Forget hot-girl summer, Euro-summer, or whatever facile tagline comes next — it was a far-right nostalgia summer and it’s about time we addressed it.
In August, Nigel Farage won back his seat in Clacton-on-Sea for the Reform Party with 63.34 per cent of the vote. In early September, the extreme-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won control of the federal state of Sachsen-Anhalt with 43.8 per cent of the vote. A former Victorian-era seaside resort and a former state in the Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic respectively, the two regions face similar plights in the present: disproportionately high poverty rates, an aging population, and growing disenchantment with traditional government.
For now, the past has become a far more appealing prospect than the present. Unsurprisingly, their new leaders promise that there was, most definitely, a time far better than this, far more German, more British, than whatever this current state of being could claim to be. To find it, one only has to invest in the suspiciously rose-coloured pair of sunglasses they thrust at you and gaze into the bright light of the Glory Days.
Why is it that places like Clacton and Sachsen-Anhalt seem so well suited to nostalgia? I would argue that in both cases, the successful manipulation of history by the political forces at hand requires several stages. First, an untenable present situation. Second, a time of ‘glory’ almost within living memory, which, when defended by the right person, offers a conceivable alternative to return to; third, a more ancient, mythic origin story that offers symbols and hazy notions of utopia.
Where Clacton bears the physical reminders of its past popularity, Sachsen-Anhalt still remembers the time where everybody had something. Needless to say, neither was perfect, but for this purpose, it does not need to be — it was similar enough to the present and yet better. This is how disenchantment with the current government begins, and by using it as a reference point, how Reform and the AfD keep people looking for better.
Most importantly, both parties have recognised the disinterest of their target voter bases in the parts of history that present them as the aggressor. After all, if you have nothing, how do narratives encouraging the recognition of guilt for the benefits supposedly reaped from committing atrocities naturally relate to you? If people become angry enough at being told to take on not only the emotional weight of their own difficulties, but also of their ancestors, they will inevitably prefer to remain ignorant of it altogether. In recent years, that is the greatest gift the far-right have ever received — historical antipathy.
Armed with disinterest, Reform and the AfD have anointed themselves cherry-pickers-in-chief for new national narratives. They are free to tie symbols of Bismarck and Prussia’s military might to those of women in traditional dress surrounded by children; they are free to hark back to the Saxons, Anglo or original, and claim their ethnicity as the key to awakening the nation; they are free, ultimately, to invent the past, because they have allowed their base to believe they require an interpreter.
In an interview with local media, a politician for the AfD named Hans-Thomas Tillschneider stated that the party would encourage an education system focusing on “‘more Bismarck” ’ and “‘less Hitler.”’ Aside from the fact that Hitler’s Nazi party frequently invoked rhetoric rooted in the image of Bismarck as the “Iron Chancellor” of a militarised Germany, this selective approach to history veers uncomfortably close to the intellectually prescriptive attitude of the very figure Tillschneider wants not to address. If we are to follow his policy and cover our eyes and ears to this historic era, we would perhaps be less horrified by the party’s plans to place the children of refugees and disabled children in separate classes to other children. Equally, in order to put “British shame in the past” as Reform’s education plan also pledges to do, must we not ignore the very past that produced it?
In doing so, he exposed not only the frankly horrifying similarities of the AfD’s policies to those of the Nazi’s early stages, but also the intellectual incoherence of their propaganda — during their rise to power, the Nazi party frequently used the image of the “Iron Chancellor” to promote militarism. And, by putting “British shame in the past” as Reform’s education plan also pledges to do, we enable history to become an issue of isolated, discontinuous events, represented only in carefully selected flashpoints.
I would argue, however, that beyond the obvious flaws in such logic, this narrow, incongruous history presents the greatest danger because it renders questions of cause and effect, and ultimately accountability, un-askable. Far from scepticism, the nostalgic visions invoked by the far-right have asked instead that the public never look for the whole truth — with history as their weapon, by destroying the integrity of the past, Reform and the AfD continue to protect the inconsistencies of both present and future from scrutiny too.
And anyway, who’s got time to scrutinise a £5m donation when they’re trying to make it through the worst cost of living crisis in decades?
“Nigel Farage” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
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More Bismarck, less Hitler: The AfD, Reform, and the far-right’s obsession with cherry-picking history
Forget hot-girl summer, Euro-summer, or whatever facile tagline comes next — it was a far-right nostalgia summer and it’s about time we addressed it.
In August, Nigel Farage won back his seat in Clacton-on-Sea for the Reform Party with 63.34 per cent of the vote. In early September, the extreme-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won control of the federal state of Sachsen-Anhalt with 43.8 per cent of the vote. A former Victorian-era seaside resort and a former state in the Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic respectively, the two regions face similar plights in the present: disproportionately high poverty rates, an aging population, and growing disenchantment with traditional government.
For now, the past has become a far more appealing prospect than the present. Unsurprisingly, their new leaders promise that there was, most definitely, a time far better than this, far more German, more British, than whatever this current state of being could claim to be. To find it, one only has to invest in the suspiciously rose-coloured pair of sunglasses they thrust at you and gaze into the bright light of the Glory Days.
Why is it that places like Clacton and Sachsen-Anhalt seem so well suited to nostalgia? I would argue that in both cases, the successful manipulation of history by the political forces at hand requires several stages. First, an untenable present situation. Second, a time of ‘glory’ almost within living memory, which, when defended by the right person, offers a conceivable alternative to return to; third, a more ancient, mythic origin story that offers symbols and hazy notions of utopia.
Where Clacton bears the physical reminders of its past popularity, Sachsen-Anhalt still remembers the time where everybody had something. Needless to say, neither was perfect, but for this purpose, it does not need to be — it was similar enough to the present and yet better. This is how disenchantment with the current government begins, and by using it as a reference point, how Reform and the AfD keep people looking for better.
Most importantly, both parties have recognised the disinterest of their target voter bases in the parts of history that present them as the aggressor. After all, if you have nothing, how do narratives encouraging the recognition of guilt for the benefits supposedly reaped from committing atrocities naturally relate to you? If people become angry enough at being told to take on not only the emotional weight of their own difficulties, but also of their ancestors, they will inevitably prefer to remain ignorant of it altogether. In recent years, that is the greatest gift the far-right have ever received — historical antipathy.
Armed with disinterest, Reform and the AfD have anointed themselves cherry-pickers-in-chief for new national narratives. They are free to tie symbols of Bismarck and Prussia’s military might to those of women in traditional dress surrounded by children; they are free to hark back to the Saxons, Anglo or original, and claim their ethnicity as the key to awakening the nation; they are free, ultimately, to invent the past, because they have allowed their base to believe they require an interpreter.
In an interview with local media, a politician for the AfD named Hans-Thomas Tillschneider stated that the party would encourage an education system focusing on “‘more Bismarck” ’ and “‘less Hitler.”’ Aside from the fact that Hitler’s Nazi party frequently invoked rhetoric rooted in the image of Bismarck as the “Iron Chancellor” of a militarised Germany, this selective approach to history veers uncomfortably close to the intellectually prescriptive attitude of the very figure Tillschneider wants not to address. If we are to follow his policy and cover our eyes and ears to this historic era, we would perhaps be less horrified by the party’s plans to place the children of refugees and disabled children in separate classes to other children. Equally, in order to put “British shame in the past” as Reform’s education plan also pledges to do, must we not ignore the very past that produced it?
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In doing so, he exposed not only the frankly horrifying similarities of the AfD’s policies to those of the Nazi’s early stages, but also the intellectual incoherence of their propaganda — during their rise to power, the Nazi party frequently used the image of the “Iron Chancellor” to promote militarism. And, by putting “British shame in the past” as Reform’s education plan also pledges to do, we enable history to become an issue of isolated, discontinuous events, represented only in carefully selected flashpoints.
I would argue, however, that beyond the obvious flaws in such logic, this narrow, incongruous history presents the greatest danger because it renders questions of cause and effect, and ultimately accountability, un-askable. Far from scepticism, the nostalgic visions invoked by the far-right have asked instead that the public never look for the whole truth — with history as their weapon, by destroying the integrity of the past, Reform and the AfD continue to protect the inconsistencies of both present and future from scrutiny too.
And anyway, who’s got time to scrutinise a £5m donation when they’re trying to make it through the worst cost of living crisis in decades?
“Nigel Farage” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
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