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Adam Tooze on Germany's Far-Right AfD Party (Plus: Eric Hobsbawm) | Ones and Tooze Ep. 259

Foreign Policy

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The far right AFD's landslide victory in a small state in eastern Germany this past week is part of a broader political story unfolding across Europe. It is also—and perhaps primarily—an economic story.

Also on the show: British historian Eric Hobsbawm.

0:00 AfD's election results
30:12 Eric Hobsbawm

Foreign Policy economics columnist Adam Tooze, a history professor and a popular author, is encyclopedic about basically everything: from the COVID shutdown, to climate change, to pasta sauce. On FP’s hit podcast, Tooze and FP deputy editor Cameron Abadi look at two data points each week that explain the world: one drawn from the week’s headlines and the other from just about anywhere else Tooze takes us.

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20 Comments

@supine2491 2 weeks ago (edited)

AfD is downstream from the failed promises of post-80s liberalism to generate something more than the strangling supremacy of capital. Everyone is a child of Reagan and Thatcher. As left parties have very little to show in battling this, you get right-reactionary fantasism. It's something.

@littlegreenpills6773 2 weeks ago (edited)

the fact of the matter is the AfD are more palatable to the political mainstream than the left are. Remigration, ethnic cleansing, pogroms and so on may be gauche and distasteful, but slightly raising corporation taxes and defunding the military a little are Armageddon

@euphoriceuler 2 weeks ago (edited)

4:01 AFD was substantially weakened in 2015 & CDU/CSU decided to position itself against 'Die Linke' and 'B90/Die Grünen' after a consultation with polster Matthias Jung.

Unfortunately that validated AFD positions, the main "win" of AFD is from non-voters. So that CDU/CSU tactic failed.

That puts CDU/CSU into a situation where the electoral tactics might become the strategy?

THAT is the key danger for Germany & Europe.

@DavidPerez-lm9nj 2 weeks ago (edited)

I recommend listening to this alongside Gerald Horne, author and black historian, at the Activist News Network this past Wednesday. His analysis show is called "Around the Horne" he tackled the AfD topic.

@maxheadrom3088 2 weeks ago

18:00 If I'm not mistaken, the criticism against the Jews prior to WWII started with a criticism against Jews fleeing the pogroms in Ukraine. I remember hearing the author of "In the Middle of Civilized Europe" talking about it. (Jewish American Historian)

@russellsharpe288 2 weeks ago (edited)

12:22 "Voters did to a certain extent support Die Linke but Social Democrat support has crashed".

Completely false. Die Linke got 8.6% of the vote, down from 11.0% in 2021, while the SPD got 9.3%, an increase from 8.4% in 2021.

With basic mistakes like this I am surprised Adam Tooze has any reputation at all. Anyway I stopped listening at this point.

@Newcavendish 2 weeks ago

Very interesting. The "emotional spasms" of the right are unbelievably powerful. One aspect of the AfD program could perhaps be coopted. If the grievance is "all Hitler all the time" in culture and education, that's somewhat plausible. Why not allow a broader focus on German history more broadly. Yes, we know need to learn about Bismarck. What could be more central to a true understanding of German history? What about the 30 years' war ... that needs to be understood? What about Eduard Bernstein, a critical often overlooked figure in German history. The center and left need to find a broader narrative of German history, and not focus exclusively on German guilt.

@maxheadrom3088 2 weeks ago

In school, our history classes were based on Hobsbawn's work.

@Rammlied_best_show_opener 2 weeks ago

Although the election forecast already pointed to the result, it was still shocking to see it in black and white. And it wasn't just me. I work in a large company and most of my colleagues have had the same reaction.
What I find remarkable is that, on election night, they assured that they would work very closely with Tesla. That was probably the recognition or thanks to Elon Musk for his election assistance.
Regards, Eva ❤

@Newcavendish 2 weeks ago

Re. the King's College Christmas service: it's true that it was confected for the BBC about a century again, but it was not really artificial: it was a gloss, and a legitimate one, on the customary Prayer Book evensong service, reconfigured, slightly, for the Christmas moment.

@Vrailly 2 weeks ago

This is the best politics podcast out there.

@kivalurswaminathan2197 2 weeks ago

Culture is lived by the first generation, observed by the second and imagined by the third generation.

@Myndir 2 weeks ago

The AfD support increase was very similar to the CDU decrease. That doesn't imply that it was a straight swap of voters, but centre right voters going to the hard right seems like the first hypothesis to investigate.

@etbuch4873 2 weeks ago

Far-right? Distant Right? Approximate Right? Near Right? Adjacent Right? And what else?

@byronsanford1683 2 weeks ago

This video shows how aloof and condescending the economic liberal Intelligentsia is.

@qxrbil 2 weeks ago

"Enemies of the constitution" ah yes the spirit of carl schmitt lives and dances in the 'moderate' wing of the german political establishment.

But the problem with declaring people enemies is that those same people can do the same, no?

@VaucluseVanguard 2 weeks ago

It seems to me there are two types of people involved in this rise of the right. First the ‘left behind’. Theses are those who have been left in the old industrial areas where guaranteed well paid employment has disappeared. The second group are the ‘stayed behind’. These are people who looked at where the self identified ‘progressive’ left were going and made a conscious decision not to go where they are going. While the first group could perhaps be won back if the economy picked up, the second group won’t. And most of the growth in the hard right has been in the latter group in the past decade. That has been created by progressive overreach.

@edmundvanroosendael 2 weeks ago (edited)

Tooze's view on Hobsbawn as an historian is the clearest example as to how/why his onetime 'Trotskyism' was of the Cliffite ie purest Social DEMOcratic kind,- ie Not (orthodox) Trot at all ie Insofar as that 'marxism' was able to relate (in some way shape or form) to the Leninist perspective re C20th Barbarism (OR Socialism) he outlines here in passing vis a vis Hobsbawn's Marxism. Once a (petty) bourgeois intel always one nyet?!.

@PDCFreetime 2 weeks ago

(Before listening to the episode) I think Adam and Eric Hobsbawm have a lot of similarities in their communication style that is, I think, what made me like listening to them. They both combine a like deep love of research and a very wide knowledge base with a love of making sweeping, unequivocal statements. There are plenty of nerds who love to study stuff but they tend to get lost in the complexity, and there are plenty of people willing to compress history to simple causes and effects, but their confidence is often based on very thin evidence. It's a pretty rare group that can manage to synthesize history in the way both have in my experience.

@maxheadrom3088 2 weeks ago

13:00 But those interviews are from TV/Journalistic coverage or from someone analyzing the electorate? I ask because TV/Journalists could be picking people to be interviewed in a skewed way.