THE RIGHT PRODUCES FEELINGS. WHILE WE DON'T BECAUSE OUR WE WAS FAKE.
Against the right, what is needed is not ›more normality‹, but real alternatives that enable counter-enjoyments. A review of "Rechte Gefühle".
Fascism always gave false, murderous answers to the question of who we are by producing feelings.
Our 'We' didn't mean everyone, this helps the right.
We can do it, we can make immigration work, was a rare optimistic sentence from a German politician that wanted to create a sense of relief.
But the 'we' in the sentence did not mean everyone and those meant were not all the same.
Reflexive fascism has been growing on the fractures and ambiguities ever since, writes Strick.
This is the crux of the discourse of 'tolerance': it feels good, a feeling of euphoria in one's own openness, which almost always immediately leads to an exclusionary hardening of the 'we', which offers reflexive fascism a double starting point, writes Strick.
Short-lived feelings of openness are not a sustainable emotional politics, writes Strick.
Defensive democracy is an automatism of bourgeois talk about fascism and does not work as a solution, writes Strick.
If you tell the history of right-wing extremism and the fight against it in the last decades, the common thread is the ongoing failure of the formula of ›democracy‹ as a community and of ›attack‹ on democracy as a description of the problem, writes Strick.
One problem with the attitude with which democracy is to be defended is that the attitude obscures the desire for the right, writes Strick.
The alternative right does not attack democracy, but rather certain people and their living environments, writes Strick.
The proximity to and participation of reflexive fascism in democracy and the public must first be understood before a supposedly ›defensive democracy‹ is set up as a defense against the right, writes Strick.
Denormalizing an emotional structure of disgust is one of the aims of his book: denormalizing the pleasant shudder at one's own projection that fascism, sexism and racism always appear in others, writes Strick.
The public negotiation of the non-normative has provided the centre and the right with a structure of desire they have in common.
An emotional politics of disgust the right and the centre have in common.
Overcoming our own emotional structure of disgust is one of the strategies against the right.
Who we are is a burning question of the present.
Fascism always gave false, racist and murderous answers to the question of who we are, writes Strick.
There is no answer to the fact that we are not the ones who count, writes Strick.
Placeless and faceless distancing is not a solution, it is the problem if it means pretending that we are neutral observers, writes Strick.
It is the boundaries between normal and pathological, rational and irrational, extreme and consensual that are the battlefield of the right’s push for the culture war frame.
Everyone is involved in the battle for or against this pushing of the culture war frame and that also means having to actively and interpretively deal with what the alternative rights produce in terms of content, feelings and comments.
We need to understand why right feelings no longer appear irrational to many so that effective counter-proposals can be developed. Say goodbye to normality, writes Strick.
Today's kids are no longer alone and lonely, but are gathered in a depressive, hyperactive digital swarm, writes Strick.
Right-wingers are not the opposite of this democracy, but one of its contemporary expressions. Its actors are white and men, writes Strick.
Their fascism agitates against today’s complex society and occupies society’s risk discourses, writes Strick.
Reflexive fascism is a producer of reality and profitable in the process.
Reflexive fascism is racist and sexist and at the same time homely.
Reflexive fascism not only shows Hitler salutes but turns them into popular culture and empowerment for some, writes Strick.
Reflexive fascism writes and murders again and it feels (again) like liberation for some, writes Strick.
It works hand in hand with the automatisms that maintain the social fiction of normality, writes Strick.
Reflexive fascism mercilessly exploits the emotional voids and contradictions. Normality thanks it for the desire it expresses, writes Strick.
It is important to get an affective counterperspective on what the right affectively-emotionally says is happening, writes Strick.
It is important to offer different versions of normality than those offered in the mainstream media, writes Strick.
The desire for stories of connection is central, because it must replace the omnipresent desire for the right, writes Strick.
Against an alternative right, what is needed is not ›more normality‹, but other alternatives
This is important for an affective counter-politics, a counter feeling, writes Strick.
How some boosted rightist enjoyment:
Clinton had half of Trump's supporters described as a basket of deplorables.
The comment initiated the collapse of an entire society, writes Strick.
The outraged separation from an extremist minority does not lead to the consolidation of a fictitious majority.
Those addressed printed T-shirts with the inscription I am a deplorable and won the emotional, metapolitical battle.
To date, the connection has only been partially understood, writes Strick.
The mistake was this: They are stupid racists and so on, we are not. But who or what are we? An answer must come, because the alternative right communicates its answers with great efficiency and speed, writes Strick on the right's enjoyment.
You need different ways of dealing with fascism.
One, for example, was found by Saxony's Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer, who asked those gathered at a community meeting after the Chemnitz riots in 2018:
Are we in agreement that the Hitler salute is not okay?
With some grumbling this minimum standard was accepted.
The anecdote forces at least one insight: large parts of the so-called normality, which automatically demarcates itself from fascism, have to be renegotiated.
The difference between democracy and fascism has become fragile in many ways.
Why is fascism attractive to people online? This requires ways of speaking that do not just rely on the rhetoric of suspicion and conviction.
What are the tricks that make voters say that fascists are right rather than look for an alternative to the AfD?
Many right-wingers feel democratic in their own eyes, writes Strick.
Many right-wingers formulate their projects of devaluation as struggles for transformation, writes Strick.
Many right-wingers position themselves not only as producers of fear, but as makers of optimism for alternatives, warns Strick.
Many right-wingers are no longer the far right, which must be discovered by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, warns Strick.
Right-wing feelings often determine the climate of discourse, writes Strick.
Back rooms have become massive counter-publics, writes Strick.
The core business of the right is the production of self-esteem, writes Strick.
THE RIGHT PRODUCES FEELINGS. WHILE WE DON'T BECAUSE OUR WE WAS FAKE.
Against the right, what is needed is not ‘more normality’, but real alternatives that enable counter-enjoyments.
REFERENCES
Simon Strick: Rechte Gefühle
Paraphrased from German or direct and indirect quotes.
The core business of the right is the production of self-esteem, writes Strick.