Is there a need for a renewed theory of fascism?

Is there a need to renew the theory of fascism?
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We are experiencing a global resurgence of fascism. What does this have in common with the 1920s and 1930s? And how can we understand the new quality of this development?

By Alex Demirović

[This article posted in May 2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/artikel/braucht-es-eine-erneuerung-der-faschismustheorie/.]



Posing the question in this way may seem somewhat tendentious, because it already implies the answer in view of recent socio-political developments: Yes, it is fascism; and presumably a renewal of the theory is needed not only because of historical changes, but also because of internal changes in the capitalist mode of production. In earlier discussions among the left and anti-fascists, expectations of theory were high. Fascism could only be prevented or stopped if it were understood theoretically. From Clara Zetkin and Ignazio Silone to Leo Trotsky and Bert Brecht to Theodor W. Adorno, there were corresponding efforts to develop a theory of the authoritarian, fascist dynamics of capitalist society. In the 1970s, it was quite possible to think that the success of the right wing was largely due to the shortcomings of left-wing theory, since it had been largely economistic in orientation.

“How should we interpret the success of anti-democratic, cold, socially racist politics? In fact, it has, if not refuted, then at least undermined all theories.”
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But all the theories and extensive research on social structure and capital factions, electorate and voting behavior, the social situation of workers or the electorate, sexual morality, the organization of the right wing and its ideologies have not been able to prevent the rise of authoritarians. How should we interpret the success of anti-democratic, cold, socially racist politics? In fact, they have undermined all theories, if not refuted them; they point to a sense of helplessness in the democratic and socialist spectrum. For if the theories are not wrong, the success of the authoritarian right suggests that it is not a matter of individual theories. Critical materialist theories of fascism and authoritarianism have produced many important insights. But something is still not enough, because they do not prevent the powerful (the bourgeoisie, the rulers, the elites) from organizing their rule in this form; and they do not capture the people (the subalterns, the masses, the proletariat) in such a way that they become a lasting force of resistance and alternative. Perhaps the expectations attached to these theories are too high or even misguided. Yet the stance taken by critical theories of fascism was often not rationalistic. It was not a matter of simple enlightenment in the sense of humanism, an appeal to reason or bourgeois norms such as freedom, equality, or democracy; nor was it a matter of merely pointing to facts. Anti-fascism could rely on the “power of the gun barrels” of the Allied victorious powers and the resistance movements and represent the conviction that the authoritarian revolt of fascism had been crushed militarily. Democracy was not and is not weak. The confrontation with fascism, right-wing extremist and authoritarian tendencies in the efforts to enlighten people consisted of pointing out: Look, these will be the consequences: destruction, poverty, hunger, loss of education, resentment and racism, violence and murder. Fascism today has learned from its historical defeat. It wants to win in the long term, but is also prepared to accept the downfall of humanity. With a metapolitical strategy, it wants to weaken or destroy those forces that would be capable of demonstrating the power of democracy and are not prepared to accept nihilism.

In the following, I will argue a) that it makes sense to think about a renewal of fascism theory, b) that even such a renewed theory is not sufficient, and c) that the current economic situation should not be understood as fascism.

Transnational allied nationalists
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In at least one relevant respect, the current situation can be compared to the fascist situation of the 1920s and 1930s: anti-democratic forces are growing stronger. Developments in individual states have been contributing to this at different rates for some time. This is not happening in isolation: there are nationalist and authoritarian-populist parties whose representatives meet, right-wing conservative media, intellectual circles that engage in exchange, militant, sometimes armed neo-Nazi groups in many countries that cooperate, and a cultural scene with music, clothing, publishers, and magazines. Right-wing strategies and actors, some of whom are neo-fascist, reinforce each other, network with forces in the churches, authorities, media, or organized crime, and find sympathy and support there; and they perforate the boundaries between formal constitutional-institutional, civil society, and underground activities. The authoritarian dynamic cannot be explained solely by the social situation of part of the population, political developments, or the activities of right-wing parties in a nation state. Despite their professed nationalism, there are programmatic similarities between right-wing parties; there are agreements, alliances, cooperation, mutual support, visits, and conferences. A recent example is the criticism of the court ruling against Marine Le Pen, who had misused EU funds for her party while serving as an MEP. Immediately after the verdict, Orbán, Meloni, and Trump spoke out and criticized the political ruling. This is a multiple scandal: the interference of foreign governments in the judiciary of a country; ignorance of French law; political support for authoritarian policies, because other governments, such as those of Turkey or Russia, are not criticized in the same way. The same thing happened again when the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution described the AfD as a confirmed right-wing extremist party. Representatives of the US government have spoken of tyranny in Germany. It is like the case of Nazi propaganda, because there is a reversal of persecutors and persecuted, perpetrators and victims. Unexpectedly, there is the spectacle of some of the ruling class radically disavowing and rejecting the apparatus of power: the media, the courts, the police.

“There is a much broader, transnational tendency toward authoritarian rule, which is supported by relevant forces of the bourgeoisie.”
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There must be deep-rooted causes for these synchronous processes. These are not to be found in the activities of right-wing nationalist and authoritarian groups, nor in the widespread views of the population as surveyed by opinion polls, nor in the situation of social poverty. There is a much broader, transnational tendency toward authoritarian rule, which is supported by relevant forces within the bourgeoisie. Some of their groups probably do not want right-wing governments or are ambivalent (if one thinks of Bezos or Musk in the period after 2017, or the distanced relationship of German business associations to the AfD). Presumably, they themselves are caught up in an authoritarian dynamic that tends to become a coercive relationship. They have increasingly talked themselves into a hostile mood: against gender, political correctness, supposed identity politics, overburdening of the welfare state, bureaucracy. The CDU's “foreigners out” slogans, the ever-increasing erosion of asylum rights, and the claim that Islam does not belong in Germany have led to demands for decisive deportation and the decisive prevention of immigration. The fact that Wolfgang Schäuble, Christian Wulff, and Horst Seehofer have retracted their own racist statements after leaving office is no longer relevant. These are continuously present right-wing forces in the media, in conservative parties, and in interest groups. They pursue this policy or consciously adopt its dynamics, work with it strategically, draw conclusions, and turn against the supposed indecisiveness and hypocrisy of the ruling parties. They radicalize widespread positions in the parties of the so-called democratic center (think of Sarkozy, Kurz, Seehofer, Spahn). Because there is a certain indecisiveness in bourgeois circles, in parties, the media, or churches, about how far to go and what concessions must be made, i.e., political-strategic debates about limits are taking place, individuals and groups can become radicalized and split off. This is what happened with the AfD, which was formed by market libertarians and right-wing CDU personnel.

Sometimes actors in right-wing parties describe themselves as fascists and refer to historical role models such as Hitler, the SS, and the SA (“Everything for ...” = AfD); they also express explicit anti-Semitism and deny the Holocaust, dig up stumbling blocks, riot in memorials, or desecrate Jewish cemeteries—only to threaten their opponents a moment later that they would do to them exactly what they deny (“mitgehangen, mitgefangen” [hanged together, caught together]). Often it is not so clear-cut, but rather alludes to a certain sympathy and continuity with historical fascism – but these allusions are then retracted. Revisionist and relativizing arguments are used, or it is claimed that these are merely misunderstandings. But there are also clear efforts to distance themselves from their fascist or National Socialist past. For example, members who make anti-Semitic statements or refer positively to Nazism are expelled from authoritarian-populist parties; representatives of these parties visit Israel and seek proximity to right-wing Israeli governments and politicians. The relationship with Jews is ambivalent. Trump fights science in the name of combating anti-Semitism at US universities. But his audacity lies in calling the neo-Nazis of Charlottesville, who proclaim that they will not be replaced by Jews, good patriots and pardoning right-wing extremists.

The fascist dynamic in the US
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This points to the problem of nomenclature. How should these forces and developments be described? There are numerous and quite contradictory critical attempts to name these phenomena: populism, nationalism, authoritarian populism, right-wing extremism, fascism, authoritarianism, radicalized conservatism, late or post-liberalism, late or post-fascism, micro- or schizo-fascism, right-wing authoritarian nationalism. After the experiences of the first weeks of Trump's presidency, intellectuals in the US are speaking simply and directly of fascism. The activities of DOGE have led to an administrative and constitutional coup, resulting in the summary dismissal of many civil servants and employees. People have been kidnapped, arrested, and deported by what amounts to a secret police force; legal procedures are not being followed, and supreme court rulings are being ignored by the administration and the government. The media is being marginalized, inundated with lawsuits, and thus intimidated both legally and financially. Law firms that represent critics of the government are losing clients or face the prospect of being sued themselves. The academic freedom of universities and research institutions is being systematically violated. Politicians are being threatened. The administrative coup is accompanied by a political and state crisis, because there is no political institution to enforce rights and court decisions, no possibility for those affected to have state actions reviewed by the courts.

Nevertheless, resorting to the term fascism creates a false historical image. Fascism was a self-designation and served to characterize a certain form of violence, mass mobilization, and conception of the state. The left has often referred to Marx's Bonapartism thesis to explain it. This tied the left of the 1920s to a historical imaginary (support from a large number of isolated small farmers) and prevented it from adequately recognizing the reality of National Socialism (the destruction of the labor movement, the constant mobilization of large masses, the uniformization of society, the creation of paramilitary combat units and secret police forces). Many believed that Hitler would not remain in power for long and that the masses would understand that the promise of socialism would not be fulfilled. War was expected, but not the rapid military successes, the conquest and plundering of significant parts of Europe, and above all the racist policy of extermination – a policy that also accepted the self-destruction of Germany and Austria.

“The use of the term fascism creates a false historical image. Fascism was a self-designation and served to characterize a certain form of violence, mass mobilization, and conception of the state.”
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Because of the Nazi dictatorship, the left has repeatedly been quick to argue that a return to fascism or neo-fascism is imminent. At demonstrations in the 1970s against the Vietnam War, the coup in Chile, or US imperialism, it was not uncommon to hear chants of “USA-SA-SS.” The expansion and militarization of the police and the judicial apparatus in the 1970s, the large number of right-wing attacks in Italy, and the anti-communist function of NATO's secret activities against left-wing groups and non-governmental organizations also suggested that fascism and an authoritarian state were on the rise. Such tendencies did exist, but they did not coalesce into a new form of exceptional rule.

It is surprising that in a country like the US, which has had a democratic constitution for over two hundred years and where parliamentary democracy is reasonably stable and regular changes of government take place, a fascist dynamic has emerged that is supported by a large section of the population. This means that attempts to explain the success of National Socialism in the 1920s by pointing to the weaker anchoring of democratic institutions in German society, less familiar democratic habits, and limited knowledge and experience of democracy are not very plausible. Even long experience and a vibrant civil society do not seem to offer protection. In fact, the opposite may be true: the contradictions that politicians must navigate in democratic institutions are seen as hypocrisy. And their invocation of democratic rules obscures the idea that authoritarian practices can arise from and within democracy.

Fascist developments do not primarily depend on the opinions or attitudes of the population. In the 1940s, representatives of critical theory argued, based on personal experience, that anti-Semitism was much more widespread in the attitudes of the US population than it had been in Germany before 1933. For critical theory, this consideration was significant in terms of the sociology of power. The attitudes of the general population do not allow us to predict the political development of a country. What matters is what those in power want. They use economic pressure, threats, violence, propaganda, and lies to create an atmosphere of obedience and conformity, so that many people join and integrate into the authoritarian collective. Opinion polls support this.

So I am thinking in a different direction. We are not dealing with genuinely new phenomena, but neither are we dealing with historical repetitions. Authoritarian political patterns and practices of rule represent a long-term trend; they are a constitutive part of the capitalist mode of production and the formation processes of bourgeois society. In this, I follow a line of thought developed by Marx in the third volume of Capital. What he attempts to determine is the “ideal average” of the capitalist mode of production. Marx proposes using his theory to focus on statistical regularities and to understand the constant changes, instabilities, crises, and revolutionary self-transformations of bourgeois social formation. Nothing remains stable or identical—but with some regularity, certain practices return in a form that is both identical and changed. These include not only economic processes and their oscillations, which with a certain probability lead to surpluses and underproduction, to labor shortages and surpluses, to simultaneous poverty and wealth, to disputes over free trade or mercantilism. In his research, Marx was obviously unsure which phenomena he should count as the ideal average of the capitalist mode of production. But he took into account the novelty of bourgeois society: the capitalist mode of production is the only one that takes the form of statistical distributions, regularities, probabilities, and averages—which has a decisive bearing on the determination of value by abstract labor, which is the result of market-mediated exchange of concretely useful labor.

“Fascist developments do not depend primarily on the opinions or attitudes of the population.”
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This consideration also applies to the capitalist state and the various political strategies of bourgeois rule. In his analyses, Marx concludes that the parliamentary republic is, on average, the normal form of the bourgeois-capitalist state. This is an “ideal” average, because in reality bourgeois rule was organized in different and often non-state forms: cities, feudal-aristocratic rulers, empires, or it was exercised in authoritarian forms: monarchy, colonial dictatorship, military dictatorship, Bonapartism, fascism. Bourgeois rule took shape from the end of the 15th century onwards, and forms of authoritarian rule played a significant role in these struggles against the peasants who wanted to get rid of feudalism and the Catholic Church: the destruction of peasant emancipation and urban movements, the Counter-Reformation, the suppression of popular movements for the appropriation of agricultural property, the restoration after the French Revolution with its intellectual representatives such as de Maistre and Bonald or parts of German Romanticism, the fight against the emerging labor movement, the Catholic counter-revolution after 1848 with representatives such as Donoso Cortez or burgeoning anti-Semitism, and after the First World War, fascism and National Socialism. These were efforts and strategies to maintain power and reproduce it on a broader scale, i.e., not only to combat popular movements once they had already emerged, but also to take preventive counterrevolutionary action so that resistance, protest, and social movements would not arise in the first place. In this way, those in power adapted to the likelihood that resistance and popular movements would arise. In a special way, bourgeois processes of domination organized themselves with and against a comprehensive, historically completely new social movement, the labor movement, which not only achieved great continuity and spatial expansion, but also developed a secularized knowledge of real social conditions and was able to develop concrete plans for an alternative to the bourgeois world and way of life. This forced the bourgeoisie not only to adopt realism, i.e., to turn to the concrete immanence of social conditions and to develop a knowledge of domination and struggles, but also to establish preventive measures designed to ensure security and order and to monitor social processes and events to see to what extent they challenged established habits and regularities. Fascism was, accordingly, a counterrevolutionary practice. It was not primarily about enforcing the interests of a bourgeois faction, as Dimitroff suggested: according to him, fascism was the openly terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, most imperialist elements of finance capital. With Gramsci and Poulantzas, on the other hand, it can be plausibly argued that fascism was the result of a comprehensive crisis of the bourgeoisie's power bloc: an economic crisis, a crisis of hegemony, a political crisis, and finally a crisis of the state, overall a destabilization of previous compromises between social forces. Even if the labor movement had no prospect of revolutionary success, the bourgeoisie was demoralized, felt threatened, and did not know how to overcome and solve the problems of reproduction in capitalist society. It had to prevent the socialist and communist movement from organizing in such a way as to undermine national and military policy from within, transform production relations, and socialize social production and reproduction.

Historical fascism in Italy and even more so in Germany took shape as a set of authoritarian practices that bourgeois rule had developed over the centuries. Fascism was a previously unknown form of unleashing state power. It incorporated modern industry, communication, law, science, and technological developments in order to exercise control over huge populations, to administer and persecute them, and to destroy them on racist grounds. Prevention aimed to combat any deviation at the level of biological life in such a way that only pure racist normality and a homogeneous national community would prevail. This included the extermination of Marxism and the labor movement, Jews in Europe, Slavs, Sinti and Roma, gays, and the disabled—in other words, all those who did not fit the image of a bred master race.

“Authoritarian political patterns and practices of rule represent a long-term tendency; they are constitutive of the capitalist mode of production and the formation processes of bourgeois society.”
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Even if it is sometimes problematic to define fascism by means of a kind of checklist, it seems sensible to me to identify a number of characteristics that are typical of the fascist form of authoritarian rule. These include: a willingness to use violence as an everyday and arbitrary practice of rule; elitist contempt for the masses; a national community and rejection of the free individual; nihilism and historical-philosophical pessimism (cultural decline, degeneration); populism and a leadership that presents itself as resistant in order to enforce the interests of the ruling class with the help of the mobilized people; nationalism; conservatism; racism and anti-Semitism; sexism, misogyny, and hostility toward sexual minorities; rejection of democracy; rejection of urbanity, intellectuals, and scientific rationality. Fascism was an attempt to seek out and destroy the generic moments of dissent and deviation in bourgeois society by scientific and police means, combined with the delusional belief that any such practice of otherness and alternative perspectives could be eliminated once and for all. It was to be a final victory, an absolute annihilation of the enemy. In contrast, military defeat by the Allied forces led by the US demonstrated that it is more successful to exercise bourgeois rule through democracy, open statistical regularities, and unstable normalization processes. The delusional belief in the supremacy of the Germans and the Aryan race was refuted. In the form of familial racism, the belief in one's own chosenness and the superiority of one's own family, the belief in knowing what is true about gender, the economy, and the welfare of the US, this imaginary enters the political arena with Trump and Musk. In doing so, they give support to other regimes that are nationalistic and racist but do not have the power to enrich and expand themselves at the expense of others.

Fascism took the form of exceptional rule. It was a condensation of all those authoritarian moments. It ended with the traumatic murder of many people, genocide, destruction, population shifts in Europe, the dissolution of colonial empires, and with it the ethnocentric certainty of European superiority. When people talk about fascism, they often mean this kind of finality in social dynamics, i.e., totalitarian rule and its destructive consequences. That is why pointing out the fascist or anti-Semitic character of beliefs, public statements, or actions could also establish a kind of political and moral boundary. It was enough to point out the anti-Semitic implications of a politician's statement to force an apology, resignation, or change in practice. For the majority of the bourgeoisie, the experience of unbridled racist violence and the elimination of democracy meant that they shied away from any attempts to reintroduce authoritarian rule in the form of fascism. The bourgeoisie was and is not opposed to the use of authoritarian practices, but it did not want them to challenge the order of rule itself, leading to unprecedented destruction, defeat, and destabilization of balances and normalization processes. This has changed in recent years due to the metapolitical strategy of the right. They do not deny the Holocaust, but they can relativize it, operate with ambiguities, retract allusions, or cynically confess: So I am a fascist. Enlightening arguments run their course and lose their effectiveness. Pressure arises to experiment with and operate authoritarian forms of rule once again.

Getting a grasp on the dynamics
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When I argue that historical fascism as an exceptional form of rule consists of a series of practices, I conclude that such finality does not have to exist. I imagine it as a kind of prism: all authoritarian elements are present. In social struggles and power relations, specific political-ideological practices can come to the fore: political-economic conservatism, anti-genderism, authoritarian populism, racism, anti-Semitism, statism, fascism (characterized here, as Adorno and Scurati suggest, by violence and propaganda). One of these moments can bathe all the others in the light of a single color and overdetermine them. These moments do not necessarily have to dynamically condense into the form of fascist exceptional rule in such a way that fascism becomes the dominant aspect. They can connect with existing forms of democracy, embed themselves in them, permeate them. There can still be a parliament, parties, a media public sphere, a constitution, law, courts. But these formal institutions and their representatives will be divided and will merge into an open and crisis-ridden field of forces: judges, prosecutors, and police officers will become part of fascist networks, journalists and writers will gradually and organically align themselves with the right wing and become its spokespersons. But it should also be noted that judges, politicians, scientists, journalists, and their family members are insulted, legally and physically threatened, attacked, or even murdered. This process is ongoing; institutions and individuals are often attacked individually, and the attacks have a threatening, corrosive, and demoralizing effect because there is no clear solution in sight. The police and public prosecutors can do little under current law, or are unwilling to do anything. The legal model of action proves useless in the face of fascist threats and violence (much more so than in the case of organized crime). Even a broad mobilization against the right wing can hardly prevent its terror against individuals, threats, and insults.

Instead of talking about fascism, it may be more useful to focus on the dynamic process of fascistization. But what exactly does that mean? It refers to a dangerous dynamic. However, it should not be understood as a targeted, finalized process that will ultimately lead to fascism. Rather, it is more like a constellation of the moments mentioned above. Fascist elements are continuously present moments of the bourgeois power apparatus (i.e., racism, neo-Nazi groups, revisionism, the cult of soldiers), but they only come to the fore cyclically and then cast the other authoritarian conditions in a special light. So if fascist tendencies are an important feature of the current economic situation, but do not teleologically lead to fascist rule, the question arises as to how the concrete form of rule should be defined.

“Instead of talking about fascism, it may be useful to look at the dynamic process of fascist tendencies. But what exactly does that mean?”
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Elsewhere, I have argued in favor of speaking of authoritarian populism. The basis for this practice of rule was the demoralization of relevant sections of the bourgeoisie after the financial crisis and the emergence of a large wave of protest movements. It was expected that this dynamic could lead to a Green (New) Deal. But the multiple crisis has progressed further. In many respects, tipping points have been exceeded: melting glaciers and Arctic ice sheets, warming oceans and coastal destruction, high CO2 and methane emissions, species extinction, micro- and nanoplastic pollution, groundwater loss, drought and soil erosion, and large-scale human migration. Raw material and energy shortages are becoming increasingly noticeable in the face of AI use, the security of infrastructure and military readiness are proving to be under threat, and space and the deep sea represent new areas of political and military conflict. A necessary transformation, which would have to be set in motion immediately, would not only yield too little profit in terms of investment, but would also be the beginning of a process that would lead away from capitalist ownership and production relations. The challenges posed by the contradiction between production relations and productive forces are too great. Serious efforts would have to be made to abandon ever-increasing capital accumulation, to restructure or even shut down entire branches of production, to develop different consumption patterns, to overcome dependence on fossil fuels, and to establish a new global economic equilibrium. The transnational bourgeoisie is not ignoring these problems. It is aware of the challenges. The discussions at the annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos bear witness to this. But there is an effort to combat knowledge and the emergence of new, appropriate practices. Knowledge should not become relevant to action, and politics should not follow scientific insight. Shutting oneself off from knowledge requires making oneself stupid, blocking perspectives for action, and reacting with a defiant “business as usual”: more, bigger, more valuable cars, more and smarter weapons, the restoration of conventional family forms and sexual practices, the destruction of research institutions and universities—as if nothing had happened, as if all the findings of Earth system research, gender studies, or critical racism research did not exist. This includes having control over the disasters that are taking place or are imminent and the resulting practices of solidarity, and rejecting the warnings of the military or insurance companies: it won't be that bad, they were just one-off events. In other words, the strengthening of fascist tendencies is an attempt to block socio-ecological transformation. Bourgeois society wants nothing to do with the monsters it creates and hopes to stem or prevent communication flows and dissident practices by suppressing the sciences (“universities as the enemy”), harassing the media, and controlling and monitoring social media.

Feudalization of the state apparatus
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The economic situation is determined by the form of autocracy. This distinguishes the current constellation from earlier forms of exceptional rule. Those who hold state power are not employees of the bourgeois class who would represent different bourgeois forces. Rather, they themselves already belong directly to the ruling class. They are entrepreneurs, they pursue oligarchic interests. This leads to a feudalization of the state apparatus: overlapping power, superimposition or elimination of hierarchies. This can go as far as a neo-feudal habitus, which can be observed in Trump, Putin, or Erdoğan. Access for representatives of other capital interests can be facilitated or made more difficult, because they now encounter their peers, not people who are bound by legal regulations (equality before the law) and trained accordingly. The media is restructured and partially blocked (rejection of newspapers, attacks on public broadcasting, persecution of journalists), the importance of some civil society organizations is significantly reduced, and the influence of scientific knowledge is diminished. The autocrats are obviously suspicious of the state apparatus, its structure, and state personnel. They hijack the state and partially rebuild it, replacing the leadership with oligarchs, friends, and family members. Democratic institutions and authoritarian leadership intermingle; parliaments, parties, and suffrage remain, but they are reorganized so that the power of one group gains continuity, change in decision-making functions becomes considerably more difficult, and quasi-dynastic representations emerge. Developments in the US suggest that state apparatuses can also be drastically dismantled or that an organization such as DOGE, coming from outside, can be used to render individual state apparatuses dysfunctional (social affairs, foreign affairs, education ministries, research institutions, universities, media) or to destroy them. It could be that this autocracy practices a combination of different forms of bourgeois rule. In addition to representative democracy, this could include the form of the totalitarian state and the form of the libertarian dissolution of the state in the form of seasteads, charter cities, or free trade and special economic zones.

Defending emancipatory achievements
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These are new challenges for the left. For in fact, civilization and the power structures of past decades, if not centuries, are up for grabs. This applies first and foremost to all the ecological upheavals that are affecting millennia-old certainties—and thus also to ideas of order that believed they were based on stable natural conditions. Given that the laws of nature in the Anthropocene are proving to be human and historical, a core ideology of the bourgeoisie—the recourse to the naturalness of conditions—is being fundamentally weakened. The nation-state, the legal authorities, bourgeois democratic procedures, the media, and the bourgeois public sphere, which have already been hollowed out by the process of globalization, are under severe pressure. The progressive aspects that have been implemented since the 1960s—sometimes in alliance with so-called progressive neoliberalism—are being fought against massively by the right, even to the point of linguistic policing. The left must stand up for these emancipatory achievements and not weaken itself by allowing conservative-authoritarian forces to convince it that social and identity politics are contradictory. These achievements were and are a precursor to a new civilization in which it should be possible to be different without fear and to live freely in harmony with nature.

“The left must not weaken itself by allowing conservative-authoritarian forces to convince it that social and identity politics are contradictory.”
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New practices of solidarity are needed. For the catastrophic trends will continue: forest fires, floods, drought, supply shortages due to transport disruptions. People, their possessions, and infrastructure are under threat. Governments are not providing sufficient help, and insurance companies are shirking their obligations. A new common will is needed to drive ecological renewal and organize solidarity in ecological emergencies.

During the traffic light coalition of the SPD, Greens, and FDP, representatives of the SPD and Greens were frequently criticized and described as the dumbest government Germany had ever had. This was a false polarization, because a number of projects were important, even if only partially correct: the switch to e-mobility, the discontinuation of subsidies for diesel or commuter allowances, the use of pesticides such as glyphosate, the so-called heating law, and the increase in CO2 emission prices. Critical points included inadequate implementation, opportunism, and the fact that society was not mobilized to support appropriate socio-ecological transformations. In the current situation, in which the small grand coalition is threatening to increase military spending, reintroduce conscription, and make cuts to social security systems, and in view of fascist tendencies that are leading to an autocratic form of government, new, democratic alliances must be considered. A socialist pole is needed. The forces that support this pole need a clear position. But it is also important to develop a perspective for alliances. In view of the strong authoritarian dynamics, it makes sense not to conceive such alliances along organizational affiliations or party lines. The starting point could be (without false updating) considerations of a popular front movement, as developed by Willi Münzenberg in the late 1930s. Such a policy can only succeed if it meets the demands of democracy in terms of the relationship between the alliance partners and the participation of individuals.

### Alex Demirović

Alex Demirović is a philosopher and social scientist. He has taught at universities in Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, among others, is a member of the board of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, and is a founding member of this journal.

Sarasota, Florida, USA, April 2025: Proud Boys and anti-vaxxers jointly disrupt an event with renowned immunologist Anthony Fauci, advisor on the Biden administration's anti-COVID strategy.