Essay about the power of the AfD: The whole thing is untrue again

Before the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt, even the darkest, most angry, pissed-off or even sad statement on social media conveyed an underlying hope: the hope of being heard. And that it will have an impact, perhaps even make a difference, if this statement is read, heard, understood and resonates. Otherwise you wouldn't have to type it into your cell phone.

But that didn't happen, it wasn't heard, at least not seen in its entirety. With a lot of effort, the Greens were able to get over the five percent threshold, but they were just able to prevent an absolute majority. But the fate of the election results is there and will not go away so easily.

The whole thing seems to simply swallow the various clever critical interventions - the education about the ethnic image of society, the analyzes of the AfD's outrageously reactionary cultural program. As if enlightenment didn't count at all. Even more, as if the reality set by the AfD could simply turn critical analyzes around and actually feed on them.

The taz is an independent, left-wing and opinionated daily newspaper. We have been arguing in our comments, essays and debate texts since the taz was founded in 1979. We often cannot and do not want to agree on an opinion. That's why you'll find some completely opposing positions here - all part of the very broad left-wing spectrum of opinions.

This was most clearly observable in this critically intended Spiegel title about Ulrich Siegmund (“The Most Dangerous Man in Germany”), which the AfD was able to exploit in the election campaign and use as a fetish and fan article. His supporters happily held it out to the man to sign. The AfD voters not only didn't give a shit about all the enlightenment, they wanted exactly the anti-enlightenment counter-program.

The same applies now after the election to headlines in the newspapers that boast the term “emergency”. It's true that the emergency is now. But if you consider how much AfDers like to hear this themselves, you won't trumpet this analysis as clickbait.

Nothing helps, the entire AfD reality is closed. Internal power struggles, hostility to the constitution, unrealistic statements, everything doesn't matter. There is no gap where criticism could harm this whole thing. This whole thing is untrue and at the same time immensely real.

“The whole is untrue” is a sentence by the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno. It is far too abstract to be directly useful for a concrete analysis of the present. But it should be kept in mind again, be it as a background or as a framework into which the analyzes can be inserted.

The sentence comes from the heights of the history of philosophy - a reversal of Hegel's dictum "The whole is the true" - and in all its gloom it conveys an intellectual despair after the Holocaust and the turning of enlightenment into barbarism under National Socialism, as Adorno called it.

After the riots in 1968, the sentence had an immense impact in the old Federal Republic. It was discussed up and down in the (then still smoky) shared kitchens and student bars. It allowed us to come to terms with the irritating experience that capitalism was able to use even the most fundamental criticism of it to modernize itself.

The counterculture was no longer seen as a threat to public order, but rather as an asset that could be capitalized on. Criticism was no longer something that confronted power, it became a motor of more flexible capitalism itself. As part of this, social movements were integrated into the system. And the individuals were given more freedom, but also had to discipline themselves more.

The phrase only really faded after 1989. It did not fit the mood of optimism after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the division of the world into East and West, which was always associated with the threat of nuclear overkill in nuclear war. In essays and novels, for example by Michael Kleeberg, David Bowie's hit “Let's Dance” was seen as a more current attitude to life and played off against Adorno's negativity.

At the same time, the whole thing was deconstructed in small parts. On the left it became a patchwork of minorities, which, however, never quite fit together and fell apart into its individual parts. So that in the present the whole thing may have come back as a negative, as inaccurate as this analysis is, without a positive whole being able to be countered by it.

Unfortunately, being colorful and encouraging cohesion alone is obviously not enough, as important as it is for the emotional balance of the communities (which should not be underestimated). The image of a colorful society is no match for the untrue whole as long as it is made easy - with the friendly support of the alleged center (taking rainbow flags from the Reichstag, cutting NGOs) - to denounce marginalized people as filthy left-green.

Part of recognizing the seriousness of the situation is recognizing the untrue whole as real and powerful. The right-wingers are not simply reacting; they are, if they ever were, no longer victims of social cuts, an allegedly failed migration policy, or an alleged media failure. Rather, they are something active and they have the momentum. Something has actively developed from the mixture of social media hijacked by the tech bros, a global trend towards authoritarianism, vibeshift fantasies, neoliberalism, traditional racism and years of culture-fighting cartwheeling by AfD cadres. And it has long since taken on a life of its own.

In this situation, pinning one's hopes on political activity is not enough. As much as Friedrich Merz may have contributed to the current social crisis (cityscape debate and others) - whether he remains chancellor or not is important for social policy, foreign policy and for the CDU, but that will not change the momentum for the AfD.

The social subsystem of politics, with its compulsion towards short-term, practical solutions, is probably not a suitable basis for reacting to the situation in an appropriately desperate manner. Can't you hear the Weidels giggling softly when they invoke the “center”?

You should also take a look at what contributes to the momentum of the right and right-wing radicals. The fact that criticism falls flat and all the many non-fiction books in which the AfD is analyzed through all the sociological and political science tools are of no use also has to do with the fact that humanities as a whole are devalued compared to the technical and mathematical branches.

With their spellbound gaze on right-wing personnel, occasionally driven by a fascination with evil, many media outlets have also tinkered with the reality of the untrue whole. And the users of this media reinforce this by staring at what Weidel, Siegmund, Tillschneider, Trump, Musk and so on have already done.

That's not nearly enough. Many people in charge of the public media allow the right to determine what is considered politically neutral, although, at least underground, the commitment to democracy and minority rights is already connoted as left-wing. Even the most outraged posting online, on whatever platform, feeds a social media system that can not only be capitalized on and manipulated, but can be cleverly used by the right to create their false reality. And why many people who complain about fake news on the one hand use AI tools to look things up on the other is a mystery anyway.

The untrue whole affects society as a whole and entangles individuals in contradictions - that is what it does. Sure, rolling up your sleeves, opposing it, mobilizing, forming alliances, antifa work on site, describing in detail how right-wing hegemony came about in parts of our society and so on, that's all that has to be done now. But there is also a moment of intellectual despair in the face of the massive reality of the untrue whole. It is also a form of intellectual solidarity with those affected: all the people who are to be excluded and who are to be denied their right to exist in this society, their way of life or their identity.

You won't be able to wrest the momentum away from the right straight away; It doesn't happen that quickly. But maybe you'll be able to stay with yourself and not let them drive you along and put you under their spell.