fascist one, and a neo-liberal defense of the current order that does not care much about democracy or minority rights. But this apparent relegation to the margins of the political theater stands in stark contrast to the second, I believe important, observation: It contradicts the extreme reactions the power holders have shown to climate protesters – both the almost grotesque total embrace, and the extreme hate and brutality with which it is being crushed.

In my view, it shows that there is some truth expressed by the protesters that hits the nerve of the power holders. First they want them to be their friends, then they want to silence them. The embrace was just another form of suffocation, of moving so close you don’t need to hear what they are saying. I suspect that truth is contained somewhere in their conjuring up the spectre of total failure. The capitalists sense their time has come.

At the moment, it often seems like it is the populist right that is using collapsing systems to their political advantage. But the extreme reaction of the established order tells me that the most feared and the most authentic messenger of imminent failure are climate protesters on the political left.

1. Other things rhyme most exquisitely, too, such as the most creative use of the German language. As of writing, the CDU has advanced another bill also aimed at keeping unwanted foreigners away, with the untranslatable name of “Zustrombegrenzungs-gesetz”. The best analogue I could find would be “inward flow control law”, as it conjures up images of a civil engineer desperately trying to stop the tide and keep his or her dam from bursting. The Nazis also loved engineering analogues, the most well known being the term “Gleichschaltung”, which stands for the complete subordination of all life under the führer principle. It had been borrowed from electrical engineering.