A "Hydra-esque" Habit - Right Wing Populism on the Surge

          My time in Ohio is no longer a far-in-the-distance glimmering Fata Morgana. Only a few more days, and I am going to be on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Of course, I wonder how much of a different environment Athens, with its roughly about 25.000 inhabitants, is going to be. What issues will be debated within the student body? How will Professors interact with their students on current affairs? While being still here in Leipzig, a city more than 20 times the size of Athens, I got to talk to two Professors from Athens about an issue which has shaken the Leipzig community for almost a year now – the Anti-Immigrant / Anti-Muslim movement LEGIDA. However, current right wing populism turns out to become more and more a transatlantic phenomenon which urgently needs to be discussed. 

A Roundtable Discussion with Professor Debatin and Professor Sweeney, Ohio University

Prof. Debatin; Prof. Sweeney, Ohio University

Professor Sweeney and Professor Debatin both come from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. Last week, they visited Leipzig University and its Radio Station Mephisto 97.6. In a round table discussion, issues were covered beginning with the heating up pre-election debates in the US as well as right wing populism on the rise on both sides of the Atlantic. This short essay drafts an overview of last week’s animated debate and its attempts to partly analyze the societal origin of the 2010s's right wing surge. 

Right wing populism, on both sides of the Atlantic, is increasingly winning. Its protagonists - Donald Trump, Marie Le Pen, or the East-German Anti-Immigrant movement PEGIDA/LEGIDA - may be varying in their names; but they are unified in their agenda. Interactively, the agenda's name is unmistakable: Promoting fear. What constitutes the might of this campaigned transatlantic insecurity is its “hydra-esque” habit. How to deal with the rising number of refugees? How to manage the prevention of future terrorist attacks? Will another financial crisis take away private savings? Is the EURO actually a good thing? How to deal with ISIS? Wherever a more complex issue pops up and leaves an unanswered societal vacuum, right-wing populist deploy fearful resentments as answers to fill the gap. More and more heads with frightened faces become the bedrock of a body which promotes a new “anti-intellectualism”, as Prof. Sweeney describes it. While some may call it “anti-intellectualism”; others might call it a longing for the old days. It is a nostalgia for days being spiritualized by clear binary conflicts, non- virtual real human interaction, and old-fashioned trustworthy media. Therefore, the re-emerging populism is a conglomerate of generations lacking up-to-date media competence, and of old (white) majorities seeing their ideas challenged.  

Most patently, the lack of modern media competence pervades the struggle of multiple generations trying to acquire information. It comes along with the loss of trust in established media outlets. Furthermore, it triggers the drift towards parallel societal universes. For a growing number of people, anything else beneath the individual opinion is perceived as indoctrinated or as general conspiracy. In Germany, this is most prominently displayed in the reinforced use of the term Lügenpresse, or the lying press, a term directly affiliated with 3^rd-Reich vocabulary. East-German anti-immigrant movements like PEGIDA and LEGIDA regularly chant Lügenpresse during their rallies to agitate against journalists and the media. This agitation might not be a direct lack of media competence. However, for a growing amount of people, it does not matter if the attacked media outlet actually covers issues accurately. Everything that counts is that it’s being part of established media. If so, it is no longer a reliable source. Therefore, the quality of sources is no longer a common standard for reliability. Instead, people only look out for what they want to see. This is inherently intertwined with the internet age and the emergence of virtual social networks like Facebook. Also here, the ways of acquiring information dramatically changed. The algorithms of what is displayed on your Facebook-timeline inherently lead to what Professor Debetin calls the “production of a tunnel vision” - a pre-selected make-up of what technology thinks you and your acquaintances might like. Not only Facebook, but search engines like Google use similar algorithms based on your browsing habits. You only get what you want. You only see what you want. However, this notion ultimately discharges into an almost hostile perception of anything that does not speak the individual’s mind. More dramatically, hardly anything comes up challenging the individual’s point of view. Should something question this ether, it’s going to be fearfully perceived as a threat.

Another fending reaction is inevitable when status and ideas are getting challenged which, for centuries, were taken for granted. Professor Sweeney exemplifies this with the US's white classes faith in American Exceptionalism between the 1630s and John Winthrop’s “City upon the hill” and the 1960s and the “Man on the Moon”. Certainly, US society's white majority started to fade away. The ones who still grew up as a clear majority are retired today. They find themselves in a world which does not work the way it used to. Having outlived the decline of the auto industry, they now face global mass technologies whose complexities are hard to understand. The speed of change is further accelerating, and it amplifies resentments towards anything new. Therefore, whoever promises a former status quo to those who feel detached from the developments around them easily wins their support. This is a phenomenon well known to a former East-German society now shifting from a relatively homogenous social make-up towards a more heterogeneous one.

A second common transatlantic phenomenon feeding into this is the reduction of community places and the loss of inner-societal face-to-face exchange. “People used to interact with each other in the military, in school, or in their church communities”, notices Prof. Sweeney. Crucial to this is that they had to encounter faces and personalities who were not like them; people, who were likely to challenge their views and opinions. However, these encounters are more and more fading. The military draft in the US, for example, was paused in 1973. Germany stopped its compulsory program a few years ago. The amount of time kids are spending together in public schools or community schools is continuously shortening, too. Beyond doubt, the acquisition of constructive atmospheres for debate is fundamental for every growing up generation.

With the end of the Cold War, a punch line was set to a world of binary confrontation. “The clear either/ or is gone”, says Prof. Debatin from the Ohio University. However, the disappearance of this two-dimensional concept not necessarily satisfied everyone around the world. This became clearly visible during the Ukraine conflict. The re-emerging Cold-War terminology itself examined the minds of so many stuck in history. However, people appeared to be desperately longing for such simple answers. Such short and simple answers are currently being dominantly given by right-wing populists. To encounter their over-simplifications and agitations, solutions seem to be urgently needed.

The Roundtable Discussion very broadly concluded on a few possible approaches. Firstly, for all generations it must become obvious again how to acquire reliable information. Therefore, a teaching of modern media competence must be implemented into schools and society. Secondly, media outlets, in order to prevent conspiracies, for example, are doomed to increase their transparency to be reachable for everyone in society. Thirdly, on an overarching scale, societal exchange must be reassured through public spaces. If these public spaces are being increasingly transferred to Social Media platforms, conventions should be installed and followed there as well. 

For my time to come in Athens, I am thrilled about further discussing these approaches. Last week’s vivid exchange has been an inspiring launch pad for further transatlantic examination on right-wing populism and re-emerging nationalism.