Part of the World Socialist Web Site's criticism of the AFD (Alternative for Germany, far-Right Nationalists) goes like this: first, they are fascist sympathizers who are trying to revive revisionism about the Nazi Holocaust in order to shed guilt about feelings of German patriotism. Secondly, "The AfD did not object to the orgy of enrichment for speculators and banks that accompanied the bailout. What the party did object to was any form of financial equalization between the richer and poorer euro countries." (WSWS, "10 years of the Alternative for Germany: How the state, its political parties and the media promoted the far right")
The first is obvious enough: constant scandals of prominent AFD members getting caught doing nazi salutes or with Nazi literature and flags. But this criticism of the AFD fails to see how pride and shame are flip sides of the same coin. It fails to see how the culture of remembrance simply cultivates taking pride IN shame, and thereby makes this prideful shame instrumental for the new German state's foreign and domestic ambitions. Both prideful and shameful remembering are simply competing nationalisms which presuppose identification with the nation. When the post-nazi government in Germany -- ironic given how many former Nazis were quietly incorporated into the new government -- fosters a "culture of remembrance" that says "never again war", what is the reason for that?
The "new" commemorative nationalism that was politically generated in the aftermath of the collapse of the Nazi government functioned, in part, as an instrument of a foreign policy power strategy for the newly formed government. The commemorative nationalism is supposed to show the world public that this more powerful, politically re-constituted Germany now no longer has anything to do with the Nazis, and thus should have its rightful place at the seat of world politics and economics. The politically generated “memorial boom” was an important means of achieving this. It's not fascist anymore, but a good reformed democracy that has dealt with its sins: so, it shouldn't be excluded or punished like during the Treaty of Versailles. The new national history was also helpful in justifying wars: Because Germany had learned from its history and was purified by it, it now had a moral duty to “assume responsibility” in the world. Foreign Minister Fischer adapted the demand “Never again war!” to the conditions of the enlarged Germany and its world power ambitions and legitimized the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 with the slogan “Never again Auschwitz!"
More can be said, but I'll leave it at that.
So, what about the second objection the WSWS makes to the AFD? The WSWS seems oblivious to the fact that their criticism ends up affirming Hitler's own criticisms and way of looking at capitalism: the distinction between bad "greedy finance capital" and a relatively unobjectionable industrial capital that produces "solid items of real value", that gives "jobs" to the workers. One might rightly wonder: what does scolding greedy finance speculators and bankers have to do with Hitler and the Nazis? Wasn't criticizing finance capital and greedy bankers also part of the standard repertoire of the Communist and socialist parties, and even popular during the Occupy Wall Street protests? Isn't it a standard left-populist trope at this point?
What initially sounds close to a "Marxist" distinction between "fictional finance capital" and "real industrial capital" -- something many self-proclaimed Marxists take for granted, citing the labor theory of value as evidence of the validity of this distinction and completely missing the fact that, as Marx pointed out, both financial and industrial capital share an identity in terms of their purpose: making more money from the money they start with, profiting from the money they invest -- in Hitler's mouth gets an anti-semitic twist. Hitler's objection wasn't to this specious moral distinction between financial and industrial capital, but to what he claimed socialists and communists were blind to: the "national-racial component", that "finance capital" represents the "essence of the Jew", i.e. "making more and more money by speculating on the work other people do." In other words, "greedy banks and stock market speculators" -- and ultimately bourgeois materialism and greed as such -- become synonymous with "the Jew". The racial identity of the Jew is reduced to "economic thinking"-- whether in the Bourgeois stock speculator/banker or in the Bolshevik-communist: both only care about their particular economic interest, and not the well-being of the national community. Thus, they create the "social problem" of class conflict by insisting on their material-economic self-interest instead of seeing the higher value of the common good of the nation. If only both would do their duty, show respect for the honor of the other side, and set their egoism aside, then all the classes could get along as necessary parts of an organic whole. This was what Hitler's "national socialism" partly consisted in, and why he was a sworn enemy of both communism and American liberalism.
The murderous logic is easy to spell out: it's not the quasi abstract socio-economic relations of capitalism, its inner laws, the purpose for which it functions that are the problem, but certain people themselves. Get rid of the people and problem solved. Hitler, in his Table Talks, claimed that the key to the stability of currency was due to "putting speculators under lock and key". (That is, locking Jews up in concentration camps and banning them from any positions of power.) He also states, "I have therefore always been opposed to incomes that are purely speculative and entail no effort on the part of those who live on them." (Table Talks, pg. 363).
So, in the theoretical debates, all of this goes under a heading called "structural anti-semitism". One can see how in the absence of elaborating a criticism of the fascist anti-semitic conception of finance capital, that the WSWS doesn't criticize the AFD for having a wrong analysis of finance capital, but rather morally rebukes them for taking it too easy on the "greedy bankers and speculators" and for complaining that Germans get to pay the bill for Greece and other bankrupt states-- and in doing so, they simply affirm the fascist standard. Here one has to ask the WSWS: where exactly do they draw the line between greed/excessive profit-making and an acceptable level of profit? Do they not notice that this singling out of the corrupt and greedy financial speculators and bankers -- as if they are fundamentally pursuing a different aim than any other business in capitalism -- is a moral critique that actually affirms what it is the speculators do? If only they "really did their jobs" and weren't consumed by greed, then everything would function marvelously as it ought to. And if the Trotsky-lover objects: well, that's not what I'm getting at! Then one has to say: then why is it that you never criticize profit, but only its excess, that it is done "greedily"? Why is it that you seemingly have no problem with banks, money, and how the banks lend credit to industrial firms during good times, but only complain when a crisis emerges? Then the agents of "real production" are denied credit, and one complains that "capitalism isn't working!" As if it gets any better for workers when capitalism is functioning just fine, when banks and "real" firms are making profits more than the last quarter.
And, in the same manner of proceeding -- making a quantitative instead of qualitative critique -- the WSWS doesn't criticize the nationalism of the AFD, but only that it is "ULTRA-nationalism". Again, implying that it is only the "excess" above an otherwise totally acceptable norm of "healthy patriotism" that is the issue. Everything fundamental about the socially acceptable democratic patriotism is left untouched and ultimately affirmed without having to bother analyzing it. Due to that, WSWS is blind to how democratic patriotism is the breeding ground of fascist thinking.
These sort of moral criticisms don't do much to combat far-Right nationalism because they don't attack the fundamental basis of nationalism and anti-semitism inasmuch as they complain that the far-Right missed their shot and then drop the ball into their court, setting them up for their slam dunk.
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