The Modern State and Its Enemies: Democracy, Nationalism and Antisemitism 1785272209, 9781785272202

Table of contents :
Cover
Front Matter
Half-title
Title page
Copyright information
Table of Contents
Chapters 1-11
1Introduction
State Theory and Democracy
2 Immortalizing the Mortal God: Hobbes, Schmitt and the Ambivalent Foundations of the Modern State
State and Myth
Leviathan and Behemoth in Hobbes: Symbols of Ambivalence
Leviathan and Behemoth in Schmitt: Symbols of Identity
Leviathan, Behemoth and New Perspectives in the Theory of State
3 Guardian of Democracy? Theoretical Aspects of Police Roles and Functions in Democracy
Method(s)
Theory: Security as a Prerequisite for Democracy
Discussion: Ten Theses on the Relationship between Police and Democracy
Conclusion
4 The Will of the People? Carl Schmitt and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on a Key Question in Democratic Theory
The Agenda of Identity: Rousseau and the Dilemma of Representation
The Will as Identity: Schmitt and the Turn toward Dictatorship
The Will of the People: But Which Takes Precedence, the Will or the People?
5 No Sovereignty without Freedom: Machiavelli, Hobbes and the Global Order in the Twenty-First Century
Sovereignty and the Ambiguities of the Global Order
Machiavelli and Sovereignty without Morality
Hobbes and Sovereignty’s Potential for Freedom
State Sovereignty and Its (Self-)Limitations
Nationalism and Minorities
6 The Concept of Ethnic Minorities: International Law and the German-Austrian Response
On the Origins of International Protection for National Minorities
Minorities Protection Conceptualizations in International Law after World War I
The Ethnical Response to Minorities Conflicts: Volksgruppenrecht
The Ethnicist Attack on International Minorities Laws
Summary
7 Carl Schmitt’s Legacy in International Law: Volksgruppenrecht Theory and European Grossraum Ideas from the End of World War II Into the Present Day
Carl Schmitt and the Grossraum Order in International Law
Schmitt’s Postwar Legacy: Volksgruppen Theory and Grossraum Thought in Europe
The Grossraum Concepts of Volksgruppenrecht Theory
Grossraum Order and European Integration
8 The German Myth of a Victim Nation: (Re)presenting Germans as Victims in the Debate on Their Flight and Expulsion from Easter Europe
Antisemitism and Right-Wing Extremism
9 Antisemitism in Eastern Europe: Theoretical Reflections in Comparative Perspective
The Ideology of Antisemitism
Antisemitism and Modernity
Eastern European Perspectives
10 Right-Wing Extremism and Right-Wing Populism: Conceptual Foundations
At the Core: An Ideology of Inequality
Ethnonationalist and “Culturalist” Thought
Right-Wing Populism as a Strategy of Right-Wing Extremism
11 Renaissance of the New Right in Germany? A Discussion of New Right Elements in German Right-Wing Extremism Today
The Emergence, Ideology and Strategy of the New Right
The Rise and Fall of the New Right
The New Rise of the New Right: Strategies between Metapolitics and the Pursuit of Cultural Hegemony
Intellectualization through Metapolitics: The Paradigm of Unconditionally Eschewing Parliamentarianism
Cultural Hegemony: The Paradigm of the Unconditional Pursuit of Influence
Conclusion: Does the New Right Still Exist—or Exist Again—in Germany?
End Matter
Bibliography
List of First Publications
Index

Citation preview

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The Modern State and Its Enemies

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The Modern State and Its Enemies Democracy, Nationalism and Antisemitism

Samuel Salzborn

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Anthem Press An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company www.anthempress.com This edition first published in UK and USA 2020 by ANTHEM PRESS 75–​76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK and 244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA Copyright © Samuel Salzborn 2020 The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The book is supported by funding from the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, Berlin. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Library of Congress Control Number:2019955037 ISBN-​13: 978-​1-​78527-​220-​2  (Hbk) ISBN-​10: 1-​78527-​220-​9  (Hbk) This title is also available as an e-​book.

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CONTENTS

1.

Introduction

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State Theory and Democracy 2. Immortalizing the Mortal God: Hobbes, Schmitt and the Ambivalent Foundations of the Modern State

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3. Guardian of Democracy? Theoretical Aspects of Police Roles and Functions in Democracy

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4. The Will of the People? Carl Schmitt and Jean-​Jacques Rousseau on a Key Question in Democratic Theory

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5. No Sovereignty without Freedom: Machiavelli, Hobbes and the Global Order in the Twenty-​First Century

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Nationalism and Minorities 6. The Concept of Ethnic Minorities: International Law and the German-​Austrian Response

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7. Carl Schmitt’s Legacy in International Law: Volksgruppenrecht Theory and European Grossraum Ideas from the End of World War II into the Present Day

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8. The German Myth of a Victim Nation: (Re)presenting Germans as Victims in the Debate on Their Flight and Expulsion from Eastern Europe

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Antisemitism and Right-​Wing Extremism 9. Antisemitism in Eastern Europe: Theoretical Reflections in Comparative Perspective

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10. Right-​Wing Extremism and Right-​Wing Populism: Conceptual Foundations

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11. Renaissance of the New Right in Germany? A Discussion of New Right Elements in German Right-​Wing Extremism Today

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Bibliography

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List of First Publications

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Index

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1 INTRODUCTION  In focusing on the modern state and its enemies, this book considers the historical intellectual developments that provided the fundaments of the modern state, informed the key theoretical questions arising in the democratic context (e.g., representation, participation, policing and the use of force) and shaped the relationship between (state) sovereignty and (individual) liberty. The modern state as a nation-​state is thus based on the relationship between its territory, its people and its sovereign authority. As a result, nationalism and minorities policy are issues that are key to the state’s self-​conception. But historically, these have also been repeatedly used as weapons against the state, manifesting in separatism, irredentism and antidemocratic agitation. Both antisemitism and right-​wing extremism have historically stood in opposition to the democratic state and continue to do so today. Antisemitism in particular is antithetical to modernity, as it fundamentally rejects equality and individual liberty. Democracies still face threats to their existence today. With autocratic regimes, political power is clearly based on the executive prerogative, meaning the use of force by police and military, thereby guaranteeing domestic stability through the threat and—​if necessary—​use of force (assuming there is no military intervention from abroad) (Chapter  3). In contrast, the political power of democracies is ultimately based on their power of persuasion, a principle that is often challenged and subverted by opponents of democracy, especially in times of social and economic crisis. Here, a democracy ideally means a constitutional order that guarantees universally applicable, generally formulated, nonretroactive laws while also having the ability to enforce these with sovereign authority, and that furthermore cements the separation of politics and jurisprudence by prohibiting the enactment of excessively vague blanket clauses. What differentiates democracies in practice is the particular way in which the demos is given the power to rule over itself: the resulting organizational rules are not only formal principles but also the outcome of substantive debates concerning the structures and functions of democracy. The distinctive modus operandi of each democratic system is thus also an expression of a

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particular understanding of democracy, with its own systemic answers to the central theoretical questions of democracy. Here, what can be seen as the central question of democratic governance is how the ruling should be related to the ruled, with the answers falling into two ideal types, based on difference or sameness: whereas conflict-​oriented democracies advocate a representative system and thereby embrace social heterogeneity, consensus-​oriented democracies argue for systems founded on identicalness and thus strive for complete or near-​complete homogeneity between the ruling and the ruled (Chapters 4 and 6). In the global history of democratization over the past three centuries, there have been many cases of democratized states becoming destabilized through the actions of opponents both domestic and foreign (e.g., in South America and Southeast Asia), reflecting a constant interplay both qualitatively and quantitatively between democratic expansion and autocratic rollback (Chapter  9). The conceptual model of “defective democracy” (cf. Merkel 2010) makes clear that the drift into autocracy happens gradually and that the dividing line between democracy and autocracy can sometimes be fluid, such as in the cases of exclusive democracy (in which parts of the populace are systematically excluded from the electoral process), enclave democracy (in which constituent groups such as militias, businesspeople and/​ or the military exercise some political power without the need for democratic legitimacy), illiberal democracy (in which constitutional frameworks are suspended either partially or completely) and delegative democracy (in which political checks and balances have been tipped in favor of a strong executive) (cf. ibid., 37–​8) (Chapter 3). Within the domestic sphere, democracies are faced with extremist forces trying to undermine their democratic foundations in order to establish an authoritarian or totalitarian system, while in the international arena, they are confronted by autocratic regimes with antidemocratic intentions. So there exists a complex interplay between democracy and autocracy in which the two models of governance compete not only domestically for sovereign control over a territory and its people but also internationally between rival states. If the democratization wave theory formulated by Samuel Huntington (1991) is extended back through history, it can also be seen that the first democratization wave seen in the European and American bourgeois revolutions began as a reaction to the prevailing undemocratic regimes—​ largely autocratic ones—​that had enjoyed relative stability for centuries (cf. Fukuyama 2011). The key development that shook the stability of autocracies was the Enlightenment’s posing of the legitimacy question (Chapters 4 and 5): once asked, it becomes impossible to silence through any means of thought control or physical force—​which ultimately explains the steady, albeit slow,

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Introduction

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proliferation of democratic regimes around the world, while also allowing for the vague expectation that democratic models of governance will eventually prevail in time, even in the face of autocratic alternative systems. In this sense, the story of democracy has always been a story of fragility, which also has to do with the nature of democracy itself. This is because democratic governance models are based on an Enlightenment ideal in which the person is not only to be treated as an individual but should also become a mature political subject. The philosophical ideals of the Enlightenment are politically implicit in the democratic model. What this Enlightenment philosophy has promised the individual is nothing more—​and nothing less—​than a shift from a passive object of history to an active subject of politics. What primarily distinguished the premodern mode of governance was that it did not need to justify itself as such. Its objective power stemmed from not subjectively needing to legitimize itself, since its own claim of divinity had already made it sacrosanct. But now that individuals were free of their premodern constraints, they were also to become aware of their own subjectivity, to recognize themselves as “born free” (Rousseau 1762, 5) and capable of learning and to emancipate themselves from their “self-​incurred immaturity” (Kant 1784, 53). As both bourgeois philosophy and liberal theory, Enlightenment thinking committed the individual to freedom without being able to guarantee it—​or even wanting to do so. In its liberal aspect, this promised freedom from coercion not only implied a freedom from security but also entailed two other double-​edged consequences, in its dialectic of public sphere versus private sphere, and in its contradiction between rights and economics. The latter guaranteed equality as a legal ideal, but one that ensured economic inequality while also legitimizing it, thereby realizing freedom as a theoretical equality while actually segmenting and differentiating society in its claims of universality; meanwhile, the former constituted the very core of bourgeois governance in its separation of public sphere from private sphere, a separation that promised freedom while also suspending it. While the public sphere was the site where the “contract between free and equal brothers” (Pateman 2000, 32) resulted in the partitioning of a legal system independent of the political sphere, this also generated the private sphere as a gendered site of reproduction, thereby establishing a basic precondition for the industrial division of labor. Public-​sphere freedom was only to be achieved through private-​sphere unfreedom for society’s female majority. Therefore, the premise of freedom in the private sphere was always structurally dependent on the reproducing of production frameworks that were founded upon a false promise of freedom—​false for being halved in two ways. So while the public sphere became the site of the political, the private sphere became the site of the public sphere’s gendered reproduction.

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But this halving of the Enlightenment ideal was not simply an exclusion: it was ultimately based on the “dialectic of the Enlightenment” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1947) itself, on its underlying premises and assumptions that are both deeply self-​contradictory and inescapably caught in this self-​contradiction. Here, emancipation from the theological paradigm ultimately meant replacing it with a natural science one—​a paradigm shift in which emancipation was also inscribed with its opposite. This dichotomy arises because on the one hand, while the new rationalism may have freed the individual from the bonds of Christian subordination, it could not offer a sense of meaningfulness like that of the theologians, one capable of fulfilling the threatening emptiness of human life and the deep yearning for transcendence, which are tied to humanity’s innate fear of what Hobbes (1651) called the greatest possible evil: death, of which only humans, alone among all living creatures, are ultimately aware of, and which shapes them in their every worldly action, both consciously and subconsciously. On the other hand, this dichotomy also arises because emancipation was based on a natural science understanding that replaced an irrational faith in God with an irrational faith in Nature, one that ushered in a process of emancipation, albeit only for the light-​skinned male part of society—​an emancipation that every progressive movement has tried to expand since then. However, this new faith in nature and science would not only take humanity’s former humility and transform it into a fantasy of omnipotence in which everything could be conquered and controlled but also lead to the classification, segmentation and hierarchization of all humanity and, in this sexist, racist, colonialist and antisemitic enterprise, to the invention of more and more categorical distinctions that would stamp out, both symbolically and concretely, the great trauma of the Enlightenment—​namely, the awareness of one’s own mortality—​through ostensibly “natural” and “scientific” hierarchical systems, ones resulting in oppression and subjugation as well as persecution and extermination. Although frequently lionized as the next democratization wave, the Arab Spring (i.e., the uprisings in several Arab countries starting with Tunisia in December 2010) took less than a year to lose its shine, as it not only turned out to be a distant mirage and a case of Western wishful thinking but—​ through the victories of various Islamist groups—​has itself become part of the third great antidemocratic counterwave, in an authoritarian backlash that is starting to transform the old authoritarian regimes into totalitarian Islamist ones. At the same time, the Western world, instead of empathizing more with the struggle for democracy and freedom since 9/​11, has been empathizing less:  anti-​Americanism and anti-​Zionism have become increasingly prominent, particularly in the European Union (cf. Markovits 2007; Rensmann and Schoeps 2011), with actions supporting freedom and democracy (admittedly

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including military ones) being met with rejection and animosity, even here in one of the cradles of democracy, feelings that are projected upon the two states that symbolically combine the ideals of freedom and the Enlightenment with the use of military force: the United States and Israel. This particular ambivalence toward modernity, one that rejects and fights against the emancipatory core of the Enlightenment while also voicing one-​ sided support for the technological solution and the essentialist option, ideas that are likewise inscribed in the dialectics of the Enlightenment, is mostly clearly seen in the worldview of antisemitism, as the “negative guiding principle of modernity” (cf. in detail Salzborn 2010a, also for the following). In the analysis of Horkheimer and Adorno (1947), antisemitism and modernity are inseparable from one another, with modern antisemitism both dependent on and limited by the Enlightenment: scientific emancipation’s potential for barbarism (and its real-​world implementation) also includes the potential for self-​reflection and a critical transcending of immaturity (Chapter 9). In both political and social terms, antisemitism in the early modern era was initially directed only against the Jewish populace itself, and especially against its legal and political emancipation. Then came a process of radicalization—​rigorously dissected by Shulamit Volkov (1978) in her conception of the “cultural code” that antisemitism had become through this process—​which happened as antisemitism became increasingly involved in broader political questions and new ground was broken in the critiquing of entire social and political systems, ultimately leading to proposals for a fundamentally new society that was still “to be designed, planned and constructed, thereby inspiring the fantasies of the völkisch movement” (Schulze Wessel 2006, 222). The delusional in the process of antisemitic projection was and is manifested as an inverting of the relationship between individual and society, between internal and external and between psyche and sociality. Drawing upon what Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno wrote about mimesis and false projection in their Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947, 220–​22), it can be said that the antisemitic worldview is not interested in a mimetic transformation process with successful object representation and simultaneous subject recognition but instead the reverse: a projective-​ delusional transformation of external reality with the goal of aligning the social environment to fit the individual’s delusional drive structure. While modern antisemitism, in contrast to premodern anti-​Judaism, does achieve an abstraction, it then seeks out—​in its delusion—​a concrete target for its projections, thereby accusing Jews of not being concrete but abstract: for example, in equating them with goods or money. Here, as Sartre (1945) has noted, the antisemite is rejecting certain abstractions of bourgeois society, particularly modern forms of property like money and stocks, since these

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would be too close to rationality and thus akin to the abstract intelligence of the Jewish. As stated by Horkheimer and Adorno (1947) and Arendt (1951), antisemitism is ultimately a particular way of thinking, and as stated by Sartre (1945) and Claussen (1987), it is furthermore a particular way of feeling: here, antisemitism is both an inability and unwillingness to think abstractly and feel concretely, with the two transposed so that the thoughts become concrete, but the feelings become abstract. As a result, the contradictions of modern bourgeois society not only remain misunderstood and unexamined in intellectual terms but are also withheld from processing in emotional terms, because the feelings are abstracted and so the ambivalent emotions of the modern individual subject are not suffered. In antisemitism, the individual is desubjectivized twice over, both in losing intellectual sovereignty over personal self-​reflection and in giving up the possibility of emotional understanding and empathy. The antisemitic desire to think concretely is accompanied by an inability to feel concretely: here, the worldview is to be concrete but the feelings are to be abstract, a situation that imposes an inversion upon both the intellect and the emotions, one whose dichotomy cannot help but lead to internal conflicts. On the ideological level, antisemitism thus maintains a decisionist attitude to the world, a conscious and subconscious radical decision to buy into the dualist antisemitic fantasy both intellectually and emotionally. Just as democracy is the guiding principle of modernity, antisemitism is ultimately its antithesis, as the negative guiding principle of modernity. The focus of this collection of essays is to explore various aspects of the dialectical tension between “democracy as a positive guiding principle of modernity” (Bluhm 2006) and “antisemitism as a negative guiding principle of modernity” (Salzborn 2010a). Here, it can be said that the modern nation-​state is organized not only along the polarity of ethnos versus demos but also according to the dichotomy of sovereignty versus freedom, or political power versus legal protections (Chapters 5 and 7). What is important about the modern nation-​state’s twofold dichotomy is that it not only provides the foundation for antisemitism and ethnonationalist thought but can also provide a safeguard against them, depending on how the four categories of ethnos versus demos, as well as sovereignty versus freedom, are concretely combined and interrelated. Nazism, which was focused only on ethnos and only on sovereignty, attempted to eliminate the modern state with its contradictions and, as Franz L. Neumann (1944) put it, to build an antisemitic “unstate” in which contradictions and heterogeneity are destroyed, and the narcissistic fantasy of ethnonationalist homogeneity is realized through antisemitic annihilation (Chapter 2).

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But here it is also clear that, within the logic of antisemitism, the never-​ ending project of antisemitic extermination can have no end, because antisemitism is structurally compelled to always create imagos as a necessary ideological construct for the preservation of its psychological and economic obsession with purity. Any attempt to unilaterally negate modernity is structurally doomed to fail, which means that a delusional structure of continual repetition is embedded within the antisemitic worldview—​it is only with the extermination of the last human in the world that the desire for omnipotence and purity can finally be achieved, which is why Jean-​Paul Sartre (1945, 470) was absolutely on the mark when he wrote that antisemitism is the fear of being human. In this volume, the various contributions explore different facets of the tension between democracy and antisemitism as seen in the modern state, striving to analyze them in terms of political theory and intellectual evolution. Here, the perceived processes of inclusion and exclusion, as described on the systemic level by David Easton (1965, 1975) and on the cultural one by Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba (1963,1980), are key elements in forming a subjective opinion of a political system and thus in deciding whether to offer or withhold political support, which can be categorized according to object (political community, regime, political authorities) and type (specific support, diffuse support), categories that themselves form the basis for multiplex opinions on the relevant political systems, opinions that then inform questions of legitimation and delegitimation. This is clearly demonstrated by recent developments in right-​wing extremism around the world, for it is here that the political ideals of democratic participation and representation are being fundamentally challenged, with the goal of destroying the democratic guiding principle of modernity (Chapters  8, 10 and 11). While the relevant political theoretical conceptions may have been originally formulated in order to mobilize political movements, the same theoretical propositions are themselves also the result of social and political instabilities, regardless of whether oriented toward legitimizing or delegitimizing the relevant political order. Of course, an idea is in itself not enough for the practical realization of a theoretical political system, and so once an idea has solidified into a political agenda, the next necessary step is to socially electrify it: the cultivation of an alliance between “elite” and “grassroots” is therefore indispensable if a proposed new political order is to be realized or an already existing one is to be defended against attempts to revolutionize it. Here, the struggle between stability and instability, and between legitimation and delegitimation, is waged in the complex interplay between conscious structures (especially political and legal ones), preconscious/​semiconscious structures (especially social ones) and unconscious structures (especially psychological ones) as seen in the interactions between individuals,

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discrete groups and the general public, structures that influence in various ways the stability and lability of existing political orders as well as the attractiveness or unattractiveness of proposed alternatives (Chapters  2 and 3). As described by John DeLamater, Daniel Katz and Herbert C. Kelman (1969), the functional and normative motives underlying a commitment to a political order are also combined with symbolic elements. The further evolution then depends on which factors in this interplay ultimately gain the upper hand, whereby it must also be noted that beyond the internal forces of a society, there are always the external ones as well, for example, with the threat of military intervention from abroad and the associated potential for an outbreak of physical violence. Despite the end of the Cold War conflict between competing systems around 1989/​90, which Francis Fukuyama (1992) enthusiastically proclaimed as “the end of history” before issuing a dark and pessimistic retraction some twenty years later in his equally enthusiastic diagnosis of a new and essentially antidemocratic “future of history” (2012), the argument over what makes for a “good” or “bad” political system has now attained a virulence that has not been seen in a long time. Today, many utopian dreams, such as the desire for world peace, the yearning for a just world order and the wish for worldwide mechanisms of calm deliberation, seem just as far from any chance of realization as they did when first proposed, considering the gigantic rollback represented by the worldwide upsurge in authoritarian and totalitarian movements (Chapter 5). And while certainly open to debate, it can be said that the concept of the state lies at the heart of modern political thought, and regardless of whether the analytical perspective is affirmative or critical, constructive or destructive, intellectual or emotional, it is impossible for any political science analysis to get around considerations of the state and its various dimensions. Even in postmodern or communitarian visions of a discursively or morally conceptualized world society (and/​or information society) transcending the nation-​state, it is the state, in its very negation, that still acts as an unmistakable normative template shaping the discourse. Here, the question of how the state dimension manifests itself is ultimately one of degree, not essentialness: regardless of whether the state represents the positive normative basic framework for theory building or merely provides the unavoidable negative foundation for normative distancing, both approaches show a referential dependence on the state as a political structuring principle (cf. Müller 2009, 221–​58). Worth noting in historical terms is that what we now see as “traditional” concepts of state theory were originally developed as systematic empirical analyses of historical states, which then became a theory of state only through their normative claims, although they actually would

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Introduction

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have been initially located within the field of political systems analysis (highly instructive here is Helms 2004, 13–​14). The fascination triggered by the state in both its real and ideal (and thus idealized) forms is rooted in the structure of modern socialization itself, and thus in the unavoidability of the state as a historical ramification of modern society. In fact, the development and disintegration of political systems can be essentially described as the erosion of legitimation systems that combine the belief in the concrete state with the hope in its ability to function as the embodiment of the abstract state (i.e., of the way it should be), or indeed with the hope that it can fend off—​with reference to competing political models like the Reich, the ekklesia, the Tiānxia and the umma—​the “pan-​” ideologies, tribalism and/​or anarchy. Therefore, the key to understanding the development and disintegration of political systems is the question of legitimation. And this is precisely what makes the state “unavoidable”:  it provides the organizing framework for the formation of modern society, and so must (in the Hegelian sense) continually reproduce it, in order to avoid going entirely extinct.

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2 IMMORTALIZING THE MORTAL GOD: HOBBES, SCHMITT AND THE AMBIVALENT FOUNDATIONS OF THE MODERN STATE  Without a doubt, the lasting currency of the Old Testament myth of Leviathan and Behemoth is due, in large part, to its appearance in the state theory of Thomas Hobbes. In Jewish eschatology, the two monsters are conceived of as radically antagonistic: Behemoth, a male, controls the land, while the female Leviathan rules over the sea. Both monsters, intending to establish a reign of terror, struggle for dominance. They are then slain by God or—​according to differing versions of the myth—​kill each other. All accounts agree, however, that the monsters’ deaths will bring about the Day of Justice. Their story was popularized through Hobbes’s treatises Leviathan or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil (1651) and Behemoth or the Long Parliament (1682). In his 1651 magnum opus, Hobbes describes an oppressive political system with only remnants of individual rights; the less well-​known Behemoth, dating from the time of the English Civil War, deals with a chaotic non-​state marked by utter anarchy. The absolute rule of Leviathan, in which traces of the rule of law and vestiges of individual rights are preserved, is distinct from that of Behemoth, which is marked by lawlessness and disorder (cf. Perels 2000, 361). In older depictions, Behemoth often resembles an elephant, a hippopotamus or a water buffalo, while Leviathan is rendered as a serpent, a dragon or a crocodile (cf. Hirsch et  al. 1904). Other scholars, thinking of the two imaginary creatures’ legendary size and power, have interpreted them as dinosaurs (cf. Lyons 2001, 1ff.). In Hobbes’s Leviathan, these iconic traditions have been transmuted to form the famous “mortal god” depicted in the frontispiece:  a giant human form made up of innumerable minuscule bodies, wielding sword and crosier as symbols of worldly and spiritual power (cf. Bittner/​Thon 2006, 37ff.; Brandt 1982, 203ff.; Bredekamp 2006; Kersting 1992, 28ff.). By way of the biblical quotation placed above the princely figure

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(“Non est potestas Super Terram quae Comparetur ei. Iob.41.24.”), Hobbes refers explicitly to the Old Testament source of his Leviathan: the Book of Job, in which the power of the Leviathan is said to be unmatched by any other power on earth. Hobbes was writing at a time in which Jewish reception of the story of Job was on the wane due to rabbinic criticism, while Christendom, on the other hand, had discovered Job as a patron saint (cf. Oberhänsli-​Widmer 2003). This is the context in which Hobbes uses a piece of Old Testament symbolism in order to posit a religious myth at the very center of his theory of government; his Behemoth serves to complement this process of political mythification. As the reception history of Hobbes’s Leviathan demonstrates, Ernst Cassirer was right in claiming that political myths could never really be vanquished but rather were bound always to take on new forms (cf. Cassirer 1946). After all, and apart even from the theoretical content of the treatise, the symbolic substance of the Leviathan (and with it a politicized version of the entire Old Testament myth of Leviathan and Behemoth) persists right up to the present day—​and this is particularly salient in those cases in which it appears severed from its original theoretical context. In the following, I will try to outline the ways in which this symbolic value is constituted in Hobbes and then show how Carl Schmitt modified it in his reading of Hobbes. At the center of my analysis will be the functional dimensions of this myth, and their metaphorical elaboration in the political-​theoretical symbols of Leviathan and Behemoth.

State and Myth The ulterior purpose of nearly all political myths is a reconciliation of opposites and the constitution of a system of conciliatory options. According to Claude Lévi-​Strauss, the social function of myth consists in its capacity to resolve, on a symbolic level, the contradictions and inconsistencies of quotidian life (cf. Lévi-​Strauss 1958, 227ff.). These forms of symbolic conflict management are apt to replace political action—​but they might also mobilize it or even generate it in the first place. What is crucial in this respect is the structural dimension of symbolization, which translates an incomprehensible, abstract reality into a seemingly univocal and clear representation, and resolves the ambivalences of abstract socialization, albeit in a rather one-​sided manner, into enchantment and fascination. At the same time myths, operating as it were on a highly densified and complex level of language, possess an intrinsic potential for concentrated expression; they compress past, present and future into a single symbolic entity. The political potency of myth consists in this antagonistic unity

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of form and content:  myth, historically speaking, compresses and abstracts, and yet, on a formal level, “it exhibits a ‘concrete’ character, by communicating abstract ideas through ‘images’ ” (Lipowatz 1998, 181). The political efficacy of political myths and symbols depends decisively upon whether they are accepted on a conscious level only or rather manage to influence the unconscious. Not until their mythic potential is actualized both on the cognitive and the emotional level can this potential be channeled toward processes that are relevant on a political and supra-​individual level. What is remarkable here is that the ambivalence of the political and social opposites contained within the mythic image correlates with a psychodynamic ambivalence, and that the potency of any given myth increases all the more as an appeal to this primary psychic structure turns into a mythic imitation of the structure itself:  whenever the social and political opposites consciously perceived in the guise of a historically compressive myth are in accord with the psychodynamic structures on which they are based—​and which in turn reproduce them—​the symbolic denouement of a political conflict will appear, subjectively, as an act of conflict management regarding the individual’s own psychic structures, which results in an impression of a sound psychic balance and an accomplished “hygiène personelle” (Grunberger and Dessuant 1997, 299). After all, Sigmund Freud was perfectly right in stressing that the historical core of any myth was “a defeat of instinctual life” and “a renunciation of instinct which has become indispensable” (Freud 1932, 7), in other words an acceptance of a socially imposed restriction on the unrestricted, individual (and thus narcissistic) will, aimed at an egotistical maximization of benefit—​ even though this means a smartly felt (but nonetheless insisted-​on) renunciation of drive. It is precisely these considerations that are suggestive already of some of the key tenets of modern social contract theories as they have been brought forward by seminal thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke or Jean-​Jacques Rousseau. Horst Althaus gets to the heart of the matter from a social contract point of view, writing that out of this general feeling of insecurity, from which no one is exempt, grows a natural desire for security. Both notions, that of “civil society” and that of “the state,” present us with potential sources for this security. The origins of these ideas lie, on the one hand, in everybody’s fear of everyone else. On the other hand, they spring from a selfish desire to protect oneself from the dangers at hand, and to accept the final peace terms in the “war of everyone against everyone else” (namely, a contractual constraint of one’s own will). (Althaus 2007,  9–​10)

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If we try to reconcile political psychology and theories of the state, we might break down the allure political myths hold to an integral conjunction of two distinct dimensions: On the one hand, we are dealing with a feeling of omnipotence, the kind of narcissistic megalomania that abstract concepts of the state cater to in so many ways. As Mario Erdheim has shown, this outlook is apt to include, at once, both a symbolical identification with the rulers (and their own respective megalomaniacal fantasies) and an identification with those ruled over (and hence with their history of insult and humiliation) (cf. Erdheim 1984, 374). On the other hand, the belief in a political myth is always transfused with the ambivalent nature of modern statehood, which is perpetually caught in the middle between order and arbitrariness, and between right and might. This ambivalence on the level of governance corresponds, in turn, to an ambivalence of chaos and order, which can be located in the individual citizens’ respective psyches. In psychoanalytical terms, the phenomenon could be described as an antagonism of drive and drive renunciation, of id and superego. What is central here from the point of view of the political theorist is that the reconciliatory impetus Lévi-​Strauss ascribes to political myth can have either constructive or destructive repercussions. In other words, either it can take the form of an integrative development, maybe even solving the existing contradictions (typically, this kind would be associated with democratic forms of government), or it could find expression in an avoidance or excision of one of the two antagonistic factors (this being typical of totalitarian states). This structural consideration has to be seen in the context of an ambivalence of sovereignty and freedom—​of right and might—​as it has found its historically distinct expression in the modern state. After all, the dialectic of the modern state consists in its twofold nature: On the one hand, it restricts all particular powers by virtue of its monopolizing sovereignty, thereby utilizing this monopoly on physical force (Max Weber’s Monopol legitimer physischer Gewaltsamkeit, cf. Weber 1980, 29, 516) to protect its citizens from third-​party violence; this is generally accepted as legitimate. At the same time, however, this claim to totality secures individual economic interests and serves to reproduce real economic inequality in the medium of an abstract political equality. As a result, the existing power structures become institutionalized (cf. Galtung 1975). Both antinomies may either be integrated without compromising their ambivalence (as has been done, for instance, in the liberal state) or they may be subject to a partial, one-​sided erasure of their dialectical nature (as was attempted during the Third Reich, under whose political system of National Socialism liberty and legality were negated, while sovereignty and force were the only elements of statehood to be put into effect).

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Hobbes’s Leviathan has long become the most influential symbol of civic statehood and modern theories of the state. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that it is more popular even than the actual content of Hobbes’s treatise, which in itself is reasonably famous (cf. Voigt 2000a, 16–​17). Today, the Leviathan is almost universally conceived of as a symbol of the authoritarian or strong state, which is a result of this particular view of its symbolic dimension taking on a life of its own, and completely dissociating itself from any diverging interpretations. Surely, starting points for such heterodox interpretations can be found in Hobbes’s work; their later obliteration has been due, in a substantial degree, to the reading of Hobbes put forward by Carl Schmitt. If, after all, we set Hobbes’s two treatises, Leviathan and Behemoth, side by side, and consider their shared context of religious, biblical mythology, some rather ambivalent aspects in Hobbes’s theory of the state will emerge—​ aspects, at that, which testify greatly to the continuing relevance of his work. In contrast, an analysis of Schmitt’s reading of Hobbes suggests an undue, one-​sided curtailment of the symbolic content of Leviathan and Behemoth, which subsequently developed into a complete ideological disunion of the two political symbols. There can be no doubt, then, that Schmitt’s interpretation was, as Rüdiger Voigt has stressed, “instrumental in shaping the image of the Leviathan in Germany, if not the whole of Europe” (Voigt 2000a, 18).

Leviathan and Behemoth in Hobbes: Symbols of Ambivalence Wolfgang Kersting is absolutely right in discerning in Hobbes’s theory a “complete disjunction” between “quasi-​ belligerent anarchy and absolute rule”, in which absolute rule is “a necessary prerequisite to the termination of a perpetual war, and essential for the subsequent creation of a framework for peaceful coexistence” (Kersting 2000, 91). This normative distinction made with respect to Hobbes’s theory of the state has its basis in the differentiation, in terms of a theory of society, between Hobbes’s natural-​law doctrine and his theory of sovereignty. This in turn is instructive of Hobbes’s view of human nature, which Herfried Münkler has described as an abstract and “equalizing model” in which everybody has equal rights to goods and services (cf. Münkler 1993, 108). Since the ideas of “making equal” and “leveling” comprise disparate directions of effect, Münkler’s notion of an “equalizing model” is also apt to illustrate the ambivalent structure of the socio-​theoretical basis underlying Hobbes’s theory of the state: it encompasses the competitive situation of a bellum omnium contra omnes (cf. Hobbes 1962b, 110ff.) as well as the act of relinquishing this precarious freedom for the establishment of a monopoly on

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violence, and an overall improved level of personal security (cf. MacPherson 1962). Kersting puts it as follows: According to both Hobbes’s theory of personhood, and his theory of representation, the citizens are the state; they are under an obligation to accept the decisions and actions of the ruler as their own. Having said that, they are able to live […] an unaffected life courtesy of the leviathanic state’s successful pacification of society. (Kersting 1992, 36, emphasis in original) Thus the social contract becomes at once a basis for the individual liberty granted to all citizens, and the foundation of an absolute authoritarian state to which its citizens surrender as willingly as they do it unconditionally. As becomes evident, then, Hobbes’s ambivalent conception of statehood is caught in between “despotism and a truly peaceful statehood” (Voigt 2000b: 41). In a symbolic way, this finds expression in the frontispiece to Hobbes’s De Cive (1642), the third volume—​but the first to be published—​of his multipart “Elements of Philosophy.” In the engraving, the gateway to civil society is guarded by a personification of “Imperium” on the one side and “Libertas” on the other. Mindful of this duality inherent to Hobbes’s theory of society, which allows his commentators to stress either side of the matter and depreciate or even disregard the respective other, Carl Schmitt has spoken of “the Hobbes crystal.” As we shall see, however, one of Schmitt’s objectives was to crush that crystal by supplanting it with a new theory of his own. Hobbes is leagues away from any moral categories of thought, and not very surprisingly, his view of human nature precludes any trace of an ontological notion of ethics. Rather, in an approach devoid of any transcendence, he is pleading for a concentration on the subject in the utilitarian vein (cf. Hobbes 1962a, 7ff.). In this way, man himself is responsible, according to Hobbes’s conception of the state of nature, to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life; and consequently, [to do] any thing, which in his own judgment, and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto. (Hobbes 1962b, 116) De facto, this brings about a state of inequality, caused by differing physical strength or by disparate skill and potential regarding the use of tools in the fight against all other human beings. As “the strong are feeling the lack of an ultimate security as keenly as the weak,” however, this at the same time includes a moment of natural equality (Althaus 2007, 9). According to

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Hobbes, it is this natural state of abstract, but complete equality, and the ever-​ threatening possibility of its sudden relapse into violent chaos, which induces in man a readiness to relinquish his liberty, and positively abolish the state of nature by means of political compact: The passions that incline men to peace, are fear of death; desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them. (Hobbes 1962b, 116) If we consider the fact that Hobbes does not conceive of this universal covenant as a logical consequence of the state of nature, but rather as its utter disruption, the remoteness of his theory from earlier, premodern ethical beliefs becomes strikingly clear (cf. Münkler 1993, 122). For Hobbes, it bears repeating, all human concord is artificial and “by way of covenant” (Hobbes 1889b, 103). This means that individuals, fearing an arbitrary incursion on their total freedom, renounce all of their liberties—​only to reattain them (or rather, some of them) at the hands of the sovereign. The sovereign, after all, will inevitably curtail those encompassing liberties but at the same time is in a position to guarantee those that are left by virtue of the state’s monopoly on violence: The only way to erect such a common power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of foreigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure them in such sort, as that by their own industry, and by the fruits of the earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly; is, to confer all their power and strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will […] This is […] a real unity of them all, in one and the same person, made by covenant of every man with every man.” (Hobbes 1962b, 157–​58) Hobbes’s contractual view is based in a hypothetical scenario, and consequently, his idea of the relationship between sovereign and subject is not to be understood as reciprocal in any real sense. A more fitting designation might be, in Kurt Lenk’s phrase, that of a “preferential contract” (Lenk 1998, 72) between the two major parties, in which the absolute sovereign is given a palpable advantage. After all, as this contract constitutes the sovereign to begin with, he cannot properly be a party to it in the sense in which every individual citizen is. In consequence, the sovereign “is not legally bound vis-​à-​vis the contracting parties,” which is why Herfried Münkler, in his discussion of Hobbes’s theory, speaks of a “social contract of submission” (Münkler 1991, 220). However, this does not necessarily make Hobbes’s contractual model

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of sovereignty and participation a unilateral affair—​even though the citizens abandon any right to revision immediately on conclusion of the contract. Instead, Hobbes does not only conceptualize the exchange of absolute (yet uncertain) freedom for a set of circumscribed (yet guaranteed) liberties:  by clearly stating his political and philosophical dissociation from Catholicism and thus breaking away from the scholastic horizon of meaning, he opens those new avenues of thought through which the social implications of the ambivalent relationship between freedom and sovereignty become apprehensible in the first place. As Anton Pelika puts it, The sovereign’s entitlement to rule is founded neither on the divine right of kings nor on his own best interest; his rule, absolute and permanent, relies on a contract which is irrevocable and merely notional. And yet, it is only a small step from this concept to the idea of a revocable contract between a ruler and his subjects, and the notion of a sovereign who is accountable towards his people is not far off. (Pelinka 2004, 187) The constitution of the absolute sovereign is, in Hobbes’s words, “the generation of the great leviathan […], of that mortal god, to which we owe under the immortal God, our peace and defence” (Hobbes 1962b, 158). Here and elsewhere in Hobbes, the Christian reference is obvious. All the same, his Leviathan, right down to capitalization, implements a clear political separation of “mortal god” and “immortal God.” This is visualized, on a symbolic level, in the frontispieces of both the Leviathan (with its explicit differentiation of sacred and secular insignia) and the earlier De Cive (with its horizontal division between the temporal and divine spheres). This illustrates, too, that Hobbes’s avowals of Christian belief (and again, those turn up in many places in his writings) have to be considered as philosophically distinct from his theory of the state: “immortal God” may prevail over Hobbes’s “mortal god” on a moral scale, but He does not exert any direct influence upon the constitution of the sovereign. This, again, is alluded to in the frontispiece to the Leviathan, in which the figure of the sovereign is holding the crosier in its left hand—​instead of the right, as would have been proper according to medieval iconographic conventions. Seen from this angle also, Hobbes renounces the scholastic tradition, drafting a secular epistemology in which, while the existence of God may not be questioned in strictly atheist terms, the Deity is excluded from the political reference system all the same: The dominion of the Leviathan is delineated by precisely two factors: mortality (on a physical level) and representation (on a political level). Politically speaking, the God of Hobbes’s Leviathan is dead. He

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may live on in the hearts of innumerable individuals; in fact his cult may even be the state religion: he will never be more than just a name for a vacancy in the political system. Only to the extent to which this vacancy is actually kept clear of intrusion can the omnipotence of the sovereign be conceptualised. The political death of the immortal God is the necessary precondition of sovereignty. (Adam 2000, 186) In his Leviathan, then, Hobbes drafts an ideal example of a sociopolitical system built on the ambivalence of sovereignty and freedom, in which “an ideal contract of sovereignty and submission […] is meant to illustrate the constant possibility of a relapse into a pre-​contractual, anarchic state of nature” (Lenk 1998, 73). In his analysis of the history and causes of the English Civil War period (1640–​60), included in his treatise Behemoth, Hobbes sketches the Leviathan’s function as an agent of change: the great Leviathan is constituted as absolute sovereign in order to defeat Behemoth (who is representing anarchic civil war). He then goes on to substantiate the theoretical claims laid out in his Leviathan with empirical evidence of “those things that Weaken, or tend to the Dissolution of a Common-​wealth” (Hobbes 1962b, 308), as one of the chapters of the Leviathan is headed. In Hobbes’s view, the political crisis unleashed by an outbreak of civil war can only be overcome through absolute sovereignty. This implies the abrogation of a circulation of power among different agents, none of which, usually, is capable of centralizing power in a monopoly of legitimate violence: The Behemoth expounds the lessons to be learned [sc. from the Civil War]—​namely, that one ought at all times to obey to the laws issued by the sovereign, and that even the minutest signs of a renewed curtailment of the sovereign’s power would, by necessity, trigger another civil war. (Münkler 1991, 236) An absolute sovereign, Hobbes is convinced, is the only authority able to guarantee a peaceful and just political order—​if, that is, his subjects agree to total submission: The virtue of a subject is comprehended wholly in obedience to the laws of the commonwealth. To obey the laws, is justice and equity, which is the law of nature [sic], and, consequently, is civil law in all nations of the world; and nothing is injustice or iniquity, otherwise, than is against the law. Likewise, to obey the laws, is the prudence of a subject; for without such obedience the commonwealth (which is every subject’s safety and protection) cannot subsist. (Hobbes 1889a, 44)

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Hobbes thus provides his revolutionary Leviathan, which represents a real innovation in political philosophy, with a counterrevolutionary crutch, as it were, in the form of the Behemoth: while the concept of the “great Leviathan” brings to the political sphere fundamental changes in both theory and practice, the Behemoth recasts these changes as a new, robust status quo. By safeguarding secularized absolutism in this way, Hobbes replaces the belief system of scholasticism with a new, secular one: “In one crucial respect, Hobbes’s concept of sovereignty closely resembles that of the omnipotence of God:  both are raised into existence by belief ” (Scheit 2004, 174). Inasmuch as it sternly rejects any prospective revolutionary changes—​which might, after all, in the course of political progress establish a sovereign yet non-​absolutist type of government—​Hobbes’s theory relies heavily on a notion of supratemporal validity. Hobbes’s theory of the state unfolds a system of political ambivalence, a system in which freedom and sovereignty are intimately linked, and to represent this idea on a symbolic level, Hobbes draws on the Old Testament myth of Leviathan and Behemoth. As he understands them, civil liberties can only be guaranteed by a sovereign endowed with absolute power. In order to attain to them, man is obliged to break from the state of nature and the absolute equality it implies; this, again, is only possible through submission to the almighty sovereign. It is true that the great Leviathan is bound by positive law no less than the subjects who serve to constitute him. However, as the Leviathan holds the prerogative of establishing the absolute state by means of a contract of submission, he is also in a position to establish the rules, or laws, which govern it. Hobbes condemns arbitrary rule and anarchy (Behemoth) in favor of a sovereign and omnipotent but just and lawful state (Leviathan). By seizing on the myth from the Book of Job in its integrity, and entitling both of his treatises in accordance with it, he stresses the comprehensiveness of his theory: Hobbes describes, through the opposition of the two mythical, overwhelmingly powerful creatures, the two poles of social reality. Behemoth and Leviathan form a complementary, dialectic whole; thus, they symbolize the ambivalent nature inherent to any conceivable system of government. This concept is deeply rooted in the history of ideas: Hobbes borrows it from the “potentia absoluta underlying the late-​medieval notion of God as an arbitrary ruler, and it has also left its traces in Hobbes’s concept of the absolute sovereignty of God” (Taubes 1983, 11). There is a peculiar “fascination of ambivalence” surrounding this politicized myth, which is dominated, chiefly, by the figure of the Leviathan, “part artificial man, part machine, part monster, part mortal god” (Voigt 2000b, 55). Hobbes may be an emphatic defender of the absolute state, but he is also an outspoken champion of two other things: the secular constitution of the

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“mortal god” and a legal provision binding the absolute state to guarantee the civil liberties of its citizens. Hence, we are able to discern in Hobbes’s writings on the theory of the state a concept of symbolic reconciliation. To be more specific, the reconciliatory process he envisions aims to blend the dialectical opposites of freedom and sovereignty. Although there admittedly is a certain degree of absolutist bias, Hobbes’s approach is concerned with the establishment of a just political order based on the rule of law—​an ultimately ideal state of affairs, which in Jewish eschatology is represented by the death of both Leviathan and Behemoth. It is obvious that Hobbes’s contractual grounding of the fundamental principles of government and his theory of absolute sovereignty are at variance with any democratic and participatory notions of how a society should function. Moreover, they can be used as an argumentative basis for the perpetuation of a bourgeois system of ownership. Despite all this, Hobbes’s philosophy was instrumental in rendering the notions of liberty and constitutionality conceivable in the modern state, at the same time shedding light on the ambivalent roots of modern socialization. After all, it is just as essential to view Hobbes’s doctrine of natural law in light of his concept of sovereignty as vice versa. The attempt to integrate—​in a symbolic manner—​ seemingly irreconcilable opposites is at the very core of Hobbes’s political mythology; its emblematic ambivalence is integral to it.

Leviathan and Behemoth in Schmitt: Symbols of Identity Carl Schmitt understood that this ambivalent structure, which found its symbolic expression in a politicized version of the Old Testament myth of Leviathan and Behemoth, was pivotal to Hobbes’s theory of the state (cf. Rumpf 1972, 64–​65; Schmitt 1937, 622ff.; 2008a, 65ff.). Through a process of projective identification, Schmitt then tried to eliminate the dichotomy, thus making himself, curiously enough, exactly that which he accuses the members of the “Jewish front” of being (cf. Schmitt 2008a, 70): a “neutralizer” (cf. Gross 2005, 267ff.). His goal was the invalidation, in terms of the history of political thought, of the ambivalent structure of the modern state, and a negation of the integrative moment inherent in Hobbes’s political mythology with its implied conjunction of sovereignty and liberty. However, Schmitt’s decisionist reading of the Old Testament myth was not only aimed at an abrogation of its symbolic ambivalence, it also made provision for a re-​ essentialization of the “mortal god” and, thus, a reinjection of Catholic theology into political theory (cf. Schmitt 2005). In an act of projection, Schmitt accuses the Jews of having destroyed the Leviathan, having rendered it “dead from within” (Schmitt 2008a, 61)  or “soulless” (entseelt in Schmitt’s original German). In reality, it is Schmitt himself who destroys the integrative essence

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of the Leviathan through his theologically charged idolization of a fantasy of omnipotence. To call Schmitt, as Helmut Schelsky has done, “a twentieth-​ century German Hobbes” (cf. Rottleuthner 1983, 264–​65; Schelsky 1981, 5) is not only wide off the mark but also turning Hobbes on his head. Schmitt wants to purge Hobbes’s theory of the state of the liberal element it doubtless contains; in its stead, he reads into Hobbes’s writings his own brand of political theology. According to Schmitt, Hobbes had “failed in his endeavour to restore the natural unity” (Schmitt 2008a, 85). Schmitt is not thinking, however, of a mere symbolic unity of political antagonisms: his goal is an internal and external unity of theology and the state. For Schmitt, this constitutes the theological basis for any kind of statehood. Hobbes had successfully dissolved this theological core, both symbolically and theoretically; Schmitt tries to reinsert it into Hobbes’s work. Schmitt’s smoke-​screen tactics consist in a constant mingling—​as far as Hobbes’s theory is concerned—​of criticism and affirmation, and the persistent confusion of the levels of political and constitutional theory on the one hand and mythology and symbolism on the other. He accuses the Jews of having destroyed the Leviathan—​which is quite beside the point, as the alleged destruction is really of something not present in Hobbes in the first place. It is only in Schmitt’s own projective imagination that Hobbes’s theory of the state is built around a “sovereign power that brings about the unity of religion and politics” (Schmitt 2008a, 55). To Schmitt, the emphasis allegedly laid by the Jews on the distinction between the public and the private caused, before long, the dissolution (or rather, “dissolution”—​Schmitt’s Entseelung) of the Leviathan, while in fact it is Schmitt’s own theologico-​decisionist reading that destroys it. To this end, Schmitt even employs an antisemitic conspiracy theory (cf. Bookbinder 1991, 101), speaking of the Old Testament Leviathan as a “mythical symbol fraught with inscrutable meaning,” which provided the Jews with a “secular image of a battle” (Schmitt 2008a,  5–​6). According to Schmitt, “the unique, totally abnormal condition and attitude of the Jewish people toward all other peoples” was intimately connected with the role of Leviathan and Behemoth as “Jewish battle myths of the greatest style”; “looked at from the perspective of the Jews, each is an image of heathenish vitality and fertility.” Although serpent or dragon “are viewed in Near Eastern and Jewish mythology as hostile and evil,” Schmitt observes, they have been seen as “symbol[s]‌of protective and benevolent deities” by a wide variety of other, especially Germanic peoples (Schmitt 2008a, 8ff.). In Jewish tradition as presented by Schmitt, the struggle between Leviathan and Behemoth signifies the universal struggle between “heathen peoples”: But the Jews stand by and watch how the people of the world kill one another. This mutual “ritual slaughter and massacre” is for them lawful

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and “kosher,” and they therefore eat the flesh of the slaughtered peoples and are sustained by it. (Schmitt 2008a, 9) In Land and Sea, Schmitt further elaborates on the conspiracy theory already sketched in his The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: They eat the flesh of the animals which have killed each other, skin them, build nice huts from their hides, then celebrate a solemn, thousand-​ year feast. This is the Jewish interpretation of universal history. (Schmitt 1942, 10) This antisemitic conspiracy fantasy, while already offering a glimpse at the “Thousand-​Year Reich” aspired to by the Nazis, is allegedly based on Jewish sources—​or so Schmitt claims. In fact, research carried out by Raphael Gross has shown that there is no trace of any such ideas in the cabbalistic sources only vaguely identified by Schmitt (Cf. Gross 2005, 275–​76). In light of this, the mythological grounding underlying Schmitt’s critique of Hobbes turns out to be a mere phantasm introduced, intentionally or unintentionally, to provide an anti-​ Jewish argument in political theory with a solid antisemitic underpinning. In his analysis of the Leviathan, Schmitt points out that in the book, “the sea animal of the Hebrew Bible and the Platonic conception of the huge man” appear side by side, and argues that Hobbes’s notion of the Leviathan in fact constitutes a “mythical blending of god and animal, animal and man, man and machine” (Schmidt 2008, 19–​20). In discussing Hobbes’s model, Schmitt is torn between consent and condemnation, tormented, in a way, by an inability to cope with the ambivalences at the core of Hobbes’s political philosophy. Although he is fascinated by the concept of total sovereignty as embodied by the “huge man,” Schmitt finds great fault with the fact that Hobbes, in an act of theological negation, has based this sovereignty on the notion of liberty. Schmitt’s main point of criticism is this: The sovereign is not the Defensor Pacis of a peace traceable to God; he is the creator of none other than an earthly peace. He is a Creator Pacis. The justification provided, on the contrary, proceeds the other way around, as in the thought processes of “divine” right:1 Because state power is supreme, it possesses divine character. But its omnipotence is 1 In the original, this sentence reads “Die Begründung verläuft also umgekehrt wie in den Gedankengängen ‘göttlichen’ Rechts” (Schmitt 1938a, 50–​51) and contains a nonstandard construction that could perhaps be more aptly rendered as follows: “The justification provided, however, proceeds conversely to the thought processes of ‘divine’ right” (emphases added).

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not at all divinely derived: It is a product of human work and comes about because of a “covenant” entered into by man. The decisive element of the intellectual construction resides in the fact that this covenant does not accord with medieval conceptions of an existing commonwealth forged by God and of a pre-​existent natural order. The state as order and commonwealth is the product of human reason and human inventiveness and comes about by virtue of the covenant. This covenant is conceived in an entirely individualistic manner. All ties and groupings have been dissolved. Fear brings atomized individuals together. A  spark of reason flashes, and a consensus emerges about the necessity to submit to the strongest power. (Schmitt 2008a,  32–​33) The passage quoted is the only place in The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes in which Schmitt unambiguously points to the fact that Hobbes’s ideal state performs a positively categorical disengagement from the theological paradigm; it is also in this passage that Schmitt phrases his own theoretical agenda at its most lucid: he wants to incorporate a divine element into the Leviathan, deify the man-​made state and grant it omnipotence—​all on the basis of a narcissistic megalomania that lets the state fantasize about being identical with God. After all, Hobbes’s theory of the state is modern not only in the sense that it is founded on secular principles: it is also progressive insofar as it denies man the Christian fantasy of being able to become as God (cf. Grunberger and Dessuant 1997, 262, 300). Schmitt’s political theology is in consonance with Hobbes’s theory only where the absolute origin of the (decisionist) state is concerned, and this is where Schmitt sees a possibility for human megalomania to be instantiated in accord with God. The obvious objection would be that in the dominant Jewish interpretation of the myth it is God who kills Leviathan and Behemoth and is thus portrayed as all-​powerful and without any doubt superior to man. Schmitt downplays this as mere symbolism and tries to work it into his theory by denying man’s narcissistic slight of not being able to become as God with reference to man’s supposedly actual omnipotence. Schmitt conceives of the “rebellious individualism,” which is a typical aspect of man-​made states as a defining challenge of human state building (as opposed to the “states of ants, termites and bees [sic],” in which the sexuality of the individual is erased); after all, Schmitt writes, human socialization takes places “without the organic sacrifice of individuality” (Schmitt 2008a, 36–​37). From a politico-​psychological point of view, one could interpret this to mean that in human society, the sex drive is not eliminated through castration. This would imply that the fear of castration experienced by those in power persists, denying their omnipotent fantasies the transcendent, asexual space that alone

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is fit to contain their boundless power and protect it from challengers both human and divine. Schmitt accuses Hobbes of propagating a state in which the established social order is dissolved (cf. Schmitt 2008a, 46), a state that—​from the point of view of an organic theory of government—​could only be called a machine, not a body (cf. Schmitt 2008a, 34f.)—​which would mean the forced substitution of political equality for an implied natural difference; the reduction of an ideal, organic unity to the aspect of mere functionality; and the negation of individuality by means of an all-​encompassing utilitarianism. For these reasons, Schmitt is moved to voice his contempt of Hobbes as the despised creator of a failed symbol of “consummate impartiality” (Schmitt 2008a, 50), while at the same time saluting him as “Hobbes, the great decisionist” (Schmitt 2008a, 55): Hobbes used this image because he considered it to be an impressive symbol. He failed to realize, however, that in using this symbol he was conjuring up the invisible forces of an old, ambiguous myth. His work was overshadowed by the leviathan, and all his clear intellectual constructions and arguments were overcome in the vortex created by the symbol he conjured up. No clear chain of thought can stand up against the force of genuine, mythical images. There is only one question that such myths elicit, and that is: Does its path in the overall march of political destiny develop into good or evil, right or wrong? Whoever utilizes such images easily glides into the role of a magician who summons forces that cannot be matched by his arm, his eye, or any other measure of his human ability. He runs the risk that instead of encountering an ally he will meet a heartless demon who will deliver him into the hands of his enemies. Such was indeed the case with the leviathan conjured up by Hobbes. That image was inadequate to the system of thought to which it was applied in historical reality and it perished as a result of its encounter with the forces arrayed behind the traditional Jewish interpretation of the leviathan. All the indirect powers who are usually hostile to one another were suddenly in agreement and coalesced to “catch the huge whale.” They have killed and eviscerated him. (Schmitt 2008a, 81f.) As Iring Fetscher has rightly remarked, one can only submit to Schmitt’s view of a “failure” of the Leviathan symbol on the assumption that Hobbes was “the progenitor of twentieth-​century authoritarian and totalitarian states” (Fetscher 1966, XLII). Hence it is only consistent of Schmitt to be fascinated by what Thomas Schneider has called “the dictatorial and decisionist element” in Hobbes (Schneider 1997, 122). This is obvious in

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Schmitt’s discussion of a “sovereign state authority,” which, “based on [its] sovereign power”, single-​handedly “determines […] what is right and proper,” an agency based on total command: Auctoritas, non Veritas (Schmitt 2008a, 53ff.). Part and parcel of this all-​ embracing competence is an entitlement to control all subjects’ religious beliefs, both positive and negative. Thus the “mortal god” has power over “miracles and confession,” as Schmitt puts it (Schmitt 2008a, 56–​57). However, Hobbes’s theory contains at this point of the argument a decisive liberal proviso: the very distinction between public and private reason, which Schmitt so ardently rejects (ibid.). For Schmitt, Hobbes’s enlightenment impetus—​manifest in his advocacy for a privately enjoyed freedom of belief—​was nothing less than a gateway for the first “liberal Jew” (i.e., Spinoza) to go about “destroy[ing] [entseelen] the mighty leviathan from within” (Schmitt 2008a, 57). Spinoza, Schmitt writes, was the first to notice “the barely visible crack” running through Hobbes’s work in the form of the distinction between external and internal, public and private, which led him to develop this thought further in his Tractatus Theologico-​Politicus (1670), eventually “push[ing] [it] to the limit of its development until the […] leviathan’s vitality was sapped from within [entseelt]” (Schmitt 1938a, 86–​87; 2008a, 57): Hobbes focused on public peace and the right of sovereign power, individual freedom of thought was an implicit right open only as long as it remained private. Now it is the inverse: Individual freedom of thought is the form-​giving principle, the necessities of public peace as well as the right of the sovereign power having been transformed into mere provisos. A small intellectual switch emanating from the nature of Jewish life accomplished, with the most simple logic and in the span of a few years, the decisive turn in the fate of the leviathan. (Schmitt 2008a, 58) As has already become clear in my own discussion of the Leviathan, Schmitt is mistaken in his disproportionate assessment of the respective importance of sovereignty and liberty in Hobbes’s theory of the state. If, moreover, Hobbes’s own remarks on Spinoza as related by Ferdinand Tönnies are anything to go by, Hobbes had found in Spinoza’s treatise “maybe not exactly a restatement of his own published teachings, but, without a doubt, thoughts very much in consonance with his private beliefs”; according to Tönnies, the only difference between them was that Hobbes never dared write as audaciously as Spinoza (Tönnies 1925, 286n.60). Apart from the antisemitic element, Schmitt weaves into his particular brand of anti-​liberalism a völkisch strand. For instance, he stresses that the

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mere acknowledgment of a difference between the internal (or private) and external (or public) spheres renders the hegemony of the internal and private over the “public power” an accomplished fact (Schmitt 2008a, 61). As a consequence, Schmitt holds, “The soul of a people betakes itself on the ‘secret road’ that leads inward” (ibid.). This is not only a rather cryptic way of saying that a given nation shares a collective emotional bond; it also implies the synonymy of “nation” and “people”: If the “soul of a people” is forced inward, into the private sphere, it is only consistent to conclude that before this displacement, it used to reside in the public sphere. If, in addition, the notions of “people” and “nation” are one and the same (as the concept of identity underlying Schmitt’s metaphor suggests), there can be no privacy, as any individual liberties are precluded a priori. After having made concessions to individualism and privacy, Schmitt argues, the public power would have to face “death from within”: “Such an earthly god has only the appearance and the simulacra of divinity on his side” (ibid.). Over the course of this process, the Leviathan takes on “an inhuman or a subhuman appearance” (Schmitt 2008a, 63): For centuries the Jew was fortified in his feeling of superiority vis-​à-​vis the heathens and the bestial idolizing of their will to power by the interpretation of the image of the leviathan that had been made by rabbis and cabbalists. (Schmitt 2008a, 62) What Schmitt fails to mention in his many antisemitic harangues is that in the Leviathan, Hobbes himself speaks favorably of Judaism. With regard to their respective historical and theological contexts, Hobbes even points out—​with remarkable sagacity—​the parallel nature of Jewish monotheism and the modern theory of sovereignty. After all, his own line of argument is given biblical authority through reference to the Mosaic Covenant, which, as described in the Book of Exodus, established God within Judaism—​by means of a contract. This “Covenant” between God and the Jewish people makes the latter his “chosen people” and denies the rest of the world—​ those nations not party to the contract—​His favor (cf. Hobbes 1962b, 396ff., 605ff.). The fact that Hobbes chose to draw on this tradition clearly attests to the resistive quality of his work, and highlights its capacity to defy one-​sided interpretations like the one brought forward by Carl Schmitt. It is significant that in the wake of the Covenant concluded at Mt Sinai, the narcissistic dream of becoming as God has been dismissed from the Jewish tradition. This puts Hobbes’s contractual theory of sovereignty in a specific lineage within the history of ideas, in which it brings about, as it were, a symbolic

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reconciliation with the strict, paternal Law. Schmitt’s Christian approach, by contrast, is a revolt directed at the narcissistic slight of not being able to become as God. The God of the Hebrew Scriptures defeats the monsters Leviathan and Behemoth just as the state, in Hobbes’s theory of the state, symbolically defeats what Franz Neumann has termed the Unstaat, a mere deformed and chaotic caricature of statehood. From the point of view of narcissistic megalomania however, might, not right, will prevail in the struggle of superior powers—​which reveals such positions to be, mythologically and psychologically speaking, expressions of man’s infantile hope of immortality, expressions of the megalomaniacal fantasy that man might after all transcend his humanity and attain godlike status. In appropriating Old Testament mythology, Hobbes suggests a symbolic conciliation of the secular and spiritual realms, a unity of opposites (cf. Hofmann 2005, 283ff., for a discussion of the ambivalences in Hobbes’s political theology). Schmitt’s reading of the myth, on the other hand, aims at the destruction of its inherent ambivalence, and constitutes an attempt to annihilate the opposites into Machtpolitik and decisionist despotism. It is for no other reason that scholars have time and again discussed the “true intent” of Schmitt’s The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Was it a book in support of the National Socialist state? Or was it rather, as Schmitt himself tried to make plausible after the war, a printed testimony to his aloofness from Nazi ideology?2 Both claims are true—​and false at the same time. They are true, because in this and other writings, Schmitt followed the anti-​Jewish decision of National Socialism; his position was true to the ideological core of the Nazi regime. The claims are false, because Schmitt criticized the Nazis’ regulatory policies from the point of view of political Catholicism—​without, to be sure, any kind of fundamental dissociation from the regime whose juridical legitimation had been one of his principal occupations in the years leading up to his book on Hobbes. One can only agree with Günter Meuter in

2 On p. 21 of his 1950 collection of essays, Ex Captivitate Salus, Schmitt quotes a passage from p. 94 of his own The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes, first published in 1938, without disclosing the identity of the author cited (in the English edition of 2008, it is p. 61). In addition, he falsifies the quotation as regards to both content and context: Whereas in Ex Captivitate Salus the passage about the “secret road that leads inward” reads like a document of inner, silent resistance against a “public sphere organised by state power,” the quite contrastive treatment of the same subject in his The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes had amounted to a fierce attack on anything liberal, with Schmitt claiming that a “public power” was compromised the very moment it recognized “the distinction between inner and outer.”

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stressing that Schmitt’s main focus was on the “total state” of Roman Catholic provenance (cf. Meuter 1995, 101).

Leviathan, Behemoth and New Perspectives in the Theory of  State On a political level, Hobbes’s theory of the state is vitally concerned with what—​on a religious level—​are central tenets of Judaism also: man’s submission to a strict law—​the Law; the renunciation of any and all human claims to divinity and, following from this, an acceptance of human limitation. In both systems, submission leads to freedom—​with the qualification that Hobbes makes a philosophical and systematic distinction between the divine and secular spheres. As Hobbes’s absolute sovereign has not come into power through arbitrary legitimation, be it autocratic or divine, but instead was enthroned by virtue of his subjects’ contractual agreement (and thus a—​albeit imagined—​process of consensus-​building), Hobbes can, ideally, presume the positive formulation of the Law to be consensual in nature as well. Of course, the circumstance that this contract is both merely notional and irrevocable means that Hobbes’s position is far removed from any properly democratic conceptions of legitimacy. Franz L. Neumann takes up the thread of Hobbes’s political symbolism and connects with Hobbes’s concern for ambiguity. In his Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, Neumann tries to reintegrate the moment of ambivalence into a theory that, at the same time, is a critical analysis of the ideas of Carl Schmitt. Neumann’s main concern is with the bourgeois-​liberal constitutional state, whose very authority is based on the pervasive dualism of political power: on the antagonism of right and might, both being as essential to the state as they are conflicting with one another. What the modern state relies on are the forceful—​and indeed, sometimes, the violent—​enforcement of its sovereignty, vis-​à-​vis the local and particular powers, and the establishment of a uniform administration and jurisdiction. At the same time, it pretends to institute a system based on universal and equal (that is, impartial) laws; a system that establishes political liberty in order to preserve economic freedom (cf. Salzborn 2009b). Neumann argues that, depending on which pole is currently being favored in civil government practice or modern theories of the state—​right or might, law or authority, liberty or sovereignty—​its respective opposite (i.e., whichever is at greater risk, empirically speaking) ought to be strengthened and defended. This takes place on “unsteady ground” (Söllner 1982, 285), and the ever-​changing priorities in this process must be adjusted “according to the demands of the day” (Neumann 1937, 33). As Neumann sees it, Hobbes’s

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notion of the state is, at its core, aimed at the “preservation and defence of human life”; it comes with a “right to insubordination which is, admittedly, only granted to individuals” and is secondary to a more fundamental duty to obey: This is where Hobbes’s ambivalent stance becomes apparent. His emphasis is on sovereignty, according to the demands of his day; he stresses the dangers of a power unrestrained by law, advocating a state authority independent of the brawling factions [of the Civil War]. However, there is a secondary emphasis on liberty, be it ever so slight. (Neumann 1937, 33) Neumann’s own emphasis is directly opposed to Hobbes in that he prefers liberty over sovereignty—​thus developing the very aspect of the myth of Leviathan and Behemoth, which Carl Schmitt had so vehemently opposed. Just like Hobbes, however, Neumann is acutely aware that in the modern state, the two cannot be separated. This means that the modern state will always be ambivalent—​or it will not be at all, as the Nazi attempt to eliminate modern statehood on völkisch grounds has shown: Since the National Socialist regime is, as we believe, just the perverse travesty of a state [ein Unstaat] (or is, at the very least, on its way there); since it holds a chaotic reign of lawlessness and anarchy, devouring, so to speak, the rights and dignity of man; since this “non-​state” is on its way to global domination, already conquering vast stretches of land, and is on the brink of hurling the whole planet into chaos, it appears to us there is only one designation fit for the National Socialist system: The Behemoth. (Neumann 1977, 16) By drawing on the Old Testament myth of Leviathan and Behemoth with its implicit promise of and end to the reign of terror, Neumann demonstrated, as it were, his own hope of a removal of Nazi tyranny. However, this hope had to retain the form of a negative dialectic embodied in the state: owing to historical context, its conceptualization could not possibly be concrete or positive. An attempt to reintegrate the mythological and political dimensions of Leviathan and Behemoth opens the prospect, on a symbolic level, of a further strengthening of the liberal element in modern statehood—​which, still, cannot be conceived of except as in direct correlation with sovereignty. Schmitt’s interpretation of Leviathan and Behemoth has laid the ground for a state theory advocating the negation of liberty by and an expansion of sovereignty within the state. Taking into account the currently ongoing disintegration of

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state sovereignty, this implies the very real threat of an actual “dissolution” of the Leviathan: the gradual diminution and eventual abrogation of any liberty whatsoever. To grasp this as the core idea of modern concepts of statehood, and to follow Hobbes’s lead in rejustifying—​for the sake of liberty—​sovereignty against non-​statist and anti-​statist attacks, opens up a new perspective in the theory of the state: a perspective in which Leviathan and Behemoth may once more be conceived of as the dialectical unity Carl Schmitt’s decisionism tried to shatter.

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3 GUARDIAN OF DEMOCRACY? THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF POLICE ROLES AND FUNCTIONS IN DEMOCRACY  In textbooks and primers on democracy and democratization studies, one searches in vain for a dedicated chapter on the relationship between police and democracy (cf. Crick, 2002; Grugel, 2002; Haerpfer et al., 2009; Saage, 2005; Schmidt, 2010; Vorländer, 2010). One can only speculate on the reasons for this deficiency. Is it because the very existence of a democratic system so “obviously” requires an institution like the police, in order to maintain the state’s sovereignty in the domestic sphere and guarantee it during conflicts? Or is it because the police, both past and present, were not and are not an institution of democracies only, since authoritarian and/​or totalitarian regimes are similarly (and more heavily) reliant on police and parapolice organizations for the maintenance of power,1 meaning that the police are not a genuinely democratic institution per se? Regardless of where these causes might lie, it is certainly possible to go beyond empirical and historical research into police roles and functions in real-​life political systems both past and present, in order to formulate a theoretical framework that outlines the specific relationships between police and democracy—​and because they are clearly different from those existing under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, it makes sense to examine these interrelationships more closely. Of course, democracies and autocracies are clearly quite different in how they exercise the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force so that the differences in police role and function are very 1 Here, the term “parapolice” combines the understandings of Huggins (1991) and Rigakos (1992), referring to legalized policing organizations that are not (or no longer completely) subject to governmental norms (due to privatization or outsourcing, for example), as well as illegal units and groups that undertake policing duties without any authority to do so (analogous to the role of the “paramilitary” in international affairs).

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much a difference in entirety (Busch et al., 1988, 29). Although the police is sociologically speaking a nonaligned institution, since it can serve any regime and is therefore neither intrinsically democratic nor intrinsically authoritarian or totalitarian (cf. Dupont et al., 2003, 331ff.; Hinton and Newburn, 2008), there nonetheless does exist a conceptual, historical and systematic connection between police and democracy.

Method(s) The goal of this article is to draw constructive relationships between the fields of police studies and democracy studies. This also means linking the methods used in police studies with those of democracy studies, in order to combine the strengths of one methodology with those of the other, as highlighted by international discussions concerning methodological triangulation as a major advantage of method integration. Peter K.  Manning (2005, 23)  has put forward the proposition that the police “are legitimate, bureaucratically articulated organizations that stand ready to use force to sustain political order.” This proposition is the starting point for describing the methodological approach of this article. In a first methodological step, undertaken in Section 3 and defining security as a basic condition for democracy, Manning’s proposition is concretized through historical reconstruction methods derived from the field of comparative democracy studies. Through this historical reconstruction and thereby the sociohistorical contextualization of political concepts, as represented in particular by Quentin Skinner (2002), J. G. A. Pocock (2009) and the approach of the “Cambridge School” of the history of political thought, the foundations will be laid for the second step in Section 4, in which the methods of historical reconstruction derived from the field of democracy studies are combined with the methods of a hermeneutic structural analysis as found in the police studies research of Jo Reichertz (2013, 75ff.; cf. 2004) in particular. Reichertz highlights hermeneutic structural analysis as an important methodological tool for grasping structural elements of policing in a qualitative way. The great potential of this method is also found in the way it methodologically lays a groundwork (through a hermeneutics of policing) that enables further, specifically quantitative approaches (which this article only suggests, without implementing them itself). If Manning’s proposition (that the police “are legitimate, bureaucratically articulated organizations that stand ready to use force to sustain political order”) is true, then a hermeneutically conceptualized structural analysis should allow one to concretize the elements that make up the core of democracies, while also pointing to potential deficiencies in the legitimation of policing in democracies. Because of this

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(i.e., the methodological limitation to a qualitative methodology with the goal of sketching a conceptual outline of police roles and functions within democracies as a way of concretizing Manning’s proposition), the methodological connection between historical reconstruction and hermeneutic structural analysis will also include a normative dimension, which—​to borrow from Ian Loader (2000, 323)—​has the goal of being “normatively adequate to the task of connecting policing to processes of public will-​formation.” In the present article, this normative dimension is informed by the author’s years of experience within the field of police training in the Federal Republic of Germany (as a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences for Police and Public Administration HfPV, Wiesbaden).

Theory: Security as a Prerequisite for Democracy During the Florentine Renaissance, Niccolò Machiavelli began the process of emancipating politics from morality, a process that would eventually shape the entire historical and intellectual development of the Enlightenment. The individual shifted from being an object of politics to being its subject; the Enlightenment is, in the words of Immanuel Kant (1996, 58), “mankind’s exit from its self-​incurred immaturity.” Traditional patterns of thought and governance were now being criticized and challenged by a worldview guided by the demands of reason. Inspired by empiricism and the natural sciences, there emerged a growing criticism of metaphysics, religion and superstition, which had served to underpin medieval rulership and were now being measured against the demands of rationality and equality. Political emancipation from existing rulership paradigms, and thus the beginning of democratization, had become conceptually possible because the main epistemological prerequisites had been established. Furthermore, with the invention of the printing press and the gradual emergence of nationally unified vernacular languages, the early modern period saw the opening of a political space that not only facilitated communicative processes beyond purely authoritative commands but also provided a direct motor for the establishment of democratic governance patterns in the modern age. Since governance now required legitimation in the eyes of the ruled (in whatever form this might take), it also required general communication in a non-​private, non-​secret social space, which would become the public sphere. The historical processes leading to the emergence of the public sphere were intimately interwoven with movements to democratize governance, and thus with democratic opinion-​forming processes; it fact, it was only with the public sphere acting as a mediating arena between individual and governmental levels that democratic legitimation became possible at all.

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The main prerequisite of the public sphere is that governmental conduct and institutions should be structurally transparent within the wider polity; besides serving this oversight function, the public sphere also began allowing for the articulation of society’s plurality of interests (cf. Habermas 1992). Because of rival interests and political conflicts within a polity, the public sphere came to represent a heterogeneous space where competing models for legitimizing and justifying governance were all up for debate, which could include partial and general criticism of such governance. A prerequisite and ongoing requirement of the public sphere—​without which the necessary legitimation of governance cannot be created (only that which is known can be discussed, and thereby scrutinized and even challenged)—​is the establishment of a political space that gives acting participants a sufficient measure of security (first and foremost on a physical level), a security based upon a binding agreement across all of society: the social contract. Liberal-​minded revolutions shifted power from the nobility to civil society, with feudalist production methods giving way to capitalist ones, in which production patterns were no longer defined by feudal ownership of land, property and serfs but rather by private ownership of the means of production, within a framework marked by abstract legal equality and the political emancipation of civil society. The impermeable estate-​based structure of society gave way to a flexible class-​based one, and direct, concrete rulership gave way to a mediated, abstract order. The ground was prepared by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-​ Jacques Rousseau—​key political thinkers in what Georg W. F. Hegel (2005, 82) called the “transition into a new age”—​whose philosophies of state governance offered a paradigm reversal by freeing the state’s political sphere from its traditionally religious roots, thus taking the political-​economic orders of the past and making them history. In institutional terms, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau conceptualized political orders that built upon a view of human beings as rational agents and prioritized the scientific, mathematical worldview above the religious one; the conception of the social contract, as found in the work of these three theorists, was key to the rationalist disenchanting of the late medieval world (cf. Weber 1946, 129–​56). The idea of the social contract would mark one of the most momentous transformations in the history of ideas: from now on, political action and the exercise of power would require the consent of those affected; the “natural” or God-​given right to rulership had been challenged, and governance would instead be based on the agreement of the people. This proposal to establish a social contract may have been only hypothetical (at least at first), but it nonetheless established for the first time the need for governance to be legitimized and for political consensus (however minimal it

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Table 1  Progression of democratization Political demand Goals Protective state

Security

State under rule of law

Freedom

Welfare state

Solidarity

Democratic state

Equality

Cultural state

Education

–​  Protection against external attacks –​  Ensuring domestic peace –​  Guaranteeing property rights –​  Legal and constitutional system –​  Human rights and civil rights –​  Rights-​protecting bodies (courts) –​  Social participation –​  Social and economic justice –​  Welfare  system –​  Protection of social rights –​  Sovereignty invested in the people –​  Universal suffrage and free ballot –​  Transparency of political offices –​ Vertical and horizontal opportunities for participation –​  Education for all citizens –​  Research funding –​ Justice in the international context (peace, ecology, etc.)

Own illustration, inspired by Guggenberger (1995, 39), Benz (2008, 37, 127) and Voigt (2009, 32).

might be) to be pursued—​which also meant it was always open to debate. This consensus might be an agreement to protect the basic right to exist, or it might guarantee property ownership rights, or it might even declare a common will to pursue specific political goals. Therefore, the basic assumption of all theories of democracy is that the polity must first serve a protective function both inward and outward, before any further questions of political participation and shared decision-​making can be considered at all. Inspired by and expanding upon the ideas of Bernd Guggenberger (1995, 39), Arthur Benz (2008, 37, 127) and Rüdiger Voigt (2009, 32), one can schematize a hierarchical progression of democratic demands, with the security function of the protective state serving as the initial basis for all democratization processes (Table 1). This is only an idealized scheme that outlines general tendencies and preconditions and cannot be taken as a fixed template for a “successful” or durable democratization. It is retrospective, not predictive. While the advancement of democratization does require the fulfillment of certain contextual requirements, it is important to note that these are not sufficient in themselves. This is mostly clearly seen in the need to establish security, thereby guaranteeing internal and external peace: if the sovereignty of the state is not

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recognized through the granting of a monopoly on the legitimate use of force (cf. Weber 1980, 29, 516), it becomes impossible to establish a rule of law, which is necessary for upholding freedom first, then equality and solidarity—​ every process of democratization requires a centralized sovereign power. State sovereignty is a necessary prerequisite for every democratic development, if it is to be durable and lead to political stability. Sovereignty requires the establishment of a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, both internally and externally, and without this, democracy would be impossible. To put it more succinctly: if a political system lacks this sovereignty, then any social group—​whether it be criminal gangs, political extremists, religious fundamentalists or ethnic separatists—​could challenge its rules by using violence at any time or place. And democracy is built upon exactly these guarantees: legal certainty and the security of life’s essentials, especially of everyday livelihoods and basic survival. Only a sovereign state can guarantee such securities. One can truly hope for democratization only when there exists a recognized monopoly on the legitimate use of force—​meaning that everyone is ready to follow the legislated rules and regulations, submitting to the central authority while also recognizing its legitimacy—​although the existence of a centralized authority is certainly no guarantee for democratization processes, since the monopoly on the use of force can also be used to exclude people from political participation. While the equation of “no democracy without sovereignty” may be true, the reverse equation—​that the establishment of state sovereignty would necessarily and inevitably lead to democratization—​would certainly be false. The main goal is, in all cases, “civilizing security” (Loader and Walker 2007). Obviously, any centralized authority could also exploit its tools of power and control to establish an authoritarian or totalitarian regime, using its monopoly on the use of force to serve a dictatorship.

Discussion: Ten Theses on the Relationship between Police and Democracy The institution that creates and maintains domestic security, and that can ultimately guarantee it during emergencies, is the police. However, a comparative look at the historical development of various political systems shows that, in the modern world, no such system has existed or even can exist without a police or parapolice institution: not only does every democratic system have a police but also every authoritarian one too, and even totalitarian ones—​such as National Socialism and Stalinism historically or the Iranian mullah regime today—​have police-​like organizations.2 2 One of the distinguishing features of police-​like or parapolice organizations in totalitarian regimes (as opposed to authoritarian ones) is that several of them can coexist in

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Drawing from comparative research into democracies and autocracies, there are several police-​related indicators that can be seen as contextual conditions associated with successful democratization processes. These indicators are also important because the domestic security guaranteed by the police is the basic foundation of all democracies so that an analysis of police roles and functions within a democracy allows one to measure the depth and durability of its democratization—​or conversely, how unstable or endangered the democratic order might be. Seen in this light, the institution of the police may be considered a key indicator in the empirical measurement of democratization processes, even though this factor has so far been neglected by comparative empirical research into democratization3. The following will formulate 10 theses on what structures are necessary for a political order that establishes the police as a democratic institution, and thereby as a guardian of democracy; these 10 theses are to be seen as a preliminary basis for discussion, inviting further refinement (and possible correction) by empirical studies.4 Thesis 1: For the police to be grounded as a democratic institution, it must be integrated into the legal system and bound to the law. From the perspective of a constitutional democracy and a stable democratic political culture, this prerequisite would almost seem self-​evident. Nonetheless, it is absolutely crucial if the police are to be successfully integrated as an essential institutional component of a constitutional democracy. This prerequisite highlights two major aspects. First, the police must be an explicit component of the legal and constitutional order, which also means that there cannot exist—​in parallel to the police, and thus in parallel to the legal system—​parapolice bodies, which are not beholden to the legal system but are nonetheless entrusted with policing functions. Therefore, the duties and powers of the police, as well as limits on their activities, must be explicitly defined by the legal system and the constitution. Second, the institution of the police must itself be subject to the procedures of the legal and constitutional order. The police are thereby denied any extralegal powers, their actions are structurally differentiated from arbitrariness, and if an individual police officer does violate the law,

parallel structures so that there are multiple parapolice bodies, often with decentralized control, whose authorities are unspecified, unsupervised and mutually overlapping, thereby eliminating any kind of legal certainty. Concerning this parallel structure, see the still essential Fraenkel (1941). 3 For an overview of useful yardsticks for empirical comparative research into democracy and democratization, see Salzborn (2012, Ch. 11.2). 4 Of course, these 10 theses make no claim to covering the entire topic; however, they do try to cover its central aspects.

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there is a way to prosecute and punish this violation through the legal (and penal) system. Thesis 2: To be a democratic institution, police allegiance must be to a legal or constitutional order, and not to an abstract entity or a concrete person (cf. Sung 2006, 347–​67).   In a democratic order, police allegiance cannot be personalized, as a democracy requires the police to carry out its duties on a basis of impersonal representation, not simple obedience to a person. Allegiance to an abstract entity (such as the Kaiser of the German Reich) or a concrete person (such as Adolf Hitler) implies obedience toward that entity or person so that personal dictates (and thus arbitrariness) are recognized before, or instead of, laws and regulations. In contrast, a democratic order always ties command authority to a structure, which is not only independent of any particular person but is itself impersonal, because the basic principle of legal equality essentially means that any person could assume any office in the polity. Therefore, police should swear allegiance only to the legal system and its institutions, and not to particular persons—​only then does the police actually work for the demos. Thesis 3: The social permeability of the police must be institutionally anchored so that it represents the democratic order not only horizontally but vertically as well (cf. Manning 1997). While the second thesis states that the police works for the demos, this third thesis states that it should come from the demos itself, thereby standing for and acting for it (Pitkin 1967). The options for institutionally anchoring this idea range from a simple proclamation, to a quota system, to a highly detailed proportioning by percentage along numerous social cleavages (cf. Ben-​Porata and Yuvala 2012, 235ff.). Important dimensions of social permeability include socioeconomic, gender-​related and ethnic ones5:  for the police to truly represent the demos as an institution, there must be a comparableness (however this might be concretized) between the composition of its membership and that of the general citizenry (cf. Muira 2008). Thesis 4: There should be strict separation between the military and the police. The limitation and division of powers (checks and balances) has been the inviolable foundation of all democratic orders since the European and American revolutions, and this also needs to be explicitly emphasized for the two institutions that are authorized to mobilize and deploy physical force during emergencies. It is particularly under autocratic regimes that the systemic separation between military and police is overridden, which is of 5 In terms of the ethnic dimension, a structural tension emerges when there is a considerable ethnic difference between the resident populace and the citizen populace of a democratic state, where police membership is restricted to citizens only, in order to avoid conflicts of loyalty between states.

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critical importance to the populace, since the national and international laws covering military deployment are fundamentally different from those covering the police. Furthermore, there are also huge differences between the police and military in terms of the quality and quantity of force, both as a potential threat and as a reality. While the separation of police and military cannot go so far as to disqualify former military personnel from becoming police officers, or vice versa (also due to practicalities), there should nonetheless be no institutionalized path for transitioning between the two, as was the case in the early Weimar Republic, when military veterans (mostly loyal to the Kaiser) formed the basis of the police force. Thesis 5:  Police training must conform to high institutional standards and include a high degree of internal transparency. There needs to be a high degree of loyalty toward the democratic order among police officers, because they are the sole domestic guarantor for preserving democracy during conflicts, and with their legitimized power to exercise physical force, they are ultimately the most important guardian of the constitution during a state of emergency. Loyalty comes not only from agreeing with the principles of a democratic order—​it can also be further developed and solidified through institutions. This requires not only professionalized police training and a standardized career path but also institutional bonds to the democratic order, such as with formalized postings (including job security, pensions, etc.). Since delicate situations can bring police work into conflict with the most important values of liberal democracy—​human rights and civil rights—​all police branches and ranks need to possess advanced formal education, ideally at a postsecondary level. Thesis 6: The police must operate as a politically neutral democratic institution but cannot be politically naïve. In authoritarian regimes, and even more so in totalitarian ones, (para-​)police work is subservient to an explicitly political agenda (e.g., the enforcement of a particular worldview or religion, the unequal prosecution or non-​prosecution of crimes according to who the alleged perpetrators are, and the focusing on the motive instead of the action itself) so that (para-​)police operate in an explicitly political manner and function as a tool for pursuing political goals; in contrast, while the police of a democracy also serves a generalized political purpose (generally the maintenance of state structures and its constitution, as well as the enforcement of the legal system), it must also stay mindful of the neutrality imperative, meaning that all rules and norms must apply and be applied to everyone, regardless of individual status. However, this nonpartisanship and political neutrality cannot be misinterpreted as political naïveté, on the contrary: police in democracies must be politically astute and well-​schooled, in order to be effective and independent. This effectiveness especially applies to the investigation

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of politically motivated crimes, where it is essential to be familiar with the worldviews, ideologies and behavioral codes of the suspected perpetrators, in order to successfully understand their actions—​ and while political leanings are deliberately ignored by a judge when determining a sentence, this information is vital for a police investigator when conducting a structural analysis of a crime. Furthermore, the maintenance of police independence also benefits from a keen political awareness so that potential misuse of the police by the political world can be more readily recognized. This underlines the need to integrate elements of political science and sociology in police training programs, on the one hand for teaching about citizenship and the institutions of state, and on the other hand for improving political literacy, with a particular focus on political theories/​ideologies, political systems, political sociology and international relations. Thesis 7: There needs to be rigorous oversight of the police as a democratic institution, which includes strong self-​critical faculties within the police itself (cf. Haberfield and Cerrah 2008). In being subject to parliamentary or judicial oversight, the police are no different from any other institution within a democracy. However, because the police are authorized to physically exercise the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force, there is a far-​reaching potential for the violation of guaranteed human and civil rights; therefore, it is crucial that democracies maintain internal and external oversight of police actions, as there need to be clear and unambiguous sanctions not only for the misbehavior of individual officers, but also for institutional deviations from the guidelines of the democratic order (e.g., by a particular police unit or agency). A major deficiency of many police organizations is that internal criticism of officer behavior during patrol or interrogations is often misunderstood as a public shaming and is therefore suppressed by a staunch esprit de corps. An institution that is capable of admitting its mistakes with aplomb, and of avoiding or at least minimizing these in the future, is not only more credible in the public eye but also demonstrates that police officers are human beings, not machines, capable of making mistakes just like any other citizen. Of course, public self-​criticism of general police conduct while on duty (e.g., if police use excessive force at a demonstration) should not mean publicly blaming just one particular officer, who enjoys the same personality rights as everyone else. Another key issue in the ability for self-​criticism relates to the use of force (such as using firearms, threatening torture, etc.), where the extralegal abuse of authority needs to be strictly forbidden. Thesis 8: Because security is subordinate to freedom in democracies, police work must be oriented toward not only repressing crime but also preventing it. In democracies, security measures are ultimately legitimized by their ability to enable and guarantee freedom—​the security functions of a democratic system are founded

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upon legitimation by the citizenry, which has granted this authority only in exchange for a guarantee of freedom. In order to institutionalize this relationship between security and freedom on an everyday level, the remit of the police must be oriented not only to repressing crime but also preventing it. A sole focus on repressive functions would not only be problematic in terms of democratic values, it would also effectively revoke the basis of the democratic social contract, transforming the democratic regime into an autocratic one. This is because a police force serving only a repressive function is no longer fulfilling a democratic goal, where security should be maintained in the service of freedom (and not as a higher priority or an end in itself). However, Hans-​Gerd Jaschke (1997, 34) has also pointed out the ambiguous relationship between repression and prevention, in which strategies with a potential for strengthening democracy—​such as using (electronic) surveillance instead of repressive tactics and employing police to resolve conflicts through peaceful negotiation and cooperation—​can also become subverted by an increasing emphasis on technology, developing a self-​sustaining logic that promotes intensive observation and preemptive monitoring (especially through advanced tracing and identification techniques), thereby acquiring a character that can restrict democratic freedoms. Thesis 9: Democratic orders require institutionalized authority, which for the police is easier to achieve in a centralized state than a federal one. Here in the Federal Republic of Germany, local political traditions can lead to the assumption that federally structured political systems are the most natural ones. However, there is no theoretical reason why any democracy must prefer a federal model over a centralized one, since both are capable of integrating institutional controls and implementing democratic models of representation, although in differing manners (cf. Neumann 1957). Nonetheless, for the police as a democratic institution, the advantages of a centrally organized state outweigh those of a federal one, because the police, as authorized representatives of the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force, have a visible constitutional function that is oriented toward the primacy of freedom and the equality of citizens so that police effectiveness would benefit from a framework that is unified and standardized across the entire territory of the democracy. Thesis 10:  In order to maintain the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, the police need to be well staffed and financially independent. To maintain the independence and effectiveness of the police as a democratic institution, it is crucial that its long-​term staffing and financing levels remain among the most stable of any institution within the democratic polity (cf. Adlam 2002). The level of financial and material resources should naturally be proportionate to other government departments, but it should never fall victim to a wholesale policy of fiscal reductions. As the guardian of democracy, the

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police must always be ready for duty—​especially in times of crisis—​meaning that any budget changes should preferably occur in opposition to wider economic cycles. If the police are understaffed or underfinanced, then any political or social crisis within the democracy could precipitate the use of parapolice bodies or the military (with the aforementioned antidemocratic shortcomings), which can restrict freedoms either partially or completely, and break the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force, at least temporarily. One step toward undermining the democratic state’s monopoly on the use of force is seen in the privatization of police duties, delegating them to private companies that are much less subject to public oversight. In this context, the privatization and outsourcing of police services could introduce a creeping process of antidemocratization, which does not automatically lead to a loss of freedoms but does include the structural potential for it.

Conclusion From a historical and theoretical point of view, police in democracies serve roles and functions that are different from those of police and parapolice organizations in authoritarian and totalitarian systems. This article attempted to formulate more precisely the conceptual aspects of the relevant preconditions and contexts, thereby determining the necessary prerequisites for the police to function as a guardian of democracy; however, one must bear in mind the constant evolution and operational dynamics of police work in democracies as well as the reciprocal interactions that exist between these 10 theses describing the roles and functions of police in democracies—​these are based on theoretical ideals, meaning that real-​world police that completely correspond to them (or can even hope to) are just as rare as real-​world democracies that completely correspond to theoretical models of ideal democracies. Therefore, these 10 theses are also meant to provoke discussion, not only about their own validity as separate statements and as interdependent ones but also (and more urgently) discussion about whether one’s own practice, both in police work and/​or in police theory, measures up to democratic ideals and one’s own ideals—​and if deficiencies do exist, where improvements might be made.

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4 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE? CARL SCHMITT AND JEAN-​JACQUES ROUSSEAU ON A KEY QUESTION IN DEMOCRATIC THEORY  It was none less than Thomas Hobbes who wrote (if only in passing) of an “Inconstancy from the Number,” thereby hitting upon a central problem of democracy, as well as its perpetual need for legitimizing justification (Schmidt 2010, 52): But in Assemblies, besides that of Nature, there ariseth an Inconstancy from the Number. For the absence of a few, that would have the Resolution once taken, continue firme, (which may happen by security, negligence, or private impediments,) or the diligent appearance of a few of the contrary opinion, undoes to day, all that was concluded yesterday. (Hobbes [1651] 1909, 144–​45) While a nondemocratic system tries to guarantee permanence and stability to its subjects while demanding the same from them, but regardless of their will (and thus must always fail in the long run because they are ultimately based on force, not legitimation, a situation that will not be examined more closely here), democracy promises to guarantee their legal rights, and not despite its citizens, but explicitly in accordance with their will, while thereby also assuming the perpetual risk of changes resulting from inconstancy (cf. Salzborn 2012a). This “Inconstancy from the Number” is an unavoidable challenge for every theory of democracy. This is because democracy is a political system promising something it cannot guarantee in the long run, and yet must promise in order to ensure its long-​term existence (on this see also Böckenförde 1976), namely the stability of its freedoms-​based system, one that exists precisely because of this “Inconstancy from the Number.” This is a system that can legitimize its continued existence only through its instability, one that (in contrast to all

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other political systems) guarantees its citizens the option of having divergent opinions, a system that regulates conflicts while constantly producing more. The inconstancy of the masses is a problem frequently discussed by historical thinkers. It is difficult to resolve because the issue is not just a mathematical one, so it cannot be settled by simply adding up the numbers. For example, James Madison wrote extensively on the proper ratio between representatives and the represented (Hamilton et al. [1787] 2003, Federalist Papers nos. 10 and 55), which was to be neither too small nor too large: however, it was not possible to calculate the most effective and sensible ratio in absolute terms, but only relative ones. The reason for this is that this phenomenon is a qualitative and thus a social one and cannot be resolved by simple mathematics because social and political structures are constantly changing over time. The question of what are “too many” or “too few” parliamentarians in a representative democracy can only be answered for a particular point in time, and also only in retrospect, namely after a concrete critical situation has demonstrated that there really were too many or too few of  them. Therefore, this “Inconstancy from the Number” serves as a constant reminder of democracy’s very foundation: the people, the demos, which is so changeable and unpredictable, a complication that utopians of all stripes (cf. Saage 1997) have repeatedly tried to iron out while striving toward a normative definition of “the will of the people,” which nonetheless keeps slipping away in real-​world situations, and inevitably must slip away. The attempt to overcome this “Inconstancy from the Number,” and thus to “conclusively” fathom the will of the people, is based on the hope of permanently securing democracy, but paradoxically (and inevitably), achieving this very goal would ultimately destroy it. The people’s will is not only the empirical core of every democracy’s legitimation—​it can also become democracy’s death through normativization, if it is ever set in stone. This is a conflict between a posteriori and a priori, in which the will of the people can always be determined after the fact but never before, although an a priori determination would certainly be very attractive as a binding basis for a system’s legitimation. However, every such determination, because of its ontological nature, must eventually become its opposite, thereby negating the current real-​world will of the people, that is, the sum of the wills of all individuals, which are always changeable and varying in practice. The following analysis proposes that there exists an unresolvable contradiction between the claim of direct legitimation through “the will of the people” and the real-​world impossibility of achieving this beyond the use of indirect representation; if such a claim of direct legitimation is theoretically argued, it leads to an ontological determination of what is ostensibly the will of the people, a will defined by an alleged consensus or by a person who claims to

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“understand” the will of the people. As described above, the dilemma is that a democracy should ideally be based on a covenant in which decision-​making is shared among those affected by the consequences, but this is not possible in practice, partly because democratic polities are too populous to manage this even in purely technical and administrative terms, and partly because modern capitalist society’s perpetually inscribed conflicts (over resources, ownership, power, etc.) make it impossible for any democracy to fix the people’s will at any one point in time, an act that would try to freeze the dynamics of society and solidarity, with their constantly changing contradictions and constant changes driven by contradiction (cf. Fetscher 1973; Saage 2005). Lying at the heart of such efforts to fix “the will of the people” as an ostensibly homogeneous “identity” in the sense of “identicalness” is the work of Carl Schmitt (cf. Mehring 2009; Voigt 2011). One step on the way toward Schmitt’s complete conceptual radicalization is represented by Jean-​Jacques Rousseau’s antiliberal break with the representational government ideas of the Enlightenment and liberalism (cf. Kersting 2003; Wokler 1995); Rousseau clearly recognized the dilemma of representation and the associated theoretical problems it presents in terms of legitimizing democracy and tried to resolve these structural conflicts through the concept of identity –​which then paved the way for Schmitt to cite Rousseau as a respected source for his own argumentation, which was not geared toward constructively resolving this potentially central dilemma in democratic theory but instead took inconstancy as a reason for disavowing democracy in general as a pluralistic and conflict-​ prone form of state and governance. Before detailing and critiquing Schmitt’s argumentation in order to demonstrate the unresolvability of the representation problem as seen in the “Inconstancy from the Number,” while also showing that this actually represents a strength of democracy so long as it does not veer into support for antidemocratic ideologies (cf. Pickel and Pickel 2006; Salzborn 2009a; Schuppert 2008; Westle and Gabriel 2009), the following will begin by first highlighting the theoretical lines of connection running from Rousseau to Schmitt, showing that the ambiguities in Rousseau’s conception of identity are themselves part of the legitimization problem, ultimately enabling Schmitt to invoke Rousseau both rightly and wrongly (cf. Hidalgo 2013).

The Agenda of Identity: Rousseau and the Dilemma of Representation Embedded within the rationale of modern democracy theory is a fundamental tension that remains unresolvable, namely that between economic and political freedom (cf. Salzborn 2012b). Whereas democracy has become a governmental form specifically associated with capitalist society, which itself

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would have been inconceivable without the history of the Enlightenment, so is embedded at its core the same conflict that shapes modern society. In the Enlightenment’s promise of emancipating the person as a subject, there is inscribed a freedom that could also lead to an self-​aggrandizing of the individual, that is, there exists a dialectic between this emancipation and its functional opposite; similarly, democracy’s promise of political freedom also contains a caveat that this freedom can only be a half one, that the promise of political equality is necessarily balanced against the price of economic inequality. This is because complete freedom, as implied by liberalism as the guiding ideology ushering in modernity, means not only freedom from compulsion but also freedom from guaranteed security: whoever wants to be free must also accept the consequences of freedom (cf. Dahrendorf 2007), and there can be no freedom from compulsion without the constant risks presented by this freedom from guaranteed security, or without what Erich Fromm (1942) called “The Fear of Freedom.” The emancipation of bourgeois capitalist society was a political and legal one, with the goal of economic emancipation—​but unfettered equal rights for all does not actually mean unfettered equal possibilities for all. Just as freedom expanded the horizons of personal happiness for some, it shrank it for others. At the same time, the Enlightenment’s modern subject injected a qualitative difference into the big picture: once the legitimation of governance has been demanded in the real world, as demanded by democracy in the modern age, the corresponding debate can no longer be silenced (cf. Salzborn 2013). However, the anchoring of bourgeois capitalist society in private property created an essential and unresolvable tension with freedom itself, a tension that must always result in conflicts within capitalist society, because the freedom of unequal persons also means the inequality of free persons, and within the law’s postulated equality is also inscribed the economic process in which some enjoy long-​term accumulation while others suffer impoverishment, as also described by Marx ([1867] 1908, 707). To paraphrase a fundamental concept from Rousseau’s natural law philosophy, humanity’s suffering began with private property; but on the other hand and in contrast to Rousseau’s criticism, private property also represented the motor that allowed freedom to become a utopian promise in the first place, before it could become a reality. Bourgeois capitalist society’s conception of private property, a conception that Locke and Engels have shown is based not on acquisition but on labor (cf. Brocker 1992), concretizes the theoretical promise of legitimized governance in democracy, which in turn (as both the starting point and the result of power relationships between the rulers and the ruled) is necessarily subject to the “Inconstancy from the Number,” because a discrepancy exists between the ideal of allowing citizens to share

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in the decision-​making about their common future and the real-​world ability for citizens to emancipate themselves by turning theoretical political maturity into an truly informed political maturity, a discrepancy that is mediated by freedom:  in order to effectively partake in the “plébiscite de tous les jours” (Renan [1882] 1997), there must exist the possibility of leisure time, which Marx describes as a “realm of freedom” that can only exist outside of capitalist society (Marx [1894] 1909, 954). In other words, if you want to act with true political maturity and participate in political decision-​making, you also need the freedom of leisure time in order to gather information and consider interests, thereby acquiring sufficient competence; but this free time, which completely lacks economic function, is structurally missing in capitalist society, because the worker’s time is devoted to satisfying basic everyday needs. To put it succinctly, those who need to work have little time for deliberation. Therefore, because democracy is founded upon a social model defined by wage–​labor relationships, it can never entirely fulfill its promise of freedom. Any attempt to do so would destroy its economic foundation, along with its legal one. This is the hidden source of the concept of democratic representation, which historical thinkers have often described only in terms of pragmatism:  for example, while liberal thinkers in particular have pointed out that representation is a useful or suitable idea for capitalist contexts, socialist thinkers have criticized precisely this seeming dependence on pragmatic concerns—​without however considering its causal basis beyond the issue of pragmatism. But it is much more than pragmatic; it is actually indispensable for capitalist society as well as any society based on wage employment and the division of labor, because as Max Weber ([1919] 2004) writes, the rationalization of the modern age means that politics itself has become a business; in fact, going beyond Weber’s conception, it must become a business, because the career politician is the only one whose time (which is also paid time) can be devoted to gathering information and considering conflicting interests, both personal ones and those of society’s various interest groups. Of course, Rousseau was not able to anticipate this; nonetheless, he understood that this area must represent a perpetual source of conflict for society, and tried to resolve the question of participation and representation as a political one, although it is in fact an economic one, ultimately stemming from private property. Rousseau’s answer to this conflict was a utopia of identity within a republic of virtue (cf. Kersting 2003), in which the social inequality created by private property is to be neutralized on the political level—​without seeing that political representation and private property are interdependent because of economic reasons, not political ones. For Rousseau, the basis for creating a political order is solely a common agreement between individuals in the form

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of a social contract, establishing a body politic based on the voluntary and egalitarian participation of all, as stated in The Social Contract: Each one of us puts into the community his person and all his powers under the supreme direction of the general will; and as a body, we incorporate every member as an indivisible part of the whole. (Rousseau [1762] 1968, 61) In Rousseau’s conception, the political republic emerges when the people come together and transfer all their rights to the community as a whole. Since all persons are subsumed into it, no one person owes allegiance to another, meaning that each individual remains as free as before. As a result, the individual bourgeois (who is guided only by private self-​interest) is transformed into a citoyen (who embodies the community). The citizen is framed in terms of morality and virtue, with the common good taking priority over private interests. As a collective body, the republic consists of a common self (moi commun) and a general will (volonté générale), both always aiming toward the impartial common good. However, the common good is not necessarily the sum of individual wills or the will of all (volonté de tous). Since the volonté générale is supposed to be expressed in the laws passed by a full assembly of all citizens, the result is a direct plebiscitary sovereignty of the people, founded upon a social contract (Kersting 2003, 11–​24). For Rousseau, the sovereign will cannot be divided or delegated, meaning that sovereignty remains unlimited and immune to limitation. The idea of “identitarian” democracy, in which the rulers and ruled are completely identical, as the opposite of representative democracy, thus goes back to Rousseau and his view that the will cannot be represented: every subject is also sovereign, and since sovereignty cannot be divided or delegated, it cannot be exercised by a proxy (cf. Bertram 2012; Douglass 2013).1 In Rousseau’s framework, the concept of identity plays a central role in trying to establish (by way of reason) a volonté générale, making the general will of all into the essential prerequisite for governance—​that is to say, a direct plebiscitary popular sovereignty based on consensus. Here, Rousseau argues against potential heterogeneity in society:  individuals who refused to comply with 1 Theoretical approaches leaning toward “identitarian” democracy are often found in New Right debates (cf. Benoist 2009) and elite theory (cf. Martinelli 2009; Salvatore 2015). But in terms of discussing Rousseau, it is also typical that identitarian ideas and variations thereof are similarly found in the politically opposite spectrum, namely in certain streams of feminist (cf. Young 2000) and postcolonial (cf. Spivak 1988) theory.

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the general will within an identitarian process would be “forced to be free” (Rousseau [1762] 1968, 64). Carl Schmitt took up Rousseau’s democracy theory while further extending the political motif of identity (cf. Bergem 2005, 58ff.); however, Schmitt’s critique of parliamentarianism focuses on the nature of debates in representatively elected parliaments, which ostensibly express only self-​interests while neglecting “the general will” so that selfishness becomes the norm and mob rule overrides “the will of the people.” For Schmitt, parliamentarianism is the antithesis of democracy, which for him, as for Rousseau, means absolute homogeneity of the community as well as identity between rulers and the ruled—​but Schmitt goes further in concretizing Rousseau’s vague notions, with a conception of democracy that tries to exclude all liberal elements and Enlightenment ideals (such as freedom, subjectivity, privacy, etc.) so that only “the will of the people” finally remains as the core “substance” (Schmitt [1923] 1988; see also Przeworski 2010). But what then is the will of the people, if it is not to be constantly rediscovered through parliamentary debates and public discussions? In stark contrast to Rousseau, Schmitt focuses here on a concept of “substance,” which is not to be determined by reason but is instead to be embodied and expressed by a charismatic personality, along with occasional plebiscites (Schmitt 1927). Identitarian democracy thus becomes—​through the erasure of all liberal elements—​an acclamation of the dictatorship (cf. Schmitt [1921] 2014), with the dictator now embodying the will of the people and manufacturing its identity, in concrete terms by excluding all that is heterogeneous, alien and divergent. This also informs the paradox that totalitarian regimes often consider themselves “democratic,” according to the internal logic of theoretical identity: here, one particular subsection of society is declared to be the demos (such as the workers and farmers in East Germany or the “Aryans” in the Nazi Reich), whereby their alleged interests are ontologically defined and “the common good” is normatively formulated, in a process that tries to manufacture identity between rulers and the ruled (and their respective interests), de facto through segregation and separation. Here, Schmitt acted as a pioneering architect of identitarian democracy theory by declaring the ethnos to be the demos. Similarly, identitarian democracy movements often establish their own subjective ideal as the overriding one, that is, as an “ultimate value” (Dieter Langewiesche) or “ultimate authority” (Reinhart Koselleck), allowing the deliberate circumvention of majority rule and mediating processes in order to impose a minority view.

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The Will as Identity: Schmitt and the Turn toward Dictatorship Schmitt’s conception of a constitutional reality existing beyond legal positivist man-​made laws, as expounded in his Constitutional Theory ([1928b] 2008), has had a major impact on legal theorists since then. In this book, following up on his works concerning the legitimization of sovereignty and parallel to his work explaining the supremacy of “the political” (Schmitt [1927] 1996a), Schmitt criticizes normativism and positivism while proposing a process-​ oriented dynamic in the political sphere, one that could not be understood through a purely positivist analysis. In Schmitt’s analysis of political systems, more important than the positivist defining of norms is the central role played by the individual and collective processes of deliberation and debate within a society, particularly in the forming of political will, from which follows that the simple existence and awareness of norms is not the same as the acceptance of norms. While subsequent legal scholars accepted Schmitt’s differentiation between norm and reality (cf. Grimm 1991; Hesse 1959; Loewenstein 1951/​ 52), they challenged his decisionist reshaping and voluntarist refocusing of social reality toward an ethnically homogeneous community ideal, which in Schmitt’s framework resulted in prioritizing extralegal concerns (such as will, “the people,” common good, mores, etc.) in lawmaking (cf. Fraenkel 1941; Neumann 1944; Ridder 1975). For the dimension of will in Schmitt’s identity theory, a key aspect is the implicit question raised by Schmitt’s recognition of the (very real) difference between constitutional norm and constitutional reality, namely the question of which one has primacy, which Schmitt answers categorically in favor of constitutional reality—​one he conceives as homogeneous and identitarian. Schmitt thus states in Constitutional Theory that a constitution is always legitimate “when the power and authority of the constitution-​making power, on whose decision it rests, is acknowledged” (Schmitt [1928] 2008b: 136; see also Eleftheriadis 2010; Kay 2011). Therefore, he is not so much concerned with the factuality of the constitution in the sense of actual, positively existing rules; instead, his focus is an extralegal one, in which the “substance of the constitution” is based on the political decision defining its “political existence,” and thus “requires no justification via an ethical or juristic norm”: “The special type of political existence need not and cannot legitimate itself ” (Schmitt [1928] 2008b, 136). A comparable idea was already expressed in his earlier book Dictatorship: “What is seen as the norm can positively be defined either by an existing constitution or by a political ideal” (Schmitt [1921] 2014, xli). An “essential presupposition” for Schmitt’s antiliberal definition of democracy is a “substantial equality” or sameness, meaning an “identity of the

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ruler and ruled, governing and governed, commander and follower” (Schmitt [1921] 2014, 264), which connects directly to the friend–​enemy dichotomy in his Concept of the Political ([1927] 1996a) and the therein formulated ideal of homogeneity (cf. Salzborn 2011). For Schmitt, democracy is a “rule of the people” characterized not by individuals ruling themselves but by the collective taking control—​the people as ethnos and not demos. This is an argumentatively interesting point, as the German term for “people” is Volk, which actually permits both interpretations: it means both “people” and “nation” in today’s German, but in the German-​language debates of the 1920s it referred to an ethnically defined people, as the direct antithesis of a citizenship-​based Nation (cf. Boehm 1932 for a major proponent; cf. Prehn 2013 and Salzborn 2005a, 2008 for critical analysis). In Schmitt’s conception of democratic governance, whoever “rules or governs […] may not deviate from the general identity and homogeneity of the people” but must instead “agree substantively” with the people “in terms of democratic equality and homogeneity” (Schmitt [1928] 2008b, 264):  In a “pure democracy, there is only the self-​identity of the genuinely present people” and thus no representation. The word “identity” signifies “the existential quality of the political unity of the people” and not “any normative, schematic, or fictional types of equality.” Democracy thus “presupposes a people whose members are similar to one another,” who share “the will to political existence.” When Rousseau states that what the people will is always good, this is “correct because a people’s existence is based on its homogeneity” (Schmitt [1928] 2008b: 264–​65). Schmitt himself admits the necessity of a government as an administrative institution, which also necessitates a formal differentiation between “those governed and those governing” (Schmitt [1928] 2008b, 265), but this should not be allowed to establish “a qualitative distinction and to distance governing persons from those governed,” because this would endanger “democratic homogeneity and identity”:  “In a democracy, whoever governs does so not because he possesses the properties of a qualitatively better upper class opposed to an inferior lower class” (Schmitt [1928] 2008b, 266). Nonetheless, practicalities could “reasonably prompt the people to entrust comrades [“Volksgenossen,” an ethnonationalist term for Volk comrades] who are efficient with the administration and leadership duties”; however, “the formation of a special class” is to be avoided, because this would endanger “the qualitative and substantive equality of all, which is the supreme prerequisite of every democracy” (Schmitt [1928] 2008b, 266). What at first glance appears to be a fervent plea for equality actually reveals itself to be a fervent plea for inequality, because the ideas of homogeneity and identity are ultimately irreconcilable with the basic democratic ideals of contradiction and conflict;

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here, Schmitt is postulating an internal homogeneity and identity that can only be mediated through an ethnonationalist conception of Volk, one that assumes not only an immutable outside but also an ostensibly existential other (cf. Salzborn 2010a). Schmitt thereby puts forward the absolute supremacy of a particular conception of unity, order and community, a conception homogenized through rigid, ethnicized friend versus enemy ideas, and in which decisions about belonging (and not belonging) are made no longer by the individual but by the collective. But in deciding who is the political enemy, only “the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation” (Schmitt [1927] 1996a, 27): But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. These can neither be decided by a previously determined general norm nor by the judgment of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party. (Schmitt [1927] 1996a, 27) The imputed identity of state and society is further used to argue that this identity can make everything political (at least in principle), which in turn would also override the state and its more specific definition of the political. Here, the general application of legal norms is suspended and the legal foundations of liberal democratic thought are overruled, along with liberalism’s Enlightenment promises of freedom, subjectivity and privacy. In The Concept of the Political, Schmitt’s antidemocratic proposition culminates in defining the Volk (in ethnonationalist terms) as a conscious antithesis to the Nation (in potentially republican terms), with the Volk as the basic unit for differentiating between friend and enemy (for further analysis of Schmitt’s concept, cf. Baume 2009; Benhabib 2012; Kahn 2009; Keedus 2011; Stanton 2011). When a Volk no longer enforces this friend versus enemy differentiation (lacking either will or ability), it ceases to exist politically, because the enemy is ultimately necessary: “The justification of war does not reside in its being fought for ideals or norms of justice, but in its being fought against a real enemy” (Schmitt [1927] 1996a, 49). Here, war becomes an end in itself, with the friend versus enemy differentiation becoming a self-​fulfilling prophecy. In this situation, society’s drive to achieve ideals of homogeneity, unity and communality through clear friend versus enemy delineations also “implies a double possibility:  the right to demand from its own members the readiness to die and unhesitatingly to kill enemies” (Schmitt [1927] 1996a, 46).

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Schmitt’s conception of democracy as presented in The Concept of the Political finds its argumentational precursor in the form of democracy he discussed in The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy ([1923] 1988). This was where he develops his ontological concept of democracy in terms of form, which was then further developed in terms of content in The Concept of the Political. In Parliamentary Democracy, he begins by conceptualizing a contradiction between democracy and parliamentarianism, which effectively boils down to a contradiction between identity and representation, but expressed in terms of democracy versus parliamentarianism for populist appeal. For Schmitt, the concept of parliamentarianism stems from liberalism and not from genuine democracy, whose intellectual and historical roots he emphatically traces back to Rousseau. In describing democracy’s form, Schmitt writes that every “actual democracy rests on the principle that not only are equals equal but unequals will not be treated equally” (Schmitt [1923] 1988, 9), with “actual” representing an argumentational device that can empty any historical intellectual concept and recode it with an “actual” meaning, thereby ontologizing it and denying its contested nature (cf. Göhler et al. 2004). He goes on to say that democracy “requires, therefore, first homogeneity and second—​if the need arises—​elimination or eradication of heterogeneity” (Schmitt [1923] 1988, 9). As a result, democracies “can exclude one part of those governed without ceasing to be a democracy,” and have historically incorporated “people who in some way were completely or partially without rights,” giving them a status similar to slaves, although they may be called “barbarians, uncivilized, atheists, aristocrats, counterrevolutionaries” (Schmitt [1923] 1988, 9–​10). Incidentally, this provided a wide-​reaching argumentational groundwork for the future Nazi regime’s antisemitic extermination policies (for a deeper analysis of Schmitt’s antisemitism, cf. Gross [2000] 2007), as mentioned by Ernst Fraenkel: The elimination of the ostensibly heterogeneous subgroup, meaning their political disempowerment and if necessary their physical annihilation, is meant to ensure the creation of a unified common will whose substrate is the racially homogeneous Volk and whose representative is the leader [Führer] of a hierarchically structured movement. (Fraenkel [1964] 1979, 211, my translation) On the other hand, Schmitt rejects a universalist equality, which he calls “absolute human equality,” as one that is “conceptually and practically meaningless, an indifferent equality” (Schmitt [1923] 1988, 12). He goes on to say, Where a state wants to establish general human equality in the political sphere without concern for national or some other sort of homogeneity,

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then it cannot escape the consequence that political equality will be devalued to the extent that it approximates absolute human equality. (Schmitt [1923] 1988, 12) In this analysis, the idea of equality for all humans is not a component of democracy but of liberal ideology: Schmitt further asserts that “a true state, according to Rousseau, only exists where the people are so homogeneous that there is essentially unanimity” (Schmitt [1923] 1988, 13). In most of his writings during the Weimar era, Schmitt was fairly meticulous in avoiding explicit statements on what concretely defines the Volk; correspondingly, his conception of democracy in Parliamentary Democracy concentrates primarily on form, although he almost addresses content with passing references like “national or some other sort of homogeneity” (Schmitt [1923] 1988, 12); however, the ethnicizing (or more precisely, völkisch, an adjective derived from Volk in the ethnonationalist sense) core of Schmitt’s proposition is not made explicit until The Concept of the Political in 1927, while the specifically antisemitic aspect, which is only hinted at by the formal framework of Parliamentary Democracy, does not explicitly come out in concrete form until his writings during the Nazi era (cf. particularly Schmitt 1934a, [1938] 1996c, 1939, 1942; cf. also Derman 2001; Gaynor 2012; Salter 2013; Tralau 2011; Vagts 1990). Significantly, Schmitt also writes in Parliamentary Democracy that “unanimity” may in fact be “naturally present” (Schmitt [1923] 1988, 14), thus explicitly pointing to the essentialist core of his conception. In essentializing this naturally present unanimity, Schmitt also succeeds in reducing to absurdity the contract idea, which is the part of Rousseau he disdains: according to Schmitt, the contract is meaningless if unanimity naturally exists, and if society lacks this naturalness, then the contract will fail, making it equally meaningless (Schmitt [1923] 1988, 14). Schmitt then goes on to eliminate the (minor) liberal aspect of Rousseau’s theory (cf. Salzborn 2010b, 67ff.): The general will as Rousseau constructs it is in truth homogeneity. That is a really consequential democracy. According to the Contrat social, the state therefore rests not on a contract but essentially on homogeneity, in spite of its title and in spite of the dominant contract theory. The democratic identity of governed and governing arises from that. (Schmitt [1923] 1988, 14) The “will of people” can be better expressed “through acclamation, through something taken for granted, an obvious and unchallenged presence” than through the processes of representative democracy (Schmitt [1923] 1988, 16); his mention of the “unchallenged presence” is so unmarked that one could

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easily miss its true import: in Schmitt’s conception of democracy, the people no longer need subjective agency. Following this line of logic, Schmitt goes on to argue that the “minority might express the true will of the people” (Schmitt [1923] 1988, 27), a will that can be made explicit through “the familiar program of ‘people’s education’ […] The people can be brought to recognize and express their own will correctly through the right education” (Schmitt [1923] 1988, 28). Where Rousseau cites reason as the best path to understanding, Schmitt proposes an educational dictatorship that imposes the “right” understanding upon “the will of the people”: “The consequence of this educational theory is a dictatorship that suspends democracy in the name of a true democracy that is still to be created” (Schmitt [1923] 1988, 28). Dictatorship thus becomes the tool for closing the gap between völkisch ideology’s normative claim and democracy’s normative implementation:  If “dictatorship designates the exception to a norm,” it does not mean “any arbitrary negation of a random norm.” What is “negated is the norm, whose authority should be guaranteed by dictatorship throughout its historical-​ political existence. There might be a difference between the rule of law in its making and the method of its exercise” (Schmitt [1921] 2014, xlii). Schmitt’s support of dictatorship is a political one in which dictatorship is not seen as an antagonistic opposite of democracy but as a necessary option for democracy; however, this is a “democracy” cleansed of all liberal, socialist and Enlightenment elements, founded upon a demos that is understood as an ethnic and homogeneous collective, one that unconditionally submits to an authoritarian leading figure because it believes that this figure corresponds to its essential nature. For Schmitt, the formal characteristic of a dictatorship is “the empowerment of a supreme authority, legally capable of suspending the law and of authorising a dictatorship” (Schmitt [1921] 2014, xliii). Schmitt’s “democracy” is thus one in which the essence of democracy is completely destroyed, and any hope of broad participation and shared decision-​making is eclipsed; this is how Schmitt interprets “the will of the people,” which no longer needs the people for its interpretation and justification, but only its leadership. The path to the racially homogeneous “Volksstaat” (the “Volk state” as described in Aly [2005] 2007) was paved by Schmitt’s identity theory, which he argues not simply with political arguments but also with legal theory ones, using democracy’s own legitimizational weaknesses in order to destroy its rule of law from within. Schmitt does so in Der Hüter der Verfassung ([1931] 1996b) by developing his legal theory along two strategic lines of argument: on the one hand, his argument deploys the concepts of identity, homogeneity and decision(ism), which are key to informing his support for the strengthening of the personal over the structural, thereby anticipating the charismatic principle,

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while also building up the textual skeleton from which he develops his critique of the Weimar Republic’s parliamentary system; on the other hand, and rather remarkably in terms of his legal theory, Schmitt also borrows somewhat from the positivist discussion of Weimar constitutional law (cf. Friedrich 1977; Geis 1989; Sontheimer [1962] 1994; Stolleis 2001) when his argument aligns with maintaining the constitution instead of amending its substance so that when he tactically argues for centralizing power by strengthening the personal over the structural, thereby elevating the Reich President to “Guardian of the Constitution,” he strategically supports a constitutional order that he otherwise rejects. Here, it seems that Schmitt, after intellectually weighing the advantages, has decided to give tactical support to maintaining the constitution while also arguing for the strengthening of a structurally antidemocratic aspect, namely the positioning of the Reich President beside and above the constitution, because this would ultimately torpedo democracy. He thus remains faithful to his decisionist objective, while employing a rhetorical detour to support it. At the heart of Schmitt’s argumentation lies a scorn for the Weimar constitutional order and its elements of “pluralism, polycracy and federalism” (Schmitt [1931] 1996b, 71, my translation)—​especially pluralism, which he considers the core of the legal theory position opposite his own (cf. Vinx 2015). In Schmitt’s analysis, This parliamentary, democratic, party state is, in short, an unstable coalition party state. The deficiencies and shortcomings of such a situation have been portrayed and criticized often enough:  incalculable majorities; governments that are incapable of governing and that fail to assume political responsibility, since they are bound by compromises of all sorts; incessant compromises between parties and parliamentary groups that come about at the cost of the interests of a third party or of the state as a whole, and that require a pay-​off to every party involved in exchange for its participation; the distribution of positions and sinecures in the state as well as in communal or other public institutions among the followers of parties, in accordance with some formula derived from the strength of parliamentary parties or from the tactical situation. Even those parties that, with an honest public spirit, want to put the interest of the whole above the goals of the party are forced, in part by the necessity of giving consideration to their clientele and voters, but even more by the immanent pluralism of such a system, either to take part in the continuous trading of compromises or to stand aside as irrelevant. At the end, they find themselves in the position of the dog, known from La Fontaine’s fable, that guards the roast of his master with the best of

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intentions, but that, when he sees the other dogs devour it, eventually decides to participate in the feast. (Schmitt [1931] 1996b, 88–​89, translation from Vinx 2015, 143) Schmitt criticizes social and political pluralism by polemically exaggerating it as a raw clientelism that ultimately endangers the unity of the state and the political order. Here, it is historically true that pluralism theory of the 1920s had indeed not yet reflected upon state-​stabilizing forces and the need for common guiding principles, as later described by Ernst Fraenkel ([1964] 1979). From this lack, however, Schmitt then construed a “pluralism of concepts of legality” (Schmitt [1931] 1996b, 90, translation from Vinx 2015, 145), which ostensibly leads to destabilization and the endangerment of state unity, particularly through a domestic political conflict between antagonistic groups—​a completely intolerable situation in Schmitt’s friend versus enemy conception, potentially escalating into each side framing the other as an “ ‘internal’ enemy,” even when dealing with a state of siege (Schmitt [1921] 2014, 161) so that the “constitution itself is pulverized between these two reciprocal negations that function almost automatically” (Schmitt [1931] 1996b, 91, translation from Vinx 2015, 145–​46). He writes that the “pluralist disintegration of a parliamentary legislative state” (Schmitt [1931] 1996b, 94, my translation) can be prevented only by a pouvoir neutre, a “neutral power” (Schmitt [1931] 1996b, 132, translation from Vinx 2015, 150). Here, Schmitt seems to be contradicting himself, having always emphasized unity and homogeneity in his identity theory—​but this is not a genuine contradiction, as he never actually discards the identity concept in Der Hüter der Verfassung, he simply sets it aside for argument’s sake: here, the goal is to create a power that would be practically capable of combating pluralism, under the theoretical guise of protecting the constitution. But in reality, the pluralism described by Schmitt had not historically threatened the constitution at all; in fact, the vigorous Weimar debates about social democracy (cf. Kirchheimer 1930; Neumann 1932; for later analysis, see also Blau 1980; Fisahn 1993) show that the legal theory debate, particularly on the constitutional level, would have had much more room for maneuver had social conflict structures been organized in a more constructive way, and not homogenized in an identitarian way. However, Schmitt’s true interest lay in advancing the identity of the Volk, which is ultimately why, in Der Hüter der Verfassung, he focuses on something that is objectively unimportant to him:  the Weimar Republic’s constitution. He needs it as an argumentational vehicle to give a vital impetus to his identity concept: the introduction of a “neutral power.” Of course, a close reading shows that this power is anything but “neutral”: what makes it so important as a structuring force for Schmitt is simply

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its ability to systematically suspend the constitutional order, thereby advancing his antidemocratic identity theory by opening a crucial path toward dictatorial development: Differences of opinion and conflicts […] are either resolved, from above, by a stronger political force, that is by a higher third that stands above the differing opinions—​such a power, however, would not be a guardian of the constitution, but rather a sovereign ruler of the state—​or they are arbitrated or settled by an authority that is not superior to but that stands alongside the conflicting parties, and hence by a neutral third. That is the purpose of a neutral power, of a pouvoir neutre et intermédiaire, which is placed at the side and not above the other constitutional powers, but which is endowed with peculiar competences and opportunities of influence. (Schmitt [1931] 1996b, 132, translation from Vinx 2015, 150–​51) At first glance, it might seem unfair to claim that Schmitt is paving the way for dictatorship with his concept of the pouvoir neutre, when he does in fact distance himself quite explicitly from the idea of a “higher” power—​but if one looks more closely at his proposition, it is clear that his “neutral” power is actually endowed with everything it needs to stand not only beside the constitution but actually above it, as a “neutral, arbitrating, regulating, and preserving power,” constructed upon—​and this is a key point—​“a further development of the doctrine,” namely one making the pouvoir neutre “independent of the legislative authorities” (Schmitt [1931] 1996b, 137, translation from Vinx 2015, 157). Schmitt’s identitarian conception of “the will of the people” ultimately reaches its conceptual climax in Legality and Legitimacy ([1932] 2004). By undertaking an empirical analysis of the Weimar Republic’s constitution and what he calls its three extraordinary lawgivers, Schmitt presents a theoretical outline of the legislative state, which he contrasts with the jurisdiction state, governmental state and administrative state. He writes that the “typical expression of the jurisdiction state is the decision in the concrete case, in which the correct law, justice and reason reveal themselves directly without having to be mediated by preestablished, general norms”—​thus suggesting, polemically speaking, a state based on judicial fiat—​while “the governmental state […] finds its characteristic expression in the exalted personal will and authoritative command of a ruling head of state”—​thus suggesting, speaking entirely without polemics, a state based on political fiat (Schmitt [1932] 2004, 4–​5). Finally, there is the administrative state, “whose specific expression is the administrative decree that is determined only in accordance with circumstances, in reference to the concrete situation, and motivated entirely by considerations of factual-​ practical purposefulness” (Schmitt [1932] 2004, 5).

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Schmitt writes that the legislative state is characterized by a “closed system of legality” that is itself a “normative fiction” (Schmitt [1932] 2004, 6), one that has “developed a thoroughly distinctive system of justification” (Schmitt [1932] 2004, 9); he criticizes the legislative state above all because it rejects extralegal forces as a source of lawmaking, assigning them to the sphere of the political: The claim to legality renders every rebellion and counter-​measure an injustice and a legal violation or “illegality.” If legality and illegality can be arbitrarily at the disposal of the majority, then the majority can, above all, declare their domestic competitors illegal, that is, hors-​ la-​loi, thereby excluding them from the democratic homogeneity of the people. (Schmitt [1932] 2004, 30; see also Dyzenhaus 1999; Kay 2011) This argument is all the more remarkable because Schmitt is projecting his own homogeneous identity fantasy onto the pluralist constitutional state so that he can then criticize it for arbitrarily declaring domestic competitors “illegal”—​ which is precisely the same intention held by the school of legal theory built on identity and decisionism. But in the constitutional state, the ultimate authority to declare something legal or illegal lies not within the subjective authority of political actors but is in fact tied to the law, meaning that the process of determining what is legal or illegal can be done objectively without any consideration of the subjective positions of those involved—​and the question of whether this determination of legality is then seen as politically right or wrong is left outside the legal framework. But here, Schmitt accuses the “legislative state” of doing precisely what he himself wants to do: frame political competitors (and not just domestic ones) as “the enemy,” thereby denying the legitimacy of their actions by instrumentalizing the legality question and thus excluding them from the “homogeneity of the people” (which does not and should not exist in a constitutional state), an identitarian homogeneity (the only thing legitimizing “legality” in Schmitt’s view) arising exclusively from Schmitt’s friend–​enemy concept and the policy of identitarian decisionism. Here, Schmitt borrows an argumentational trick from the völkisch movement (cf. Salzborn 2005a), one not necessarily conceived as a conscious and deliberate stratagem (and thus with knowledge of its falseness) but instead formulated as a genuinely held ideology and therefore argued with an unselfconscious belief in its objective correctness:  if legality and legitimacy are to merge together in the völkisch framework, meaning that every legal settlement and decided measure is to be guided by a völkisch homogeneity ideal that forms its legitimizing premise while also generating legality, then Schmitt is here accusing the democratic constitutional state of a policy that it not only does not pursue, but

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cannot pursue, if it wants to remain a democratic state and a constitutional one. Schmitt also points out the site in the legal system that offers a gateway for identitarian legal ideas and for the elimination of legality through völkisch legitimation: “the concrete interpretation and use of undetermined and evaluative concepts, such as ‘public security and order,’ ‘danger,’ ‘emergency,’ […] etc.” (Schmitt [1932] 2004, 32), which are indeed purely matters of interpretation and thus resistant to any standardized norms. Schmitt attempts to keep these aforementioned indeterminate concepts open in sociopolitical terms. Here, he rejects what would actually be the more sensible path in legal theory terms, namely to erase such indeterminate concepts in general from the legal system. He does so because such indeterminate concepts are, as later demonstrated by National Socialism, crucial for circumventing the legal system in favor of rule by decree (cf. Fraenkel 1941; Neumann [1937] 1967, 1944). Therefore, Schmitt chooses a rhetorical detour: the minority holding the means of state power and the opposing party striving for it should each be given an equal chance at defining what is “legal” and what is “illegal.” For this, Schmitt proposes an “impartial third party […] For in contrast to the parties to the dispute, this third party would be a supraparliamentary, indeed suprademocratic, higher third” (Schmitt [1932] 2004, 34). Schmitt’s goal is a turn toward identity in the sense of an essentialist assumption of homogeneity, aimed at imposing a “substantive order” (Schmitt [1932] 2004, 94). For him, it all boils down to a single fundamental choice: “recognition of the substantive characteristics and capacities of the German people or retention and extension of functionalist value neutrality, with the fiction of an indiscriminate equal chance for all contents, goals and drives” (Schmitt [1932] 2004, 93–​94). Schmitt wants to use a mixture of deliberative and dictatorial elements (Schmitt [1932] 2004, 89, 94) to counter the “neutral majority functionalism that is pitted against value and truth” (Schmitt [1932] 2004, 94); this “value and truth” descriptor also highlights the moralistic aspect of identitarian political ideology, while pointing to a conception of the “the people’s will” that may derive from various sources but not from the actual people. It is epistemologically impossible to argue against “value and truth” because these are always subjective (despite being persistently framed as objective) and ultimately mix morality into the argument. And whoever argues on a moral level, as Schmitt does, is in fact covertly arguing the most basic of interests, namely one’s own interest, here camouflaged as “truth” or “the will of the people.” Schmitt’s argument is ultimately an antidemocratic one, because he wants anyone with a divergent opinion or interest to be ruthlessly subjected to what he claims is “the will of the people,” which in fact is the decisionist will of the dictator.

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The Will of the People: But Which Takes Precedence, the Will or the People? In thinking about “the will of the people,” the crucial question is whether the emphasis is on the will or the people, meaning on subjective emancipation or collective identity. Here lies the main difference between Rousseau and Schmitt, which Schmitt tries to smooth over and ultimately resolve in his selective reinterpretation of the social contract theory. Rousseau’s identity theory puts its hope in reason, which certainly has the potential for subjective emancipation and is utopian only because it actually believes in this hope: Rousseau wants to create in practice “the will of the people” through identity but puts the emphasis here on the will. Schmitt disdains this faith in reason. He is a proponent of not only decisionism but also homogeneity. For Rousseau, identity must be at the service of reason, but for Schmitt, it is subservient to nothing, representing instead the ontological polestar of his homogenizing framework. Schmitt puts his emphasis on “the people,” which for him is nothing more than the ontologically defined “substance” of an ethnonationally defined homogeneous Volk, an ideal that tolerates no opposition and represses difference to the point of extermination. Under Rousseau, people are “forced to be free,” but under Schmitt, they are forced to be homogeneous, and the individualist outlet allowed by Rousseau (whoever refuses to be “free” can simply leave) no longer exists under Schmitt so that the empirical “will” is unconditionally subjugated to the Volk, which has been ontologically defined by the dictator. For both Rousseau and Schmitt, the difficulty with “the will of the people” is that its inconstancy makes it ultimately uncontainable, thus challenging each scholar to reconcile this problem—​Rousseau of necessity, Schmitt with intent. In attempting to preserve the heart of democracy and its essential goal of constantly reflecting “the will of the people” despite its structural inconstancy, Rousseau and Schmitt diverge onto two different paths: one subsuming it hypothetically into a republic of virtue, the other in practice destroying it entirely under a völkisch dictatorship. The knowledge formulated from this in terms of the history of ideas has a significant importance for current questions of both the theory and practice of democracy. This is because the numerous movements on the right-​wing fringe that once again today set themselves up as “the voice of the people” connect directly to the writing of Carl Schmitt. In both Europe and America, loud calls are going up that the government will not implement the “will of the people”—​always from populist parties or movements that themselves push ethnonationalist and racist objectives that

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divide society (as can be seen most clearly in Trump’s presidential campaign in the United States) and wish to tear down democracy. Even if right-​wing extremist parties in Europe are nowadays (once again) finding success at the ballot box, they are at their core not really about the real will of the people but the subordinate (and bogus) popular will—​not what is empirically verifiable and really extant but that which right-​wingers declare to be the popular will: their own nationalist worldview. Many of them even invoke Carl Schmitt directly: from the French Nouvelle Droite to the German Neue Rechte, Schmitt’s writings find a gigantic audience. In essence, the anti-​parliamentary affect of the populist extreme right concerns itself with what Schmitt, as one of the central pioneers of National Socialism, demanded:  a directed democracy on the basis of one of the perceived (i.e., right-​wing dictated) “will of the people” that is based on ethnic homogeneity and a categorical and militaristic “friend–​enemy” way of thinking. That this way of thinking leads to barbarism is today historically demonstrable—​and can be reconstructed in the history of  ideas.

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5 NO SOVEREIGNTY WITHOUT FREEDOM: MACHIAVELLI, HOBBES AND THE GLOBAL ORDER IN THE TWENTY-​FIRST CENTURY  International debates concerning human rights, as seen in recent years, are intimately connected to the central paradigm at the core of today’s world order: the sovereignty of the state (cf. Kalmo and Skinner 2010; Minkkinen 2009). Human rights violations committed by national governments have often provoked debate about the legitimacy of such states and/​or their governments and continue to do so, while also providing the moral basis for military intervention in response to a specific crisis or conflict. Although one might very well question whether a particular campaign against human rights violations is actually motivated by ethical concerns or more by rhetoric instead, it is clear that human rights and state sovereignty have often collided in the arena of international relations (cf. Prokhovnik 2007; Walker 2010). The insistent question of what is more important, respecting state sovereignty or defending human rights, is generally handled by politicians and diplomats in a pragmatic manner:  if human rights are violated by a state whose legitimacy is not fundamentally questioned by the international community, then the integrity of that state, and thereby its sovereignty, is granted a higher legal weight; however, if a state’s legitimacy is strongly challenged in the international context, then human rights objections will become prioritized over state sovereignty. One of the most glaring recent examples of such asymmetrical arbitrariness in international relations is the case of the former Yugoslavia compared to that of Iran: while international criticism of human rights violations was enough to legitimize the violation of state sovereignty in the case of Yugoslavia, the sovereignty of Iran is not in question, even though its human rights violations are more widespread than those of the former Yugoslavia, and not only domestically but also internationally—​in repeatedly threatening to destroy Israel, Iran has shown that the fundamental violation of human rights is its guiding principle. Nonetheless, we are a long way from

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any internationally backed military intervention to topple the authoritarian theocratic regime in Tehran. Although this asymmetrical arbitrariness may dominate international relations in empirical reality, it obviously does nothing to solve the problem from a theoretical perspective—​and for a critical theory of sovereignty to be worthy of its aspirations, it has to address this issue from a consistent position that is defined not by arbitrariness and subjectivity but by transparency and consistency. The following will outline a proposal in this direction. This theoretical outline still treats state sovereignty as the key paradigm of the modern political order, but also takes into account today’s altered constellations in international relations, resulting from the rupture of the bipolar world order, the formation of asymmetrical structures in international conflicts following the Islamic terror attacks of 9/​11, the new “wars without area” (cf. Voigt 2008), and the associated international debates on the validity of universal norms, especially regarding human rights (cf. Kapferer 2004; Sassen 1996, 2006). In outlining a model of sovereignty, this proposal makes constructive reference to the ideas of Machiavelli and Hobbes concerning the fundamental structures of modern statehood, and ultimately argues for a sovereignty without morality—​but not without restraints. A  central element is the idea that in terms of legal theory, limitations on sovereignty should not come from some other context but should instead be developed solely in reference to itself and its inherent contradictions: if one tries to legitimize an infringement on state sovereignty by appealing to conceptions of human rights and fairness that draw upon the epistemological foundation of an ethical or moral philosophy, then one creates a dual sphere of legal claims in which the two sides are set in opposition to each other (sovereignty vs. morality/​ethics), ultimately lacking not only a common epistemological axis but actually being incapable of finding a logical intersection—​which is precisely why every international debate on whether to uphold or violate a state’s sovereignty finally ends in an act of arbitrary decision-​making, a brutal verdict that structurally lacks any kind of legitimization. In fact, the claims of sovereignty are structurally incompatible with the claims of morality, as will be demonstrated. The following proposal begins with the assumption that state sovereignty, as a central paradigm of modernity, is open to challenge only when the standards of this paradigm are violated in reality—​but not when it is challenged with ideas that are extrinsic in legal-​theoretical terms, or confronted with competing world order models that generally have post-​sovereign aspirations at their core, and thus have no empirical examples to support them. Proposals for a post-​sovereign world order lack any real-​world practice, and although they certainly strive for the normative creation of this desired political order

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by confronting sovereignty-​based models, this aspiration has a crucial flaw in terms of legitimacy: in modern history, only the sovereign state has provided a workable place for the realization—​not only hypothetically but also in actuality, at least partially—​of individual freedom, which is the implicit and/​or explicit philosophical basis of all ethical and moral conceptions of fairness and human rights. The danger of losing even the hope of modernity’s promised freedom (no matter how small it might actually be in every single sovereign state), as a consequence of the desovereignization of the international state order, would seem to be the strongest argument against it—​for there would be no second chance afterward. Therefore, a sound model of sovereignty would need to be developed from the ambiguities of state sovereignty itself. Sovereignty must serve as its own criterion and be taken back its historical theoretical roots: a sovereignty model can be valid only if it rests upon the internal legitimation of this sovereignty, since state sovereignty without real legitimacy is not only a half measure, as will be demonstrated, but actually none at all—​because state sovereignty, as historically theorized, was not developed as an end in itself but instead with the goal of human freedom. As highlighted by Rob B.  J. Walker, the concept of sovereignty has always had an “inside” and an “outside (Walker 1995, 169ff.), which represents the only legitimizing criterion that is theoretically sufficient for potentially challenging it. In the words of Jean L.  Cohen, the intrinsic connection between the sovereign equality of states and the political freedom of individuals can be summarized to the effect that this concept (sets up) external independence in the political and legal relationships of a political community, in that it establishes a national jurisdiction and differentiates between different legal and political systems. It thereby guarantees the internal conditions that allow for the possibility of self-​ determination, as well as legally constituted self-​ government and autonomy—​meaning the possibility of political freedom. (Cohen 2007,  51–​52) No freedom without sovereignty—​but conversely, and recalling the twofold thrust of sovereignty, a state also has no legitimate claim to sovereignty if it does not allow individual freedom. Carl Schmitt’s well-​known sovereignty paradigm, which defines the sovereign as the controller of the “state of exception” (cf. Schmitt 1934b, 11), illustrates this idea in terms of system, although contradicting it in terms of substance: in Schmitt’s paradigm, individual freedom is suspended within the homogenous collective, which accepts the “state of exception” only as long as it believes that this collective coercion represents its freedom—​but when the

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collective perceives that it lacks negative freedom, particularly the freedom from coercion, and deems this to be a deficit, then it will reconsider absolute rule in the “state of exception,” thereby steering sovereignty back to its freedom-​oriented aspirations (cf. Salzborn 2009c: 143–​64). Put another way, and following Chantal Mouffe’s (2005) argumentation, Schmitt’s conception of sovereignty is precisely formulated in empirical terms, but is loaded with an ethnicized norm, which means that it also needs to be disburdened of this morally based aspect. This is because the völkisch (or “ethno-​nationalist”) belief in collective homogeneity, which forms the bedrock of Schmitt’s sovereignty theory, needs to be recognized as a moral claim, and one with highly subjective dimensions. This is also demonstrated by a historical analysis of National Socialism, which Franz L. Neumann once described as an “Unstate,” in which state sovereignty is actually abrogated by the real-​world suspension of individual freedom and is replaced by the multiple power blocks of a supposedly homogenous Volksgemeinschaft or “people’s community” defined by völkisch beliefs and antisemitic violence (cf. Wildt 2003: 45–​61); to paraphrase Hannah Arendt (1951), the völkisch movement was from the very start a truly anti-​nationalist and anti-​sovereigntist one.

Sovereignty and the Ambiguities of the Global Order According to Hans-​Ulrich Wehler’s analysis, the modern nation-​state is a unique phenomenon that could have only arisen in the West, because this was the only region where all the main prerequisites could be found (cf. Wehler 2001, 15ff.). Here, at the threshold to modernity, various strands of development came together in a process that saw the emergence of the modern nation-​state. After premodern power blocks had already progressed far along the path of internal consolidation, emergent modernity’s revolutionary period provided a broader framework in which the nationalist vision of utopia provided a major point of orientation. This increased its attractiveness by connecting to the ideals of liberalism and the Enlightenment, while also—​and often simultaneously—​falling back on the arsenal of established religious traditions. This is how modern nationalism also acquired the aura of the mythic. This development was based on fundamental processes of social and economic upheaval, including the transition from feudal to capitalist methods of production, which led to an increasingly market-​dependent social structure and a growing mobility that stimulated mediated channels of communication, ultimately enabling the formation of nationalist movements as social phenomena. The key internal conflict of modern nationalism is ultimately whether one should place more emphasis on pursuing emancipation, liberalism and the

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Enlightenment or on maintaining an ostensibly preordained relationship with divine destiny. Speaking in generalized terms, the former position considers the nation-​state as a political nation based on a common political will and a foundation of reason, while the latter position takes up premodern founding myths and transforms them into a tenet of faith so that the nation is founded upon a belief in the ethnic community’s preordained destiny. Although modern nationalism may have had its starting point in the Western world, that is, the European/​American one, it certainly did not limit itself there. The internationalization of nationalism was accompanied by numerous asynchronicities in developmental course. Beyond the inevitably growing economic interdependence between states, a particularly significant factor was the increasing worldwide impetus toward formally structuring societies into nation-​states—​which happened without those societies necessarily following the same developmental processes typically seen in the West. The reasons why the phenomenon of the nation-​state is so intimately tied to modernity can be found in the sphere of economics. Franz L. Neumann convincingly argued that when the liberalism of civil society achieved political success, namely the creation of a universal rule of law under the aegis of a constitution, this did not only have political results, such as emancipation and the development of democratic structures. It also became indispensable for the continued existence of goods-​producing social structures, because only the legal contract, with its binding protections backed up by the rule of law, could ultimately ensure reliable security for trade transactions (cf. Neumann 1967, 31–​81). Elements of arbitrariness, which were typical of premodern power relationships, could have easily transformed trade into robbery, thereby destroying the foundation of civil society. Therefore, the modern nation-​state is a necessary precondition for the continued existence of civil society, which itself only emerged with rise of the nation-​state. Centralization and monopolization gradually increased through the end of the nineteenth century, so the nation-​state’s role as a sovereign entity becomes more and more important, not only in regards to its own citizens but also in international law, as an entity capable of taking action internationally. Only an international order based on the same formal principles of contractual obligations and responsibility could enable economic players to reach beyond their domestic markets in the pursuit of new markets and raw materials. Therefore, the overall interests of the market could not be limited to purely economic matters, but had to reach into political matters too, because the framework for free competition needed to be secured in the political and legal spheres as well. In other words, the need for a contract-​based environment essentially “forced” the entire world order into adopting the abstract structures of (modern) statehood. It was only when the fulfillment of

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contracts was guaranteed by international treaties and the domestic rule of law that the logic of the markets found enough security for the realization of free competition. Thus, the modern world order can be seen as a structured order of nation-​ states, even though some of these states—​such as in the Arab world—​exist beyond the sphere of the Enlightenment and modernity, having never fulfilled (so far) the factual preconditions for establishing a nation-​state. In terms of actual realities, a great many modern states are certainly not a product of the Enlightenment—​instead, these continue existing as a non-​ contemporaneous element (as described by Ernst Bloch 1962), in some cases representing in their real-​world character a regressive answer to the all-​ encompassing demands of modernity. Therefore, the export of the nation-​ state outside of the European/​American milieu was successful only in terms of external appearance; in terms of actual content, these societies (particularly in the Arab world) are just now on the threshold of modernity—​and it remains to be seen whether their emerging domestic systems will lean toward a liberal Enlightenment model or an ethnonationalist/​religious one (cf. Diner 1989, 15ff.). As the Western political order consolidated over the centuries toward the modern sovereign state, the core conflict has ultimately revolved around the ambivalent relationship between freedom and coercive authority. The political entity we now call the “state” has developed over a centuries-​long process into an organizing framework that is characterized by the dialectical relationship between these two drives: the union of freedom and coercive authority, always contradictory and contested, but nonetheless indispensable for the state. As highlighted by Franz L. Neumann (1986), the political system of the modern state is defined by precisely these two elements, which are both essential ingredients and yet in mutual conflict. The modern state needs to assert its coercive sovereign authority in the face of localized and/​or specialized authorities (e.g., the church) while also establishing a unitary administration and jurisdiction; at the same time, it professes to cultivate a political order based on uniform laws that apply to everyone, thereby establishing political freedoms that protect economic ones too.

Machiavelli and Sovereignty without Morality This essential connection between political freedom and the legitimation of state sovereign authority can be traced back to the earliest foundations of modern political thought, as seen in the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–​1527) and Thomas Hobbes (1588–​1679)—​in the works of Hobbes in

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an explicit way, in the works of Machiavelli in an ante-​litteram way (Anglo 2005). For them, political freedom is both the motivating principle and ultimate obligation of state sovereignty, which furthermore must reject morality and its claims to objective truth that are actually based on teleological and ethical arguments (Prokhovnik and Slomp 2011). By drawing upon the ideas of Machiavelli and Hobbes and applying them to today, one can demonstrate how the implication of moral assumptions necessarily turns a critique of state sovereignty into an ideological position so that its antiauthoritarian stance becomes equivalent to the theological ethical arguments that were criticized by Machiavelli and Hobbes. By casting an empirical view on political reality, Machiavelli revolutionized the analysis of political power; in his power-​oriented realism, the abstract ideals of the spiritual gave way to an analytical examination of actual structures. In short, Machiavelli divorced politics from morality (cf. Machiavelli 2008, 709–​856) or, in the words of Raymond A. Belliotti (2009), he emphasized a balanced understanding of good and evil in politics. As he wrote in The Prince (1513), he wanted to investigate the “reality of things” or the “real truth of the matter” and not just imaginary ideals, because “there is such a distance how men doe live, and how men ought to live,” with many writers ignoring empirical reality in order to describe a normative desire instead (Machiavelli, Princ. XV). So, Machiavelli focused on an “ethical judgment” represented by the “true knowledge of histories” (Benner 2009). Machiavelli thereby “removed the arena of political behavior from the traditional purview of ethics, liberating it from an all-​encompassing conception of morality,” so that from now on, political actions were to be derived solely from “the causal adaptation of strategies according to the situation”—​ however, as emphasized by Wolfgang Kersting (1988:  101–​2), this did not negate an action’s “moral quality” but simply highlighted its meaningless in political terms. Philosophical interest thus turned to the causal relationships in politics, launching an investigation where ontological questions were largely purged by a general dismissal of “political moralizing backed by transcendent theological arguments,” as described by Herfried Münkler (1984, 281). Machiavelli had a cyclical understanding of history that harked back to political Aristotelianism, redirecting the emphasis from ethical ideals to a rational investigation of tools and techniques for the acquisition, exercise and maintenance of power (cf. Machiavelli, Princ. XII), drawing insights for future political actions by analyzing “similar circumstances” seen in past political events (Machiavelli, Disc. I, 39). His vision of a just political power is not centered on morality but on successfulness. The main focus is on political conflict, in which Machiavelli assumes

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a pessimistic understanding of human nature, free of “all metaphysical and teleological connotations” (cf. Kersting 2005, 30); in constructing a communal order, he recommends we assume that “all men are bad, and will always, when they have free field, give loose to their evil inclinations” (Machiavelli, Disc. I, 3); to him, people are ungrateful and inconstant, hypocritical and cowardly, and primarily looking out for their own advantage (Machiavelli, Princ. XVII; XXIII; Disc. I, 3). In terms of politics, a key aspect of Machiavelli’s philosophy is that the pursuit of power politics derives its moral legitimacy from its empirical success, as well as from the resulting stability of the political process (cf. Machiavelli Princ. XVIII; Disc. I, 9), so that his analysis of the empirical core of moral tenets shows that these are subjective phenomena that only acquire a specious objective reality during the unfolding of political power plays; put another way, morality, when applied to the wider collective beyond the subject’s ethnic allegiances, is simply veiled political dominance. In his Discourses (1531), Machiavelli writes, For in the beginning of the world, its inhabitants, being few in number, for a time lived scattered after the fashion of beasts; but afterwards, as they increased and multiplied, gathered themselves into societies, and, the better to protect themselves, began to seek who among them was the strongest and of the highest courage, to whom, making him their head, they tendered obedience. Next arose the knowledge of such things as are honourable and good, as opposed to those which are bad and shameful. For observing that when a man wronged his benefactor, hatred was universally felt for the one and sympathy for the other, and that the ungrateful were blamed, while those who showed gratitude were honoured, and reflecting that the wrongs they saw done to others might be done to themselves, to escape these they resorted to making laws and fixing punishments against any who should transgress them; and in this way grew the recognition of Justice. (Machiavelli, Disc. I, 2) Machiavelli is an empirical realist whose normative goal is the establishment of political stability—​which also connects him to Hobbes. Machiavelli (Princ. XVIII) recognizes that moral issues are used to camouflage political goals so that in political terms, moral labels are only of secondary importance. In his dialectical decisionism, Machiavelli understands that political thinking is guided by decisions that are often characterized by contradictory poles, and even mutually antagonistic ones (cf. Ottmann 2006, 18); at the core of politics is conflict, struggle and the “praise of discord” (Skinner 1990, 110). The key to understanding Machiavelli’s theory of conflict can be found in the idea of virtù, which

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refers to a person’s will and capability to pursue and achieve one’s own political goals, and more importantly, to preserve one’s own political community. (Münkler 1984, 314) The key point is that if virtù is lacking, and therefore also the will to political freedom, then the latter will be replaced by the decision-​making authority of an autocrat; in other words, when civil society expresses insufficient interest in political participation, the result is autocracy. So if there is no virtù, or it is not exercised, then this deficit will be filled by the uomo virtuoso. In return, this shows that Machiavelli’s theory dictates an autocratic element only when civil society shows no interest in political participation; or put another way, when fortuna outweighs virtù, when partisan interests tear apart the community, then the republican ideal of virtù—​which has its subjective roots in civic attitudes or the bios politikos, and its objective underpinnings in laws, customs and political institutions—​gives way to fortuna. When this takes over, chaos sets in. The rationality of power, which had tamed the ambizione through laws and political institutions, becomes perverted into the irrationality of force, allowing greedy private interests to overrun the community, thereby ruining it both politically and morally. (Kersting 2004, 124) For Machiavelli, the establishment of a stable state is in no way an end in itself (cf. Münkler 1984, 334); instead, the creation of a state order was to “ensure the security of life for its citizens and guarantee legal certainty” (Voigt 2004, 48). Machiavelli conceived of the sovereign state not only as a necessity for establishing an orderly community but also as a site for politically securing individual freedom. For him, freedom is incompatible with autocracy, and his idea of republican freedom conceptually forgoes elements of personal dictatorship and dependence on a ruling personality; instead, there would be rule by laws and institutions (cf. Kersting 2004, 135), although Machiavelli (Disc. I, 3) did support the idea that laws could make people good. The republican community would create “laws and ordinances beneficial to the public liberty” as a result of constructive debates and discordant struggles within that particular body politic (Machiavelli, Disc. I, 4). In the sovereign state, the struggles around freedom become ones focused on political competency and its superiority to simple fortune; political conflict, which underpins freedom, has thus been emancipated from the chains of ethics so that in Machiavelli’s conception, “the voice of the people” is likened to “the voice of God,” because he considers the people to be smarter, more reliable and of better judgment than its rulers (Machiavelli, Disc. I, 58).

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Hobbes and Sovereignty’s Potential for Freedom Like Machiavelli, Hobbes also builds his political theory on a negative conception of human nature. According to Hobbes in De Homine (1658), the greatest good for a human being is self-​preservation, while “the greatest evil is death, especially with pain”; here, the means for achieving self-​preservation and avoiding death is power, but only a power that is great enough to rise above others (Hobbes 1959, 24): So that in the first place, I put for a generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death. (Hobbes, Lev. I, 11) According to Hobbes, people desire and pursue “that which is good for themselves, and to avoid that which is hurtful; but most of all, the terrible enemy of nature, death, from whom we expect both the loss of all power, and also the greatest of bodily pains in the losing” (Hobbes 1926, 97–​98). This is why it is also “a right of nature, that every man may preserve his own life and limbs, with all the power he hath” (Hobbes 1926, 98). Central to Hobbes’s conception of man is the idea of utile or “profit,” which in essence implies both living and surviving, associated with (as stated in his De Cive of 1642) a “right to all” that exists in the “bare state of nature” (Hobbes 1959, 82–​83): Every man by nature hath right to all things, that is to say, to do whatsoever he listeth to whom he listeth, to possess, use, and enjoy all things he will and can. […] And for this cause it is rightly said, Natura dedit omnia omnibus, that Nature hath given all things to all men; insomuch, that jus and utile, right and profit, is the same thing. But that right of all men to all things, is in effect no better than if no man had right to any thing. (Hobbes 1926,  98–​99) Hobbes thereby dispels the teleological aspect of natura dedit omnia omnibus, turning it against the natural law of the Stoics and subsuming it as a legitimizing factor within his own conception of political order, because the concept of just distribution, which in a teleological framework is only needed for the fulfillment of natural law, here becomes the legitimizing basis for the political (self-​)emancipation of the individual in becoming a social being or, to use Hobbes’s term, part of a commonwealth (Lloyd 2009). The human being, whose “whole nature” consists of “strength of body, experience, reason, and passion” (Hobbes 1926, 96), now faces in the natural

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state a twofold dilemma: one can never be sure of one’s own strength or of one’s own weakness in any of these relative characteristics: The natural equality of men was for Hobbes not merely formal and juridical but a substantial equality of physical strength and of natural wit. Such differences as here exist are insufficient to warrant any claim to superiority. No man need be held back from the struggle for existence by the thought that he has no chance of success; given a favourable opportunity, the weakest can kill the strongest. (Hood 1964, 75) According to Hobbes, in the “bare state of nature” no action can be unlawful, “for Injustice against men presupposeth Humane Lawes, such, as in the State of Nature there are none” (Hobbes 1959, 82); therefore, the key factor in achieving self-​ preservation and avoiding one’s own death is unrestrained and unrestrainable power. Due to the equality of human strength and other characteristics, it cannot be certain that one will have enough power to maintain oneself in the long term so that “reason therefore dictateth to every man for his own good, to seek after peace” (Hobbes 1926, 100): Reason is no less of the nature of man than passion, and is the same in all men, because all men agree in the will to be directed and governed in the way to that which they desire to attain, namely, their own good, which is the work of reason: there can therefore be no other law of nature than reason, nor no other precepts of natural law, than those which declare unto us the ways of peace, where the same may be obtained, and of defence where it may not. (Hobbes 1926, 101) Although Hobbes may conceive of the human as a power-​hungry creature, always trying to maximize power in order to enhance self-​preservation and stave off the likelihood of death, it is human reason that helps one understand the need for a durable peace established by a common power. Münkler (1993, 108)  described Hobbes’s conception of humanity as an “equalizing model” in which all people are equal and therefore also have the same abstract right to objects and goods. Münkler’s term highlights the ambiguous structure of the social theory underpinning Hobbes’s state theory, as this equalization incorporates conflicting forces, including not only the competitiveness of the pre-​political natural state with its “war of all against all” or bellum omnium contra omnes but also the contractual act of giving up this risky freedom in order to best protect one’s own self-​interest by establishing a monopoly on the legitimate use of force (cf. MacPherson 1962):

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According to Hobbes’ theory of the person and of real representation, the citizens are the state, and have to accept the actions and decisions of their rulers as their own. But they also have […] a natural life within this society that has been effectively pacified by the Leviathan state. (Kersting 1992, 36) The social contract thereby becomes the basis for both the guaranteed freedom of the individual and the absolute omnipotence of the state, where the citizen offers an obedience that is voluntary but unconditional so that Hobbes’ theory of state falls into that ambiguous space between “despotism and peaceableness” (Voigt 2000b, 41). This is also symbolically illustrated by the frontispiece of De Cive (1642), the third volume (but first published) of his exposition on the foundations of philosophy, showing society’s entrance flanked by figures called “Imperium” and “Libertas.” Hobbes refrains from imposing moral categories, so that his conception of humanity bears no trace of ontological ethical considerations, but instead displays a utilitarian orientation toward his subject that rejects any transcendent idealizing (cf. Hobbes 1967). Thus, in Hobbes’s conception of the natural state, each person is obliged to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement, and Reason, hee shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto. (Hobbes, Lev. I, 14) Although there exists de facto an inequality due to differing physical strengths, competing abilities and chance opportunities to use auxiliary means in the struggle against others, this also incorporates a natural equality in return, because “complete security equally escapes both the strong and the weak” (Althaus 2007, 9). Due to this abstract equality found in the natural state, and the threatening uncertainty in which the complete freedom could just as quickly become the opposite, people become willing, in Hobbes’ view, to relinquish this freedom, positively abolishing the natural state in favor of a political covenant: The Passions that encline men to Peace, are Feare of Death; Desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a Hope by their Industry to obtain them. (Hobbes, Lev. I, 13) To Hobbes, human beings are not political by nature but first become so when they establish a covenant, a common agreement for avoiding death,

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the summum malum (cf. Ryan 1996, 216–​17). Therefore, the need for a state derives not from any ontological purpose but “solely from a fear of violent death” (Strauss 1965, 41)—​in other words, it establishes a negative freedom. Hobbes’s theory was a major departure from the premodern emphasis on ethics, as particularly well illustrated by his conception of the covenant not as a logical extension of the natural state, but rather as its rupture (cf. Münkler 1993, 122), in that the concord between people is an artificial one, “mediated by covenants” (Hobbes 1926, 128). Therefore, because they fear the loss of total freedom, individuals will relinquish it entirely, only in order to get it back under the regency of state sovereignty—​certainly with limitations but also with the backing of the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force: The only way to erect such a Common Power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of Forraigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure them in such sort, as that by their owne industrie, and by the fruites of the Earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly; is, to conferre all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills, by plurality of voices, unto one Will. […] it is a reall Unitie of them all, in one and the same Person, made by Covenant of every man with every man. (Hobbes, Lev. II, 17) Hobbes thereby completely overturns the Aristotelian conception of a human nature geared toward fulfilling a political order, which in turn is part of a natural order; with Hobbes, politics draws its origin from the individual, who is neither political in nature nor inherently inclined to organize according to natural laws. Hobbes thus strips the state of “all axiomatic and ontic primacy,” in order to formulate “the legal basis of the ‘status civilis’ solely with reference to the individual and his rights” (May 2002, 33). As stated by Henning Ottmann (2006, 284), the ratio of Hobbes is thereby formulated as a “rationality of self-​preservation and self-​assertion,” in which moral categories (such as “good” and “evil”) are no longer “universally objective labels for behaviors” so that morality itself is reduced by rigorous theory to the purely subjective notion it really is. With Hobbes, the state is stripped of its associations with morality and virtue, relieved of all ethical ballast whose only function had been to underpin Scholastic philosophy and ontological thought, which had ultimately amounted to the masking of political ambitions behind a fiction of ostensibly universal ethics and morals. Hobbes frees the political sphere (and with it, the legal system and the state) from the dictates of morality, which may claim universality but is ultimately revealed to be just subjective arbitrariness. As described by Stefan May (2002, 35), with Hobbes

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the state becomes a “(natural-​)rights-​protecting institution” built upon the shared political activity of individuals, casting off the fiction of a natural order in the political sphere. Hobbes’s theoretical conception of the covenant is founded upon an abstract basis, which is also nonreciprocal. Since the sovereign created by this contract is not in fact restricted by it, the sovereign is “also not legally beholden to the contracting parties,” which is why Herfried Münkler (1991, 220) also describes the state’s constituting contract as “both a social contract and a submission treaty.” However, the path to Hobbes’s theory of contractual rulership and participation is not necessarily a one-​ way street, even though the subject individuals may have relinquished their right to repeal after having concluded the contract. This is because Hobbes’s theory, beyond giving up risky but absolute freedom in favor of a secured but relative one, also opens up a new mental space by loosening the grip of the Scholastic worldview and radically departing both politically and philosophically from Catholicism and universality, a space where social perception of this ambivalent relationship between freedom and sovereignty first becomes conceivable at all: The ruler is not entitled by God nor by his own self-​interest. He rules, absolutely and irrevocably, on the basis of a contract that is non-​ repealable, but also only fictive. Thus, from this stage to the idea of repealing the contract, to the idea of the ruler’s responsibilities towards the ruled, is just one more small step. (Pelinka 2004, 187) In this point of view, one could imagine Thomas Hobbes as a “radical democrat,” as James R. Martel (2007) pointed out. Machiavelli and Hobbes each advocate a sovereign state whose legitimacy rests solely upon a negative freedom as respectively conceived by their theories. Here, the positive meaning of freedom remains a bone of political contention, because it cannot be defined a priori, since politics are no longer subject to any ethical goal or moral purpose (cf. Fraenkel 1964). Politics is freed from the dictates of morality, entirely focused on conflicts between differing interests, and thereby cleansed of any ideology of that tries to define “good” and “just” not as simply part of an ongoing process but as a fixed normative judgment, as was commonly seen in the philosophies of the ancient world and the Middle Ages. With Machiavelli and Hobbes, politics becomes its own self-​contained standard, stripped of moral or ethical considerations. Modern concepts of sovereignty thus descend from an abandonment of (religiously based) morality and ethics, which were replaced by individual freedom as the basic legitimizing factor for rulership. Rulership now needs to be legitimized, and the modern sovereign state now needs legitimation, rather than premodern moral

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ideals for justifying rulership. Conversely, the modern sovereign state retains logical relevance only as long as it is underpinned by this legitimizing freedom.

State Sovereignty and Its (Self-​)Limitations Therefore, sovereignty today cannot be challenged with morally based ideals of fairness, but rather through the use of universal positive standards for securing and stabilizing all forms of individual freedom, which is categorically separated from economic freedom, as a freedom that goes beyond that of the individual. Freedom requires the sovereign state, but this cannot be an institution whose legitimation is based on ethics or morality, which are never truly universal in their legitimacy or validity, always being built around a subjective core of faith: for a morality to be truly universal, it must refer to that which cannot be taken away from the individual, to a positive understanding of humanity. However, this positive understanding of humanity, in purporting to represent a universal ethics, necessarily carries a non-​deducible ontological core that relies on the myth of intersubjectivity. The claims of an ethical/​ moral framework that has been stripped of its subjective core must therefore remain metaphysical, because the ethical is categorically inscribed with the relativity of a subjective reference to objective conditions. Nonetheless, this recourse to a positive ethics enjoys “the dazzlement of false immediacy,” as Horkheimer and Adorno (1947, 160)  wrote in the Dialectic of Enlightenment. In contrast, Adorno says that freedom “can be defined in negation only, corresponding to the concrete form of a specific unfreedom. Positively it becomes an ‘as if ’ ” (Adorno 1973, 231). Therefore, a critical ethical framework must always be in the negative, for only in negativity can it preserve its non-​ontological potential and escape the accusation of ideology, a charge that nonetheless must be raised as soon as it turns into the positive. Ethics achieves true intersubjectivity only when it emancipates itself from subjective morality so that it does not attempt to transform morality into an intersubjective object and thereby elevate it to universality, but instead preserves its negative core as a categorical sign of freedom and equality, staying intersubjective by rejecting the intersubjective: Each human being has been endowed with a self of his or her own, different from all others, so that it could all the more surely be made the same. But because that self never quite fitted the mold, enlightenment throughout the liberalistic period has always sympathized with social coercion. The unity of the manipulated collective consists in the negation of each individual and in the scorn poured on the type

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of society which could make people to individuals. (Horkheimer and Adorno 1947, 9) Moralistic thinking collectivizes the suffering of the unfree subject and thereby claims universality for that which is individual: while the subject’s experience of suffering does indeed have an objective dimension in being part of a social matrix, the concrete experience of suffering still remains a highly individual act, and if this suffering is positively redirected into a utopian vision of its abolishment, then the subject becomes violated a second time, for the goal is no longer an absence of suffering but rather its positive transformation into an abstract launch pad. Therefore, the political goal must be in affirming that “every generation of men, and therefore also the living, have a claim” (Popper 1945, 158). This does not mean the right to happiness but instead “a claim not to be made unhappy” (ibid.). Therefore, to extend the concept, the focus is to “lend a voice to suffering” (Adorno 1973, 18). For it is precisely in this suffering that social totality achieves expression, entirely individual but nevertheless mediated. According to Adorno, “suffering is the objectivity that weighs upon the subject; its most experience, its expression, is objectively conveyed” (ibid.). Bringing it back to a critical theory of sovereignty and its theoretical role within international relations, this means that the aforementioned difference between the rhetoric and the actuality of universal standards, particularly human rights standards, involves a more nuanced conceptualization of sovereignty, focused on the difference between positive norms and moral rhetoric, meaning the separation between natural law conceptualizations and (in accordance with Hobbes) the concept of moral and political nature. In terms of sovereignty theory, this means that such a teleological natural law understanding must be discarded when critiquing state sovereignty, while positive standards, particularly human rights ones, could very well become the legitimizing criteria—​but only if they are integrated within the sovereignty conception of the state in question, be it through their partial or complete incorporation in the national legal system or through the state signing international treaties that obligate it (at least partially) to upholding human rights. Human rights can therefore become a criteria for measuring the validity of a state’s sovereignty only when they have been legally positivized by the state. However, the situation is quite different when the state does not respect that which it promises to give its subjects when they grant it a monopoly on the legitimate use of force over them and in their name: freedom. Freedom, while providing the major conceptual basis for most human rights, is also directly tied to sovereignty, and when freedom is lacking, then the state is also lacking the legitimizing basis for its monopoly on the use of force. Therefore, the theory of sovereignty is always inscribed with a dynamic element, coming

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closer to Machiavelli’s model, where the right to participation is forfeited by a lack of interest in participating, than it does to Hobbes’s model, which resembles a one-​time barter transaction in which cries for freedom (or at least a greater degree of freedom) can reopen the question of the sovereign’s legitimacy in its monopolistic use of  force. The political affirmation of freedom-​oriented rights indirectly nullifies the systematic separation between human rights and state sovereignty, but without relying on a morality or ethics of any kind, because human rights are not dependent on the dictates of morality—​instead, the demand for freedom becomes an amoral political instrument. The focus shifts from accusations of human rights violations to a demand that the state adhere to the sovereignty covenant that exists between it and its subjects. Therefore, emancipation must always begin as a domestic demand and not an international one, because this political struggle can only be conducted as a matter of self-​interest, against an anti-​sovereigntist violation of it. The struggle for freedom is a struggle for sovereignty, just as much today as in the time of Machiavelli and Hobbes, because anti-​sovereigntism represents a fundamental challenge to the universal application of the modern promise of freedom, which finds its roots in the political theories of Machiavelli and Hobbes.

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6 THE CONCEPT OF ETHNIC MINORITIES: INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE GERMAN-​AUSTRIAN RESPONSE  Conflicts between national minorities and majorities have become a routine part of politics in Europe today. Upon closer examination of the European history of minorities conflicts, it becomes clear that—​regardless of which national history of conflicts one looks at—​it was not until the end of World War I that the subject of minorities policy truly became part of the political agenda. For today’s minorities conflicts, examining the evolution of minorities conflicts during the 1920s is especially interesting, because this was when the foundations were laid for conceptual controversies within minorities policies that have retained even today their potential for complicating and even blocking constructive solutions for minorities conflicts. The basis for this can be found within a terminological framework that developed in the German-​ speaking world during the 1920s and 1930s, according to which minorities were not to be democratically treated as participants within a political system where they themselves could discuss and negotiate their rights. Instead, there developed in German and Austrian debates after World War I  the notion that national minorities should be separated and excluded, thereby denying them the possibility of political and social participation within their respective nations. This formed the basis for the future handling of minorities conflicts, which generally frustrates any attempt toward a solution oriented toward negotiation and open-​endedness, and which, from the very start, tends toward the hardening and long-​term cementing of conflict structures. The following will trace this debate’s evolution since the 1920s, beginning with an examination of historical developments up until the minorities protections policies of the League of Nations. This is followed by a discussion of how World War I resulted in conceptions of international law that tried to formulate for the first time a comprehensive system of minorities protections, and thereby a model for the handling of minorities conflicts. The third step

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is to introduce and analyze German and Austrian reactions to the League of Nations’ conflict resolution model, in which minorities conflicts were addressed by proposing concepts oriented toward fragmentation and exacerbation along lines of social conflict. During the German Weimar Republic and the Austrian First Republic, these ideas still remained on the level of conceptual proposals; it was the National Socialist regime that then radicalized them and set out to implement them, thereby politically and militarily destroying the first system oriented toward the constructive handling of minorities conflicts in the history of international law. Finally, the summary will briefly analyze possible implications for the handling of minorities conflicts. Thus, this paper seeks to sketch out the emergence of nationality law in Europe, with a particular focus on the developments of the 1920s. With the end of World War I, a particular conception of minorities within international law began developing in German-​speaking territories, which, in the context of the new European order resulting from the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, sought to replace antidiscriminatory individual rights with a system of ethnically based collective legal privileges. The international legal provisions outlined by the League of Nations were conceived in terms of individual rights, especially in terms of antidiscrimination protection; therefore, legal-​theoretical proposals for nationality laws or Volksgruppenrecht (“folk-​group law” or “ethnic group law”)1 geared toward collective and ethnicizing special legislation, as developed since the early 1920s by members of the contemporary völkisch (“folkish” or “ethno-​ nationalist”) movement in Germany and Austria, represented a fundamental shift in orientation. Borrowing from the theory of the eigenständiges Volk (“discrete and independent ethno-​nation”) formulated by Max Hildebert Boehm, a legal system was to be created in explicit opposition to the liberal minorities policies of the League of Nations. The theoretical repudiation of these policies extended to the terminological level, so the debate was no longer about minorities protections but rather about nationality policies. This paper will examine to what extent a political paradigm was reshaped in the 1920s into a conceptual system of legal standards and how successful were the efforts to legally underpin the sociotheoretical theoretical construct of the Volksgruppe.

On the Origins of International Protection for National Minorities Although the criterium of ethnicity has been particularly significant in the recent history of minorities protections, it did not play a role in the genesis 1 Cf. for historical development and theoretical analysis, Salzborn (2005a).

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of minorities protections standards (cf. Pircher 1979, 54; Pritchard 2001, 51). Minorities protections originated before the emergence of the civil society and were at first not ethnically based, since it was only with the development of the modern nation-​state that ethnicity became an important distinguishing criterium; thus, national problems first appeared in the nineteenth century. During the end of the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age, these protective mechanisms referred to religious minorities in the context of the division of Christianity by the Protestant Reformation, because territorial transfers of the time, combined with guaranteed freedoms of emigration and allegiance, led to religious minority-​majority relationships in the respective territories. Therefore, the problem of religious tolerance had already appeared in international law at that time. After the Peace of Nuremberg (July 23, 1532)—​generally known as the earliest instrument of protection for religious minorities—​ and the Peace of Augsburg (September 25, 1555), the Peace of Westphalia (October 24, 1648) is of particular significance, because it regulated minority protections on an international level for the first time. The Peace of Nuremberg was the first constitutional document to establish a “general peace” for Protestants, while the Peace of Augsburg at last offered recognition to the Lutherans (cf. Heckel 2007, 13). This established a general public peace in which the Protestant and the Catholic states of the Holy Roman Empire extended recognition to one another. Through this peace agreement, each imperial state was given freedom of religion and the right to choose a church (cuius regio, eius religio); furthermore, inhabitant subjects who were of another faith, or who were not in agreement with the religion of the local ruler, were accorded the right to free, unchallenged emigration (cf. Heckel 2001; Klueting 2007). The Peace of Westphalia then granted equal status to both Protestant and Catholic confessions, while also adding Calvinism to the legal framework defined by the Peace of Augsburg, giving each group corresponding rights under rulers of opposing faiths, while also guaranteeing the right to emigration and the protection of assets. In the European context, the following period saw the ratification of bilateral treaties with increasingly common provisions for the freedom of religion and the protection of religious minorities. The protection of religious minorities, which is still a principle of international law, is highly comparable with the modern democratic concept of protection for national and ethnic minorities. The focus was on the individual as a legal entity who was guaranteed the free exercise of belief (cf. Kugelmann 2001, 255). This type of conceptualization can be interpreted as an antidiscriminatory approach, relating here to potential discrimination on religious grounds, and its motivation is similar to modern conceptions of antidiscriminatory protections on various other grounds, including ethnic

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ones. In retrospect, this parallel can also be seen in later regulations for the legal protection of minorities, in which religious grounds are always listed among others (cf. Lanarès 1964). Therefore, the protection of religious minorities before the emergence of civil society can certainly be seen as a model for, or even as a forerunner of, later minority protections that were conceived as human rights protections that underlie efforts to protect the private individual against discrimination. However, the ethnicizing momentum seen in later conceptualizations of Volksgruppenrecht, the presumption of human biological and cultural differences that need to be protected and enhanced, and the segregation of people according to ethnic criteria, all clearly point to a discontinuous momentum in the protection of minorities under international law. In fact, the goal of modern ethnic group legislation is in direct opposition to that of protecting the individual against discrimination via enforcing the principle of tolerance, as promoted by religious minority protections; instead, it strives for the collective differentiation, classification and separation of people (cf. Salzborn 2005b, 81). One of the first attempts to protect national minorities under international law can be seen in the Final Act ratified on June 9, 1815, at the Congress of Vienna: according to Art. 1, Par. 2, the Poles, who had become subjects of Russia, Prussia and Austria, were assured a national representation within a confederation of multiple nationalities in accordance with the legal framework of their respective territorial rulers (cf. Pan 1999, 72). Since the signatory states of this treaty were also the guarantor powers behind this agreement, it can be stated that Art. 1, Par. 2, broadly addresses the national rights of a people, that is, the bona fide protection of a national minority under international law—​albeit with only limited application (cf. Duparc 1922, 114). Despite the existence of this early forerunner of minorities protections legislation in international law, it is generally assumed within the field of legal history that there were no seriously respected (i.e., valid in the wider context) protections for national minorities under international law until the end of World War I (cf. Jellinek 1898; Veiter 1968, 227). The scholar of international law Rudolf Laun (1923: 256) even goes so far as to say that it was only World War I that “facilitated the emergence of international nationalities legislation” at all. However, in evaluating the history of minorities rights, these aspects of international law were not as important as other developments occurring in the domestic field at the time. It was not just that some states had enshrined protective measures for minorities: more importantly, these very measures had introduced a conceptual differentiation that would become elementary to the discussion of minorities and Volksgruppen, in which the idea of “minority,” which

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was originally understood in purely numerical terms, became terminologically equated with “nationality” and/​or Volksstamm (“ethnic-​tribe”) (cf. Kann 1964, 40). Up until then, the concept of the national and/​or ethnic minority had been relatively unknown in the legal-​positivist sense. In the Austro-​Hungarian Empire, which was the first state to legally enshrine this type of minorities legislation, there were, strictly speaking, no linguistic or national minorities, in the sense of an ethnic interpretation of minorities that differentiated between state and ethno-​national group; instead, there existed only relative majorities made up of the so-​called Austrian Germans in the Austrian section (the Cisleithanian half of the empire) and the Magyars in the Hungarian section (the Transleithanian half) (cf. Veiter 1984, 19). The dual monarchy was understood as a multinational state, irrespective of the question of whether one of these groups was to be interpreted as foundational to the state. Since Austria-​ Hungary was not a nation-​state in the sense of a republican civil society, it did not classify inhabitants according to minority-​majority lines, but rather nationality and Volksstamm.2 Terminologically speaking, these concepts were already pointing to and anticipating the greater autonomous existence of each group: while a minority always depends by definition on a majority, without which it would not actually exist, a nationality or a Volksstamm is, linguistically speaking, an autonomous entity, which is on the emancipatory path toward becoming a Volk and/​or nation, and which is furthermore bonded together by positive collective characteristics. The expression Volksstamm is applied to an “ethnic group with an ancestral area of settlement (‘Heimat’ or ‘homeland’), a consciousness of community, and a certain degree of social and organizational articulation” (Veiter 1970a, 1). Therefore, the Volksgruppen approach first entered the fields of law and politics under the label of nationality rights, during the “ethnicization of politics in old Austria” (Stourzh 1999, 35) in the mid-​nineteenth century: In the Austrian half of the Empire it became legal and factual, while in the Hungarian half it became legal theory but not actually constitutional; it became the basis of characterizing the various ethnic communities according to truly Volksgruppen criteria; in other words, it gave them recognition as articulated, socially real, ethno-​national communities. 2 Franz Pan (1999, 73) points out that it was only with the settlement between Austria and Hungary and the granting of equal rights to both peoples in 1867 that one can even speak “of a minorities protection in real terms.” In contrast, Otto Kimminich (1980, 43) states that the “nationalities and Volkgruppen problem” of old Austria after 1867, “as a whole,” cannot be considered “in the perspective of minorities protections,” because a nation-​state did not exist.

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These were to be maintained and protected as such, and they were to be supported as communities. (Veiter 1970a, 1) Core elements of the constitutional rights guaranteed to the nationalities were set out in Art. 19 of the Constitution of 1867: 1. All Volksstämme of the state shall have equal rights, and each Volksstamm shall have the inviolable right of maintaining and cultivating its nationality and language. 2. The state recognizes the equality of the various languages in the schools, public offices, and in public life. 3. In the countries populated by several Volksstämme, the institutions of public instruction shall be so organized that each Volksstamm may receive the necessary instruction in its own language, without being obliged to learn a second language. (doc. in Dodd 1909) Until the end of World War I, Austria remained the only state in Europe that made the constitutionally protected basic rights of nationalities into a legal obligation that was actionable before the constitutional court.

Minorities Protection Conceptualizations in International Law after World War I After World War I, the ratification of the Paris peace treaties reordered the states of the European continent, drawing not only new borders but also establishing new countries such as Czechoslovakia. A  major consequence of this new order was the emergence of national minorities, often living in—​but not limited to—​the new border regions. Previously the inhabitants of another state, they were now marooned by the radically modified political and social frameworks. The Paris peace treaties included minorities protections provisions for affected states and minorities, designed to prevent the emergence of new conflicts and threats to the peace, of which many developed—​from conflicts of loyalty caused by irredentist movements to governmental and social discrimination (cf. Eisenmann 1926; Janowsky 1945; Macartney 1934). Minorities protection provisions after World War I were almost completely lacking in the identity-​building aspects that resulted from the recognition of ethnic groups as collectives, which had played such a profound role in the Austrian nationalities legislation. During the League of Nations era, international legal provisions for the protection of minorities were based upon the minorities protection treaties ratified by the Allies and their associates with the

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states of eastern and southeastern Europe, which were designed with the general goal of conflict prevention (cf. Azcárate 1945; Pearson 1983). Formally, the system of minorities protections during the League of Nations era utilized that classic instrument of international law, namely the multilateral treaty, which required implementation within the domestic legislation of each signatory state; at the same time, it also supported implementation through a guarantee from the community of states, which was organizationally represented by the League of Nations (cf. Kimminich 1980, 49). These minorities protection treaties led to the development of a broader system of democratic minorities protections, which was laudable not only for guaranteeing such protections to a previously unknown degree, but especially for emphasizing republican aspects over völkisch ones, thus reflecting an overall orientation toward protection from negative discrimination. I  align myself here specifically with the analysis of Franz L. Neumann (1966, 161), who, in his famous study Behemoth, considers the philosophy of minorities protection reflects “the best heritage of liberalism,” relating this directly to the minorities protection treaties of the League of Nations era. In his work on the minorities policies of the League of Nations, Martin Scheuermann provides an articulate summary of the foundations of minorities protections within international law: The […] rights were generally no different from those commonly accepted obligations that a state under the rule of law would normally have towards each and every one of its citizens. The notion of “positive discrimination,” which is a key idea in modern minorities protections, was still completely unknown as such, although the general spirit of this idea was already being called for by a few theorists on minorities policy. Minorities protections treaties guaranteed only the rights of individual persons, and granted no entitlements to groups. The signatory states were very conscious of their own internal as well as external sovereignty, and wanted to avoid at all costs the creation of such “states within the state” that result from collective group rights. (2000, 29) In fact, this fear was not unfounded. Looking back upon the developments of the League of Nations period, it becomes apparent that the practical failures of minorities policies were due not only to the inadequacies of the Minorities Section of the League of Nations (cf. Gütermann 1979; Palleit 2008; Reydellet 1937, 59; Scheuermann 2000: 30) but also to the politics of irredentism and Volkstum (“folkish cultural identity”) among those minorities living in border zones, especially in those just outside the German Empire. It was these politics of Volkstum and irredentism, frequently stimulated by outside influences, which

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were to provoke the emergence of a whole series of conflicts in the first place (cf. Bamberger-​Stemmann 2000, 35). Even though absolutely no domestic obligations toward minorities were imposed upon the German Empire (cf. Göthel 2002), it still felt itself (along with Austria-​Hungary) the main loser of World War I.  Military defeat and the resultant Treaty of Versailles led to numerous territorial losses for the empire:  France took back Alsace-​Lorraine, Belgium received the district of Eupen-​Malmedy, most of North Schleswig went to Denmark, Danzig became a Free City under the protection the League of Nations, the Memel Territory came under Allied administration and Poland reclaimed the Province of Posen, most of West Prussia and parts of Upper Silesia. Beyond that, Germany had to give up all its colonies. As a result of the Treaty of Versailles, all the Germans of these regions became foreigners, and therefore, according to the interpretation of Volkstum, they were now Grenz-​und Auslanddeutschtum (“Germanhood of the borders and abroad”). Despite existing outside of the German state, this was still considered part of Germanhood, according to the criteria of völkisch theory: “The concept of Auslanddeutschtum is independent of national citizenship; the only valid criteria is Volksgemeinschaft (‘folk/​ethnic community’)” (Grothe 1921, 38). After the demands of World War I, Germany struggled to find a commensurate place in the international order, wanting to secure for itself new colonies and markets by conquest; therefore, the loss of colonies and borderlands was perceived and interpreted as an especially unjust clause of the Treaty of Versailles, the so-​ called “disgraceful peace of Versailles” which was universally hated by all political parties, in a process aptly described by Hans Mommsen (1989, 101) as an “inner rejection of the peace.” All other acts were seen as further humiliations that became intimately connected to the question of Deutschtum abroad, thus forming the basis of a common “ethno-​national identification” (Münz and Ohliger 2001, 373).

The Ethnical Response to Minorities Conflicts: Volksgruppenrecht The irredentist and German nationalist movement in Germany and Austria was supported by a shared criticism of the Treaty of Versailles. Among other developments (such as the explicitly imperialist and expansionist ideas of the “Pan-​Germans”), there began to emerge within the intellectual circles of this movement a völkisch stream, which turned against the liberal-​democratic provisions of the minorities protection treaties and sought to formulate an explicitly völkisch counter-​ideology (cf. Boehm 1959, 9). The core of this project was the acceptance of the eigenständiges Volk, as formulated by Max Hildebert

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Boehm (1932), which formed the most important theoretical foundation for European Volksgruppenrechts-​making in the Weimar period. Boehm, the “prophet of ethnopolitics” (Haar 2000a, 27), and one of the most important theorists of Volkstum in the Weimar Republic and National Socialism, attempted to systematically contrast the idea of Volk against all other political and social categories (cf. Boehm 1932, 17, 265). Central for him was dissociating the idea of Volk from the categories of nation/​ state, disconnecting it from the western conception of nation, which also happened to be the basis of minorities protection treaties. This was to underline the independence of the German Volk and help it gain supremacy in Europe. The basis of this “ ‘European’ German sense of mission” was, as aptly explicated by Ulrich Prehn (2001, 57), the continuing references to the Volkstumskampf (“struggle of völkisch identities”) and protection of the homeland in the German borderlands, as a “parallel motif to the alleged ‘westernization’ of central and eastern Europe,” for which “particularly France, England, and Wilson’s League of Nations and minorities policies” were to be made responsible. Boehm’s ethnopolitical and Volk-​theoretical works delivered “ ‘magic formulas’ for the foundation of a German collective identity, which, like the especially emotionally loaded project of the yet-​to-​be-​ realized Volksgemeinschaft, were designed to destroy the international order of nations and ‘ethnic groups’ which emerged in Europe after World War I” (Prehn 2001, 58). The theory of the independence of the Volk may have focused on the German Volk, but it certainly did not deny the independence of other nations or Volksgruppen; on the contrary, it generally assumed the then ubiquitous formula of a Volk unter Völkern or a “people among peoples” (cf. Loesch 1925), leading one from the theory of disputed borderlines, as formulated by Boehm (1923:  310), to “Europa Irredenta.” In the struggle against the League of Nations and toward the “overthrow of French domination of the Continent,” the “release of Volkstümer from centuries of state stranglehold” through the dismantlement of western (i.e. democratic and republican) “state omnipotence” should lead to the growth of the völkischer Freiheitsbereich (“völkisch zone of freedom”) (cf. Boehm 1923, 316, 320): Healthy political consolidations in the modern state order will prevail in the long run; however, the abolishment of the most egregious disunifications and dismemberments of suppressed Völker is a prerequisite for the political as well as the economic reconstruction of Europe. In this regard, however, an attempt will have to be made to identify the wider geopolitical territorial units of the Continent and give them shape. (Boehm 1923, 314)

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The basis for this was to be the “recognition of each Volk as a Volkspersönlichkeit (‘the Volk as a legal person’) and thereby as the natural foundation of the new Europe” (cf. Loesch 1926, 50). In this theory, the Volksgruppen functioned as “natural federations or corporations” within each individual state, which for its part was to confer “national-​corporational rights” so that the various Volksgruppen would be able to determine “their own lives autonomously” within the area of “national-​cultural life” (cf. Raschhofer 1980, 67). In order to appropriately sanction this model on a supranational level, liberal-​democratic citizenship would be countered with völkische Volksbürgerschaft (“völkisch membership in an ethno-​national group”), which would be made valid across borders (cf. ibid.). In this way, Volksgruppenrecht theorists positioned themselves in explicit opposition to what one of their most prominent proponents, the Austrian international law theorist Hermann Raschhofer, called the “Paris Minorities Protection Treaties.” These were criticized because “within minorities law, nationalities are forced to live with the legal status of being seen as atomized national individuals,” without receiving recognition as “organic legal persons” and without existence as “valid legal persons possessing rights” (Raschhofer 1931, 76, 78): Nationality is […] not some characteristic that accidentally appears in every and any citizen per se, bringing people together, as it were, as just an after-​thought; it is not like strangers being thrown together as members of an association representing some common interest; it is not just the sum of parts, but rather the totality. (Raschhofer 1931, 77) Therefore, according to this understanding, a nationality only existed when “its members organically and communally, and especially historically and culturally, perform as a qualifiably distinct ethnic group” (ibid.). Consequently, nationalities rights only exist when “a national differentiation of persons also results in a legal differentiation,” leading toward the goal of “establishing empires and corporations which each possess legal personhood in their own right” (ibid., 154). In opposition to liberal positions on the minorities question, völkisch proponents were striving for a “new legal construction” (Bodensieck 1958, 507) within international law, while constantly emphasizing the (völkisch) independence of minorities, which also includes the use of the terms “nationality” and Volksgruppe. According to assumptions of the Volksgruppenrecht theory of the 1920s, minorities and Volksgruppen were considered to be “inter-​country co-​nationals.” Despite having already extracted a certain conventionalized validity, they had, “as yet, hardly come to any clear, systematic and definitive

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expressions” in terms of international law (cf. Boehm 1927, 147),3 which essentially meant that this concept had not yet developed any internationally legal relevance. The “co-​nationals” carve out for themselves “at first their own rudimentary rights which seek justification within natural law, and which, through collisions with the norms of the state-​mandated positive legal system, […] become embroiled in severe conflicts: a legal system which can be theoretically explicated and governmentally enforced within the core territory of the nation-​state” (cf. Boehm 1938, 153). The “metapolitical essence” of autonomy provisions would thereby contain its “own laws which should be completely separate from external influences and even from recognition as positive law,” as stated by Boehm (1927, 141), in contrast to the international laws then in force. Therefore, the concept of autonomy represented “just a historical precursor to state sovereignty”—​and thus the essential legitimation for separatism and separation (cf. ibid., 136). Carl Georg Bruns summarized this contradiction between law and politics thus: The idea that the Volksgemeinschaft, built upon the basis of legal personhood and independent of borders, should stand next to the state on a legally equal basis is a complete departure from the essence of the minorities treaty laws in force. This idea is so influential in the struggle for a new conception of the national idea, and it could become so decisive in the realignment of Europe, that when compared with the laws of the treaties […] there is nothing left in common. (1929, 17) While each völkisch-​defined minority had become the subject of the völkisch rationalized struggle against the liberal-​democratic minorities system of the League of Nations, it was the concept of “national (and cultural) autonomy,” which had become the object of desire among Volksgruppenrecht theorists in the interwar period (cf. Veiter 1938). However, the legal framework for the concept of national autonomy was not established by a norm emerging from the field of international law—​the international law system being shaped by the liberal minorities laws of the League of Nations—​but instead, exclusively by the domestic legal systems of individual countries (cf. Dörge 1931); there was “no provision in international law through which a Volksgruppe was directly awarded collective rights (of personhood) as an entitlement under international law,” as succinctly stated in 1938 by the Vorarlberg scholar on international law Theodor Veiter (1938, 73).

3 Boehm (1935, 79) spoke later of gesamtvölkische Konnationale, with gesamt meaning “as an entirety,” revealing with this choice of words even more clearly the political implications.

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The concept of autonomy was thus understood as being a stand-​alone legal entitlement within the domestic context, while at the same time being lauded as “neither arbitrary nor time-​limited” (Gerber 1926, 251)  because of its standing under natural law; therefore, it should apply “for all time” (zeitewig), according to Max Hildebert Boehm’s (1932, 222)  formulation in reference to the concept of Volk. The concept of national autonomy thus represented the theoretical peak of Volksgruppenrecht theory; in fact, it was regarded as the “provision of folk-​group law most in accordance with the essence of Volkstum,” because it actualized “the recognition of the legal personhood of the Volksgruppe,” as written by Theodor Veiter (1938, 81) in what was probably the most important work of the 1920s and 1930s on the subject of Volksgruppenrecht.

The Ethnicist Attack on International Minorities Laws With an eye toward the significance of the völkisch contribution to anti-​ democratic thought in the Weimar Republic, Kurt Sontheimer (1994, 247) wrote that, in accordance with the notion of the “independence of the Volkstum and the belonging of all Germans to one Volk,” the treaty-​related völkisch minority problems, and in fact the founding of new nations at all, were put in a critical light. From the “Europa Irredenta” left behind by Versailles, a new order in accordance with völkisch principles should emerge, i.e. state borders should coincide with ethnic borders. This, and not just the recreation of the old borders, was the goal which the völkisch ideology enjoined upon the extraordinarily active efforts of the national groups representing Germanhood abroad.4 Thus, with völkisch politics in the Weimar Republic, the political point of view was shifted away from the bourgeois-​democratic subject of Nation toward the völkisch subject of Volk. Parallel to the displacement of the word “nation” in popular and scholarly usage, the term “nationalities” (as well as “minorities”) started being supplemented with the term “ethnic group”; this, as astutely observed by Martin Broszat (1958, 58), signaled an “internal turning away” from the “western, liberal-​democratic concept of ‘nation’ as shaped by the French Revolution.” In the early 1920s, critics of the term “minorities” took the term Volksgruppe and “re-​made” it (Boehm 1959, 26), politically “launching” it (Kloss 1969, 68), and thus introducing it into the social linguistic context 4 On the conceptual dimension of the here underlying social construction of boundaries, see Pinwinkler (2003, 31).

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for the first time as a highly effective and deeply meaningful term. Without a doubt, Austrian nationalities laws functioned here as a partially adaptable inspiration for Volksgruppenrecht theorists during the interwar period; however, by sustaining the collective momentum of the eigenständiges Volk concept, the “terminological shift” (Raschhofer 1964, 83) was to linguistically assert itself in the context of minorities politics too, in order to manifest the völkisch goals of anti-​Enlightenment thought as being anti-​national (and anti-​state) on a linguistic and symbolic level as well. While the term “nationality” refers back to the core term “nation” (which also exists in republican thought), the term Volksgruppen points toward the term Volk (in the völkisch sense) as the basic unit (cf. in depth on the term Volk, Hoffmann 1991). As an answer to the League of Nations’ democratic minorities policies, which were seen as being connected to the territorial capitulations of the German Empire and the dissolution of the Austro-​Hungarian double monarchy after the end of World War I, the Volksgruppen concept was so effective that it also established itself on a linguistic level as a self-​contained blueprint for a normative system of international law. Therefore, the Volksgruppen concept represented the formulation of a sociotheoretical blueprint that stood in fundamental opposition to the European minorities laws of the League of Nations era, and which oriented itself against the associated liberal-​ democratic ramifications, thus finding great resonance in the völkisch movement of the time. Since the Volksgruppen theory had no anchors in international law, it was conceived as a natural law system, although with the presumption that the Volk and the Volksgruppen were sociological facts—​as opposed to specific, ideological interpretations of social reality—​which needed to be transferred into normative legal systems. At the center of the Volksgruppenrecht concept of the 1920s stood the orientation toward national-​corporate rights for minorities, which were seen as being essentially different from the majority society, and the polarization between state citizenship and Volksbürgerschaft. This challenging of the European system of civil nation-​states during the interwar period on two fronts led to the failure of the attempt to transfer the ethnic-​group concept into European minorities legislation on an international level; this only changed with the political attempt by the National Socialists to rearrange Europe according to völkisch premises. In diametric opposition to the international legal conception of minorities protection, National Socialism pursued the Volksgruppen theoretical goal of creating a constitutional legal system, which would lead to the formation of a new international law that disavowed the national sovereignty of the nation-​ state, emanating from a basis of völkisch, anti-​Enlightenment, natural law (cf. Neumann 1966, 150). According to National Socialism, the necessary basis for a functioning international law was not the formula of rationalism plus sovereignty but rather a “shared basic mindset in politics and ideological world

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view” emerging from the “general acceptance of the völkisch principle” (Klauss 1937, 107). The starting point was not a “liberal-​democratic-​statist” but rather a völkisch-​defined Europe, and since Germany was supposedly the only European state in which the beginnings of this kind of legal conception were constitutionally anchored, it should also take up the missionary task of exporting this legal philosophy to all of Europe (cf. ibid.). Liberal-​democratic minorities laws were, “in tenor and form, essentially a liberal-​democratic, individualistic legal institution,” and were therefore also rejected by the Nazi state, because they boiled down to a quantitative definition of the official state Volk, while, for the National Socialists, only a “qualitative definition” could be decisive (cf. ibid., 51). It was about the “conservation and promotion” of “völkisch elements” (Ziegert 1937, 5) and of the Volksgruppe as a Blutsgemeinschaft (“blood community”) with “völkisch characteristics,” which were ostensibly defined by “objective attributes” (“derivation”), and not by individual self-​identification (Klauss 1937, 52). Only those minorities that had the citizenship of their local state, but that possessed membership in a supposedly different Volk, could be considered Volksgruppe; in contrast, “members of foreign states, who lack any feeling for the folk groups imperative,” were subject to Fremdenrecht (“foreigner laws”), “when they live in Germany” (cf. Ziegert 1937, 22). Furthermore, the various Volksgruppen were divided into two “classes,” called artverwandte and artfremdte (typologically “related” and “unrelated”) (cf. Klauss 1937, 54). The artverwandte included all ethnic groups that “exhibited a racial make-​up similar to the German Volk, meaning all Germanic ethnic groups, and broadly speaking all ‘Aryan’ ones,” while the artfremde (being definable only in contrast) included those ethnic groups that were “neither blood relations nor members of the European community,” meaning “Jews and Gypsies in particular” (ibid., 54). Since the artfremde were “not members, but rather Fremdkörper (‘foreign bodies’) in the community of European Völker,” they were not subject to Volksgruppenrecht but rather to “a special Artfremdenrecht (‘law system for Artfremde’)” (ibid., 55). The “absolute estrangement of the racially different (e.g. the Jews and the Gypsies)” was therefore the “necessary consequence” of this Volk and Volksgruppen conception (Walz 1939, 150). This meant that while National Socialism was demanding the establishment of a “racist system of international law” (Diner 1989, 23) and rights for ethnic groups on a foreign policy level, it was categorically denying these same rights on a domestic level to those people who would have been considered ethnic groups (according to their own criteria), had they been living in other countries. The foundation for this was the legal and political differentiation, which placed Staatsangehöriger (citizens living under the “protection of the German Empire”) and Staats-​/​Reichsbürger (“Staatsangehöriger with German or

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artverwandte blood”) on the one side, and the concomitant construction of the artfremde on the other, thus forming the basis for racially justified antisemitic special legislation (cf. Benz 1988; Walk 1996): No other state, before or since, had presumed to dictate who could inhabit the Earth and who should disappear from the land, who could sire and bear children and who not, who could live and who must die. (Schwarz 1996, 28) Therefore, National Socialism’s Volksgruppen policies were dominated by three encompassing principles. First, striving for the recognition of German minorities abroad as corporately organized ethnic groups with corresponding collective privileges, culminating in separatist provisions for autonomy. This stood immediately next to the goal of relocating German minorities to the German Empire or to annexed territories, whose current inhabitants were first either expelled or more often murdered out of racist and antisemitic motives. These two aspects were subordinate to the central goal of Nazi Volkstum policies and Nazi ideology overall: the mass destruction of European Jews. Instead of minorities protections under international aegis, guarantor authority for each ethnic group was shifted to the corresponding mother country as the “political guardian of the minorities,” which meant, as Franz L. Neumann (1966, 163) pointed out, “not only the rejection of rational international relations” but “also the end of internal unity in every state having sizeable minorities”: This technique characterizes the whole conceptual and intellectual framework of National Socialism. In their hands, the “concrete personality” of the Volksgruppe really means differentiation among the groups so to play one off against the other. The conqueror imposes a hierarchy of races. The Volksgruppen idea is nothing but a device to hold some groups down while inviting others to share in the spoils of the conquest. […] Descent takes precedence over citizenship. Racial Germans throughout the world remain Germans, members of the Volksgruppe, subject to its law. […] Recognition of the minority as a public corporation, as the Germans understand it and have applied it in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania, thus creates a state within a state and exempts the German group from the sovereignty of the state. (Neumann 1966, 163) Liberal-​democratic efforts to avoid “states within the state” by means of minorities protections based on the rights of the individual were now inverted by Volksgruppenrecht policies that had been extended to völkisch interventionist

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policies under National Socialism, becoming political maxims that dictated actions. Nonetheless, the attempt to transfer the Volksgruppen concept into broader international legal norms was a failure. The Nazi legal conception was still only voluntas and no longer ratio, thereby eclipsing the universalist premise with a decisionistic legitimation of brute power and force—​the liberal minorities laws of the League of Nations period may have thus been politically destroyed, but they were not to be replaced by a völkisch world order (cf. Claude 1955).

Summary From a political science perspective, an analysis of developments in the handling of minorities conflicts after World War I reveals the following: Beyond the political, societal and social conflict between national minority(-​ ies) and majority(-​ies), an ever-​present and important role is also played by the increasingly fine distinctions in terminology as well as the insinuation of interpretative overtones within the constellation of conflicts—​therefore, in the analysis of minorities conflicts, it is never irrelevant as to whether one speaks of a minority, a nationality or a Volksgruppe, because each of these terms implies a specific understanding of how the conflict should be handled, and these understandings are in many respects mutually exclusive. Here, the key categories according to which a solution to minorities conflicts can and must be discussed are defined first by the question as to whether a minorities policy is oriented toward the individual and his/​her protection from discrimination, or the collective and its (dis-​)entitlement through discriminatory laws (cf. Brown 2000; May 2008; Schmid 2001). This is connected to a more general understanding of minorities and nations: are these to be understood in the sense of a demos or in the sense of an ethnos? The first option emphasizes the democratic mutability of identities as assigned by the self and by others, allowing for a heterogeneous conception of identity, while the second option tries to insist on an immutable set of identities, using this concept of ethnic identity to permanently exclude and isolate other people. The conception of nations and minorities based on the demos model is built upon the principle that a population constitutes a nation-​state arising from a conception of sovereignty, which assumes the existence of a political equality regardless of other criteria such as language, origin, culture and social status, and exercises state sovereignty accordingly, which means ruling over itself using defined representative mechanisms. Within democratic theory, this model could be typologically described according to Ernst Fraenkel (1991, 326) as an “autonomously legitimate, heterogeneously structured, pluralistically organized constitutional state.”

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According to the social conception founded on the demos model, membership in a nation or minority is not simply a result of citizenship papers; rather, one is a citizen in the full sense of the French citoyen, freely choosing to legally identify oneself as a member of the nation and to share responsibility for this constituent state. This can be contrasted against the attitudes, conceptions and political movements emerging from the theory of the ethnos, taking as a basis the ethnic interpretation of the nation and/​or the minority as a Volk or Volksgruppe. Here, one attempts to build an identity between the members of an ethnic group, the territory they populate and their formal membership within respective regional and/​or state organizations. In this conception, the imperative of ethnicity becomes the central focus, forming above all the constitutional foundation of the Volk, which is understood as a comprehensive ethnic collective. This ethnic identity, built upon linguistic, cultural and historical traditions that are partly factual, partly fictive, is used to legitimize the struggle for ethnic independence, contributing to broader demands for cultural and/​or state autonomy within the framework of a collective interpretation of minorities rights. The third basic dimension emerging from a political-​science analysis of the historical materials is the question of whether minorities conflicts must or should be solved through political or legal means. Here, historical experience offers valuable clues indicating that the answers to this question are never absolute, but only relative, because the potential for shaping political solutions is also dependent on how well the existing laws already protect minorities from discrimination. This in turn points to the importance of the national context of minorities conflicts, because the handling of minorities conflicts must still be ultimately worked out in practical terms within a nation-​state’s societal spaces, and during the League of Nations era, it was seen that legal protections are only effective when they are locally incorporated into a nation’s legal code and accepted by its political culture. Therefore, an analysis of the legal treatment of minorities conflicts after World War I  also shows that the legal dimensions of minorities policies must always be discussed in close relation to the political culture. This brings up the question of how much a political culture is characterized by ethnic fragmentation and how much by democratic participation. Here, according to Anton Pelinka (2009) and Arend Lijphart (1977, 1999), fragmentation within a society means the existence of subsocieties that assign themselves a specific identity informing political loyalties and a particular political attitude—​for or against the state in which they live. The more a political culture and thereby its political system tolerates or even encourages ethnic fragmentation, the stronger the centrifugal tendencies become within a society, which can lead to an erosion of the political order and ultimately to its destruction due to ethnopolitical forces.

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7 CARL SCHMITT’S LEGACY IN INTERNATIONAL LAW: VOLKSGRUPPENRECHT THEORY AND EUROPEAN GROSSRAUM IDEAS FROM THE END OF WORLD WAR II INTO THE PRESENT DAY  Franz L. Neumann was among the first to highlight the theoretical context of attempts to reconceptualize international law during National Socialism, as well as German ideas of geopolitics and of Volksgruppenrecht (“folk-​or ethnic-​group legal frameworks” based on ethnic group membership) in regards to Europe’s political order. In his trailblazing study from the early 1940s, Behemoth:  The Structure and Practice of National Socialism 1933–​1944, Neumann was already describing this theoretical triad as a kind of “German Monroe Doctrine,” thereby recognizing that beyond a political expansionist ideology, there was an attempt to establish a new international law framework in which objective rationalism and state sovereignty would give way to an ethnoterritorial conception of Grossraum (a “greater area” in geopolitics) characterized by dominance through force and power politics (Neumann 1942, 110ff.). At the theoretical core of National Socialist thought, legal frameworks were closely tied to the categories of Volk (“folk/​people” in the sense of ethnonation) and Raum (“room/​space/​area”), or “Blut und Boden” (“blood and soil”). In diametric opposition to minorities protections anchored in international law, the National Socialist goal was to create a legal order emanating from Staatsrecht (“state rights” or “state law”), forming a new international law framework in which the sovereignty of nation-​states is to be abrogated (Neumann 1942, 127 ff.; see also Dreier 2001). The system of minorities protections, along with Europe’s entire international law framework, was to be rejected, as Germany also demonstrated through its withdrawal from the League of Nations shortly after the Nazi takeover. The League’s policies and the protection of minorities in international law were called an “extermination campaign against the

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Volksgruppen” (“folk/​ethnonational groups,” sing. Volksgruppe), and even a “war of extermination” (Klauss 1937, 96). In the National Socialist view, the necessary foundation for a well-​ functioning international law framework was not to be found in the generally accepted formula of rationalism plus sovereignty, but rather in a “shared political-​ideological basic approach” grounded in a “general recognition of the völkisch principle” (völkisch meaning “Volk-​centric” or “ethnonationalist”) (ibid., 107). Here, the starting point was to be found in a völkisch-​defined Europe and not a “liberal-​democratic-​statist” one (ibid., emphasis in original). And because Germany was ostensibly the only European state where the beginnings of this legal paradigm were also anchored in Staatsrecht, it should also take on the missionary task of exporting this legal understanding to all of Europe (Hasselblatt 1938; Kundt 1936): The beginnings of a Volksgruppenrecht are already developed in Germany, but are only barely apparent in the rest of Europe; nonetheless, we acknowledge that Volksgruppenrecht ultimately aims at a general European solution and will also achieve it too. A  general European Volksgruppenrecht is possible, because it is necessary. (Klauss 1937, 107, emphasis in original) Hitler summarized the international law understanding underlying Volksgruppenrecht with the succinct formulation “Human rights break Staatsrecht” (Hitler 1933, 105), whereby it must be emphasized that this definition of human rights did not arise from anything like international conventions but rather from a German natural law conception that elevated the völkisch principle to a human one and demanded universal recognition for this fundamentally anti-​universalist position (see Schmitt 1934a,  6–​7). In contrast, Neumann understood the anti-​statist, anti-​Enlightenment and anti-​liberal thrust of the attempted geopolitical Volk-​based reorganization of Europe emanating from the German Reich as an anti-​egalitarian and anti-​ rationalist rejection of the universalist principle of equality before the law and a degradation of the “majorities in the conquered territories to the status of slaves” (Neumann 1942, 139); more than that, he also saw the calculated power politics behind it. By using the “characteristic trick of every National Socialist criticism of traditional Western conceptions,” namely exploiting a problematic situation along with the necessary criticism of it—​in this case the real minorities conflicts in Europe, which were marked by racist and völkisch stigmatization—​and then blaming liberal democracy for all these problems, the effect became recast as the cause so that irrational solutions could then

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be offered as plausible ones. In the concrete case of the debate surrounding the legal personhood of minorities, this meant, as Neumann wrote, that the National Socialists made “no attempt to transform the socio-​economic structure so that from a formal equality there might emerge a real one; instead, they use[d]‌a legitimate critique” of this deficiency in minorities protections during the League of Nations era “to abolish even legal equality”: This technique characterizes the whole conceptual and intellectual framework of National Socialism. In their hands, the “concrete personality” of the Volksgruppen really means differentiation among the groups so as to play one off against the other. The conqueror imposes a hierarchy of races. The Volksgruppen idea is nothing but a device to hold some groups down while inviting others to share in the spoils of the conquest. […] Descent takes precedence over citizenship. Racial Germans throughout the world remain Germans, members of the Volksgruppe, subject to its law. […] Recognition of the minority as a public corporation, as the Germans understand it and have applied it in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania, thus creates a state within a state and exempts the German group from the sovereignty of the state. (Neumann 1942, 137–​38)

Carl Schmitt and the Grossraum Order in International Law In his analysis of the international law development of the “German Monroe Doctrine,” Neumann made direct reference to Carl Schmitt, characterizing him as the “leading voice in the Nationalist Socialist revisionist chorus” (ibid. 128), but Schmitt himself rejected the idea of a German Monroe Doctrine (Schmitt 1939, 64). However, his rejection was not so much in principal, but more terminological. In fact, the structural principle of the American Monroe Doctrine was viewed quite positively by Schmitt, because it created the basis for an international order and legal framework that was no longer based on the rights of nations and states, but of Völker and Volksgruppen, thereby offering the foundation for a “true community of peoples” (Schmitt 1938b, 53); furthermore, it also sketched out the Grossraum as a new entity in law, one that was conceptually envisioned as combining a worldview idea with physical power. (See as an overview Blindow 1999 and Schmoeckel 1993. See also Barnes and Minca 2013.) Mathias Schmoeckel argued that this theory has “combined the ethnic homogeneity” with the “hegemony over many different peoples on the one hand with the claim to predominance free of restrictions of constitutional or international law on the other” (Schmoeckel 1993, 282).

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Besides the international law scholar Hermann Raschhofer (see Salzborn 2006a, 29ff.), there was indeed nobody more significant than Carl Schmitt during the time of National Socialism for the theoretical formulation of Grossraum international law concepts in connection to Volksgruppenrecht and geopolitics. His study concerning a “Grossraum Political Order in International Law with a Prohibition on Intervention by Spatially Foreign Powers”—​which was expanded upon by his later work Land and Sea (see Schmitt 1997 [1942])—​ outlined the main details of the proposed reordering of the international law framework in Europe. Schmitt’s approach had three central dimensions: legitimation in law, Volk/​Volkstum policy (“folkdom” referring to the entire utterances of a Volk as an expression of its ethnonational distinctiveness) and geopolitically framed international law. To help legitimize his Raum-​ordering principles in international law, Schmitt turned to the American Monroe Doctrine declared in 1823, which he saw as the first and most successful example of a Grossraum principle anchored in international law. In striving to insert Grossraum principles into international legal theory, Schmitt did not want to directly adopt the Monroe Doctrine itself, but instead highlighted the core idea he saw in its legal system, in order to make it “fruitful for other Lebensräume [“living-​spaces”] and other historical situations” (Schmitt 1939, 24). Schmitt was thereby concerned with the “extracted core” of the Monroe Doctrine and its transferal to the Greater German context (Hofmann 1992, 219). For him, this involved two central ideas: the general introduction of a Grossraum theory into the field of international law and the tying of this idea to the “basic principle of non-​intervention by spatially foreign powers” (Schmitt 1939, 32). What is striking is that Schmitt recognized how the non-​interventionist agenda of the American Monroe Doctrine had ultimately become the legitimation for the United States’ own imperialistic interventions (ibid., 30)—​which also implicitly suggested the character of the German adaptation of this concept, an adaptation that was not to be imperialist in the traditional sense, but that would still very much aim for the universal application of its own anti-​universalist principles (see also Kaufmann 1988, 13ff.), ones that, in Schmitt’s words, should be “valid for the entire world” (Schmitt 1939, 30, 37). Here, Schmitt put the concepts of “idea” and “Raum” (here translated as “space”) at the heart of his conception of the desirable international law framework (Schmoeckel 1993, 43ff): For us, there are neither spaceless political ideas nor, reciprocally, spaces or spatial principles without ideas. It is an important part of a determinable political idea that a certain Volk carries it and that it has a certain opponent in mind, through which this political idea gains the quality of the political. (Schmitt 1939,  33–​34)

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This “political idea” was further conceived by Schmitt as an ordering principle that dominated each Grossraum while also protecting it from interventions by “spatially foreign powers” (ibid., 36). However, while Schmitt used the American Monroe Doctrine to legitimize his conception of a Grossraum order in terms of legal theory, it nonetheless remained irrelevant in his concrete formulation of Volkstum policy and geopolitically framed international law. In terms of Volkstum policy, Schmitt looked toward the Volksgruppenrecht that had been newly developed by the Nazi Reich in the “Central and East European Grossraum.” In reference to scholars including Hermann Raschhofer, Kurt O. Rabl, Werner Hasselblatt, Karl Gottfried Hugelmann, Gustav A. Walz and Max Hildebert Boehm, Schmitt wrote that the “German school of Volk and Volksgruppenrecht has clearly elucidated the antithesis that separates a Volksgruppenrecht built on the concept of Volk and Volksgruppe from a minorities protection scheme constructed on the basis of individualistic liberalism” (ibid., 58). However, in terms of international law, it was still necessary to integrate this approach within the context of the ordering principle of the Grossraum. The “political idea” that Schmitt had placed at the theoretical center of his conception for a Grossraum order anchored in international law, and which was crucial for geopolitical dominance, thus put the “protection of the Volk-​oriented uniqueness of every Volksgruppe” at its focus; however, this protection was not to be the affair of “spatially foreign powers […] but rather of the Volk-​oriented and state powers responsible for this Raum; it is, in particular, an affair of the German Reich” (ibid., 63–​64). Leaving aside the fact that such arguments already represented a defensive argument against any potential American intervention triggered by the Nazi Reich’s political, military and terrorist Volkstum policies in eastern Europe, Schmitt highlighted the political core of what would become the fundamental idea for establishing a European Grossraum order: the “National Socialist Volk idea,” which has ostensibly established “a German right to protect those German Volksgruppen of foreign state citizenship,” thus representing a “genuine basic principle of international law”—​at least according to the standards of the new international law framework conceived by Schmitt: This is the political idea that has the specific meaning of a Grossraum principle under international law elucidated here; the political idea for the Central and East European space in which there live many Völker [pl. of Volk] and Volksgruppen who are, however, not racially alien from one another—​except for the Jews. (Schmitt 1939, 64; see also Gross 2007) Building upon this Volkstum policy foundation, Schmitt then further developed his approach in terms of geopolitically framed international law, focusing on

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the concept of the Reich—​here, it must be noted that while Schmitt held an anti-​statist interpretation of sovereignty, he also felt that it ultimately could not be restricted by laws (see Voigt 2001, 49). According to him, every Reich has a Grossraum upon which it extends its political ideas, a Raum that cannot be subjected to interventions by spatially foreign powers. The “sun of the Reich concept” would then rise in geopolitical terms when the entire world is “sensibly” divided into Grossräume (plural of Grossraum), which in turn are fundamentally organized by the “order-​producing effect” of the prohibition on interventions by spatially foreign powers (Schmitt 1939, 70). In terms of international law, the Reich concept thus summarizes the connection between Grossraum, Volk and political idea in a very concise manner, while standing in explicit contrast to the state concept and its universalist claims. According to Schmitt, the goal was also a conceptual “dethroning of the state concept” (ibid., 78; Schmitt 1958, 375ff.):1 The new ordering concept for this new international law framework is our Reich concept, which emanates from a völkisch Grossraum order upheld by a Volk. […] From what was a weak and impotent Middle Europe has emerged a strong and unassailable one, ready to take its great political idea, namely respect for every Volk as a living reality determined by species and origin, blood and soil, and to extend it into the central and east European Raum while also repelling the interference of spatially foreign and unvölkisch powers. (Schmitt 1939,  87–​88) Here, the political thrust was directed not only toward a völkisch negation of the state concept in international law but also the de facto disempowerment of nation-​ state sovereignty. Reich and Grossraum functioned as antithetical concepts to the “small-​Raum, state-​oriented conceptions of an interstate law framework flourishing in the shadow of Anglo-​Saxon universalism” (Schmitt 1995, 260; see also international perspectives in, e.g., Hirschboeck 2011; Hooker 2009; Legg 2011; Salter 2012; Stirk 1999; Teschke 2012; Vagts 1990). With this particular conception of geopolitically framed international law, combined with Volksgruppenrecht theory, the goal was an ethnopolitical Grossraum order for Europe (merging here the terminologies of Max Hildebert Boehm and Carl Schmitt) (Boehm 1932). The historical starting point for this “Volk-​ization” of the political, with its considerable potential for shattering 1 Schmitt is known to have considered this dethroning as basically already complete, as seen in his foreword to the 1963 new edition of his major work Der Begriff des Politischen: “The epoch of statehood is now coming to an end. No more need be said about this” (Schmitt 1963, 10).

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states, was the attempt to revise the Paris Peace Conference treaties signed after World War I, along with the resulting reorganization of states, and to modify these along ethnic lines (see Salzborn 2006b, 44ff.). Here, the political perspective was shifted away from the (liberal/​democratic) nation/​state subject to the (ethnonationalist) Volk subject. This particular approach, which was heavily promoted under National Socialism in both theory and practice, would experience a major renaissance after the end of World War II in terms of legal theory and international law. The three dimensions of Schmitt’s approach—​legitimation in law, Volkstum policy and geopolitically framed international law—​would become the inheritance of a branch of international law, operating under the banner of Volksgruppenrecht theory, that was engaged with systematically developing Schmitt’s conception of an international law framework for a Grossraum order in Europe, thereby trying to implement in practice Schmitt’s call for an anchoring of Volksgruppenrecht in international law and striving for a far-​reaching reshaping of international law toward an anti-​statist legal framework.

Schmitt’s Postwar Legacy: Volksgruppen Theory and Grossraum Thought in Europe The defeat of National Socialism by the Allies was the basis for an anti-​ fascist restructuring of the European order. Associated with this political reorganization was the launching of the United Nations, which represented a second attempt after the League of Nations to build “a world order on the basis of a collective security system with a codified legal framework” (Paech and Stuby 2001, 230). On the level of international law, a central element of this attempted new order was the implementation of universally guaranteed human rights for the individual, along with antidiscrimination provisions, while at the same time rejecting collective-​rights provisions or positively discriminating (special) rights, like those demanded by Volksgruppenrecht. Despite all the formal shortcomings of the minorities protection mechanisms of the League of Nations era, there was a consensus that the preceding system of international law had been a failure, also in light of the politically inflamed minorities conflicts that had ultimately triggered the destruction of the European nation-​state system. After all, attempts to reshape international law both legally and politically through the formulation of Volksgruppenrecht and Grossraum policies were not insignificant in helping to trigger World War II—​and a logical consequence of this was the later rejection of völkisch collective rights. The legal scholar Iris Bils has rightly noted that the birth of the UN marked a “completely new era” because the focus had shifted from the protection of minorities as groups (or even as Volksgruppen) to the protection of

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individuals instead (see Bils 1995, 159). As a consequence, the protection of national minorities was no longer treated as a distinct field of international law after World War II (see Lemke 1998, 47). Although there did exist on the level of international treaties a consensus rejecting collective-​rights provisions in the sense of a European Volksgruppenrecht and thus of an ethnopolitical Grossraum order for Europe, this did not mean that the end of the National Socialist regime had brought about an extinction of Volksgruppen and Grossraum theories, or that their advocates had disappeared into political insignificance. Quite the contrary:  after a phase of political retreat, there would soon emerge a new attempt to establish in law and politics a framework of völkisch collective rights for a European Grossraum (see also in detail Salzborn 2005a, 193ff; see also Joerges 2003; Teschke 2011). However, instead of the Grossraum order anchored in international law as conceptually established by Schmitt, the focus of postwar scholarly debates on international law, especially those conducted in Austria and Germany, was now squarely focused on the concept of the Volksgruppe—​which Schmitt himself had also utilized, forming the conceptual and political basis of his Grossraum theory. Because this postwar theory of a European Volksgruppenrecht, with its goal of an ethnopolitical Grossraum order for Europe, does not begin with concrete plans for ordering the European Raum, but instead emerges from a specific völkisch understanding of politics and society while also harking back to various theoretical and legal approaches toward legitimizing this ambition, it is important to examine not only the ideas of Volksgruppen theory for organizing Europe on a local, regional and continental level but also its Volk policy foundations, as well as its attempts to achieve legitimacy through intellectual adaptations. Here, besides theoretical and conceptual borrowings from Schmitt, there are also formal similarities in emulating his strategy of grounding his geopolitically framed international law conceptions on a Volkstum policy foundation, while also reinforcing this in terms of legitimation by integrating and reinterpreting existing legal norms—​this was an attempt at securing legitimacy in international law by politically instrumentalizing and adapting legality itself, meaning the political use and reinterpretation of positive law in order to conceptually substantiate the reformulation of an international law framework that until that point had been solely conceived on the grounds of natural law (Schmitt 1932). Since the legal legitimation approach seen in the postwar era is formally identical to Schmitt’s efforts, but chooses a fundamentally different focus in terms of specific content, its conceptual orientation should be briefly described here (see also in detail Salzborn 2005a). The project of politically and legally legitimizing the goals formulated by Volksgruppen theory since the end of World War II is based on an attempt to normalize these goals. An impression

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should be created that a European order based on the Volksgruppe is actually a necessary part of human life. These normalization efforts take place on two levels: in terms of politics, the völkisch model of society should be incorporated as generally applicable within currently existing legal norms, which in turn are to be correspondingly “expanded” or reinterpreted; at the same time, in terms of law, this should lead to the impression that Volksgruppenrecht has long been a part of the international law framework, or that the latter is almost automatically evolving toward this model. What makes up this legitimation framework are the concepts of natural law and homeland rights on the one hand and a specifically völkisch reading of self-​determination rights and human rights on the other. Building upon the Christian understanding of natural law in its premodern approach, a legal theory foundation is developed in which Völker and Volksgruppen, as ethnic communities of shared destiny, themselves have intrinsic value as part of the Order of Creation according to God’s plan, a value that is thus not open to question. The motif of the homeland and the postulate of homeland rights connect the theoretical elements of an ostensible naturalness and autochthonous indigeneity with the territorial factor, which is of central importance in regards to the transition from a Volksgruppe without autonomous rights to a völkisch Volk with corresponding corporate powers. While the argumentation based on natural law and homeland rights is meant to theoretically legitimize the legal claims of the Volksgruppe, it is the motif of self-​determination rights along with the motif of human rights that lets Volksgruppen theory establish a direct connection to positive law. Volksgruppen theory thus appropriates the liberal-​democratic norms of self-​determination rights and human rights for its own argumentation, reshaping them in völkisch terms by interpreting them in a collective sense rather than an individual one. In terms of content, the Volksgruppen concept takes a romanticized view of the Volk and politicizes it (just as Schmitt did upon a Volkstum policy foundation) by extrapolating a Raum-​ordering framework as a consequence of the cultural division of humanity into Völker and Volksgruppen. Social and political conflicts thus become naturalized and intertwined with the emergence of ethnicities. In thinking of ethnicity as an essential category and promoting it as the highest good of the human being, the political goal then becomes the complete social and political segregation of people along ethnic lines, along with the creation of separate ethnoregions for the various Volksgruppen: Emphasis is put on the ethnic and cultural homogeneity of the populace, or at least their similarities in culture and mentality, extending to a shared sense of having been affected by the negative effects of outside forces. This leads to claims that the affected people share the same

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interests, in opposition to other regions or the higher-​ level system. (Pallaver 2000, 247) The proposed models of a European Volksgruppenrecht, built upon a völkisch understanding of humans and society, promote a homogeneity-​based concept of ethnicity (not only within state borders but quite often across them too) in which state citizenship is to be supplemented with a Volk membership defined through völkisch principles. Here, Volksgruppenrecht would always apply only to people whose Volk membership is not the same as the majority in their state of citizenship, but who are nonetheless treated as legal citizens of that state in accordance with the law and without discrimination, so that they are not impeded structurally or administratively in their life pursuits; Volksgruppenrecht would not apply to refugees or migrants. According to völkisch thinking, a multicultural society would ultimately destroy “the context in which a Volksgruppenrecht has its meaningfulness, due to the inclination towards dissolving all forms of gewachsener [organically “grown”] national cultures, melting them into the randomness of countless groups and grouplets” (Hahn 1994, 108). Here, discrepancies within a society are to be transformed by way of völkisch segregation into a general uniformity, a situation where the Volk is understood as a natural collective “that exhibits a common ancestry and differentiates itself from other natural collectives through its cultural, intellectual and often linguistic distinctiveness, along with a corresponding consciousness” (Hentges 2000, 157). In this conception, ethnic identity becomes the main factor constituting a person’s makeup. The members of a group defined by ethnic criteria are seen as sharing a “powerful essential collectivity,” or even an “ethnic determinism,” allegedly leading to “more uniformities in social conduct” between members of this ethnic group than would be the case between members of differing ethnic groups (Pan 1972, 288). Differing social interests existing within an ethnic collective are thereby redacted out of the lived realities of actual people, as the real-​world relevance of these differences is negated by the primacy of ethnicity. Furthermore, ethnic parallel structures are to be created on all social and political levels, leading initially to a social segmentation within the affected nation’s society, and then to a political autonomy bolstered by fiscal independence. This social separation is to be achieved primarily through the establishment of autonomous structures on social, cultural, linguistic, educational and religious levels, all in accordance with ethnic differentiation criteria. The political separation of a “Volksgruppenraum” (“folk-​group space”) then becomes primarily a question of time, as the growing independence of the socially constructed, gradually emerging “autonomous ethno-​ region” is further

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strengthened by self-​government powers on the legislative, executive and judicial levels. Such a Raum, defined in völkisch terms and regionally structured (i.e., even across state borders) (see Schmitt 1939, 234ff.), would act autonomously in all regards, gradually becoming isolated from the social and political frameworks of the relevant nation-​state(s), a situation ultimately signifying the formation of ethnic Grossraum ghettos and the creation of “Volksgruppen zoos” (Karl Heinz Roth). In this context, migration and immigration are to be categorically rejected, because a so-​called “ethnopluralist” Europe should be internally based on ethnic homogeneity and externally based on völkisch exclusion, in order to safeguard the ostensibly “natural” character of each respective “homeland region.” The “ethnocentric ideological framework” thus represents no obstacle to a culturally determined definition of in-​groups and out-​groups, one that relies on a fundamental belief in human inequality (see Marc Swyngedouw and Ivaldi 2001,  5–​6). The political goal here is the shattering of all ethnically “non-​ homogeneous” nation-​states (which would concretely result in the complete breakup of Belgium and the separation of over one-​third of France’s sovereign territory, to name just two examples) and the creation of an ethnoregional structure with autonomous Volksgruppenräume (“folk-​group spaces”) within the framework of a European ethnofederation (see Hillard 2002, 137ff.). In such an ethnoregional Europe, the regions would be categorically defined in völkisch terms and framed as “natural” homelands, becoming organically conceived small units reflecting the identificational assertions of an ethnofederal “Nation of Europe” (Ruge 2001,2003, 725). The ethnoregional concept strives for the revision of state borders, which are ultimately to be nullified. The goal is the creation of a new European Reich combining “power politics towards the outside with an authoritarian formulation inside” (Schmidt 2001, 26).

The Grossraum Concepts of Volksgruppenrecht Theory The attempt by Volksgruppen theory to reshape existing social and political achievements involves not only conceptions of humans and society but also political and legal conceptions of structure and order. The Raum-​ordering concepts of Volksgruppen theory are directly tied to its Volk policy concepts, as plans for a völkisch “normality” are transcribed onto the geopolitical structure of Europe, with the intention of reordering the continent according to principles of ethnic homogeneity. The goal here is the enforcement of a völkisch particularist model of society, as opposed to one guided by universalist Enlightenment principles.

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According to the concepts of Volksgruppen theory, the order of the European Raum is to be defined by three structural elements:  völkisch autonomy, ethnoregionalism and ethnic particularist federalism. These three Raum-​ ordering concepts are interwoven with one another, complementing each other and exhibiting theoretical overlaps, making it impossible to draw clear boundaries between them. Nonetheless, they are each integrally concerned with different vertical dimensions of how to order Raum and society. Whereas the autonomy-​oriented concepts are formally concerned with the position of an autochthonous Volksgruppe within the broader society of its ostensible “homeland,” along with the concrete legal and political structuring of this Raum in relation to other entities and actors, the concept of ethnoregionalism is focused on structuring the territorial dimension of the völkisch units, employing ethnic legitimation arguments against the claims of other territorial groups. Ethnoregionalism thereby constructs the relevant territory as a politically operative one in the first place, in demarcating it according to ethnic criteria as opposed to other potential ways of structuring (such as economic or social ones). Furthermore, ethnoregionalism not only defines the internal structure of a völkisch region but also regulates the horizontal relations between such regions. Paradigmatically speaking, the bonding together of these individual völkisch-​defined regions is not to be achieved within a nation-​state model but rather within a European Grossraum that is federally structured according to ethnic principles. The new European sovereign entity to be established by this ethnic particularist federalism (which is not tied to concepts of national sovereignty) exhibits strong pre-​Enlightenment tendencies following the principles of an ethnic hierarchical conception of collectivity; the goal here is the fundamental reordering of Europe through the creation of an ethnofederal Reich. The principle of autonomy is aimed at empowering the Volksgruppe as a legal entity within the state (i.e., as a corporate body) so that it can exert—​ to different degrees in different areas—​decision-​making powers in political, judicial, economic and social spheres by issuing legal regulations as it sees fit within a self-​administration framework, whereby this autonomous subject always remains bound to the wider state through ties anchored in Staatsrecht, and the territory subject to this special regulatory framework does not acquire the qualities of a sovereign state itself. (see Simon 2000). Autonomy is seen as the “key instrument for protecting the Volksgruppe”—​with which the goal of internationalizing Volksgruppen politics can be further pursued (Pan 1995, 52–​ 53)—​and is extolled as the “only realistic way” to resolve minorities conflicts (Pan 2001, 80). Manifested as powers of self-​administration, autonomy regulations are fundamentally oriented toward protecting the collective identity of a Volksgruppe,

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particularly in terms of substantial measures that expand and strengthen the collective separate identity through the “material privileging of the Volksgruppe” (Heinz Kloss) and the granting of “preferential treatment” (Franz Pan), to be accorded in the form of special rights separately from the rest of the populace (Kloss 1970, 118; Pan 1999, 51): The bearer of autonomy must always be a group. The granting of autonomy thus implies the recognition of the group as a minority or Volksgruppe, as well as the acceptance of collective rights. (Heintze 1997a, 408; see also Heintze 1997b) Furthermore, the existence of a representative organ is also considered a prerequisite for autonomous self-​administration, an organ recognized as legitimate by both the affected state and the represented Volksgruppe. However, it is also emphasized that only “bodenständige [“tied-​to-​the-​soil”] Volksgruppen, and not immigrants with foreign Volk membership” should come to enjoy such collective rights (Héraud 1967, 193) because the definitive basis is considered to be “traditional settlement within a specific Lebensraum enduring through generations” (Mitterdorfer 1997, 6). Whereas autonomy-​oriented conceptions define the content of Volksgruppen rights and the different preconditions for granting them, it is ethnoregionalism that structures the corresponding territoriality for these concepts. It is in ethnoregionalism that the homeland rights and natural law of Volksgruppen theory find their Raum-​ordering counterpart. Drawing upon völkisch ideas of a naturally grown, homogeneously structured Volksgruppenraum, ethnoregionalism strives to complement the envisioned ethnic order of Europe with a Raum-​ ordering one. Because a Volk/​Volksgruppe and its Raum are conceptualized together as an indivisible unit with borders that are considered “immovable” (Blaschke 1980, 15), ethnoregionalism restructures the European nation-​state system according to prepolitical criteria so that the political borders between states are no longer in force; instead, it is the purported cultural and/​or ethnic borders between Völker/​Volkgruppen that become important (Veiter 1985, 9ff.): As a sociogeographical term, a region is a spatially enclosed or coherent area with specific geographically defined borders, whose populace is endowed with specific shared traits and has the will to preserve their resulting distinctiveness, with the goal of further developing their cultural, social and economic progress. (Veiter 1991, 15) As an organizational space that is both geographical and historical, the region transcends the spatially and temporally bound manifestations of national

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divisions and is thus considered superior to the state in durability (Grulich 1979, 8). The basic framework defining the ostensibly necessary common traits of each region’s populace is found in the ethnic classification criteria of Volksgruppen theory, according to which “these regions are homogenous in terms of language and culture”; alternatively, in the exceptional cases of “certain political polyethnic units,” they should at least have an adequate feeling of belonging together (Héraud 1979, 53). In defining a region, it is not the shared economic or political interests that are highlighted, but rather (an alleged) common descent, culture and language (Héraud 1969,7ff.), because each Volksgruppe purportedly finds in the relevant region’s cultural circumstances and landscapes “specific sources of inspiration and evidence of its own continuity,” thereby corroborating that this Volksgruppe indeed has a territory “that belongs to it alone” (Héraud 1967, 192). In this context, the international law theorist Guy Héraud emphasizes the “monoethnic principle” as the central aggregating element in the regional ordering of Raum. After a corresponding reshaping of Europe in terms of Raum policies, each monoethnic region should optimally contain between two and five million people, with the physical borders determined by ethnic, historical and economic criteria; “polyethnic” regions, if any at all, should remain an exception (Héraud 1979, 61ff.), The region-​ focused conceptions of Volksgruppen theory are thereby oriented against the integrated nation-​state (the rallying cry is “Contre les États—​Les régions d’Europe”) (Marc and Héraud 1973) and also against the abolishment of prepolitical concepts of inequality stemming from ethnicity, while conversely promoting the postulate of an ethnically homogenous Raum for each Volk/​Volksgruppe. Volksgruppen theory’s goal of transforming Europe into an ethnofederal Reich is built upon concepts of personal and territorial autonomy, along with the territorial structuring of Raum according to ethnic regionalism. In order to achieve this goal, “the very structure of the nation-​state needs to be shaken up through the emancipation of the communities and regions, simultaneously with the creation of a federation” (Héraud 1963a, 332). Its place would be taken by the Volksgruppe, as a coalition of people who share the same language and culture: This emphasis on Volk-​based distinctiveness does not stand in contradiction with endeavors towards a united Europe. For this future Europe cannot be a Europe of Fatherlands–​it must be a Europe of Völker, a sublime living symphony of the concertare of European cultures. (Straka 1976, 15, emphasis in original)

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An important prerequisite of this federalism, in both domestic and continental terms, is that “the settlement areas of the different ethnic groups are enclosed and consolidated into political/​administrative units” (Kimminich 1985, 200). Understood as the “consummated form of regionalism” (Esterbauer 1991, 181; see also Esterbauer 1979) and the political “final objective” (Riz 1981, 155), this (ethnic-​particularist) federalism should serve in a European multilevel system to geopolitically restructure the European Grossraum while also providing the political and organizational framework for the ethnic reordering of the continent. This conception of federalism as a bündisch order (an order within a Bund or “alliance”) is built upon ethnoregionally structured territorial units (lands, cantons, provinces, constituent states, etc.) (Veiter 1983, 27), thereby embodying—​according to international law scholar Theodor Veiter—​ an amalgamation of “federal thinking and organic democracy” (Veiter 1970b, 64–​65), meaning a political order that puts federalism and the rule of the Volk/​people (in contrast to liberal democracy’s “rule of the people”) under the primate of ethnic homogeneity: “Ethnisme et fédéralisme forment un couple solidaire” (Marc and Héraud 1973, 32).

Grossraum Order and European Integration According to Veiter, this kind of federalism is characterized by the “autonomous and democratic will-​formation and legislative powers of small and medium-​sized collectives, especially political and ethnic ones, towards the goal of realizing their own purpose” (Veiter 1964, 37). The concept of ethnofederalism thus refers not only to the internal framework of nation-​ states and region-​states but also—​as a supranational ordering framework—​to the overall European Grossraum. The federalizing of European nation-​states according to ethnoregional principles while incorporating völkisch autonomy concepts is just the first step in the process of ethnic particularist federalization; the second step (and ultimate political goal) is the transformation of Europe into an ethnofederal Reich, thereby abolishing the modern nation-​ state order. This “federation of Volk-​based collectives,” according to Guy Héraud, should take over the role of the “historical states” and replace them (Héraud 1963b, 157). The idea of an “ethnocentric federalism” (Bruno Luverà) argues for a complete shift in sovereignty, taking it away from the European nation-​states and conferring it upon a European central authority (see Luverà 1996, 8). An integral element in the creation of this new European ethnofederation is the redefining of internal borders according to the parameters of what Guy Héraud calls “ethnisme objectif ” or “objective ethnism” (the French language differentiates between “ethnisme” and “ethnicisme”) (Héraud 1979, 85):

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The states need to now […] surrender significant powers upwards—​ to the European level—​and downwards—​to the lands and regions. However, European regionalism without the creation of a European Volksgruppenrecht would be too little. (Habsburg 1987, 179) A confederation structure on a continental level is rejected by völkisch theorists because in this scenario, sovereignty remains with the individual states and a plurality of sovereignties continues to exist; but in a federal order, sovereignty is single and indivisible, vested in the “composite group”—​the ethnofederation (Héraud 1979, 41): Europe is only possible as federation of states that give up sovereign rights to this collective, established by its free Völker living in secured homelands. (Riedl 1958, 82) Sovereignty—​understood here to mean “unconditional authority to use force” and “irresistible physical power”—​is to be taken away from the states (Héraud 1979, 41): The necessary unity and order would then not be generated through a bureaucratic all-​encompassing apparatus and the rulership of officials, but rather through a bottom-​up, many-​membered system based on building consensus continually and freely. (Hilf 1982, 161) The European federation—​which is not to be founded on material values, but instead on cultural and spiritual ideas—​as a “federation of monoethnic regions” (Guy Héraud) is built directly upon these regions as its immediate “members,” whereby the redemarcation of regional member states according to ethnic membership and linguistic borders indirectly transfers major functions to the völkisch collectives (Héraud 1979, 51, 53). In this context, Peter Pernthaler highlights the “historical individuality” of such member states, which are to become politically independent carriers of statehood (Pernthaler 1992, 118–​19). According to Fried Esterbauer, the völkisch federal state needs to be established upon “Volk-​states, and not artificial states, as member states (region-​states),” because with the increasing size of political systems, “such as of a European Union in particular,” there is a decrease in ostensibly important feelings of (ethnic) belongingness (Esterbauer 1977, 226). In terms of the geographical or territorial reorganization of the European continent, the project of ethnofederalism is marked by competition between approaches that put more emphasis on ethnic-​autochthonous concerns and approaches that focus more on ethnoregional components. While in the

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first case, nation-​states considered to be already ethnically homogeneous would remain largely intact (whereby only Austria and Germany are actually considered “ethnically homogeneous,” despite certain reservations) (see Héraud 1977, 75), the second case proposes a federal regionalization for these nation-​states too. As Esterbauer emphasizes, the main criterion for the demarcation and structuring of region-​states would be “landsmannschaftliche Verbundenheit” (“countrymen bonds”), whereby the essential core of “Volk self-​determination” within ethnic federalism is expressed through the creation of “Volk-​states” instead of “artificial” states (i.e., the current modern nation-​ states) (Esterbauer 1976, 43, 46). The “geopolitical structuring” of such states, according to Héraud, must pay attention to “ethnic realities” (Héraud 1979, 75). The goal here, as Bruno Luverà has rightly criticized, is the “reunification of culturally homogenous spaces” and the curbing of intercultural and interethnic interaction (see Luverà 1996, 9; 1999). With both the ethnic-​ autochthonous variants and the ethnoregional variants, the focus is thus on the dissolution of nation-​state structures. However, this envisioned new Reich, as a reactionary utopia, remains extremely vague. It is not really rendered as a precise institutional system and is instead invoked as more of a sentiment. This exaltation of the Reich yearns for the restoration of a Europe before nation-​states, which also implies a pre-​democratic one. Instead of a pluralist political system, the goal is an authoritarian one, to be based on organic Volkstum conceptions. As a result of the unconditional preeminence give to ideas of unity, order and collectivity, the freedom of the individual is to be subordinated to the omnipotence of a European Reich (as a kind of “völkisch-​regional anti-​nation-​state”). This Reich is perceived as a totalizing manifestation of unity founded upon “race” or Volk/​Volksgruppe, in which (also similarly to Schmitt) clear friend-​versus-​foe conceptions help to define rigid borders between in-​groups and out-​groups. Even though the real-​world implementation of such a Reich concept must seem absurd, more recent developments in the European context concerning support for autochthonous minorities and/​or Volksgruppen represent a concrete point of contact with the Grossraum theories of Volksgruppenrecht, due to a comparable emphasis placed on elements like Bodenständigkeit (“tied-​to-​the-​soil-​ ness”), homeland connection, ethnic identity and linguistic authenticity, which all resonate with the international law proposals of Volksgruppen theory. In this context, particular attention is drawn to the 1992 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, expressly intended for the promotion of “autochthonous” minorities—​as ethnically defined collectives—​through the establishment of collective special rights (see Bollmann 2001; Riedel 2006). An objective specified by this European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is the “the recognition of the regional or minority languages as an expression

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of cultural wealth” (Art. 7, Sec. 1a). Additional stipulated measures include respect for regional or minority languages as well as the facilitation and/​or encouragement of their use (Art. 7, Sec. 1b, c, d), for which the corresponding infrastructure is to be created and its existing elements promoted (Art. 7, Sec. 1f, g, h). The needs and wishes expressed by the minority groups are to be taken into consideration (Art. 7, Sec. 4). More comprehensive measures for promoting the use of regional and/​or minority languages in public life stretch across many different areas, including education (Art. 8), judicial authorities (Art. 9), administrative authorities and public services (Art. 10), media (Art. 11), cultural activities and facilities (Art. 12), economic and social life (Art. 13)  and transfrontier exchanges (Art. 14). Overall, the Language Charter presents a völkisch-​collective conception of minorities that is no longer primarily oriented toward anti-​discrimination provisions anchored in the rights of the individual, focusing instead on actively promoting the languages of autochthonous minorities and Volksgruppen: For the purposes of this Charter, “regional or minority languages” means languages that are traditionally used within a given territory of a State by nationals of that State who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the State’s population and different from the official language(s) of that State; it does not include either dialects of the official language(s) of the State or the languages of migrants.” (Art. 1a, emphasis added) However, this promotion of a separate identity that already begins in international law actually reinforces interethnic differences in sociological terms instead of overcoming them; in fact, real-​world experiences have shown that when specific categories of underprivileged persons are legally elevated as specially protected minorities, there emerges the fundamental problem that “these privileging measures elevate the relevant groups as special groups, thereby tending to run in principal against social integration,” as argued by Kay Hailbronner (Hailbronner 2001, 259). In practice, collective rights, as a regulatory framework for positive discrimination, have generally tended to increase interethnic tensions rather than diminish them, because they stimulate demands for minority protections that ultimately result in linguistically based segregation processes:  “Group rights encourage supporters of ethnicity and thus a splitting of society all the way to segregation” (Rittstieg 1996, 1004). Thus, it must be concluded that in many cases, the encouragement of ethnicity promoted by collective special rights is what led to the consolidation of a minority’s ethnic collective identity in the first place, by launching a process of ethnicization. Indeed, this process has led to a conflict between völkisch

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and democratic minorities policies, also resulting very much in a “question of survival for the European Union” itself, as described by Sabine Riedel: Without a political nation concept, one that makes all citizens equal before the law while effectively protecting the various ethnic identities from discrimination, the ethnic nation concept remains powerful and inflames conflicts between states. […] EU member states can only work with its state peoples in constructively shaping the European integration process, and not with “Völker in the ethnic sense,” who challenge existing legal frameworks and even state borders themselves. (Riedel 2002, 59) Thus, in terms of both political theory and international law, the propositions of Volksgruppenrecht are used to shake up the nation-​state order of Europe and disempower state sovereignties. Entirely congruent with Schmitt’s conception of a Grossraum order anchored in international law, the goal here is to reorganize and restructure the European Grossraum in accordance with Volk theory concepts, thus subjugating the people as demos to the Volk as ethnos. Ultimately, this model is—​in Anton Pelinka’s words—​the “absolute antithesis” of the individual’s freedom of movement and right to democratic self-​ definition (Pelinka 1996, 29).

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8 THE GERMAN MYTH OF A VICTIM NATION: (RE)PRESENTING GERMANS AS VICTIMS IN THE DEBATE ON THEIR FLIGHT AND EXPULSION FROM EASTERN EUROPE  From a sociological perspective, it may be surprising that interest groups that were founded in reaction to an event 60  years ago continue to be of social and political relevance. The Vertriebenenverbände (expellee organizations)1 which are the subject of this article might easily have lost their immediate significance and given up their existence after the admission and integration of the refugees into the social and economic fabric of the Federal Republic. Although this integration was not without its problems, it was generally accomplished by the late 1950s/​early 1960s. Had it been the case that the expellee organizations had been founded with the sole purpose to represent the social and economic interests of those who had been displaced by flight and resettlement as a result of National Socialism and World War II, this loss of significance would have most likely been the case. In this case only a few elderly people would still be telling stories about the former Eastern German territories, for example, when they talked to their grandchildren about their own childhood. In the near future, these territories would have the same social and political status that they have had in historiography and international law for quite some time: that of a closed chapter of German history.2 However, 1 The expellee organizations possess a wide network of political and cultural organizations, though, not all refugees and expellees were members of these organizations. The umbrella organization Bund der Vertriebenen (BdV) currently gives a number of two million members. This number is probably inflated, though, and is supposed to give the impression that the expellee organizations still have mass support today. 2 The historical and legal status of the former Eastern German territories was initially determined at the Potsdam Conference. The bilateral contracts between Germany and its East European neighbors in the early 1990s confirmed the status of these territories

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the expellee organizations, which were founded illegally immediately after the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany,3 were by no means conceived as a lobby with exclusively domestic political ambitions (cf. Salzborn 2000, 52–​ 65). The concept of “landsmannschaftliches Gedenken”4 was developed at an early stage, running counter to concepts of integration of the refugees into the Federal Republic. “Landsmannschaftliches Gedenken” implies that all refugees and resettlers should not only live in their new “Heimat” in the Federal Republic but should maintain a parallel mental existence in their “alte Heimat” in order to safeguard a real German future for it. The identity of the new fFederal citizens was supposed to be rooted in a Landsmannschaft, something that was articulated with a clearly recognizable territorial aspect. Since it was supposed to be concerned not just with the memory of times past but also with the earliest possible restitution of the lost territories, the expellee organizations’ concept of Heimat resulted in political demands that could only be perceived by the East European neighbor states as a provocation and a threat. Of particular importance here is the insistence on “das Recht auf die Heimat” in the statutes of the expellee organizations. The definite article “die” is still being stressed today. What is at stake is not that every human being should have a right to live wherever s/​he happens to dwell but a concept of Heimat that is tied to a particular region or territory. In the case of the expellee organizations, their “Heimat” has (again) become the home of Poles, Russians, Czechs and others. The claim to “die Heimat” in the expellee organizations thus implicitly questions the right of East European neighbors to their home. This generally völkisch conception of “die Heimat” in the expellee organizations’ foreign policy ambitions was underlined by the fact that the resettlers had already found a new home, either in the Federal Republic or in parts of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). However, the political activities of the expellee organizations continue to this day, since they were not satisfied with this situation. The political influence of the expellee organizations is certainly weaker today than it had been 30 or 40 years ago—​a time when they constituted a decisive factor in domestic policy and elections in West Germany. Nevertheless, the expellee organizations still make claims with respect to (foreign) policy and frequently manage to arouse public interest. The political claims that the as no longer belonging to Germany. The Two-​Plus-​Four contract finally established the East German border as definite and fixed with respect to international law. 3 These types of organizations were initially prohibited by the Allies who feared a renaissance of militarism and nationalism. 4 A Landsmannschaft is a welfare and cultural association for Germans from areas of the former Reich.

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expellee organizations stand for are linked to the moral function they have for a “self-​confident” German foreign policy. This can be illustrated by the fact that the expellee organizations have received generous financial support from past and present Federal governments, irrespective of which party was in power. That the ideas and demands of the expellee organizations still find an audience today is related to the new claim to sovereignty and normality in the politics of the Federal Republic which results from the transformations in Eastern Europe after 1989/​90. Part of this new “normality” is the “levelling of the Nazi past” (Wiegel 2001, 399) in everyday consciousness; people’s concrete historical knowledge about National Socialism is in decline and loses the meaning it had for the old Federal Republic. This goes hand in hand with a tendency to detach historical realities, events and developments from their concrete sociopolitical context in favor of a moralizing view. One of the most prominent examples of this is the representation of flight and expulsion of Germans from the Eastern territories, a development that is not seen in the context of National Socialism’s politics of expansion and extermination. Thus, flight and expulsion can be morally condemned (e.g., as condemnation of violence) without taking into account the historical and social responsibilities for those consequences of National Socialism. This moralizing approach to the German past is becoming increasingly significant in a time where an alleged “taboo” on empathy with German experience is evoked continuously, while simultaneously the Nazi past is addressed everywhere, especially by politicians. The Federal Republic is at pains to correct the image of Germany abroad, for example, by stressing the lessons Germany has learnt from history, by making statements against the far right or by introducing political measures against neo-​Nazis. Simultaneously, the world is expected to recognize that the Germans, too, had been victims. The historical-​political arguments of the expellee organizations are part of a larger discourse about the image of German history that has been the subject of controversial debates over the last 20  years, particularly from the conservative end of the political spectrum (see the documentation on the “Historians’ Controversy” in Knowlton and Cates 1993; see also Baldwin 1990). The aim of these conservative attempts to redefine Germany’s relation to its Nazi past was the “normalization” of German history; the removal of the limitations on German politics (e.g., military interventions) due to the Nazi past was supposed to facilitate a renewed German geopolitics (Wiegel 2001, 399). Conservative historians and politicians negated the historically exceptional status of National Socialism and the Holocaust in particular, attempting to exonerate the German past by applying concepts from 1950s totalitarianism theory that essentially equated Nazism with Stalinism (see esp. Klotz and Schneider 1997). This line of argument essentially aims to relativize the political, historical and

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social relevance of National Socialism. The expellee organizations supplement this with an attempt to redefine the perpetrator–​victim relationship. This is of extreme importance for their image of history and the narratives of political legitimacy that are derived from it. The ultimate aim of a rewriting of the perpetrator–​victim relationship is the moral and historical legitimation of their hegemonic interests, that is, the claim to financial compensation by the Polish or Czech state. Simultaneously, this allows them to play a passive or innocent role through the “construction of a victim community” (König 1998, 411), since the German responsibility for flight and expulsion is negated. The aim of this redefinition of victim–​ perpetrator paradigm is to legitimize the image of the “self-​confident nation” as it was, for example, developed by the so-​called “New Right” in the 1990s (cf. Schwilk and Schacht 1994). The motivation of the expellee organization is thus of a political nature rather than being concerned with a historically adequate interpretation of the past. In the old Federal Republic, the expellee organizations frequently aroused negative public opinion, especially when they presented their claims rather aggressively. The recent shift in public discourse with respect to German wartime suffering, however, has furnished them with a more positive image and has allocated them a privileged role within that discourse. The expellee organizations’ central argument is that flight, expulsion and resettlement at the end of World War II constituted an injustice in terms of international law. The ultimate goal is the inscription of this perspective within German historical memory in order to support their struggle for the “Recht auf die Heimat” in the arena of international politics. In the past, this argument has been presented with some restraint by the expellee organizations in the knowledge that these ideas and claims would lead to considerable political and diplomatic irritation on behalf of East European countries. However, since the expansion of the EU eastward and the admission of Poland and the Czech Republic, their tone has become much harsher. Additionally, the legitimate basis of their argument was supposed to be made visible for everyone in the capital of the “Berlin Republic” in the shape of a Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen (Centre against Expulsions). Erika Steinbach, president of the Bund der Vertiebenen (BdV, League of Expellees) and member of parliament for the CDU, is quite open about the benefits of this Centre for the expellee organizations. The “Centre” is supposed to be placed in “historical and spatial proximity” to the Berlin Holocaust memorial (cf. Wonka 2000). The conceptual model for the project is the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Considering the large number of memorial sites and their considerable divergence with respect to content—​from German war memorials to

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the memorials for Nazi victims—​the creation of the Centre against Expulsions does not immediately appear to be very significant. The commitment that is expressed in the plural of “expulsions” in the Centre’s title even seems to be a sign against inhumanity and crime, and thus seems to abstract from the usual historical revisionism of the expellee organizations (cf. Salzborn 2000, 131–​ 50) And if there wasn’t the issue of the German past and the Nazi völkische politics of extermination, and if history was merely a succession of dates rather than a nexus of causalities, this would probably be the case. However, the desired spatial closeness to the Holocaust memorial takes the flight and expulsion of the Germans out of its historical context. The purpose of this is to lend legitimacy to the claim that the Germans, too, had been victims, since they had suffered under Hitler. While this certainly applies to Hitler’s racial and political victims as well as to those who were designated “inferior” by Nazi ideology, it is certainly incorrect with respect to the majority of Germans (cf. Gellately 1996; Goldhagen 1996). Above all, the Germans are supposed to have suffered “after Hitler” or “from the consequences of Hitler.” Opinion polls on behalf of the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (October 23, 2003) and the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza (October 21, 2003) found that over 90 percent of Germans are of the opinion that the Germans are victims of World War II. The expellee organizations’ desire for “historical” proximity of their Centre to the Holocaust memorial is thus directly connected to their desire for a discursive proximity of the expulsion to the German mass murder of European Jews or, more precisely, to their status as victims. The intended location of the Centre against Expulsions in the nation’s capital turns the expellee organizations into representatives of a national tragedy. This ascribes victim status to the Germans as a whole and implicitly puts them historically on the same footing with the murdered Jews. In Erika Steinbach’s words, “Im Grunde genommen ergänzen sich die Themen Juden und Vertriebene miteinander. Dieser entmenschte Rassenwahn hier wie dort, der soll auch Thema in unserem Zentrum sein” (quoted after Wonka 2000). This comparison turns history upside down. The expulsion of the Germans was a reaction to National Socialism, to the racial policies of the Nazi state and the Holocaust. In contrast to Nazi policy, it was established in the Potsdam Agreement (Article XIII) in accordance with the principles of international law. Furthermore, the term “Rassenwahn” is inappropriate with respect to the resettlement of Germans from the Eastern territories. The resettlement was not racially motivated but a reaction to the conflict potential of National Socialism’s racial policies. The German minorities in Eastern Europe (a large part of the later expellees) had stirred up social and political conflicts and had played an active part in the Nazi policies of Germanization. The

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most well-​known example of this is the “Volkstumskampf ” by large sections of the Sudeten German minority against Czechoslovakian democracy (cf. Zimmermann 1999).5 The Allies’ objective was thus to prevent future conflict. This politics of destabilizing neighboring countries with völkisch organizations was the basis of Nazi foreign policy at least until Nazi Germany pursued its interest by military means. This Volkstumspolitik, which was to lead ultimately to the resettlement of the German population in the East, was a central aspect of the preparation and execution of Nazi imperial and genocidal policies. Recent research in social history has exposed a structural connection between German völkisch and minority policies in Eastern Europe and the mass extermination of European Jewry (cf. Haar 2000b; Heinemann 2003). The expellee organizations’ desire to represent themselves as victims with their Centre against Expulsions implies thus a forgetting of the antisemitic and genocidal policies pursued by National Socialism and German minorities. Furthermore, it implies a denial of the fact that the Allied decision to resettle the Germans from the Eastern territories was not ethnically but politically motivated. While the cruelties that occurred during the expulsion are doubtlessly morally reprehensible, this does not change the historically legitimate and legal character of the resettlement. Erika Steinbach’s statement that the “topics of Jews and expellees” were complementary is not just a distortion of history; the Centre against Expulsions is estimated to cost 82 million euro in contrast to the Holocaust memorial, which cost around 25.5 million euro (cf. Salzborn 2002a, 151).6 Instead of putting the expulsions into a historical context, the Centre against Expulsions will obscure the causal connections between Nazi völkisch and genocidal politics in the East and flight and expulsion of the Germans from the Eastern territories. In order to devalue any critique of the planned Centre against Expulsions its supporters take recourse to morality, which appears without doubt to be on their side. Who is not moved by the terrible photographs that depict people fleeing from the East? Who is not morally outraged at the sight of these images? However, the code of politics is different from the code of morality,

5 In comparison to the völkische struggle of the Sudeten-​German minority in Czechoslovakia, the activities of German minorities in other regions had been waged with less aggression and destructive force. Nevertheless, these German minorities frequently had a profoundly destabilizing and disintegrating role during the 1920s and 1930s, which disturbed social cohesion. See the survey of research in Salzborn (2005a, 73–​88). 6 The equation of the Holocaust with the resettlement of Germans after the war is part of Erika Steinbach’s rhetorics. The newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau had already in their edition of December 12, 1998, issued a symbolic red card as “intellektuellen Platzverweis.”

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as Hans-​Magnus Enzensberger has poignantly noted (Enzensberger 2003). It is important to make this distinction; historical arguments in the debate about a Centre against Expulsions cannot and should not be devalued politically by emotive attitudes. The purpose of a moralist reduction of flight and expulsion to the aspect of violence is to abstract from German historical and political responsibility and to project that responsibility onto the Allies. Simultaneously, it abstracts from the concrete historical situation as well as from the political interests that are the basis of this situation. The main problem here is that a Centre against Expulsion in Germany would further detach the past from its historical and political context. The Centre would remove not only chronological but above all the causal connection between Nazi settlement and extermination policies and flight and expulsion from collective memory. The goal is thus not a realistic and historically appropriate view of the past but a sanctioning of flight and expulsion as collective injustice for which there is no individual responsibility or guilt on the German side. The social philosopher Theodor W. Adorno noted in his Minima Moralia that the concept of universal wrong obscures any individual responsibility: “In der abstrakten Vorstellung des universalen Unrechts geht jede konkrete Verantwortung unter” (Adorno 1997a, 25). The problem here is not the topic of flight and expulsion as such and the search for an adequate interpretation and historization. The way in which this engagement with the past takes shape in the Centre against Expulsion is rather to be criticized. The former vice president of the German parliament, Antje Vollmer, criticized the approach of the expellee organizations when she noted that their political approach to the topic flight and expulsion has to be understood as an interest to keep the memory of the experience alive, however, “nicht im Sinne des Mitleids, sondern im Sinne einer offenen Rechnung” (Vollmer 2002). The new German victim discourse is thus less an encounter with the suffering of individuals than it is an attempt to conceive and represent flight and expulsion as collectively experienced injustice. The central aim is not the enlightenment about the past but the creation of a collective victim identity to support the political demands of the expellee organizations. The historian Peter Steinbach notes, Die Deutung der Vergangenheit wird dabei nicht nur zum Streitfall, sondern sie kann auch, national wie international, zum Ziel politischer Einflussnahme werden—​ sei es, um bestimmte Inhalte kollektiver Identität zu beeinflussen, sei es, um politische Gegner mit historischen Argumenten zu bekämpfen, sei es, um in den internationalen Interessenkonflikten Ansprüche historisch zu rechtfertigen. (Steinbach 2001, 7)

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The collectivizing of individual histories aims at a revision of the historical context. On the one hand, it negates the historical origins of flight and expulsion; on the other hand, it calls the legitimacy of their consequences into question. The fragmentation of history into apparently unconnected events facilitates the contemporary delegitimation of the postwar anti-​fascist European order, following the Allied defeat of National Socialism. Only when flight and expulsion are no longer perceived in the context of National Socialism is it possible to morally exonerate and present them collectively as injustice. This is simultaneously a depoliticization of history as history is no longer presented and interpreted in its causal connections and contexts. Moralizing is an integral part of this process. This can be best observed in the German right’s inability to speak of flight and expulsion without resorting to nationalist and delusional terminology.7 However, the moralizing line of argument is also part of a conscious political strategy. The expellee organizations’ depoliticized argumentation aims at creating assent precisely by appealing to people’s emotions and moral sense. This process has been described by Sabine Moller as “Entkonkretisierung” (Moller 1998)—​a moralizing perspective that makes everything comparable with everything else because the facts have become completely distorted. The complex nature of historical reality is reduced to apparently omnipresent fragments by emotional regression. Thus, every analogy appears to make sense because its addressees are no longer conscious of any epistemological and judgmental context; they merely evaluate historical events according to the criteria of “good” and “evil” without taking into account their contexts and political motivations. This process is best illustrated by recent research into the memory of National Socialism within German families, which has shown that the children and grandchildren of Nazi perpetrators frequently turn their parents and grandparents into victims. The reason for this is that they on the one hand have little knowledge about the Nazi past and the Holocaust and on the other hand perceive their parents and grandparents as victims of Nazi persecution, terror, bombings and war captivity (cf. Welzer et al. 2002). As the generation of children and grandchildren judges the latter to be “bad” and “evil,” their own parents and grandparents are recodified as resistance fighters and victims of National Socialism. The origin of this kind of reflex is not least the lack of substantial, precise and detailed engagement with National Socialism, which is largely dealt with as a moral problem without conscious engagement with its historical and political 7 One of the best examples of this in the recent past is Klaus Rainer Röhl’s Verbotene Trauer. Ende der deutschen Tabus (2002).

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reality. Any conscious engagement with this period would need to contain the acknowledgment that the Nazi regime enjoyed wide support in the German population—​especially in the annexed and invaded Eastern European territories. It would have to acknowledge that the majority of Germans actively and passively participated in the extermination of the Jews (whether by participating in expropriations, lootings, denunciations, killings, deportations, etc., or through silence and lack of resistance, by spreading antisemitic or racist sentiment or by profiting from forced labor and “Aryanization”). Finally, it would have to acknowledge that it was possible to execute the Nazi policies of resettlement and extermination in such a barbaric manner because there was a wide consensus between Nazi leaders and the German population. The aim of the recent debate about flight and expulsion of Germans as a result of National Socialism does thus not constitute an engagement with the individual fates and people’s traumatic experiences, experiences that are independent of the victim-​perpetrator paradigm, as Alfred Krozova has convincingly argued (Krovoza 2001). The concept of traumatic experience refers both to violence experienced as well as executed violence. As the result of an experience of violence, traumatic experience does not immediately contain any political or moral judgment or attribution of guilt. Thus, it was possible for the Germans as a “derart in ihren Wahnzielen bloßgestellte, der grausamsten Verbrechen überführte Population” to be first and foremost concerned with themselves, as Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich put it in their seminal study Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern (Mitscherlich and Mitscherlich 1980, 35). Under National Socialism, the German collective followed a doctrine that allocated to the Germans a privileged position in the world. This allowed them to project their own aggression onto designated “others” who, by that projection, were turned into subhuman creatures. For the overwhelming majority of Germans after the war, this fact did not result in a feeling of shame; instead, they resorted to the infantile excuse that they had “only” obeyed their Führer. This explains, as the Mitscherlichs underline, the “Neigung vieler Deutscher, nach dem Kriegsende die Rolle des unschuldigen Opfers einzunehmen. Jeder einzelne erlebt die Enttäuschung seiner Wünsche nach Schutz und Führung; er ist mißleitet, verführt, im Stich gelassen und schließlich vertrieben und verachtet worden, und dabei war er doch nur folgsam, wie die erste Bürgerpflicht es befahl” (ibid., 53–​54). This infantile position does not only “forget” the historical facts, but it turns the victim-​perpetrator paradigm upside down. It turns the paradigm to the advantage of the Germans insofar as the remorse expressed in this attitude relates only to the destruction and extermination of the Germans’ own character and desires. The defense mechanisms against guilt and the denial of the past that are manifest in the immediate postwar period went hand in hand with an almost

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ritual cultivation of one’s own innocence and one’s own status as a victim. The frequently uttered claim that there had been a social taboo to speak about this topic can be explained by the lack of critical reflection on the repressed causes of flight and expulsion, despite the large amount of historiographical, sociological, political and literary publications on this theme. It is not necessary to refer to the prominent critic Marcel Reich-​Ranicki who pointed out the nonexistence of such a taboo in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Reich-​Ranicki 2002); any unprejudiced look at the German past will confirm the impression that flight and expulsion of Germans is a topic that at no time during the history of the Federal Republic had been subject to a taboo. Rather than subject to a taboo, the topic was “omnipresent” as early as the 1950s and an important medium for the Germans to represent themselves as a “nation of victims,” as Robert G.  Moeller points out (Moeller 2002a, 2002b). Simultaneously, however, the issue of perpetration with respect to the Holocaust was played down in public discourse (cf. Salzborn 2002b): In the diction of the Vertriebenenverbände, the expulsions constituted not only a “crime against humanity and a violation of the basic ethical principles of our civilization.” Because of their indiscriminate brutality and sweeping scope, they amounted to something much worse:  “the greatest collective crime in history” which endowed the expellees with a victim status comparable to that of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. (Ahonen 2003, 46) The purpose of the Centre against Expulsions is to situate the Germans’ own suffering in the center of the memory of the Nazi war. What is new about this is not the German feeling of being a nation of victims; this myth had been widespread in Germany already in the 1950s and 1960s. What is new in this claim to victim status is the vehemence and aggression with which it is articulated, especially by the league of expellees. New is also the strategy of international focus, as the moral and political claims against Poland and the Czech Republic are validated under the guise of an allegedly global memory of a “Century of Expulsions.” The imagined claim of German collective guilt, a concept that was never part of an Allied political strategy (cf. Benz 1994), is countered by an interpretation of history that is likely to generate the myth of a German collective innocence. One central aspect of this inverted representation of historical reality is the collectivization of individual experiences of German refugees. This results in an undue generalization of individual memories of German refugees, which ignores the political context in favor of a moralized view of the past. However, in this representation of the German past as history of German victims there

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is no room for disharmonious elements of memory. This means that the generalizing term “expulsion” obscures the ambiguous and contradictory nature of the historically diverse phenomenon that took place in several phases. The “expulsion,” as conservative historian Theodor Schieder argued shortly after the war, is an aggregate of four phases of evacuation, flight, expulsion and deportation/​resettlement with permanently changing variables (participants, legal situation, local and temporal micro-​context, etc.). According to Schieder, these four phases were distinctly different in character while partially historically overlapping (Schieder 1960, 10–​11). This is important for the debate on representations of flight and expulsions insofar as the choice of a generalizing term, namely a term that is supposed to describe a longer historical process, is made in order to highlight the general or, rather, what can be generalized. However, the term “expulsion” represents something linguistically that cannot be generalized historically in this way. The events that can be described as “expulsion” only represent a small part of a larger process. The first phase according to Schieder is the evacuation by German units as “Ausdruck einer zusammenbrechenden Staatsgewalt ohne tiefere Autorität.” The ensuing flight was followed by a brief phase of “wild,” that is, unofficial and unorganized, expulsions before the Potsdam Conference. These were in some regions supposed to create “vollendete Tatsachen vor den Entscheidungen der großen Politik” with respect to borders and transfer of population. The last phase was that of “organisierten Ausweisungen nach den Potsdamer Beschlüssen” (Schieder 1960, 10–​11). Evacuation—​flight—​ expulsion—​deportation (resettlement): expulsion itself was thus only one of a series of phases. This insistence on terminological differentiation and on the particularity of detail might seem petty at first sight. However, the reason for this demand for precision is that the term “Vertreibung” (expulsion) has acquired general acceptance in public discourse until today. It was purposefully introduced after World War II despite the fact that historiography had established the abovementioned four phases very early on. The term Vertreibung was intentionally launched as part of victim terminology and as part of a political strategy. The language of “expulsion” was supposed to underline the status and the representation of the resettled Germans as victims (cf. Böke 1996). The term Vertreibung was thus introduced some years after the end of World War II as official victim term with the purpose to morally legitimize the claims of the expellee organizations. It replaced hitherto commonly used terms like Umsiedlung (resettlement), Ausweisung (deportation) or Flucht (flight). As the representative 1959 work Die Vertriebenen in Westdeutschland explains, “Wort und Begriff des ‘Vertriebenen’ ” implicitly expresses the “Unrecht der Vertreibung.” The term “expellee” denotes “eine andere Würde als der

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Name Flüchtling” (Rogge 1959, 190). In this sense one has to understand the “deutsche Rechtsterminus ‘Vertriebener’ ” as “fortlaufender Protest gegen das Unrecht der Vertreibung” (ibid.). This is the reason why Flüchtling (refugee) and Umsiedler (resettler) were rejected as collective terms: the resettlement was supposed to be understood as passively endured injustice and everything that denoted responsibility or active participation was supposed to be removed from memory. With a view to the planned Centre against Expulsions, the introduction of the term “expulsion” anticipates terminologically contemporary attempts to realize the claims by the League of Expellees on a political and historically binding level. The demand for a scholarly debate about the generalizing tendency of the term “expulsion” does call into question historical facts but is in the interest of terminological precision with regard to the interpretation of these facts. The term Ausweisung, initially introduced by Theodor Schieder to describe one phase, might be considered as a suitable scholarly overall term. On the one hand, it includes the component of coercion while leaving it open whether this is due to anticipatory action (as in flight) or whether it happened in conjunction to physical violence (as in wild expulsions). On the other hand, however, it lacks the moralizing overtones of Vertreibung or—​on the other side of the political spectrum—​Umsiedlung while including semantic indicators that there were historical and political reasons for these events. Moreover, the term Ausweisung points to the legal basis of these events in the framework of international law. Another that might be regarded as too sterile due to its legalese character is that of Bevölkerungstransfer (transfer of population). In contrast to Ausweisung, however, it would underline the aspects of the politics of migration and thus implicitly point to the potential for conflict as a result of the transfer process. A serious scholarly debate about the term “expulsion” in Germany has yet to take place. The term can only be considered as having been consciously implemented for political reasons; it was ultimately institutionalized in legally binding form though Article 16 of the Basic Law (1949) and later through Section 1 of the Bundesvertriebenengesetz (Federal Law for Expellees, 1953). Those who supported the institutionalization of this terminology, however, were not primarily concerned with the people affected and their problems. This is evident from the fact that Theodor Schieder, who oversaw the Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-​Mitteleuropa comprising several thousand pages (cf. Beer 1998, 1999a), produced a report on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Expellees on the “gesamten Komplex der Dokumentensammlung” without having seen “auch nur einen der vorliegenden Zeitzeugenberichte über die Vertreibung am Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges” (Beer 1999b, 281). Although Schieder was doubtlessly familiar with the topic and methodologically competent, his approach reveals the political intention of the enterprise, one that

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abstracts from the individual fate without knowing it. According to Matthias Beer, through this approach historiography was supposed to underpin and legitimize in a scholarly way the “außenpolitischen Ziele des Staates” and thus “nach wie vor national sinnstiftend wirken.” The ultimate purpose of this kind of historiography is to make history manageable for a collective project (ibid., 282). It is not about the “immediate perception of the individual case” as Arnold Sywottek put it (Sywottek 1987, 72). On the contrary, the individual case is deindividualized in order to represent a historical problem. Thus, historical events become generalized before a scholarly debate about the possibility to generalize and typify has even taken place. The aim of the representation of Germans as victims is not enlightenment about historical realities but the creation of a certain collective identity. The Centre against Expulsions in the way intended by the League of Expellees is thus anything but a form of productive engagement with the past—​something that is nevertheless necessary. Such an engagement with the past should certainly address the crimes that occurred during flight and expulsion, even if (or because) this topic is one of the most thoroughly researched within recent German history. However, the new German victim discourse is not concerned with a critical reflection of the past, by which, according to Adorno, “man das Vergangene im Ernst verarbeite, seinen Bann breche durch helles Bewußtsein” (Adorno 1997b, 555). It is instead concerned with the restitution of the “aufrechte Gang,” as the categorical farewell to the past is euphemistically known in Germany.

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9 ANTISEMITISM IN EASTERN EUROPE: THEORETICAL REFLECTIONS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE  Within the social and historical sciences, the greater part of antisemitism research, in terms of theory construction, has focused on Western European case studies. This process of theory construction has been insufficient in making systemic comparisons incorporating the numerous studies that examine and analyze Eastern European antisemitism and its lines of development. This can also be seen in how the classificational differentiation between “old” and “new” antisemitism, so often exercised in antisemitism research, is insufficiently nuanced for application in the Eastern European context. While the forms of so-​called “old antisemitism”—​which on the one hand can be seen in religiously motivated Christian anti-​Judaism, and on the other hand in völkisch-​racist antisemitism (cf. Benz 2004a)—​can in fact be labeled as “old” or “older” in a historically contextualizing way when interpreting the historical development of forms of antisemitism as manifested in Western Europe, such a classification cannot be seamlessly applied to Eastern Europe. For, the historical caesura between “old” and “new” antisemitism that is broadly applicable to Western Europe—​the defeat of National Socialism and the end of World War II—​is further supplemented and overlaid in Eastern Europe by other significant caesuras that have influenced the respective national manifestations of antisemitism: the October Revolution of 1917 and the Eastern European transformations of 1989/​90. The motives behind a “new” guilt-​denying manifestation of antisemitism, which also emerged in parts of Eastern Europe during the postwar era, differ from those in Western Europe (here, the denial of guilt as collaborators or as a perpetrator nation), amalgamating—​in significant contrast to Western Europe—​ much more with Christian religious motives so that the guilt-​ denying aspect of antisemitism has quantitatively a distinctly lesser weight in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe, particularly Germany and Austria. Furthermore, it is conspicuous that the anti-​Zionist or anti-​Israeli variety

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of antisemitism, which attempted to avoid accusations of antisemitism by channeling its antisemitic ressentiments through the communicative detour of Israel-​hating, achieved prominence noticeably earlier in Eastern Europe, especially in the Soviet Union, than as happened in Western Europe in the aftermath of the later caesura of the 1967 Six-​Day War and in the context of the anti-​imperialist positionings of the student movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, the socioeconomic conditions in Eastern Europe since the Russian Revolution are so different from those in Western Europe that the question is at least raised as to whether or not Western antisemitism’s characteristic capitalist-​oriented thought patterns, which could already be seen under National Socialism, also have interpretative relevance for Eastern Europe too. This leads to the key question of what influence the political, historical and cultural processes of the Eastern European states—​in both their commonalities and their specificities—​had for the development and shape of those antisemitic ressentiments relevant to Eastern Europe, since, although socioeconomic contexts in Eastern and Western Europe at the end of the nineteenth century were at first comparable, Eastern Europe then under the aegis of the Soviet Union declared war for several decades on capitalist socialities. The goal of this article is take the analyses that were systematically brought together in this book to look at the lines of development in Eastern European antisemitism and to discuss them in relation to the theoretical insights of antisemitism research. To this end, the following will begin by outlining the current state of research regarding theoretical reflections on the political and sociotheoretical dimensions of antisemitism, in order to then contextualize the specificities of Eastern European developments. The aim thereby is to gather insights from social science and historical science research into antisemitism in Eastern Europe, and systematically incorporate them into the construction of theory, thus filling a gap that has existed until now.

The Ideology of Antisemitism Modern antisemitism has also traditionally incorporated religious antisemitism—​ which in its anti-​ Jewish orientation may have exhibited arbitrariness but was certainly not accidental—​ and therefore “cannot deny its Christian heritage” (Bauer 1992, 77), with the genetic simultaneity of premodern and modern antisemitism being clearly legible in the internal coding of antisemitic ciphers (cf. Salzborn 2010a). Referring back to Sigmund Freud (1939), it is clear that antisemitism or Jew-​hating has its theological origins in Christianity, and that this unconsciously lives on in the form of Christian metaphors and myths within the fantasies of antisemites. The deeper cause for this projection oriented toward “the Jews” lies in the

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differences between Christianity and Judaism, which emerge from a small narcissistic discontinuity, meaning that the origins of antisemitism are essentially of a religious nature, since Jewish monotheism took away from humanity the illusion of potentially being God (cf. Grunberger and Dessuant 1997, 262, 300); however, antisemitism formulates itself as an attempt (and, in light of antisemitic barbarity driven to mass extermination, definitely a pathic one) at a “distorted cure” (Freud 1921, 159) for the profound narcissistic wound as an expression of antisemitic fantasies; it formulates itself as “hearsay about the Jews” (Adorno 1951, 125)—​and not as a real engagement with Jewish religion or the history of Jewishness. Therefore, antisemitism can only be deciphered by analyzing antisemites themselves—​and not by analyzing Judaism or Jewish history. It is neither an accident that the antisemite chooses “the Jews” on which to project his obsessions, nor is it accurate to say that antisemitism has anything to do with actual Jewish behavior. Picking up on assertions by Parsons, Sartre, Horkheimer/​Adorno and Arendt concerning the concrete manifestations of an antisemitic projection oriented toward “the Jews,” one must emphasize that, because of the totalization of civil society and the associated essential interchangeability emerging from the commodification of all life, the projection screen of antisemitism has become instrumentalized and therefore, in a dehumanizing sense, arbitrary. The ticket mentality (Horkheimer and Adorno 1947) and the culture industry (Claussen 1987) manifest themselves in a reified way of perceiving the world, oriented toward interchangeability, indiscriminateness and arbitrariness, and marked by a large portion of disinterest in and lack of empathy toward others. Antisemitic resentments certainly do not limit themselves to Jewish targets—​in fact, as pointed out by Sartre, basically anyone can take on the function of the Jew in antisemitic fantasies; however, this does not change the historical reality that antisemitism has always been and continues to be directed against Jews, and with barbaric brutality. The antisemitic worldview is thereby structured by a dualistic detachment from the external world, in which one’s own beliefs are not checked against reality, and the antisemite reacts (apparently) to an action or statement that does not exist (it is or was simply a figment of fantasy), and people or characteristics can be declared “Jews” or “Jewish,” even if they are not such in actuality: “Juif par le regard de l’autre” (Traverso 1997, 203). This process takes place within the antisemitic formation of a Jewish idea, in which a transparent projection screen may be provided by Jewish culture, religion and history, which themselves become arbitrarily distorted or even generated anew; because of this, Sartre is correct in focusing attention on the worldview and passion of the antisemites, in order to begin making antisemitism comprehensible. In accordance with Arendt, one can say that in contrast to premodern anti-​Jewish

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prejudice, modern antisemitism represents an evolving historical process of abstraction culminating in a new peak in the twentieth century: away from actual Jews as projection objects, toward the fictional “Jew” who has been identified as alien to the Volk, who is defined solely by antisemites and who has no more hypothetical possibilities for escaping the antisemitic delusion. According to Hannah Arendt, the evolution of modern antisemitism through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was thus a process of radicalization in which anti-​Jewish prejudices and resentments were increasingly divorced from the realities of society, until finally within the total ideology of National Socialism they became complete abstractions that “required no Jews, but only images of Jews, in order to unleash the hatred against them” (Schulze Wessel and Rensmann 2003, 128). The real, empirically localizable conflicts between Jews and non-​Jews in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which were taken as the starting point of theoretical analysis for Hannah Arendt (1955) and (in a manner transforming perhaps one or two centuries) for Parsons too, do not represent the cause of antisemitism but instead the precipitating impetus for the transformational quantum leap from premodern religious antisemitism toward modern völkisch antisemitism (cf. Nonn 2008, 10–​11). This also means that historical conflicts and social differences between Jews and non-​Jews cannot be drawn upon as genuine causes when explaining antisemitism. As Sartre pointed out, the important thing for antisemitism is not the historical reality but rather the mental images made “from Jews” by the historical participants. It is the idea “qu’on se fait du Juif qui semble déterminer l’histoire, non la ‘donnée historique’ qui fait naître l’idée” (Sartre 1945, 447). For Sartre, antisemitism is, in this respect, also not explainable through external factors (of social or historical experience) but solely through the formulated and fantasized idea of the Jew. Significant here is not the actual Jew, nor the actual behavior of Jews, but rather “l’idée de Juif ” (ibid., 448), the mental image that the antisemites have made of the Jew. On a political and social level, antisemitism during the emerging modern was at first directed only against the Jews, and especially against their legal and political emancipation. The process of radicalization then took place through the increasingly stronger emphasis on general political questions surrounding antisemitism—​a process succinctly summarized by Shulamit Volkov (1978) with the term cultural code, which is what antisemitism had become through this process—​erupting into a critique of the whole social and political system, finally leading to conceptions of a fundamentally new society, “inspiring the fantasies of the völkisch movement towards designing, planning, and building” (Schulze Wessel 2006, 222). The delusional behind the process of antisemitic projection was and is concretized in a transaction of reciprocal reversals of the relationships between

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individual and society, a transposition between internal and external, between psyche and sociality. Borrowing from Max Horkheimer’s and Theodor W.  Adorno’s (1947, 220–​21) analyses of mimesis and false projections in Dialectic of Enlightenment, it can be said that the antisemitic worldview is not interested in a mimetic transformation process with an accurate representation of the object and a simultaneous recognition of the subject, but rather the opposite, in a projectional delusional transformation of external reality with the goal of conforming the social environment to match the individual’s delusional drive structure. Although, as previously stated, modern antisemitism differs from premodern anti-​Jewish prejudice in effectuating a process of abstraction, it nonetheless then delusionally seeks concrete projection screens and accuses Jews of being abstract and not concrete—​for example, in the form of commodities or money. As Sartre pointed out, antisemites thus repudiate particular abstractions of civil society, especially the forms of modern property such as money and stocks, because these were closely associated with rationality and therefore were also related to the abstract intelligence of the Jewish.

Antisemitism and Modernity Thus, in the antisemitic fantasy, Jews become symbolic of abstraction itself, which makes clear the highly contradictory contents of antisemitic resentments: Jews are accused of abstractness and are thereby blamed for the modern, which likewise encompasses socialism as much as liberalism, capitalism as much as enlightenment, as well as urbanity, mobility and intellectualism (cf. Benz 2004b; Schoeps and Schlör 1995). Only concreteness, and in politics the völkisch, are not encompassed by this antisemitic fantasy, since they represent the antithesis of the—​as first described by Sartre (1945, 452)—​ differentiation between the generalized and the concrete in thought patterns and commodity forms, and the resulting dichotomy between worldliness and rootedness in the antisemitic worldview. With Moishe Postone (1982), it follows that the value system of modern society and the resulting differentiation between utility value and exchange value as well as the fetishization of commodities are causative of antisemitism’s establishing a connection between these economic spheres and a concrete worldview in which the abstract is dualistically associated with Jewishness. Postone pointed out that certain aspects of the annihilation of European Jewry will remain unexplained as long as antisemitism is treated as a simple example of prejudice, xenophobia and racism in general; that is to say, as long as the belief continues that antisemitism is simply an example of scapegoating whose victims could have been members of any other group, because although the choice of antisemitic projection object exhibits arbitrariness, it was not

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accidental. Antisemitism bears not only a considerable quantitative difference (as manifested in the Shoah) in comparison to prejudice and racism, it also has qualitative differences, in the concrete (material and sexual) articulation of the potential power attributed to the Other, as well as in the abstractness of the attribution given to antisemitism, which is fantasized as a “mysterious unfathomability, abstraction and generality” (Postone 1982, 15). Because this fantasized power in antisemitism has no identifiable bearer, it is perceived as rootless, fantastically large and uncontrollable, but above all as hidden behind a façade, and is therefore perceived as conspiratorial and unfathomable—​in other words, as abstract. National Socialist antisemitism attempted to personalize and concretize this abstraction with the antisemitic extermination, although the Shoah itself had no functional meaning, and the annihilation of the Jews served no other purpose besides exterminating the abstract. Brought into contact with racial theories that had been emerging in the late nineteenth century, a conception of the naturalness and rootedness of organicity became connected with the commodity-​producing society, in which these thought patterns are themselves an expression of that same paradoxical fetish that generated the conception of the concrete as being natural, while increasingly representing the social-​natural so that it appears to be biological (cf. Postone 1982, 21). The abstract and the concrete are not understood in their unity as rational parts of an antinomy, for which the real vanquishing of abstraction would be represented by the value encompassed by the historical-​ practical reconciliation of the contradiction itself, as well as of each of its sides. This is how the dichotomy of material-​concrete versus abstract mutates into the racial dichotomy of Aryan versus Jew: Modern antisemitism is therefore an especially dangerous form of fetish. Its power and its danger lie in that it offers a comprehensive worldview which seems to justify various types of anticapitalist discontent, giving them political expression. It nonetheless allows capitalism to continue, insofar as it attacks only the personification of that social form. This understanding of antisemitism allows one to see a significant impetus of Nazism as being an abbreviated anticapitalism. A defining characteristic of antisemitism is the hatred of the abstract. Its hypostatization of the existing concrete leads to a unanimous, barbarous—​but not necessarily hate-​filled mission: the deliverance of the world from the source of all evil in the form of the Jews. (Postone 1982, 24) Historically, the antisemitic delusion was not an individual but rather a superindividual phenomenon, involving not just single paranoiacs, but rather an entire society that exalted the delusion of antisemitism as the norm, so that,

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historically seen, the phantasm of social normality became structured by the antisemitic delusion. The antisemites transferred their delusion to reality and attempted to adjust reality to match their own psychic deviance. The antisemitic delusion escalated from a national conception of negative integration (cf. Wippermann 1987, 36) toward the extermination of those fantasized as being nonidentical, with the concrete goal of creating völkisch homogeneity and the extermination of the abstract possibility of nonidentity and ambivalence. The antisemitic delusional structure implemented by National Socialism is thus the clearest manifestation of the social reality of antisemitic fantasies, and the mass extermination of Jews is the utopia of modern antisemitism, which was barbarically realized in the Shoah—​and whose replication in the present day is striven for by Islamic antisemitism in particular. The antisemites want to annihilate that which they desire, aggressive extermination desires go together with narcissistic identification, and fantasized envy generates the delusion of omnipotence. The extent and radicalness of antisemitism in a social and political system are fundamentally dependent on its material and conceptional concretization, which itself has been made realizable by the modern ambivalence of enlightened thought, because capitalist totality has produced economic foundations that are essentially identical around the world, and the potential for an antisemitic reaction to the ambivalent uncertainties of the modern is equally evident everywhere. Here, the crucial macrotheoretical contextual prerequisite is the relationship between (nation-​)state organizing and its implementation in the sovereign state as the site of a “systematized form of dominance” (Pelinka 2006, 225). In this context, Arendt characterized antisemitism as an antinationalist worldview, pointing out that National Socialism placed little value on the nation-​state and set völkisch thought against the national conception. Arendt sees völkisch ideology and racist thought as standing in opposition to nationalism, and as factors undermining it (cf. Arendt 1955, 265). However, it would be equally wrong to assume that states constituted as non-​völkisch would automatically be non-​antisemitic, as conjected by Klaus Holz (2001), who was absolutely correct in his formal analysis but mistaken in his assumptions in positing a modern antisemitism and a “nationalist antisemitism.” The actual state forms of civil society do not correspond to the conceptual forms but are instead defined like civil society by the dialectic of enlightenment. The dialectic of the modern state consists of its double character: on the one hand, limiting individual instances of violence by imposing a monopolizing sovereignty and using this monopoly on physical force (Weber 1980, 29, 516), which has been recognized as legitimate, to protect its citizens publicly and privately from physical violence committed by third parties; but on the other

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hand, simultaneously using this to realize the proclamation of universality to secure particular economic interests—​using abstract political equality to manifest actual economic inequality—​thus structuralizing power relationships (cf. Galtung 1975). Franz L. Neumann (1944) focuses on this dialectic in his analysis of modern state theory, emphasizing that both central components—​ sovereignty and freedom—​form a unity within the state, and therefore cannot themselves be resolved in one direction or the other, thereby remaining in an “unresolvable contradiction” (cf. Buckel 2007, 82; Salzborn 2009a). The modern nation-​state is organized around the poles of ethnos or demos, and simultaneously also around the differentiations between sovereignty and freedom, and between force and rule of law. Central to this double ambivalence of the modern nation-​state is that while it forms the ideational basis for antisemitism and völkisch thought, it could also be a guarantor for its prevention, depending on the combination of the four categories—​ethnos and demos as well as sovereignty and freedom—​and how they stand in concrete relationship to one another.

Eastern European Perspectives Rudolf Jaworski (2005, 29)  pointed out that the developmental and contextual conditions for nineteenth-​ century East Central European antisemitism were marked by a large degree of homogeneity, and that—​with the exception of Czechoslovakia, as the only East Central European state to establish a genuinely democratic tradition—​these also continued into the early twentieth century. Jaworski (2005, 30)  presented his insights against the background that although East Central Europe possessed a great plurality of Jewish settings, these did not lead to any variation in antisemitic stereotypes—​which ultimately supports the variously formulated thesis that antisemitism has very little to do with Jewishness itself, and then only with “rumors about the Jews” (Adorno 1951, 125). In East Central Europe, the preexisting history of anti-​Jewish sentiment had a strong effect on the development of modern antisemitism, finding its roots in the social and political dominance of Christianity in East Central European states. In contrast to that of Western Europe, the typical Eastern European formation of antisemitic stereotypes in their transition from Christian anti-​Judaism to modern antisemitism was heavily influenced by the image constructed by antisemites of the so-​called Eastern Jew (cf. Kurth and Salzborn 2009). Within antisemitic rhetoric, this anti-​Jewish cliché became amalgamated with those Jewish ways of life that did not explicitly correspond, especially that of the assimilated Jew. The experience of social and economic crisis in the context of industrialization that was felt all across East Central Europe, especially

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in combination with the agrarian and rural structure of large parts of East Central Europe, is thereby indicative of the interweaving of anti-​Jewish ressentiments with antisemitic stereotypes clothed in economic terms, an amalgamation that reinforced accusations of Jewish dominance in world politics. While the process of nationalization—​with few exceptions—​was already complete in Western Europe, Eastern Europe saw the juxtaposition of socioeconomic crises with the nationalization of society and the homogenization of state identity, which—​once again with the exception of later Czechoslovakia—​led to a considerable potential for ethnicization, but also for contradictory accusations in times of erupting crises, which, on the basis of previously established Christian anti-​Jewish stereotypes, became channeled into a modern antisemitism: In this part of Europe, it was the particular misfortune of the Jews that their entry into middle-​class society was happening precisely at the moment in which this was coming apart at the ethnic seams, and for the Jews it was not at all clear into which emerging nation-​society they were supposed to integrate themselves, if at all. (Jaworski 2005, 33) The Russian Revolution and the corresponding nationalist struggle against growing socialist influences in East Central Europe during the interwar period became the foundation for an amalgamation of an anti-​Bolshevist stereotype with an antisemitic one, culminating in the Polish imprecation of “Judeo-​ Commune” (cf. Pufelska 2007), an expression that had already emerged in the interwar period. There emerged a solidification of anticommunist impulses, which was also connected to an anticapitalist impulse in East Central Europe:  Jews became answerable not only for social hardships and economic crises in the anticapitalist view but also for egalitarianism in the anticommunist view, and thereby also for the growing influence of the Soviet Union on the other nations of East Central Europe, which developed practical relevance after the end of World War II. Therefore, antisemitic ressentiments in East Central Europe were a regressive rebellion against modernity in two respects: against liberalism as well as socialism, and thus against both freedom and equality. In the national identities of many Eastern European states, antisemitism was written into the national mythologies with inconsistencies and contradictions stemming from these antisemitic interpretations of both anticommunism and anticapitalism. This function of “antisemitism in the construction of national identity” (Benz 1995, 28)  points to a principal difficulty in dealing with Eastern European antisemitism, in that it forms not only a component of the respective political cultures but, in the context of nationalist theory, also

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represents the conceptual legitimation, and is thus etched into the national self-​image, probably most clearly in Hungary and Poland. During the Soviet era, Eastern European antisemitism stood under the guise of anti-​Zionism and anticosmopolitanism. Randolph L. Braham (1994, 143–​44) showed in his remarkable analysis that Soviet domestic and foreign policy immediately after the war had considerable negative consequences for the Jews of Eastern Europe, with socialist anti-​Zionism and the associated hostility against Israel being decisive factors: Shortly after the war, the traditional and modern components of antisemitism were reinforced, and partially displaced, by new ideological-​ political strains. These evolved through the perversion of the two central factors in contemporary Jewish history, which were expected—​naively in retrospect—​to sound the death knell of antisemitism: the Holocaust and the subsequent establishing of the State of Israel. The perversion was first orchestrated by loosely organized extremist forces of the Right and then adopted—​and exploited at various levels of intensity—​by extremist forces of the Left, including the current and former communist states. Although guided by different ideological perspectives and conflicting political interests, these extremist forces embraced the new strains in contemporary antisemitism—​ anti-​ Zionism and its corollary opposition to Israel, and the distortion, denigration, or outright denial of the Holocaust—​with equal zeal. While the drive to distort and actually deny the Holocaust was begun by the Right, the campaign against Zionism and Israel was initiated by the Left during the late 1940s. In the course of time, the two strains were fused with the more traditional religious and racial forms of antisemitism and used in various combinations by both extremes in accordance with their particular ideological and political needs. (Braham 1994, 143–​44) Although the Soviet Union temporarily supported the foundation of the State of Israel in the beginning, its position then changed due to the British withdrawal from the Middle East. In order to realize its long-​term goal of achieving supremacy in the region and of squeezing the Western powers out of the Middle East, the Soviet Union began supporting the Arab states: The pursuit of this geopolitical objective and the concomitant Stalinization of Eastern Europe coincided with the first major rift within the communist world, the Soviet-​Yugoslav dispute over the character and leadership of the world communist movement. The anti-​Titoist campaign that followed was soon intertwined with a relentless twin drive

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against Zionism and cosmopolitanism and against the State of Israel. (Braham 1994, 145) Under the star of Stalinism, this was associated with a general shift in Eastern Europe concerning the politics of remembrance, especially regarding the mass extermination of European Jews. The Shoah became taboo, sinking into “the Orwellian memory hole of history” (Braham 1994, 145). While socialist states certainly acknowledged the mass extermination, and also exploited it as a political instrument, the antisemitic goals of Nazi policies were largely ignored. National Socialism mutated into fascism, the antisemitic war of extermination became an imperial war of conquest and the central victim of National Socialism was no longer the Jews, but the socialists. This version of history, which became dominant everywhere within the Eastern European sphere of influence, led to an overall political and moral disconnection between their own anti-​Israel politics, on the one hand, and the instrumentalization of World War II remembrance policies for political purposes, on the other. Put another way, one could argue antisemitically against Israel as well as the Jews of Eastern Europe without needing to see one’s own continuity with National Socialism, simply because antisemitism had been deleted as a genuine core element of National Socialism. In this way, the anticapitalist struggle of the nineteenth century, which had already been conducted in most of Eastern Europe as an anti-​Jewish struggle, could be continued in the Soviet era without any ideological softening; the ideological enemies were still “modernity” and “capitalism,” both of which continued to be described antisemitically in most Eastern European states of the twentieth century, just as in the nineteenth one. This also suggests a certain paradox in the totality of the transformation into a capitalist civil society: the logic of its thought and value systems is so comprehensive that a socialist overlay does nothing to fundamentally change it, other than in modifying the formulation of its stereotypes. The fact that most East European states exhibited no significant differences in basic tenor, and that only the first Czechoslovak Republic showed that this version of modern socialization was not inevitable, may point to the heavy dominance of the Soviet Union in Eastern European politics, but this does not relieve any Eastern European state from its own responsibility for the specific formation of antisemitism within its national mythology. The nonsimultaneity of economic as well as political evolution, which without a doubt began for Eastern Europe with the Russian Revolution—​and which attempted, in the context of the worldwide hegemony of capitalist production methods, to overcome them, without ever accepting them as a precondition to this overcoming—​offers no basis on which to build national strategies of absolution.

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These socialist endeavors, built upon an economic, political and especially sociocultural foundation of absolutism, rejected from the very beginning that political ideal which Western European civil society finally managed to wrest from absolutism:  the freedom of the individual. However, without the individual freedom of self-​definition, the political cultures of Eastern Europe were consequently also not capable of emancipating the individual from mythology, which must be seen as a prerequisite for all emancipation, to paraphrase Marx. Instead, popular beliefs and national mythologies were cultivated, religious faith became replaced by a secular faith in socialism, the bondage of absolutism shifted directly into the bondage of socialism, while a religiously tinged anti-​Judaism became the political culture’s emotional mortar, which was overlaid by that modern form of antisemitism sanctioned with an apparent moral integrity, directing its hatred against Jews in their collective form: against Israel. Therefore, the antisemitism that has emerged in Eastern Europe since the upheavals of 1989/​90, and which is now especially influential in the political cultures of Russia, Hungary and Poland, has planted itself in the fertile soil of nondemocratic political cultures in which anti-​Enlightenment myths, antiparticipational political concepts and divisive ideas promoted through social demagoguery once again dominate the political agenda.

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10 RIGHT-​WING EXTREMISM AND RIGHT-​WING POPULISM: CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS  What is right-​wing extremism? At first glance, the question would seem easy to answer. But it involves various dimensions that are not immediately obvious, because it actually covers two complexes that need to be systematically differentiated before an answer can be formulated. On the one hand, it obviously involves identifying the factors and aspects informing a particular worldview and/​or conduct that would justify calling someone or something right-​wing extremist. This would cover the basic elements of the far-​right worldview and its resulting political practices—​in other words, investigating the relationship between theory and application in right-​wing extremism, analyzing what characteristics distinguish the far-​right worldview conceptually and examining how these ideas and attitudes lead to specific social and/​or political actions. On the other hand—​and this is less obvious—​the investigation must also consider how the term “right-​wing extremism” has come to be applied when categorizing particular political phenomena, be it as an additional label or an essentialist one; in other words, whether, when and why one chooses to speak of right-​wing extremism, or alternatively right-​wing populism, neo-​fascism, neo-​Nazism or the radical right. While the term “right-​wing extremism” has now become established as an overall label within German scholarship, politics and media, this has certainly not always been the case (e.g., in West Germany until the early 1970s, public debate was dominated by the terms neo-​Nazism and neo-​fascism, while the 1990s also saw intensive debate on whether the preferred term should be “right-​wing extremism” or “right-​wing radicalism”; cf. Salzborn 2015c). Even now, there are still multiple terms competing for the status of overarching label, so the question of “What is right-​wing extremism?” must also involve an examination of not only the descriptive label but also of what exactly is being described (on the question of terminology, cf. Hempel and Oppenheim 1948).

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At the Core: An Ideology of Inequality When elements of a purportedly right-​wing extremist worldview are discussed within German sociological debates, there are clearly differences of opinion (cf. Birzer 1996; Holzer 1994) about what exactly is to be counted as part of this “multidimensional attitudinal complex” (Borrmann 2012, 162)  and “heterogeneous mixture of the most diverse argumentative frameworks and viewpoints” (Stöss 2010, 20), and at what point one can speak of a cohesive right-​wing extremist worldview (on this, see also Pfahl-​Traughber 2014, 7–​36). It must also be emphasized that far-​right groups need not always espouse every element in the relevant spectrum in order to be considered far right, but simply need to draw from the same basic toolbox, while not necessarily all adopting the same tools: for example, a paramilitary traditionalist group that cultivates the ideological heritage of the Schutzstaffel (SS) would emphasize military aspects to a much greater extent than an intellectual group that pays homage to the thinkers of the Weimar Era’s conservative revolutionary movement—​ who were the chief ideological forebears of the Third Reich. Nonetheless, militarism is certainly not incompatible with the fundaments of the conservative revolution, and both streams share something in common: they always prioritize authoritarian/​military solutions over democratic/​diplomatic ones in handling conflicts (cf. Virchow 2006). In one of the most popular definitions of right-​wing extremism, Wilhelm Heitmeyer (1990) highlights the relationship between an ideology of inequality and an acceptance of violence or force (both terms correspond to the German concept of “Gewalt”). This approach is a sound one in general terms, although it can also sometimes lead to uncertainties, such as in the question of where violence actually begins:  Does it already exist in the publication of a racist and dehumanizing article in an alt-​right forum, or does it only start with a knife attack by a skinhead? While both are forms of violence, the media often reduces far-​right violence to the physical aspect only, thereby forgetting that the fundamental root of right-​wing extremism is found not in the practical application of physical violence but in the underlying mental framework that accepts the use of  force. At the ideological heart of far-​right thought is the assertion that human beings are unequal and thus should be treated unequally. Right-​ wing extremists thus deny the basic tenet that all persons are equal. They believe that human beings have specific immutable characteristics (whether mental or cultural) that result from their provenance (whether biological or cultural, the latter represented by “culturalist” discrimination). Based on this alleged inequality, right-​wing extremists divide human beings into ostensibly disparate groups (e.g., “races,” “ethnicities” or “peoples”) that are each to be kept

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homogeneous, meaning they should not “mix.” The common denominator of right-​wing extremist thought is the ideology of inequality, which in conceptual terms is an expression of structural violence in its sorting of human beings into essentialist collectives that are allegedly “natural” and immutable. This means that at the heart of far-​right ideology lies a clearly distinguishable ethnonationalist/​racist worldview (cf. Zuber 2015), which is “prototypical for a naturalizing of the social” (Jäger and Jäger 1999, 174, emphasis in original). The spectrum of far-​ right variants thus ranges from explicitly racist positions rooted in a model of biological difference and aligned to the Nazi tradition, to homogenizing ethnonationalist conceptions that envision a regionally/​ethnically segmented Europe under an ethnopolitical framework, to notions of an “ethnopluralism” (primarily springing from France’s Nouvelle Droite scene) based above all on assumptions of cultural difference (cf. Müller 1994; Salzborn 2005a, 2016; Terkessidis 1995). Although the concrete argumentation of essentialist difference may vary, these models are nonetheless similarly conceived.

Ethnonationalist and “Culturalist” Thought What ethnonationalist conceptions have in common is the quashing of subjectivity and the prioritizing of the collective over the individual. In right-​wing extremism, ethnic identity does not function as an individual-​chosen identity but as a collective-​coerced identity, involving both an internally binding component and an externally segmenting one (cf. Luhmann 1998), and thus a coerced inclusion and a coerced exclusion. This means that, at its root, right-​ wing extremism is always antidemocratic and structurally anti-​liberal, as well as anti-​individualist. Following on the ideas of Helmut Fröchling (1996, 87–​ 122), it is in anti-​individualism and anti-​liberalism that one finds both the key foundations and primary thrusts of far-​right ideology, because its argumentation is targeted in principle against the free and self-​determined individual; it thereby opts against a political order that takes the liberty, equality and fraternity of the French Revolution as its conceptual starting point, one that insists on these values as universally applicable human rights, which in the shape of participatory rights granted to every citizen are to be counted among the inalienable norms of the liberal democratic constitutional state. Hans-​Gerd Jaschke (1994, 55)  similarly sees the terms “Volk” (“folk,” in the sense of ethnonation) and “nature” as representing the “axiomatic fundamental principles” of German far-​right ideology. Nature (along with naturalness) is contrasted against society as an independent existential reality and is framed as being eternal, superhuman and/​or divine. Nature and naturalness are thus seen in far-​right thought as “an inescapable regulator for the way

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that humans live together” (ibid.). This mystification and glorification of the “natural” serves as the conceptual core of antidemocratic thought, in which the primacy of reason and rationality is negated; this in turn provides the theoretical justification underlying the ideology of inequality (cf. ibid.). Here, the “Volk” functions as both historical subject and political object, vouching for the homogeneity of the group and standing as its highest authority. In the understanding of the German far right, the individual is a “servant of his Volk,” to which he is irrevocably bound in ethnonationalist and cultural terms (cf. Jaschke 1994, 56). Right-​ wing extremism therefore covers the entire range of political agendas, ideologies, ways of conduct and modes of articulation, along with concrete actions, regardless of the degree of formal organization, that take for granted the racially or ethnically determined social inequality of human beings, demand the ethnic homogeneity of Völker [pl. of Volk], and reject the equality dictated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; that emphasize the primacy of the community over the individual, take for granted the subordination of the citizen to the national interest, reject the pluralism of values within a liberal democracy, and want to reverse the process of democratization. (Jaschke 1994, 31) One of the main strategies of right-​wing extremist campaigning is to challenge individualism through an anti-​modern and anti-​liberal lens, striving to replace it with an ethnonationalist worldview geared toward an ostensibly homogeneous collective. The ideology of inequality thus aims internally at ethnic/​ ethnonational homogeneity and externally at ethnic separation. As a result of these twin premises, European right-​wing extremism includes both centralist movements as well as regionalist ones, federalist movements as well as imperialist ones (cf. Salzborn and Schiedel 2003). The important thing here is that right-​wing extremism always rests upon elements of geopolitical thinking and territorial ordering (or reordering), because a “Volk” and its territory are considered together—​and not in the democratic sense of a demos, meaning an accidental, changeable and evolving society of individuals living together within a state’s sovereign borders, but in the sense of an ethnos, meaning an essentialized, static and homogeneous collective tied to an existentially understood territory (whether already inhabited or yet to be “settled”). Antisemitism is an essential component of the ethnonationalist worldview, because in what it considers to be Jewish, it sees the fundamental opposite of what it wants: in the eyes of the far right, Jews symbolically stand for modernity and the heritage of the Enlightenment, for liberalism and socialism, for democracy and pluralism, for urbanity and intellectualism (cf. Salzborn 2014a).

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Such antisemitism is expressed in very diverse ways. The explicit ones include denying the Shoah and underestimating the number of Jews murdered by the Nazi regime in order to downplay Nazi crimes, in addition to vandalizing memorial sites and committing violent attacks against Jews (whether actual or only presumed). Antisemitism can also be expressed in less obvious ways, such as in challenging Germany’s historical compensation payments to Israel or in questioning the Israeli state’s right to exist. Other common antisemitic codes include a denial of any responsibility for the Holocaust, criticism of corresponding appraisal and commemoration efforts and the deluded belief in a “Jewish global conspiracy” (as particularly seen in propaganda alleging Jewish control of finance and the media). The conspiracy trope is a fundamentally antisemitic one, in both historical and systematic terms. However, conspiracy fantasies can take numerous forms in today’s right-​wing extremism:  beyond the paradigmatic and still dominant antisemitic ones, there are also those that warn against the ostensible Islamization of Europe. This includes occasional claims that ostensible “elites” are trying to weaken the “ethnically pure Volk” by deliberately encouraging Muslim immigration. Going even further, there are also allegations that “Islam” itself has a master plan for the invasion of Germany, Europe and/​or “the West” in general (cf. Salzborn 2016 for a more detailed analysis). In summary, it can be said that right-​wing extremist thought is sustained by an ideology of inequality, one that denies the individuality and subjectivity of human beings while aiming to reverse the achievements of emancipation and the Enlightenment. Against the model of an open, pluralistic society, the far-​right worldview advocates an ethnonational, homogeneous community—​ alleged to be a “natural” collective, sometimes defined in racist terms, sometimes in culturalist ones. The rejection of pluralism, democracy and individual freedom leads to a hierarchized political understanding, as expressed in antisemitic sentiments, alongside racist, anti-​liberal, patriarchal, anti-​feminist, homophobic, elitist, social Darwinist and authoritarian ones.

Right-​Wing Populism as a Strategy of Right-​Wing Extremism The term “right-​wing populism,” although commonly used by the German media, has been the subject of intense debate among social scientists, focusing on the central question of whether right-​wing populism is an independent political phenomenon that is separate from right-​wing extremism or simply a strategic political option within right-​wing extremism. In the context of European comparative studies, political organizations and parties from different countries are often lumped together into ideological “families,” categorized according to shared ideological features that transcend national

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borders (cf. Salzborn 2012c). In regards to the broad family of “(neo-​)Fascist, (neo-​)Nazi, right-​wing extremist or right-​wing populist parties,” it has recently been argued that “right-​wing populist” parties represent their own distinct subgroup within this family. This argument is firmly rejected here; in fact, one can argue that there is generally little point in labeling particular parties from the far-​right spectrum as “right-​wing populist” solely because of their chosen political strategy (for an overview of the relevant debate, cf. Backes and Moreau 2012; Heinisch and Mazzoleni 2016; Lazaridis et al. 2016; Pirro 2015). The “right-​wing populist” label is simply a particularizing one that points to the strategy chosen by a specific right-​wing extremist stream. Populist right-​wing extremists are simply those who make use of populist tools and strategies. They try to agitate the public by choosing particular topics and pushing them in the media, especially through the use of staged events and a personality cult (as lately exploited by Donald Trump), with the goal of inserting themselves into established public discourses; here, they pick up on current topics of debate and polarize the discussion through targeted polemics. A central strategy is to conjure up an ostensible opposition between the political elite and “the people,” with the far right purporting to advocate for the latter. Far-​right populists claim that they are fighting against the alleged Establishment. As seen from Trump’s election to the American presidency, this strategy can even allow a central figure of the economic elite to present himself as an enemy of the elite. Proponents of populist right-​wing extremism will often try to avoid using explicitly fascist and/​or Nazi vocabulary (although Austria’s FPÖ is an example of a far-​right populist party for which this does not apply, and Germany’s AfD has begun to openly argue for the rehabilitation of Nazi expressions like “völkisch” and “Volksgemeinschaft,” words that promote “ethnonationalist” concerns and the “ethnonational community”; cf. Grigat 2017; Salzborn 2017b). However, a closer examination of the underlying political substance, meaning the core ideological foundations, reveals no significant differences between populist and nonpopulist forms of right-​wing extremism. Populism is therefore no more than a strategic option for right-​wing extremists: after all, the historical Nazis used the same rhetoric to set themselves up as defenders against the alleged political and media elites of the Weimar Republic, wielding words like “Volksverräter” and “Lügenpresse” (“betrayer of the Volk” and “the lying press”) in the battle against democracy itself—​words that are now being deployed again in the present day.

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11 RENAISSANCE OF THE NEW RIGHT IN GERMANY? A DISCUSSION OF NEW RIGHT ELEMENTS IN GERMAN RIGHT-​WING EXTREMISM TODAY  In the scholarly research on right-​wing extremism, the term “New Right” is one of those that has been used in very different ways, and often rather vaguely. This term has at least three different understandings, which frequently overlap. First, in very broad terms, it refers to purely temporal changes in right-​wing extremism; second, in very narrow terms, it refers to all the strands of the far right that consider themselves to be neo-​right-​wing; and third, primarily in analytical terms, it refers to a category going beyond the self-​description of individual actors to also consider the functional question of who or what can or should be described as the “New Right” in right-​wing extremism. The common factor shared by all these ways of differentiation is that they distinguish between a “New Right” and an “old” one (no matter how one might define this), be it in temporal, phenomenological or systemic terms. In a purely phenomenological sense, the term “Neue Rechte” (“New Right”) has been used in Germany since the 1970s, organizationally connected to the 1972 founding of the group Aktion Neue Rechte (“New Right Action”), which affiliated itself with the French Nouvelle Droite. This self-​description of a “New Right” was in agreement with its external analytical categorization, because there actually did exist substantial differences between this “New Right” and other strands of far-​right thought, not only in terms of political strategy but also worldview. The heyday of domestic and international discussions about Germany’s New Right was in the 1990s, although important studies had already appeared in the country somewhat earlier (cf. Assheuer and Sarkowicz 1990; Feit 1987; Fetscher 1983; Gress et  al. 1990; Koelschtzky 1986); internationally, it was the works of Bar-​On (2008, 2013), Minkenberg (1993), O’Meara (2004) and Woods (2007) that have proven pivotal.

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The reason for taking another look at the New Right in the year 2015 is that right-​wing extremism in Germany has been reshaping itself—​once again—​in far-​reaching ways (including the founding and establishment of new media outlets in the New Right spectrum, the development of new forms of action and agitation strategically connected to New Right ideas and the emergence of a new right-​wing party that formally dissociates itself from neo-​Nazism), leading to the question of whether these developments should be interpreted as a renaissance of the New Right or perhaps even as a successful implementation of its political goals through step-​by-​step achievements in the struggle for a right-​wing cultural hegemony. Therefore, the central task of this article is to systematically develop the arguments that speak for and against a renaissance of the New Right in Germany, beginning with (1) a background sketch of the emergence, ideology and strategy of the New Right and (2) an analysis of the rise and fall of the New Right in the 1990s and early 2000s. This then forms the basis for (3) a discussion that incorporates an analysis of recent developments in German right-​ wing extremism, including an examination of primary source materials from the far-​right scene, in order to weigh the arguments for and against the existence of such a renaissance while also relating these to the history, ideology and strategy of the New Right. In fact, these recent developments are quite open to interpretation, since not every temporal change in right-​wing extremism need necessarily be seen as a New Right phenomenon—​it might simply be just another change or innovation, without any particular influence from the New Right.

The Emergence, Ideology and Strategy of the New Right The political goals of the New Right can largely be summarized by two central concepts:  the intellectualization of right-​wing extremism through the formulation of an intellectual metapolitics and the pursuit of a (right-​wing) cultural hegemony (cf. Brauner-​Orthen 2001; Cremet et  al. 1999; Griffin 2000; Pfahl-​Traughber  1998). The metapolitical focus of the New Right highlights the intellectual weaknesses seen in the large parts of the far-​right scene that reject theory and cultural engagement and counters this by emphasizing the need to intellectually substantiate political ideas in order to legitimize them. This intellectualization is built upon the idea of a metapolitics that strives toward a conservative cultural revolution, one in which the New Right is prepared to ally with a “modernity” faithful to Europe’s daring spirit—​that is, to a modernity that frees Europeans from what is dead

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in their culture. At the same time, though, it rejects everything seeking growth not in Europe’s expansive spirit, but in its negation—​specifically in the functional—​and ethnocidal—​culture fostered by liberal market societies. (O’Meara 2004, 51) Here, the metapolitical intellectualization of the New Right also means that völkisch (“ethnonationalist”) positions, which are also supported by the New Right, are to be rigorously justified along with supporting references from the history of ideas, whereby—​as Roger Griffin (2000, 35) has rightly emphasized—​ the metapolitical ideas of the New Right “still contains a residue of fascist ideology in its call for cultural regeneration.” For the New Right, as a loose movement that does not actually want to achieve political power through party politics and the taking up of governmental responsibilities, the goal here is to achieve cultural hegemony, in aiming to establish its positions as the hegemonic ones in society, although this struggle for cultural hegemony always includes culturally pessimistic traits as well (cf. Woods 2007, 25). While a political party might also (in a subtle way) take on its positions, the New Right is still more oriented toward influencing attitudes and value judgments on a wider social level. The emergence of the New Right can be historically traced back to the parliamentary failure of the neo-​Nazi Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD or “National-​Democratic Party of Germany”) in the late 1960s. In the West German federal parliament elections of 1969, the NPD failed by a slight margin to pass the five-​percent minimum hurdle for parliamentary representation, thus proving unable to extend its previous successes in having entered the local parliaments of several states; as a result, the far-​right scene divided into two camps, primarily distinguished by their contrasting analyses of this failure. One camp, represented by extraparliamentary, paramilitary and terrorist organizations, felt that the NPD had been too legalistic, and that in striving toward neo-​Nazi goals, it was a mistake to play by parliamentary rules at all—​instead, democracy itself had to be eliminated through violent overthrow, in order to establish a dictatorial regime based on the direct exercise of force. The other camp traced the NPD failure to its inadequate intellectual basis, and strategically oriented itself not to a battle on the streets, but a battle for minds (cf. Salzborn 2014b, 31–​39): activists needed to persuade people to accept far-​right viewpoints, and had to first conduct a struggle for “cultural hegemony”—​to borrow a concept from the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci—​thus also employing the strategy of political mimicry (as exemplified by the adoption of this term), meaning to copy the terminology and strategies of political opponents and work them into one’s own public discourse in a camouflaged way (cf. Assheuer and Sarkowicz 1990; Feit 1987; Fetscher

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1983; Gessenharter 1994; Gessenharter and Pfeiffer 2004; Gress et al. 1990; Schmidt 2001). Therefore, the New Right in Germany also emerged as a conscious counterpart to the New Left (itself developing in the late 1960s among student movement activists and Vietnam War protesters), adopting certain strategic approaches from them and even plagiarizing them. One of these approaches was to gather the diverse strategies, loose circles and groups and give them the advantages of a large common organizational front; another was to focus strongly on intellectual debates within the media sphere; finally, grouping under a New Right umbrella also meant that existing organizations could preserve their fluid character more so than if they joined a party structure, for example. So it was little wonder that although Aktion New Rechte, founded in 1972 as a spin-​off of the NPD, soon faded into insignificance, the ideas of the New Right continued to be further discussed and promoted in other forums. The 1970s were a decade that witnessed the founding of numerous publications, some of which developed into important mouthpieces for the New Right scene (e.g., the conservatively oriented magazine Criticón), while others hosted influential debates before eventually losing currency, sometimes even disappearing without a trace (such as the nationalist revolutionary magazine wir selbst (“we ourselves”), whose chief ideologist Henning Eichberg was an important influence not only on ideological development in the early phase of the New Right movement but also on building bridges to the green/​alternative scene; cf. Heni 2007). Another factor that should not be underestimated, even though it did not really become influential in the Federal Republic of Germany until the late 1980s and early 1990s, was the French Nouvelle Droite, anchored by the GRECE organization with its chief thinker Alain de Benoist (cf. Bar-​On 2013), who in terms of terminological politics was particularly influential with his concept of ethno-​différencialisme (cf. Spektorowski 2003, 111ff.; Taguieff 1994)—​a terminological variation on the far-​right ideology of ethnic inequality but one that argues in terms of culture rather than race and is connected to the idea of “ethnopluralism,” whose formulation in Germany is largely attributable to Henning Eichberg. Building on the aspect of being (mostly) free of organizational structures while also adapting left-​wing cultural techniques, the political strategy of the New Right is characterized by a political mimicry and an attempt to advance an intellectual metapolitics aiming at a conservative cultural revolution. Here too, the terminological appropriations from the political left are obvious, especially those taken from Antonio Gramsci, the Italian theorist of “cultural hegemony”; the strategic goal is to disguise one’s own intentions through the use of mimicry, meaning the use of superficial (terminological) adaptations for the corresponding environment (e.g., for politics or media), as a way to

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slip into the social mainstream—​not in order to change it in terms of specific details but to shape and define in metapolitical terms the basic mindsets of a society, thereby occupying the zone of (political) culture, which should then lead to—​in the medium to long term—​a political new order along New Right lines. It thus represents a more indirect route, one that also includes seemingly apolitical (or pre-​political) spheres like art and music, as a strategic component beyond the formation of far-​right political parties. With regard to the ideological foundations of the New Right, it should first be emphasized that this “new” label is a rather misleading one, since—​with the exception of the “ethnopluralism” concept—​there is nothing in the New Right worldview that is actually new (cf. Bötticher 2008); in fact, it expressly and explicitly borrows a great deal from the Weimar Republic’s “conservative revolution” (as it was called in a 1950 book by Armin Mohler, a key figure in the effort to unite the various camps of the far-​right milieu), whose protagonists have been rightly seen in retrospect as the ideological forerunners and precursors to National Socialism, while also being intellectually superior to it. Therefore, the intellectual and historical sources referenced within the New Right are the same intellectuals of the Weimar period who shaped—​ whether directly or indirectly—​the basic ideological framework of National Socialism, including thinkers such as Max Hildebert Boehm, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Oswald Spengler, Othmar Spann, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger, Georges Sorel, Edgar Julius Jung, Ernst Niekisch and Ernst Jünger (cf. Herf 1984; Woods 1996). The New Right (like every other stream of right-​wing extremism) assumes the fundamental inequality of people, an idea that continues to seek its justification on ethnic grounds, if no longer on explicitly racial ones; here, its anti-​ universalism leads not to a concept of extermination (as in Nazi ideology), but rather to one of segregation or “ethnopluralism,” meaning the strict spatial separation and geopolitical division of people according to ethnic and cultural criteria. This separation by ethnic categorization is based on a notion of difference that is both homogenizing and sociobiological in nature, looking at people only in terms of ethnic/​cultural identity—​and not their subjectivity or individuality—​so that they are always just part of a collective (which is unalterable), one that stands apart from and in opposition to other collectives; this also implies a hawkish friend-​versus-​foe dichotomy that solidifies into a heroically masculine ideal of the “manly nation” (Kämper 2005). In regard to social structure, there dominates—​in terms of domestic politics—​a völkisch nationalism combined with an authoritarian statism, which translates—​in terms of foreign policy—​into an ethnopluralist concept. Another significant factor in New Right discourses is the aspect of spirituality and holistic thinking, which not only includes organizing the state along organic and hierarchical

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Table 2  The New Right in Germany The New Right Political Goal Cultural hegemony and intellectual metapolitics Origin and development Organization and strategy Inspiration from France’s Nouvelle Droite Counterpart to the New Left Failure of the NPD (late 1960s) Intellectual metapolitics and 1972: Aktion Neue Rechte in Germany conservative “cultural revolution” 1970s: Founding of numerous magazines Loose circles and groups Political “mimicry” Ideology Historical references Anti-​universalism, dictum of inequality Weimar Republic: “conservative Emphasis on difference (friend vs. foe dichotomies) revolution” Postulate of homogeneity, sociobiology Formal dissociation from National Ethnopluralism (as a scheme for Europe) Socialism Völkisch nationalism Authoritarian statism Spirituality and holistic thinking Author’s own research.

lines but also involves a strong turn toward religious concerns, extending from Christian and/​or fundamentalist agendas to—​in particular—​(neo-​)heathen, nature-​centric and/​or Germanic polytheism, in a “quest for a new religion of politics” (Bar-​On 2013, 110).

The Rise and Fall of the New Right Without a doubt, the heyday of the New Right in Germany was the 1990s, which was also a consequence of the “geistig-​moralische Wende” (“intellectual and moral turning point”) that the conservative/​liberal federal coalition government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl (Christian Democratic Union or CDU) had been promoting since 1982, with which the New Right became deeply involved during the 1990s in terms of both personnel and ideology: during the Kohl government, the agenda of taking a völkisch national self-​conception and making it socially acceptable (once again), while also revising official historiography in regards to National Socialism and casting oneself in the victim role, were major political projects not only of the far right but also within the official policy of the German federal government. Therefore, the opportunity structures were quite favorable for the New Right, in that the basic climate in Germany was right-​wing conservative on an official state level; the right to asylum was so radically curtailed in 1993 (with the support of almost every party) that many contemporary critics considered it a de facto abolition;

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and racist murders as well as attacks against asylum-​seeker lodgings were tolerated for a long time by the state authorities, often with just the concern that Germany’s international reputation might be adversely affected. The early 1990s were thus dominated by a political climate in which New Right positions could take root outside the far-​right scene too (cf. Chapin 1997; Heilbrunn 1996; Kurthen and Minkenberg 1995, 185–​91; Minkenberg 1992, 2001; Schönwälder 1995). Within the media, several New Right intellectuals managed to establish a network of mutual and reciprocal public interaction, helping to promulgate their ideas to a wider audience (cf. Butterwegge and Hentges 1999; Junge et al. 1997). In the wake of the 1980s Historikerstreit (“historians’ quarrel”), one of the most important mentors of the New Right in Germany, Karlheinz Weissmann (1995), managed to insert his views on National Socialism into the ranks of the renowned book series Propyläen Geschichte Deutschlands (Propyläen “History of Germany”)—​although his volume was then taken back off the market soon after publication, due to its historical-​revisionist positions. Similarly, New Right and far-​right intellectuals spearheaded widely heard appeals such as the one published on April 7, 1995, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to mark the 50th anniversary of the liberation from National Socialism, entitled “8. Mai 1945—​Gegen das Vergessen” (“8 May 1945—​Against the Forgetting”), a text whose intention was to stylize the Germans as victims while playing down German responsibility for National Socialism—​in itself nothing unusual for the far-​right scene, but this was published in an opinion-​leading national daily and not some minor right-​wing rag, which also highlighted the strategy of blurring the borders between right-​wing extremism and the political mainstream, as the article also included signatures by numerous politicians from the right-​wing conservative wing of the CDU/​CSU and the national-​liberal wing of the FDP (cf. Braunthal 2009, 152–​53; the Christian Social Union is a sister party of the CDU, while the Free Democratic Party is a liberal party that served in coalition with the CDU/​CSU at the time). The 1990s also saw great efforts by the weekly paper Junge Freiheit (“Young Freedom”), considered to be the flagship of the New Right (cf. Braun and Vogt 2007; Kellershohn 1994), to conduct intensive, intellectually ambitious debates and promote topical ideas; meanwhile, monthly magazines in the New Right camp, such as Criticón and Mut (“Courage”), succeeded not only in repeatedly attracting authors from outside the right-​wing spectrum but also in going beyond political and historical topics to intensively examine esthetic and cultural issues too. However, during the mid to late 1990s, the differences within conservatism became once again more apparent—​this may have to do with the fact that one of Germany’s domestic security agencies (that of North Rhine-​Westphalia), charged with monitoring right-​wing extremism,

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began to intensively scrutinize the New Right as a part of this spectrum; meanwhile, there was also a marked increase in scholarly studies focused on specific components of the right-​wing intellectual movement, with in-​depth German-​language investigations into (neo-​)heathen and esoteric aspects (cf. Heller and Maegerle 2001), ecological and “protection of life” aspects (cf. Geden 1996; Wölk 1992), the aspect of the Männerbund or “men’s association” (cf. Heither et al. 1997; Kurth 2004) and the aspect of historical revisionism (cf. Salzborn 2000; Wiegel 2001). However, the central factor may have ultimately been that the “intellectual and moral” dominance of right-​wing conservatism within the CDU/​CSU was not only politically broken by the 1998 change of government to a new coalition of the Social Democrats and the Greens but also by the fact that the openly racist wing of the CDU/​CSU had become increasingly overshadowed (once again) by other more pro-​American voices so that it lost influence within party ranks. Furthermore, one cannot ignore the fact that within the New Right media itself, the level of intellectual argumentation had collapsed in a downright dramatic fashion—​publications like the Junge Freiheit underwent a massive deintellectualization, and all across Germany, the right wing now saw long periods where it failed to recapture the intellectual prowess it had displayed in the 1990s, simply because the standards of debate had become (once again) much more primitive and simpleminded. One of the biggest, most ambitious works of the New Right, the Lexikon des Konservatismus (“Lexicon of Conservatism,” 1996, edited by Criticón chief Caspar von Schrenck-​Notzing), which was particularly distinguished by its attempt to completely erase the lines between conservatism and right-​wing extremism while also trying to develop a dominant voice in the esthetic/​cultural arena, was not only relegated to a minor Austrian publishing house, it also largely fell flat in the right-​wing scene; in a review dated May 5, 1997, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung—​which just a few years earlier had still functioned as an important soapbox for New Right intellectuals to publicize their ideas—​it received just a few lines of notice pouring scorn on its one-​sidedness, even coining a word like “schwachbeinig” (“weak-​legged”) to describe it. After the late 1990s, the significance of the New Right continued shifting, which was also reflected in social science literature, with volumes such as Rechtsextremismus und Neue Rechte in Deutschland:  Neuvermessung eines politisch-​ideologischen Raumes? (“Right-​ Wing Extremism and the New Right in Germany:  the Remapping of a Political/​Ideological Space?,” Wolfgang Gessenharter and Hartmut Fröchling, eds., 1998)  and Die Neue Rechte—​eine Gefahr für die Demokratie? (“The New Right—​A Danger for Democracy?,” Wolfgang Gessenharter and Thomas Pfeiffer, eds., 2004) examining in particular the functional aspects of the New Right. For example, did it function

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as a bridge—​was it a connective link between the far right and conservatism? Should the New Right be seen as a far-​right strand of conservatism—​or was it a strand of right-​wing extremism, originally independent of conservatism? Or was it actually fluctuating between all these scenes, essentially focused on inserting and positioning its culturalist and völkisch viewpoints within as many political scenes as possible—​was it therefore, to borrow a term from the relevant debates, perhaps a “political chameleon”? Here, the debate led back to a topic that had been repeatedly discussed by researchers investigating right-​wing extremism in Germany—​the topic of the so-​called “gray zone” or “bridging spectrum.” In other words, the spectrum of organizations that do not consider themselves part of right-​wing extremism, but which agree ideologically with far-​right positions on many significant points, and which, through overlapping organizations and memberships, consistently build bridges between conservatism and right-​wing extremism. The concept of the “gray zone” emphasizes the continuous (ideological) gradation from right-​wing extremism to the political mainstream (but is an analytically weak concept, since a gray zone could ultimately be anything, making it de facto nothing; cf. Salzborn 2012c), while the concept of the “bridging spectrum” emphasizes the function of certain groups in establishing right-​ wing extremism within the mainstream of society. The two most important social milieus that structurally fall within this spectrum while also possessing a longer ideological and organizational tradition are the Vertriebenenverbände (“expellee associations”) (cf. Salzborn 2000, 2001) and certain student fraternities, particularly the Burschenschaften (“brotherhoods”), the Gildenschaften (“guilds”) and those belonging to the Verband der Vereine Deutscher Studenten (“Federation of German Student Associations”) (cf. Heither et  al. 1997, cf. also the Konservatismus und Wissenschaft or “Conservatism and Academia” project of  2000). Both milieus share a strong (and völkisch) respect for tradition, a reactionary family and gender-​role paradigm that is both antifeminist and homophobic, an adherence to organizational and social hierarchies, a rejection of universality stemming from racist and/​or ethnopluralist views resulting in a völkisch conception of humans and society, as well as a marked tendency toward historical revisionist positions, particularly in terms of inverting perpetrator/​ victim relationships. Both scenes, which also frequently overlap with organized right-​wing extremism in terms of membership, thus concur with major aspects of the New Right worldview; although their ideas may not descend from the same lines of tradition, they nonetheless fulfill the same sociostructural functions as the ideological agenda subscribed to by the New Right. Research into German right-​wing extremism has thus increasingly turned (once again) toward the concept of an intellectual bridging spectrum—​one that may not

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describe itself as part of the New Right but is nonetheless very close to it in ideological terms (cf. Butterwegge et  al. 2002; Schmidt 2001; see also Weiß 2011).

The New Rise of the New Right: Strategies between Metapolitics and the Pursuit of Cultural Hegemony Although the late 1990s and early 2000s were a time of decline for the New Right in Germany, as reflected in its marginalization in the public sphere, it was also a time of internal regrouping that saw the reorganization of New Right structures:  far from the public spotlight, new organizations and magazines were founded, new forms of activist action were developed and there were serious discussions about how right-​wing cultural hegemony might be achieved through an intellectual metapolitics aimed at a conservative cultural revolution. These developments can be systemically categorized into two general areas. On the one hand, there was the founding and cultivation of new publication outlets and organizational structures within the New Right spectrum, along with the development of new forms of public action and agitation—​such as a radically modified public demonstration strategy—​which helped reestablish public awareness of New Right positions. On the other hand, there emerged a new right-​wing party called Alternative für Deutschland (AfD or “Alternative for Germany”) that formally dissociated itself from neo-​Nazism. However, these two sides also reflected substantial differences of opinion within the New Right scene (and still do), as there are clear contradictions between a strategy purely oriented toward changing the cultural framework and one oriented toward parliamentary party politics. Since the 2000s, Germany’s New Right spectrum has seen a growing conflict between two central paradigms: while the paradigm of intellectualization through metapolitics ultimately implies an unconditional eschewal of parliamentarianism, the paradigm of achieving cultural hegemony ultimately aims at the unconditional pursuit of influence, no matter how. As a result, it is hotly debated whether a right-​wing party can be a valid component of New Right strategies. Intellectualization through Metapolitics: The Paradigm of Unconditionally Eschewing Parliamentarianism In the milieu surrounding the weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit—​which in the 1990s was the flagship of the New Right and heavily responsible for spreading völkisch nationalism within the public sphere—​there developed in the early 2000s, after a temporary intellectual decline at the paper, several projects toward a reorganization of the New Right. Here, the Junge Freiheit itself took

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on the function (as before) of structuring debates and integrating different right-​wing strands, while also fulfilling the role of a leading right-​wing media outlet, with some 22,000 copies sold weekly (as of March 2014—​compared to a little over 15,000 in early 2008). The further evolution of the New Right after the turn of the millennium took place in two distinct stages: the first involved the creation of new institutions and organizations, particularly the Institut für Staatspolitik (“Institute for State Policy” or IfS) and the Bibliothek des Konservatismus (“Library of Conservatism”) as well as the founding of new magazine projects, particularly Sezession (“Secession”) and Blaue Narzisse (“Blue Narcissus”); the second stage involved the development and implementation of new forms of social movements from the right, particularly in the adaptation of the “Identitarian movement” for the German context and the emergence of the racist Pegida movement (Pegida is an acronym meaning “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West”). The phase of reorganizing internal structures in order to remedy the real-​world marginalization of the New Right around the turn of the millennium was thus followed by a later phase that translated the resulting ideological and strategic redevelopments into concrete social movements. In all these cases, the paradigm of unconditionally eschewing parliamentarianism retains its central importance, although Pegida has objectively softened this stance by cooperating with the AfD, thus also becoming part of a more ambiguous strategy of metapolitics—​one that remains controversial within the New Right scene. The two most important, newly created sites of New Right strategy were and are the Institut für Staatspolitik and the Bibliothek des Konservatismus. The Institut für Staatspolitik, which has absolutely no connection to any university (the word “Institut” is used in Germany almost exclusively by university institutes, although it is not a legally protected label; its use by the IfS is an example of strategic mimicry by the New Right, implying—​especially to the uninformed observer—​that it works academically on the university level), was founded in May 2000, largely on the initiative of three Gildenschaft members:  Dieter Stein, chief editor at the Junge Freiheit and member of the Freiburg Gildenschaft; Karlheinz Weissmann, top ideologist of the New Right and member of the Göttingen Gildenschaft; and Götz Kubitschek, a long-​ standing spokesperson of the Deutsche Gildenschaft and sometime chief commentator in the area of “Security and Military” at the Junge Freiheit (cf. Kellershohn 2001, 1). Kubitschek became the general manager of the IfS as well as the chief editor of both Sezession and newly established publishing house “Edition Antaios.” The IfS focuses on five core subject areas: “State and Society,” “Politics and Identity,” “Immigration and Integration,” “Education and Training” and “War and Crisis,” while also conducting summer and winter academies on a

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regular basis and publishing the most important lectures held there in the form of essays and brochures (cf. Kellershohn 2009). Within the New Right spectrum, the Institut für Staatspolitik has the function of “scholarship and education, as well as political and media consulting,” as stated by Helmut Kellershohn (2001, 1), an expert in far-​right media and New Right networks—​whereby the IfS has also undertaken an operational division of labor with the Junge Freiheit and Edition Antaios, in which the Junge Freiheit creates media publicity, while Edition Antaios focuses on the “publication of research results that have emerged in the context of this network.” Another building block of the New Right institutional network in Germany is the Bibliothek des Konservatismus, which was founded in 2000 like the IfS. The Bibliothek des Konservatismus was created at the instigation of Caspar von Schrenck-​Notzing, former head of Criticón, who established the nonprofit Förderstiftung Konservative Bildung und Forschung (“Foundation for Conservative Education and Research” or FKBF) in the year 2000, before interlocking it with the Junge Freiheit by passing on the foundation’s chairmanship in 2007 to Dieter Stein, the newspaper’s chief editor. The FKBF initially presided over some 15,000 volumes from Schrenck-​Notzing’s private library, in addition to the archive of Criticón, but after attracting a number of donations, it eventually inaugurated in 2011 a new Bibliothek des Konservatismus in central Berlin, which now holds extensive holdings of literature on three floors while also organizing lecture events, releasing its own publications and pursuing the long-​term goal of setting up “a conservative think tank with various types of events, perhaps even with an academy or a higher-​education offshoot” (Fenske 2014, 5). The stated goal is to equip the “conservative elite of tomorrow” with the appropriate “intellectual tools” (cf. Moritz 2014, 5); for the New Right project—​which here receives the “conservative” label, with a strong conceptual orientation toward the appellation of the Weimar Republic’s “conservative revolution”—​this meant the creation of a space for an intellectualization through metapolitics. After media outlets like Criticón and wir selbst ceased publication—​two magazines that had deeply and decisively influenced the intellectual debates of the New Right, particularly in the 1980s—​there emerged a glaring gap in the New Right scene so that in the early 2000s, there was no longer a media platform that could organize and structure the deeper intellectual discussion of New Right topics, away from the distractions of momentary short-​term concerns. This gap would be filled by Sezession, published by the IfS since 2003, starting with four issues per year and later expanding to six per year. As an intellectual and metapolitical debating platform for the New Right, it works toward updating the theories of the Weimar Republic’s “conservative revolution” while integrating its ideas into today’s political and social debates. The

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first edition of Sezession appeared in April 2003, with an editorial that opened with a sentence reminiscent of Carl Schmitt: “The benefit of the emergency situation is that it makes the facts more clearly visible” (Weißmann 2003, 1). Even though Karlheinz Weissmann, the chief ideologist and most important mentor of the New Right in today’s Germany, only wrote this to introduce an issue that was nominally focused on the topic of Ernst Jünger—​but in fact was only about war—​this sentence could be read as emblematic of Sezession’s overall concerns. True to the opening sentence in Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology (2008 [1922]), according to which sovereign is he who decides on the Ausnahmezustand (a word that can be translated as both “exceptional case” and “state of emergency”), Weissmann points here to the concerns of the German and European far right about the “emergency situation” in which it sees itself ever since the world’s political and geostrategic cartography was forever altered by 9/​11—​in fact, the same anti-​American and Eurocentric concerns of a New Right intelligentsia, one that is confronted by fundamentally new challenges posed by Islam and Islamism, not only in religious terms but especially in political ones. In this context, the general of goal of Sezession is a resacralization of politics, which is not the same as simply taking back or reversing the processes of the Enlightenment and secularization in Germany and Europe—​instead, it incorporates these into the formulation of its worldview, by turning not only against the process of secularization but also against the individualization of religion. The agenda of Sezession is directed against both a “godless world” (Gerlich 2011, 29)  and a “ ‘Judeo-​Christian’ inspired German reformation” (ibid.), standing instead for a “a catholicity formulated in ‘political form’ ” (ibid.). A similar agenda, if however on the intellectual level of an ambitious school newspaper, is pursued by Blaue Narzisse (originally founded in 2004 as a school newspaper in the east German city of Chemnitz), which also promotes the popularization of New Right ideas, but instead of addressing readers who are already convinced by New Right ideology and firmly integrated into its scene (like the readers of Sezession), it speaks to younger people who may be receptive to New Right ideology but are not yet committed to it or integrated into its milieu. Even though Blaue Narzisse has occasionally appeared in print form, its main field of operation is actually online, where New Right views can be communicated in a low-​threshold manner and thus find recipients who might have never intentionally come into contact with the New Right, but in this way get their first exposure to the scene, almost as if by accident. Therefore, in the New Right network of today’s Germany, Blaue Narzisse represents a kind of gateway institution for spreading agitation and propaganda, one that offers a potential entry point to the New Right on a lower intellectual level while still covering the main topics and strategies.

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A similar assessment could be applied to the emergence of Germany’s “Identitarian movement,” which—​like Germany’s New Right in the 1970s—​ was strongly inspired by developments seen in France. Naming itself “Identitäre Bewegung Deutschland,” it first emerged as a virtual presence in October 2012 on Facebook and considers itself an offshoot of the French youth organization Génération Identitaire, proclaiming—​true to the New Right strategy of mimicry—​a formal dissociation from openly Nazi positions (and also from left-​wing positions, but since this is already obvious and self-​evident from its agenda, this latter aspect simply reflects a conscious strategy of treating both ends equally through analogy; in any case, the main concern is still to avoid giving observers any impression of closeness to right-​wing extremism). Gudrun Hentges et  al. (2014) have conducted a systematic analysis examining the online and offline activities of the “Identitäre Bewegung” in Germany. Just like at Blaue Narzisse, the “Identitarians” are mainly focused on the internet, which in itself shows that this is not truly a “social movement,” due to its paucity of real-​world political practice; however, as a medium for agitating otherwise nonparticipatory persons who nonetheless share fundamentally right-​wing worldviews, the internet is an ideal tool for binding them more closely to New Right ways of thinking. Here, the strategy of the Identitarians is to orchestrate real-​life actions (especially against immigration) that are as spectacular as possible, in order to film them for online marketing—​these are staged in way that makes it hardly noticeable that the actual “movement” can barely manage to draw more than a handful of activists to its events, but these are nonetheless framed by the camera as a large movement: The internet allows people with more modest organizational resources to simulate a constant flow of protest happenings that are maintained both within and beyond the local region—​and even networked both transnationally and internationally—​so that a discrepancy emerges between the actual actions “on the streets,” which are sometimes conducted by no more than a dozen activists, and the virtual impact that these actions enjoy through viral distribution. (Hentges et al. 2014, 9) Whereas the “Identitäre Bewegung” therefore represents something like the direct-​action arm of the New Right, intended to make New Right topics such as identity politics, homeland politics and anti-​immigration agitation particularly attractive for youth by adapting modern communication methods to this end, Pegida functions as a propaganda tool against immigration and encouraging völkisch nationalism, also with enormous media effectiveness, due to the fact that Pegida demonstrations are staged as large-​scale events. The two leading media outlets in the right-​wing spectrum have even outdone

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themselves in their superlatives, which say more about New Right dreams than political reality: the Junge Freiheit calls Pegida a “mass movement” that is “driving the political world forward” (Hoffgaard 2014, 4), while the Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung even claims that “Germany is taking to the streets” (Heckel 2014d, 1), predicting that the year 2014 will have “revolutionized Germany’s political landscape in a potentially more fundamental way than people have been willing to recognize until now.” An interesting aspect is that both the Identitarians and Pegida have tried to present themselves as mass movements:  the Identitarians suggest this in the framing of their activist events and Pegida members through their ability to mobilize several thousand people, at times even 10,000, to attend real-​life demonstrations over several weeks in one German city, Dresden—​however, measured against the 80 million citizens of Germany, this still remains a marginal phenomenon in objective terms, especially since this “movement” has basically been limited to one city (all attempts to demonstrate in other cities have ultimately fizzled out, with participant numbers ranging from two to three figures). It may not be so surprising that the east German city of Dresden was the crystallization nucleus for the racist Pegida movement, considering that the city is a stronghold of right-​wing extremism—​for example, the city gave 27,861 of its “second votes” (German voters have two votes, the first for a constituency representative and the second for a party list) to the far-​right NPD and AfD parties during the latest state parliament elections of August 2014. The new thing about the Pegida demonstrations in Dresden was that they took place on a weekly basis, with the activists initially refusing to speak to the media, let alone academic scholars—​because in the fantastical conspiracy theories of Pegida followers, the democratic media was made up of the “Lügenpresse” (“lying press”). Whereas these democratic media outlets were vilified as the “Lügenpresse” simply because they did not shy from labeling racist self-​interests as such, propagandistic media outlets such as dubious blogs and Russian TV were glorified—​because these declared Pegida’s delusions to be true. And Pegida founder Lutz Bachmann was also open to giving a full-​ page interview in the Junge Freiheit (cf. Bachmann 2014, 3) and in Sezession (cf. Bachmann 2015, 18)—​but certainly not to democratic media outlets. While they did include the participation of numerous organized right-​ wing extremists and neo-​Nazis (who also assisted with further mobilization), Pegida’s demonstrations were not a genuinely New Right project (in contrast to the activist actions of the Identitarians)—​nonetheless, they did in fact promote New Right concerns with great public impact: in favor of völkisch identity and protectionist nationalism and against immigration, Enlightenment values and feminism. In this context, Pegida’s use of the catchword “Islamization” was only a pretext for inserting racist and völkisch positions back into the

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public sphere (Salzborn 2015a). In December 2014 and January 2015, Hans Vorländer of the Dresden University of Technology led an empirical study conducted at several Pegida events, which showed that the “typical” Pegida demonstrator is from the middle class, is well educated, has a slightly above-​ average income for the region and is employed; furthermore, he is male, 48 years old and has no religious or party affiliations. However, only a quarter of these interviewees are actually motivated by the topics of “Islam, Islamism or Islamization” (Vorländer 2015). An exploratory study led by Franz Walter at the Göttingen Institute of Democracy Research has essentially confirmed these findings, furthermore showing that political sympathies among Pegida followers lie overwhelmingly with the AfD (Walter 2015). Therefore, while Pegida is a movement generally characterized by racism and conspiracy fantasies, it is nonetheless a very heterogeneous one, uniting many different right-​wing sectors, and thus cannot be simply bracketed with the New Right. Still, the New Right hopes vested in movements like Pegida are immense. The Junge Freiheit predicts that in the future, Pegida could “form a kind of prepolitical space; not identical, but similar to the AfD support base. A gathering place for those who no longer feel represented or understood by the established parties; a kind of German ‘Tea Party,’ which could very well gain political influence through its agenda setting” (Vollradt 2015, 2). And Blaue Narzisse hopes that from Pegida will “emanate an impetus for the political culture in Germany: come out on the streets and show what you support!” (Menzel 2015, 6). Cultural Hegemony: The Paradigm of the Unconditional Pursuit of Influence Although the New Right of the Federal Republic of Germany has constantly experienced both highs and lows in its history, there certainly have been specific instances of success, particularly in terms of shaping public opinion—​the most obvious being the New Right rallying cry against an ostensible “political correctness,” which was introduced as a campaign by the weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit in the 1990s, with claims that certain things could not be openly said in Germany; since then, this idea has found currency far beyond the right-​ wing scene, becoming completely disconnected from its far-​right origins as an element in the New Right strategy of pursuing cultural hegemony. However, the successes of the New Right have thus far been limited to a creeping insertion of certain worldview paradigms into the general discourse—​and has never extended to an actual acquisition of political power. This changed with the emergence of the party Alternative für Deutschland, as the right-​wing fringe is now witnessing for the first time the establishment of a party that formally

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dissociates itself from National Socialism (unlike the NPD) while at the same time incorporating a whole series of New Right ideological set pieces into its worldview—​although this is also a very heterogeneous one and anything but consistent. With the European Parliament elections of 2014, the AfD won 7.1 percent of German votes, thus entering the assembly with seven seats; this was followed by further successes in several state parliament elections, in Germany’s eastern states of Saxony (9.7 percent, 14 seats), Brandenburg (12.2 percent, 11 seats) and Thuringia (10.6  percent, 11 seats), as well as the western city-​state of Hamburg (6.1  percent, 8 seats). Whether this means that the party is now well established is debatable (cf. Arzheimer 2015), as the right-​wing fringe of Germany’s party spectrum has already seen politically similar, decidedly anti-​EU projects often enough (such as the Bund freier Bürger, the Republikaner and the Pro Deutsche Mitte—​Initiative Pro D-​Mark, meaning respectively the “League of Free Citizens,” the “Republicans” and “Pro German Center—​ Pro Deutschmark Initiative”), but these have always had much smaller financial resources and much less media influence than the AfD enjoys today. The framework of the AfD platform is built on the claim of ideological freedom. The AfD presents itself as the party of expertise and economic competence; even the biographical blend of party head Bernd Lucke, as a macroeconomics professor and devout Reformed Church member, points to the party’s ideological amalgamation of market fundamentalism and right-​ wing conservatism. The ideology of the AfD is comprised of highly diverse set pieces from various different schools of thought in neoliberalism and conservatism, but they are all connected by their support for market fundamentalism and opposition to government intervention, alongside positions that are anti-​ egalitarian and opposed to social welfare (cf. AfD 2014a, 2014b). The ideological foundation of the AfD is not simply neoliberal, but also incorporates elements of conservatism, so that its market fundamentalism is not paired with a political liberalism. While the freedom of the market and the freedom to realize company profits are radically promoted (alongside an agitation against banks and governments, tinged with streaks of conspiracy theory), the freedoms of the individual are to be highly restricted—​ this is shown in terms of immigration policies, the rejection of same-​sex civil unions and the glorification of traditional family models. The AfD demands freedom of opinion only in its own campaign against an ostensible “political correctness” (cf. AfD 2014a, 3; 2014c, 1), but this same freedom is then effectively repudiated in regards to the many demonstrators who utilize their right to protest against the AfD. Meanwhile, the AfD wants to leverage and privatize profits while nationalizing the associated costs and risks, as a way of ostensibly disburdening the

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“common man”—​but in fact, this simply increases the profits of corporations while ultimately burdening the common taxpayer (AfD 2014a, 3–​7). Here, the rhetorical trick of the AfD is to style itself a party of anti-​ideologists, technocrats and experts. In this context, David Bebnowski (2013, 157) has astutely pointed out that economic questions are of course never “non-​ideological,” and that, on the contrary, the economic school of thought ideologically supported by the AfD is precisely what caused the current economic crisis—​a predicament caused not by too much governmental control of the economy but, rather, too little of it. According to Bebnowski (2013, 158), there is no such thing as “neutral economic expertise” or “non-​ideological economic truth.” At the same time, these ideologues of economic technocracy based upon an ostensibly neutral expertise have also been flirting with the concept of a guided and directed democracy in which decisions are made by ostensibly neutral experts, and not by general majorities. In fact, there is no way to democratically legitimize such experts, which stands in direct contradiction with the AfD desire to increase legitimacy through direct democracy:  these two stances are mutually exclusive, while also highlighting the inability of the AfD to acknowledge that its own position of conservatism and market fundamentalism is actually a hegemonic one—​instead, it insinuates that this stance is actually the “true” will of the people (cf. AfD 2014a, 1–​3; 2014b, 8–​12). In terms of the history of ideas, this argument, in which direct democracy is demanded by those who also pretend to know in advance what the direct democratic voting results should be and will be, is based on the ideas of Carl Schmitt—​the most important protagonist of the Weimar Republic’s “conservative revolution” and one of the key mentors of National Socialism. Schmitt (1988 [1923], 2004 [1932]) was highly critical of the Weimar parliamentary system and positioned two concepts in opposition to representative democracy: a demand for increased direct democracy and a figure who was capable of sensing the “people’s will” so that the people would no longer need to vote at all, precisely because its will could be “sensed.” Such a model results in not only the suspension of broad-​based participation but also the installation of a powerful leader in opposition to democracy (cf. Salzborn 2015b, 53–​75). A major element in this kind of suspension is the economization of politics. The foundation of democracy is conflict itself, since society contains mutually conflicting interests that cannot be simply neutralized; whoever argues in favor of economizing politics is ultimately proposing to restrict the democratic power of legitimized bodies, meaning political parties, parliaments and governments. This stance is most obvious in the slogan seen on an AfD campaign poster for the 2014 European Parliament elections: “All power emanates from the people. When will that happen here?” Here, the AfD is suggesting that Germany is a place where power does not emanate from the people,

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ignoring the fact that party pluralism is in itself the expression of popular sovereignty. In contrast, those who would delegate decision-​making to an ostensibly neutral “expertocracy” are ultimately establishing against the demos a pseudo-​expert exorbitant power that has been legitimated by nothing. In the European context, the AfD strives for a “strong and self-​confident Germany” (AfD 2014b, 2), as stated in its EU election program, a Germany whose political and especially economic dominance is to be strengthened in its relations with the European Union; however, the desire is to only profit from the opportunities of Europe, and not to shoulder a share of the risks, as illustrated by the text of yet another election poster (also underlaid with conspiracy fantasies): “Greeks suffer. Germans pay. Banks cash in.” Kai Arzheimer (2015, 17) has shown through his quantitative and qualitative analysis that “the AfD is indeed located at the far-​right end of Germany’s political spectrum because of its nationalism, its stance against state support for sexual diversity and gender mainstreaming, and its market liberalism.” Sebastian Friedrich (2015, 101) describes a “neoconservative hegemony project” pursued by the AfD, while highlighting in particular the AfD “media alliance” with the weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit, as well as far-​right blogs such as Politically Incorrect and Die freie Welt (“The Free World”). Friedrich (2015, 103) also points out the AfD’s close cooperation with Pegida, making it the first and only party in federal German parliamentary politics to publicly seek direct dialogue with the racist Pegida movement, thereby successfully positioning it as a publicly acceptable interlocutor. Indeed, as Helmut Kellershohn (2014) has also pointed out, the Junge Freiheit has effectively “offered itself as an unofficial mouthpiece of the AfD,” which is demonstrated by the fact that it regularly publishes full-​page interviews with AfD officeholders (cf. Gauland 2015; Höcke 2014; Petry 2014), alongside guest articles (cf. Gauland 2014) and the party’s advertisements. The chief editor of the Junge Freiheit also sees the AfD as an expression of growing “signs of a huge deficit in political representation” (Stein 2015, 1), while Karlheinz Weissmann, a regular columnist at the paper and a key thinker in Germany’s New Right scene, highlights not only the “legitimacy in principal” of a movement like the AfD but also considers the party to be the expression of a “portent of major changes, one that is as necessary as it was predictable”: What is meant here is not only the oncoming economic collapse, or the latency of the Euro crisis, but also the gradual questioning of the fraudulent modus vivendi upon which the state doctrine of recent decades has been based: Europe and ties to the West as a definitive solution to the German Question, the nation-​state as an anachronism, checkbook diplomacy and the creation of peace without weapons, an existence hemmed

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in by friends, economy as destiny, the welfare state as a matter of course, immigration as an asset, consumerism as a sedative, Auschwitz as a founding myth, the Sonderweg [Germany’s “path of uniqueness”] as the cause of all evil on Earth. None of this will endure, and in the upcoming struggles for resources, it will be not only over material resources, but also and especially intellectual ones.” (Weißmann 2014, 2) With these words—​which include an openly antisemitic stance—​Weissmann brings New Right calls for a conservative cultural revolution as an anti-​ Enlightenment counterrevolution into direct relationship with the AfD, while also going a step beyond New Right hopes for the party, beyond its hopes for a shift in cultural hegemony. Besides the Junge Freiheit, the other right-​wing weekly newspaper is the Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung (“Prussian General Newspaper,” in imitation of the more famous Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), which is the mouthpiece of the Landsmannschaft Ostpreussen (“Compatriots’ Association of East Prussia”), one of the major groups within the Bund der Vertriebenen (“Federation of Expellees”); with its long-​standing ties to the expellee milieu in the Federal Republic of Germany and thus its structural influence in a large scene ranging from conservatism to right-​wing extremism, the newspaper has not only enjoyed stable circulation numbers in the five-​figure region for the past few decades, it also speaks to a broad spectrum on the right-​wing fringe, although always in competition with the Junge Freiheit for the role of opinion leader in right-​wing intellectual circles. The Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung favors the AfD in its rejection of the “established parties,” which are allegedly ignoring the “worries of the voters”—​it furthermore writes of an “alienation from established parties” (Heckel 2014a, 1). The paper states that the AfD stands for a “new self-​ confidence to the right of center,” representing those who “no longer believe in the media’s diversity of opinions anyway” and who consider themselves neglected by the “concentrated network of the ‘system-​supporting media’ ” (Heckel 2014c, 1). Here, the AfD represents the starting point for a “reorganization of the German party system” (Heckel 2014a, 1) and an “epoch-​making transformation” (Heckel 2014b, 1). Since “immigration has almost completely slipped away from political control,” “most Germans will be motivated to elect the new party,” because the AfD is responding to the “uncontrolled stream of immigrants” (Heckel 2014b, 1) and an “immigration and asylum practice going out of control” (Heckel 2014a, 1). In the two opinion-​leading weekly newspapers addressing the right-​wing milieu between conservatism and right-​wing extremism, both of which have repeatedly functioned as important mouthpieces for New Right positions and

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still do, there has been massive support for the implementation of New Right ideas by and through the AfD—​however, there still remains a fundamental note of skepticism, more at the Junge Freiheit than at the Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung, which can be entirely explained by the fact that the AfD could still experience parliamentary failure at any time, meaning that one has bet on the wrong horse. And in the case of the Junge Freiheit, this would not be the first time that a small right-​wing party is declared the shining hope for New Right fantasies of cultural revolution and cultural hegemony: the Republikaner, followed sympathetically for years, have now faded into insignificance, while the Bund freier Bürger, in which the Junge Freiheit invested much hope in the 1990s, never achieved structural significance and so was not even noticed outside of Germany.

Conclusion: Does the New Right Still Exist—​or Exist Again—​in Germany? In analyzing New Right politics, there is a cardinal error that must be avoided:  mistaking appearance for reality. After all, part of the New Right strategy involves never admitting to its own marginalities, even where these can be substantiated, while generally marketing its own activities to the public as only being successful. In this sense, institutional projects like the Institut für Staatspolitik and the Bibliothek des Konservatismus, as well as media projects from Sezession to Blaue Narzisse, could also be interpreted as self-​reflecting vanity projects whose primary purpose is to support the narcissistic belief of New Right protagonists (in most cases having intellectual biographies marked by failure) that they possess omnipotent intellectual greatness after all. However, beyond this sober realism, it can also be said that the New Right in today’s Germany once again possesses institutional structures disseminating ideas that can either directly initiate social movements, such as the Identitarians, or else significantly influence them, as in the case of Pegida—​however, this is not because these movements are themselves intellectually oriented, let alone metapolitically so. Indeed, Pegida is anything but intellectual in its open racism, and the Identitarians have been conducting actions that are in fact more or less openly neo-​Nazi in character, albeit with modified and modernized marketing strategies. In any case, both movements have been intensively engaged with operating in the public sphere, thereby creating a disproportionately large media presence for New Right concerns, which in itself corresponds to its actual strategy of deploying a conservative cultural metapolitics. The fact that the AfD is now represented—​at least for the time being—​as a party in several of Germany’s local state parliaments, where it can stand for the central demands of the New Right, should be considered as ambiguous in regards to

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New Right successes: while its interests in the struggle for cultural hegemony are further consolidated with the help of the AfD, the party itself can certainly not be seen as an expression of intellectual metapolitics—​its agenda is too incoherent, its personnel structure too open to neo-​Nazi actors. Therefore, it must be acknowledged that the New Right in Germany, after a phase of decline and temporary insignificance, has restructured itself in terms of organization and agitation while reorganizing itself in various operational fields of activity (public impact, ideological and strategic discussions, agitation and publicity, propaganda and self-​marketing), in regards to both internally interconnecting factors and externally mobilizing ones. With the AfD, as well as movements like Pegida, a public channel has been created that can open perspectives for a quantitative expansion of efforts to encourage the acceptance of New Right positions. However, these organizations in no way fulfill New Right aspirations to intellectuality, let alone cultural metapolitics, so that it will be interesting to see whether the short-​term successes of New Right strategies will falter on precisely this contradiction, when the camouflaging strategy—​according to which personal sympathies for National Socialism need to be hidden from public view—​finally collapses. After all, it is no accident that Pegida founder Lutz Bachmann was publicly toppled by a photo in which he had styled himself to look like Hitler (with toothbrush mustache and side parting), further adding the caption “He’s back!”—​thereby revealing his true motives behind the Pegida facade, with its initial veneer of public respectability. Thus, behind the New Right mask, one always finds National Socialism also peeking through.

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“Immortalising the Mortal God:  Hobbes, Schmitt, and the Ambivalent Foundations of the Modern State.” In: Review of History and Political Science, No. 1/​2015. “Guardian of Democracy? Theoretical Aspects of Police Roles and Functions in Democracy.” In: European Journal of Policing Studies, No. 2/​2014. “The Will of the People? Carl Schmitt and Jean-​Jacques Rousseau on a Key Question in Democratic Theory.” In: Democratic Theory, No. 1/​2017. “No Sovereignty without Freedom:  Machiavelli, Hobbes and the Global Order in the Twenty-​First Century.” In:  Theoria:  A Journal of Social and Political Theory, No. 144/​2015. “The Concept of Ethnic Minorities:  International Law and the German-​ Austrian Response.” In: Behemoth: A Journal on Civilisation, No. 3/​2009. “The German Myth of a Victim Nation: (Re-​)presenting Germans as Victims in the New Debate on Their Flight and Expulsion from Eastern Europe.” In: A Nation of Victims? Representations of German Wartime Suffering from 1945 to the Present. Edited by Helmut Schmitz. Amsterdam/​New York, 2007. “Antisemitism in Eastern Europe:  Theoretical Reflections in Comparative Perspective.” In: Antisemitism in Eastern Europe: History and Present in Comparison. Edited by Hans-​Christian Petersen and Samuel Salzborn. Frankfurt, 2010. “Right-​Wing Extremism and Right-​Wing Populism: Conceptual Foundations.” In:  Stifled Progress—​International Perspectives on Social Work and Social Policy in the Era of Right-​Wing Populism. Edited by Jörg Fischer and Kerry Dunn. Opladen, 2019. “Renaissance of the New Right in Germany? A  Discussion of New Right Elements in German Right-​Wing Extremism Today.” In: German Politics and Society, No. 119/​2016.

208

209

INDEX

Page numbers in bold indicate index citation to text within tables. 9/​11 4, 68, 171 absolute rule 13, 17, 70 absolute sovereignty 19–​23, 31 absolute state 22–​23 absolutism 22, 152 abstraction 5–​6, 144–​46 Adorno, Theodor W. on antisemitism 143, 145 on Enlightenment 4–​6 on freedom 81 on German victim discourse 137 on suffering 82 on universal wrong, concept of  131 AfD: see Alternative für Deutschland (AfD/​Alternative for Germany) agitation 1, 160, 168, 171, 172, 175, 180 Almond, Gabriel A. 7 Alternative für Deutschland (AfD/​Alternative for Germany) 158, 168, 169, 173–​80 Althaus, Horst 15–​16 Aly, Götz 59 ambivalence 5, 15, 147 of abstract socialization 14 between freedom and authority 72 between freedom and sovereignty 20, 80, 148 in Hobbes political philosophy 25, 30, 31 Leviathan and Behemoth as symbols of  17–​23 of modern statehood 16, 23, 32, 148 American Monroe Doctrine 107, 108, 109 anarchy 9, 13, 17, 22, 32 anti-​Judaism 5, 141, 148, 152

antisemitism 1, 57, 141–​52 and anti-​Jewish prejudices 144, 145 conspiracy theory, antisemitic 24, 25 cultural code, conception of  5, 144 delusion, antisemitic 144, 146–​47 Eastern European 141–​42, 148–​52 ideology of  142–​45 Islamic 147 modern 5–​6, 142–​49 old and new 141 and purity, obsession with 7 völkisch 141, 144 anti-​Zionism 4–​5, 150–​51 Arab Spring 4 arbitrariness 16, 71, 79–​80 antisemitism and 142, 143, 145–​46 asymmetrical 67–​68 and police functions 41–​42 Arendt, Hannah 6, 70, 143–​44, 147 artfremde 100–​101 Artfremdenrecht (law system for Artfremde) 100 artverwandte 100–​101 Arzheimer, Kai 177 Austria 88, 90–​92, 91n2, 94, 112, 121, 141 authority 29, 31, 42, 63, 119 abuse of  44 centralized 40, 45 coercive 72 constitutional 54 dictatorial 59 (see also dictatorship) guarantor 101 sovereign 1, 21, 28, 72–​73, 120 state 28, 32 autocracy/​autocracies 2, 35, 41, 75 autocratic regimes 1, 2, 42

210

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autonomy 69, 101 cultural 97, 103 national 97, 98 political 114 territorial 118 völkisch 116–​17, 119 Bachmann, Lutz 173, 180 barbarism 5, 66, 133 Bebnowski, David 176 Beer, Mathias 137 Behemoth 13–​33 as ambivalence symbol 17–​23 death of  23, 26 depictions of 13–​14, 24–​25 as identity symbol 23–​31 lawlessness and disorder 13, 22 Old Testament myth of 13–​14, 22, 23, 32 Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism 31, 93, 105 Behemoth or the Long Parliament 13 Belliotti, Raymond A. 73 bellum omnium contra omnes (war of all against all) 17, 77 Benoist, Alan de 162 Benz, Arthur 39 Bibliothek des Konservatismus (Library of Conservatism) 169–​70, 179 Bils, Iris 111–​12 Blaue Narzisse (Blue Narcissus) 169, 171–​72, 174, 179 Boehm, Max Hildebert 88, 94–​98, 97n3, 109, 110, 163 Book of Exodus 29 Book of Job 14, 22 Braham, Randolph L. 150–​51 Broszat, Martin 98 Bruns, Carl Georg 97 Bund der Vertriebenen (BdV) (League of Expellees) 125n1, 128, 136, 137, 178 Bund freier Bürger 175, 179

Cassirer, Ernst 14 Catholicism 20, 30, 80 CDU: see Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Centre against Expulsions 128–​31, 134, 136, 137 Christian Democratic Union (CDU) 128, 164–​66 Christian Social Union (CSU), 165, 166 Christianity 89, 142–​43, 148 citoyen 52, 103 civil society 15, 18, 75, 143, 145, 152 capitalist 151 liberalism of  71 minorities protection in 89–​91 political emancipation of  38 state forms of  147 Claussen, Detlev 6, 143 Cohen, Jean L. 69 Concept of the Political, The 55–​58 conflict(s) 6, 48, 49–​51, 55–​56, 62, 72 Cold War 8 management 14, 15 minorities 87–​88, 92, 94–​98, 102–​3, 106, 111, 116 in police work 43, 45 political 15, 38, 61, 73–​74, 75, 113, 129 social 61, 88, 102, 113 conservatism 165–​67, 176, 178–​79 right-​wing 166, 175 conspiracy antisemitic theory of  24, 25 fantasies 157, 173, 174, 175, 177 Constitutional Theory 54 Contrat social 58 Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, The 57, 58 Criticón 162, 165, 166, 170 CSU: see Christian Social Union (CSU) cultural hegemony 160–​62, 164, 168, 174–​79, 180 cultural revolution 160, 162, 168, 178, 179 Czech Republic 128, 134 Czechoslovakia 92, 101, 107, 130n5, 148, 149

Calvinism 89 capitalism 142, 145, 147 anti-​ 146, 149, 151 production methods 38, 70, 151 in society 49–​51

De Cive 18, 20, 76, 78 De Homine 76 decisionism 33, 63, 65, 74 DeLamater, John 8 delegitimation 7, 132

21

Index democracy/​democracies governance models of  3 homogeneity and 55, 63, 57–​58 identitarian 52–​53, 52n1 legitimation of  47–​49 liberal 43, 106, 119, 156 and modernity 6, 7 modus operandi of  1–​2 versus parliamentarianism 53, 57 police and 40–​46 (see also police) representative 48, 52, 58–​59, 176 Rousseau’s theory of 49, 53, 57, 58 (see also “Inconstancy from the Number”) Schmitt’s conception of 54–​55, 57, 59 security as prerequisite for 36, 37–​40, 44–​45 social 61 studies, methodologies used in 36–​37 democratization of governance 37–​39 processes 39, 156 waves of  2–​4 demos 1, 59, 123, 156, 177 conception of nations and minorities based on 102–​3 ethnos versus 6, 53 modern nation-​state as 148 police and 42 unpredictability of  the 48 Der Begriff des Politischen 110n1 Der Hüter der Verfassung 59–​60, 61 despotism 18, 30, 78 Deutsche Gildenschaft 169 Dialectic of Enlightenment 5, 81, 145 dictatorship 40, 53, 59, 62, 65, 75 Dictatorship: From the Origin of the Modern Concept of Sovereignty to Proletarian Class Struggle 54 Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern 133 Discourses 74 discrimination anti-​ 88, 89–​90, 111, 122 culturalist 154–​55 negative 93 positive 93, 122 protection from 89–​90, 102, 103, 123 (see also minorities protections) social 92 division of labor 3, 51, 170

211

Easton, David 7 economic inequality 3, 16, 50, 148 Eichberg, Henning 162 eigenständiges Volk 88, 94–​95, 99 emancipation 4–​5, 83, 118, 152, 157 economic 50 legal 5 modern nationalism and 70–​71 political 5, 37, 38, 144 scientific 5 (self-​)  76 subjective 50, 65 empathy 6, 127, 143 English Civil War 13, 21 Enlightenment, the 2–​5, 171 anti-​ 99, 106, 152, 178 antisemitism and 5, 156, 157 dialectics of 4, 5, 147 ideals 3, 4, 53, 56, 70 (see also freedom; privacy; subjectivity) Kant’s views on 37 and modernity 71, 72 Rousseau’s ideas on 49 trauma of  4 Enzensberger, Hans Magnus 131 equality 1, 3, 22, 54–​55, 69 absolute human 57–​58 legal 38, 42, 107 natural 18–​19, 77, 78 political 16, 27, 50, 58, 102, 148 rejection of universalist principle of  106–​7 see also inequality “equalizing model” 17–​18, 77 Erdheim, Mario 16 Esterbauer, Fried 120–​21 ethnicity 88–​89, 103, 113–​14, 118, 122 ethnicization 91, 122–​23, 149 ethno-​différencialisme 162 ethnofederalism 119, 120–​21 ethnofederation, European 115, 119, 120 ethnopluralism 155, 162, 163, 164 ethnoregionalism 116–​17, 118 ethnos 6, 53, 55, 102, 103, 123, 148, 156 “Europa Irredenta” 95, 98 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages 121–​22 European Union (EU) 4, 120, 123, 128, 177 Ex Captivitate Salus 30n2

21

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exclusion 4, 7, 115, 155 expellee organizations 125–​32, 134–​35, 167 financial support for 127 flight and expulsion of Germans from Eastern territories 127–​34, 137 “landsmannschaftliches Gedenken” concept 126, 126n4 political influence of  126–​28 “Recht auf die Heimat” 126, 128 (see also Heimat (homeland)) victim–​perpetrator paradigm, redefinition of  128–​37 extermination 4, 105–​6, 127, 131, 133, 163 antisemitic 7, 57, 65, 146 mass 101, 129, 130, 133, 143, 147, 151, 157 Nazi völkische politics of  129 extremism: see right-​wing extremism fascism 151, 158 neo-​  153 “Fear of Freedom, The” 50 Federal Republic of Germany 37, 45, 125, 162, 174, 178 old 127, 128 federalism 60, 119–​21 as a bündisch order 119 ethnic particularist 116, 119 ethno-​ 119, 120–​21 ethnocentric 119–​20 Fetscher, Iring 27 Final Act (1815) 90 force military 1, 5 physical 2–​3, 16, 42–​43, 45, 147 by police, use of 1, 40, 44, 45–​46 (see also police) state’s monopoly on legitimate use of 35, 40, 44, 45–​46, 77, 79, 82–​83 Förderstiftung Konservative Bildung und Forschung (Foundation for Conservative Education and Research/​FKBF) 170 fortuna 75 Fraenkel, Ernst 57, 61, 102 France 94, 95, 115, 155, 172 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (German newspaper) 129, 134, 165, 166, 178

freedom absolute 20, 80 from coercion 3, 70, 72 complete 50, 78 economic 31, 49, 72, 81 from guaranteed security 50 and human rights, basis for 39, 82–​83 ideological 175 individual 28, 69–​70, 75, 80–​81, 152, 157 and liberalism 50, 56 negative 70, 79, 80, 81 police functions, impact on 44–​46 political 49–​50, 69, 72–​73, 75 public and private spheres of  3 of religion 89 sovereignty and 6, 16, 20–​22, 23, 76–​83, 148 submission and 31 (see also submission) see also liberty/​liberties Fremdenrecht (foreigner laws) 100 Fremdkörper (foreign bodies) 100 French Revolution 98, 155 Freud, Sigmund 15, 142–​43 Friedrich, Sebastian 177 friend–​enemy dichotomy 55, 56, 61, 63, 66, 121, 163 Fröchling, Helmut 155 Fromm, Erich 50 Fukuyama, Francis 8 Gazeta Wyborcza (Polish newspaper) 129 general will 52–​53, 58 geopolitics 105, 108, 127 “German Monroe Doctrine” 105, 107 German Reich 42, 106, 109 German(s) flight, expulsion and resettlement of 127–​34, 137 moralizing approach to the past 127–​28, 129, 134–​35 myth as victims 128–​37 (see also expellee organizations) taboo to speak about Nazi past 127, 134 see also National Socialism; Nazi/​Nazis Germany East 53, 126n2, 171, 173 Federal Republic of ( see Federal Republic of Germany)

213

Index irredentist movement in 88, 94 Nazi ( see Third Reich) “New Right” in 164 (see also New Right, the) Volksgruppenrecht in 100, 106 (see also Volksgruppenrecht (folk-​group law/​ethnic group law) West 126, 153 withdrawal from the League of Nations 105 gesamtvölkische Konnationale 97n3 governance 16, 49 democratic 2, 3, 37, 55 democratization of  37–​39 legitimation of 37–​39, 50 models 2–​3 Gramsci, Antonio 161, 162 Gross, Raphael 25 Grossraum (a “greater area” in geopolitics) 105, 107–​23 collective-​rights provisions, rejection of  111–​12 “landsmannschaftliche Verbundenheit” (countrymen bonds) 121 “National Socialist Volk idea” 109 order and European integration 119–​23 order in international law 107–​15 in postwar Europe 111–​15 principle 108–​9 regional/​minority languages, recognition of  121–​22 Reich concept 110 (see also Reich) Volksgruppenrecht theory, concepts of  115–​19 Guggenberger, Bernd 39 Gypsies 100 Hailbronner, Kay 122 Hegel, Georg W. F. 38 Heimat (homeland) 91, 126, 128 Heitmeyer, Wilhelm 154 Hentges, Gudrun 172 Héraud, Guy 118–​21 hermeneutic structural analysis 36–​37 heterogeneity 2, 6, 52–​53, 57, 102 historical reconstruction 36–​37 Hitler, Adolf 42, 106, 129, 180 Hobbes, Thomas 38, 47 contractual rulership theory 80

213

criticism of theory by Scmitt 24, 25–​27 “crystal” 18 on death 4, 19, 76–​79 human nature, conception of 17, 18, 76–​81 natural law doctrine 17, 23, 76–​77, 79, 82 on political freedom 73 projective imagination of theory by Schmitt 23–​31 on sovereignty without morality 68, 72–​75 on sovereignty’s potential for freedom 76–​81 state of nature, conception of 18–​19, 21, 22, 76–​77 on state theory 13, 17–​23, 78 (see also Behemoth; Leviathan) theory of society 17, 18 theory of sovereignty 17, 29–​30, 68, 82–​83 Holocaust 127–​30, 132, 134, 150, 157 memorial 128–​29, 130 homogeneity 2, 53, 148 collective 70 democratic 55, 63, 57–​58 ethnic 107, 113–​15, 119, 156 ethnonational 6, 156 ideal of  55 and identity 54–​57, 59–​64, 65, 66 völkisch 63–​64, 147, 156 (see also Volk) Horkheimer, Max 5–​6, 81, 143, 145 human rights 43, 106, 113, 155 freedom as the basis for 39, 82–​83 individual 111 protections 90 (see also minorities protections) and state sovereignty 67–​69, 82–​83 violation of 44, 67–​68 humanity 4, 30, 50, 76–​81, 113, 134, 143 Hungary 91, 91n2, 94, 101, 107, 150, 152 Huntington, Samuel 2 “Identitäre Bewegung Deutschland” (IBD): see “Identitarian movement” “Identitarian movement” 169–​70, 172 Identitarians 172–​73, 179

214

214

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identity collective 65, 95, 116–​17, 122, 137 cultural 93, 163 and the dilemma of representation 49–​53 ethnic 102, 103, 114, 121, 123, 155, 163 group 93, 122 heterogeneous conception of  102 homogeneity and 54–​57, 59–​64, 65, 66 Rousseau’s concept of 29, 49, 52, 65 between rulers and the ruled 52, 53, 54–​55 will as 54–​64 immaturity 3, 5, 37 “Imperium” and “Libertas” 18, 78 inclusion 7, 155 “Inconstancy from the Number” 47–​49, 50–​51 individualism 26, 29, 156 anti-​  155 inequality 18, 55–​56, 78, 115, 118, 163 economic 3, 16, 50, 148 ideology of 154–​55, 156, 157, 162, 164 social 51, 156 see also equality Institut für Staatspolitik (Institute for State Policy/​IfS), 169–​70, 179 intellectualism 145, 156 international law(s) 43, 71 ethnicist attack on 98–​102 Grossraum order in 107–​15 for minorities protections 87–​93, 96–​97, 99–​100 multilateral treaty 93 Volksgruppenrecht in 106, 108–​14 international relations 44, 67–​68, 82, 101 Iran 40, 67–​68 irredentism 1, 92, 93–​94 Islamic terror attacks 4, 68, 171 Islamization 157, 169, 173–​74 Israel 5, 67, 142, 150–​52, 157 Jaschke, Hans-​Gerd 45, 155 Jaworski, Rudolf  148–​49 Jews abstract intelligence of 5–​6, 145 accusation on 5, 23–​25, 26, 27, 145 antisemites’ mental image of 144, 148 Aryans versus 146

assimilated 148 Eastern European 148, 150, 151 extermination of 101, 129, 130, 133, 143, 147, 151, 157 monotheism of 29, 143 Volksgruppen classification of  100 see also antisemitism Job (saint) 14, 22 Judaism 29, 31, 143 anti-​ 5, 141, 148, 152 Junge Freiheit (Young Freedom) 165, 166, 168–​70, 173–​74, 177–​79 Jünger, Ernst 163, 171 Kaiser 42, 43 Kant, Immanuel 37 Katz, Daniel 8 Kellershohn, Helmut 170, 177 Kelman, Herbert C. 8 Kersting, Wolfgang 17–​18, 73 Kohl, Helmut 164 Kubitschek, Götz 169 Krozova, Alfred 133 Land and Sea 25, 108 Laun, Rudolf  90 League of Nations 111 conflict resolution model 88 liberal minorities laws of the 97, 102, 103 minorities protections policies of the 87–​88, 92–​95, 99, 105–​7 multilateral treaty, utilization of  93 legality 16, 61, 63–​64, 112 Legality and Legitimacy 62–​63 legitimation/​legitimization 7, 9, 30, 31 of democracy 47–​49 of governance 37–​39, 50 in law 108, 111 of policing in democracies 36–​37 of sovereignty 54, 67–​70, 80–​81 Lenk, Kurt 19 Lévi-​Strauss, Claude  14, 16 Leviathan 13–​33, 78 as ambivalence symbol 17–​23 as civic statehood symbol 17 death of  23, 26 defeat of Behemoth 21 depictions of 13–​14, 24–​25

215

Index “great” 20, 21, 22 as identity symbol 23–​31 Jews accused of destruction of the 23–​25, 26, 27 “mortal god” and “immortal god” 20–​21, 23 Old Testament myth of 13–​14, 22, 23, 32 preservation of individual rights 13 Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes, The 25, 26, 30, 30n2 Leviathan or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil 13 Lexikon des Konservatismus (Lexicon of Conservatism) 166 liberalism 70, 93, 109, 156 anti-​ 28, 155 antisemitism and 145, 149 of civil society 71 freedom and 50, 56 market 177 neo-​  175 parliamentarianism and 57 political 175 Rousseau’s ideas of  49 liberty/​liberties 20, 155 civil 22, 23 individual 1, 18, 29 negation of 16, 32–​33 political 31 public 75 renouncing and reattaining of  19 sovereignty and 23, 25, 28, 32–​33 see also freedom Lijphart, Arend 103 Loader, Ian 37 Locke, John 15, 38, 50 Lucke, Bernd 175 Lutherans 89 Luverà, Bruno 121 Machiavelli, Niccolò 37, 68, 80, 83 on political freedom 73 on sovereignty without morality 68, 72–​75 Machtpolitik: see power politics Madison, James 48 Manning, Peter K. 36–​37

215

market fundamentalism 175, 176 Martel, James R. 80 Marx, Karl 50–​51, 152 May, Stefan 79–​80 megalomania 16, 26, 30 metapolitics cultural 179, 180 intellectual 160, 162, 164, 168–​74, 180 Meuter, Günter 30–​31 militarism 126n3, 154 military 2, 46, 94, 109, 130 force 1, 5 intervention 1, 8, 67, 68, 127 para 35n1, 154, 161 and the police 42–​43 Minima Moralia 131 minorities 59, 64, 87–​103 autochthonous 121–​22 conflicts 87–​88, 92, 94–​98, 102–​3, 106, 111, 116 emigration, right to 89 freedom of religion 89 policies 1, 87–​88, 93, 95, 99, 102, 103, 123 protections 87–​88 (see also minorities protections) rights 87, 88, 90, 103 minorities protections antidiscriminatory 89–​90 ethnicist attack on international laws 98–​102 international laws after World War I 92–​94 Neumann’s views on 93, 101, 107 origins of  88–​92 after World War II 111–​12 modern state, the 1, 6–​7, 68, 95 ambivalent nature of 16, 23, 32 dialectic of 16, 147 and ethnicity 89 as a nation-​state 1, 6, 70–​72, 89, 148 Nazis’ attempt to eliminate 6, 32 modernity 1, 50, 151, 156, 160–​61 antisemitism and 5, 6, 145–​48 in the Arab world 72 democracy and 6, 7 Enlightenment and 71, 72 guiding principles of 5–​7, 103 state sovereignty as paradigm of  68 Moeller, Robert G. 134

216

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Moller, Sabine 132 Mommsen, Hans 94 “mortal god” 13, 20–​21, 23, 28 Mouffe, Chantal 70 Münkler, Herfried 17–​18, 19, 21, 73, 77, 80 Nation 55, 56, 98 nation-​state 1, 6, 8, 70–​72, 89, 148 National Socialism 16, 30, 64, 66, 70, 147, 151, 163–​65, 180 decline in knowledge about 127–​28, 132 defeat of 111, 132, 141 expulsion of Germans due to 127–​34, 137 genocidal policies of  129–​30 racial antisemitic legislations, demand for 99–​102 police-​like organizations  40 völkisch-​defined Europe, creation of 99–​100, 105–​7, 111 Volksgruppent policies 101–​2 Volkstum in 95 see also Nazism Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD/​National-​Democratic Party of Germany) 161–​62, 173, 175 nationalism 1, 126n3, 147, 177 modern 70–​71 protectionist 173 völkisch 163, 164, 168, 172 natura dedit omnia omnibus 76 natural law 97, 98, 99, 106, 112–​13, 117 Christian understanding of  113 of Hobbes 17, 23, 76–​77, 79, 82 of Rousseau 50 Nazi/​Nazis  25, 30 antisemitism 57 (see also antisemitism) elimination of modern statehood 6, 32 Germany 16, 126, 130, 154 persecution 4, 132 racial policies of 99–​102, 129–​30 Reich 53, 109 Nazism 6, 146 neo-​ 127, 153, 160, 161, 168, 173, 179, 180 see also National Socialism Neue Rechte 66, 159, 164, 166 Neumann, Franz L. on Hobbes theory 30, 31–​33

on minorities protection 93, 101, 107 on modern state 30, 31–​33, 71, 72, 148 on “unstate” 6, 70 on Volksgruppenrecht 105, 106–​7 New Right, the 128, 159–​81 Aktion Neue Rechte (“New Right Action”) 159, 164 cultural hegemony, paradigm of 174–​79 (see also cultural hegemony) emergence of  161–​63 in Germany 164 ideology of  163–​64 metapolitical intellectualization of 160–​61, 168–​74 new rise of  168–​79 rise and fall of  164–​68 Nouvelle Droite 66, 155, 159, 162, 164 NPD: see Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD/​National-​ Democratic Party of Germany) Ottmann, Henning 79 Pan, Franz 91n2 parapolice 35, 35n1, 40–​41, 40–​41n2, 43, 46 “Paris Minorities Protection Treaties” 96 Paris Peace Conference 88, 92, 111 parliamentarianism 53, 57, 168–​69 participation 1, 20, 51, 80, 83 democratic 7, 103 political 39, 40, 75 peace 15, 19, 20, 25, 77, 177–​78 internal and external 39–​40 public 28, 89 Peace of Augsburg 89 Peace of Nuremberg 89 Peace of Westphalia 89 Pegida movement 169, 172–​74, 177, 179–​80 Pelinka, Anton 20, 103, 123 physical force 2–​3, 16, 42–​43, 45, 147 pluralism 60–​61, 156–​57, 177 see also ethnopluralism Pocock, J. G. A. 36 Poland 94, 128, 134, 150, 152 polemics 61, 62, 158 police 35–​46 and democracy 40–​46

217

Index effectiveness of the 43–​44, 45 financial independence of  45–​46 guarantee of freedom 44–​45 integration into the legal system 41–​42 legitimate use of force by 1, 40, 44, 45–​46 military and the 42–​43 oversight of  the 44 political neutrality of the 43–​44 and political order 36, 38, 41 in political systems 35, 40, 44, 45 power of the 40, 41–​42, 43 prevention and repression of crimes 44–​45 privatization of duties 46 public self-​criticism of  44 restriction of freedom 45, 46 security as prerequisite for democracy 36, 37–​40 social permeability of  the 42 studies, methodologies used in 36–​37 training 37, 43, 44 policing 1, 35n1, 36–​37, 41 political action 14, 38, 73, 153 political agenda 7, 43, 87, 152, 156 political conflict 15, 38, 61, 73–​75, 113, 129 political culture 41, 103, 149–​50, 152, 163, 174 political dominance 74, 109, 148 political emancipation 5, 37, 38, 144 political equality 16, 27, 50, 58, 102, 148 political freedom 49–​50, 69, 72–​73, 75 political maturity 51 political mimicry 161, 162 political myths/​political mythology 14–​17 conflict management 14, 15 efficacy of  15 reconciliation of opposites 14, 16, 23 political order 21, 23, 72, 76, 79, 119, 155 ethnopolitical forces and 103, 105 factors influencing stability of  7–​8 pluralism and 61 police and 36, 38, 41 Rousseau’s view on 51–​52 state sovereignty and 68–​69 political participation 39, 40, 75 political power 1–​2, 6, 31, 73–​74, 161, 174 political reality 73, 173 political sphere 3, 22, 38, 54, 57, 79–​80

217

political stability 40, 74 political system(s) 5, 8, 16, 48, 69, 144, 147 development and disintegration of  9 ethnic minorities and 87, 103 Hobbes’ description of  13, 21 of modern states 72 opinions on 7 police functions in 35, 40, 44, 45 Schmitt’s analysis of  54 in Volk states 120–​21 political theology of Hobbes 30 of Schmitt 24, 26 Political Theology 171 political theory 7, 23, 25, 76, 123 political thought 8, 23, 36, 72 polity 38, 39, 42, 45 Postone, Moishe 145–​46 Potsdam Conference 125n2, 129, 135 power 38, 50 of man/​human  76–​79 neutral 61–​62 of persuasion 1 physical 107, 120 of the police 40, 41–​42, 43 political 1–​2, 6, 31, 73–​74, 161, 174 politics 30, 74, 105, 106, 115 public 29, 30n2 sovereign 24, 28, 40 state 25, 30n2, 64, 109 power politics 30, 74, 105, 106, 115 pragmatism 51 Prehn, Ulrich 95 Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung (Prussian General Newspaper), 173, 178–​79 Prince, The 73 privacy 29, 53, 56 private property 50–​52 private sphere 3, 29 Propyläen Geschichte Deutschlands (Propyläen “History of Germany”) 165 protection(s) legal 6, 90, 103 of minorities ( see minorities protections) Protestants 89 Prussia 90, 94, 178 public sphere 3, 29, 30n2, 37–​38, 168, 174, 179

218

218

THE MODERN STATE AND ITS ENEMIES

racism 101, 106, 133, 145–​46, 174, 179 radicalization 5, 49, 144 Raschhofer, Hermann 96, 108, 109 rationalism 4, 99, 105–​6 Raum (room/​space/​area) 105, 113 “monoethnic principle” and ordering of  118 non-​intervention from spatially foreign powers 108, 109, 110 -​ordering concepts of Volkgruppentheory 115–​16, 117 -​ordering principles, legitimation of  108 see also Grossraum (a “greater area” in geopolitics) reality 14, 43, 74, 155 constitutional 54 empirical 68, 73 external 5, 145 historical 27, 132–​33, 134, 143, 144 political 73, 133, 173 social 22, 54, 99, 147 Reich 9, 25, 126n4 concept 110, 121 ethnofederal 116, 118, 119 German 42, 106, 109 Nazi 53, 109 new European 115, 121 President 60 Third 16, 126, 130, 154 Reich-​Ranicki, Marcel  134 Reichertz, Jo 36 refugees 114, 125–​26, 125n1, 134–​36 representation 1, 7, 78, 103 dilemma of  49–​53 Hobbe’s theory of  18, 20 indirect 48 political 51, 177 Republikaner, the 175, 179 Riedel, Sabine 123 right-​wing conservatism 166, 175 right-​wing extremism 1, 7, 66, 153–​58, 163, 165–​67, 172, 173 conservatism and 166, 167, 178–​79 ethnonationalist and “culturalist” thought 155–​57 “gray zone” concept 167 ideology of inequality 154–​57 intellectualization of  160

“New Right” in 159–​60 (see also New Right, the) right-​wing populism as a strategy of  157–​58 right-​wing populism 153, 157–​58 rights 3, 57 basic 39 civil 39, 43, 44 collective 97, 111–​12, 117, 121, 122 divine 20, 25–​26, 25n1 to goods and services 17 human ( see human rights) individual 13, 88 legal 47 of minorities 87, 88 self-​determination  113 special 111, 117, 121, 122 Rousseau, Jean-​Jacques 15, 38, 57–​59 conception of identity 29, 49, 52, 65 democracy theory 49, 53, 57, 58 and the dilemma of representation 49–​53 on people’s will 55, 65 Russia 90, 152 Russian Revolution 142, 149, 151 Sartre, Jean-​Paul 5–​7, 143–​45 Schelsky, Helmut 24 Scheuermann, Martin 93 Schieder, Theodor 135–​36 Schmitt, Carl 23–​33, 53–​66, 171 accusation of Jews 23–​25, 26, 27 antisemitic conspiracy theory by 24–​25 on constitutional norm and constitutional reality 54 criticism of Hobbes theory 24, 25–​27 democracy, conception of 54–​55, 57, 59 on democratic theory of Rousseau 49, 53, 57, 58 dictatorship, support of 59, 62, 64, 65, 176 friend–​enemy concept of 55, 56, 61, 63, 66 and the Grossraum order in international law 107–​15 on “the Hobbes crystal” 18 on homogeneity and identity 54–​57, 59–​64, 65, 66 on human socialization 26–​27 on neutral power (pouvoir neutre) 61–​62

219

Index pluralism, criticism by 60–​61 (see also pluralism) political systems, analysis of  54 political theology of  24, 26 projective identification of Hobbes’s theory 23–​31 reading of Hobbes 14, 17, 24 sovereignty paradigm of 54, 69–​70 on unanimity 58 on Weimar parliamentary system 176 Schmoeckel, Mathias 107–​8 Schneider, Thomas 27–​28 Schrenck-​Notzing, Caspar von 170 security 3, 15, 18, 71, 72, 78 collective system of  111 domestic 40, 41, 165 (see also police) freedom from guaranteed 50 as prerequisite for democracy 36, 37–​40, 44–​45 public 64, 75 self-​preservation 76, 77, 79 self-​reflection 5, 6, 179 separatism 1, 97 Sezession (Secession) 169–​71, 173, 179 Shoah 146–​47, 151, 157 see also Holocaust Skinner, Quentin 36 social contract 18–​19, 45, 52, 80 individual liberty/​freedom, basis for 18, 78 and legitimation of governance 38–​39 theories 15, 65 socialism 145, 149, 152, 156 socialization 14, 26 modern 9, 23, 151 solidarity 39, 40, 49 Sontheimer, Kurt 98 sovereignty 119–​20 absolute 19–​23, 31 and ambiguities of the global order 70–​72 ambivalence of  16 freedom and 6, 16, 20–​22, 23, 76–​83, 148 intellectual 6 legitimation/​legitimization of 54, 67–​70, 80–​81 liberty and 23, 25, 28, 32–​33 without morality 68, 72–​75 national 99, 116 plebiscitary popular 52, 54

219

rationalism plus 99–​100, 106 state ( see state sovereignty) theory of 17, 29–​30, 68, 82–​83 Soviet Union 142, 149, 150, 151 Spinoza, Baruch de 28 Staatsangehöriger (citizens living under the “protection of the German Empire”) 100 Staatsrecht (state rights/​state law) 105, 106, 116 Staats-​/​Reichsbürger (Staatsangehöriger with German or artverwandte blood) 100–​101 Stalinism 40, 127, 151 state of nature 18–​19, 21, 22, 76–​77 state power 25, 30n2, 64, 109 state sovereignty 1, 33, 79, 101, 102, 105, 110, 123 autonomy as precursor to 97 for democratic development 40 human rights and 67–​69, 82–​83 as paradigm of modernity 68 political freedom and 73 and political order 68–​69 (self-​)limitations of   81–​83 state theory 8–​9, 13–​33 bellum omnium contra omnes 17, 77 of Hobbes 13, 17–​23, 78 (see also Behemoth; Leviathan) and myth 14–​17 Neumann’s perspectives on 30, 31–​33, 148 Schmitt’s interpretation of  23–​31 Steinbach, Erika 128, 129, 130, 130n6 Steinbach, Peter 131 subjectivity 3, 53, 56, 68, 155, 157, 163 submission 19–​22, 31, 80 Sywottek, Arnold 137 theory of state: see state theory Third Reich 16, 126, 130, 154 Tönnies, Ferdinand 28 totalitarian regimes 35, 40, 40n2, 43, 53 transcendence 4, 18 Treaty of Versailles 94 Trump, Donald 66, 158 United Nations 111 United States 5, 66, 108

20

220

THE MODERN STATE AND ITS ENEMIES

universalism 110 anti-​ 163, 164 Unstaat 30, 32 urbanity 145, 156 Veiter, Theodor 97–​98, 119 Verba, Sidney 7 Vertriebenenverbände: see expellee organizations violence 16, 40 antisemitic 70, 131, 133 monopoly on 17–​18, 19, 21 physical 8, 136, 147–​48, 154 structural 155 virtù 74–​75 Voigt, Rüdiger 17, 39 Volk (people) 112, 113, 123, 155–​57 comrades 55 ethnonationalist conception of 55–​56, 58, 65, 70, 103, 108, 111 independence of  95, 98 membership 114, 117 Volk unter Völkern (people among peoples) 95 völkisch collective rights 111, 112 völkisch movement 5, 63, 70, 88, 99, 144 völkisch principles 98, 100, 106, 114 völkisch theory 94 völkische Volksbürgerschaft (völkisch membership in an ethno-​national group) 96, 99 völkischer Freiheitsbereich (völkisch zone of freedom) 95 Volkov, Shulamit 5, 144 Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community) 70, 94, 95, 97, 158 Volksgruppe 88, 96, 100–​101, 102, 103, 106 as a Blutsgemeinschaft (blood community) 100 personhood of  97, 98 in postwar Europe 112, 113 and principle of autonomy 116–​17 territory of  118–​19 Volksgruppen 90–​91, 95, 107, 121–​22 classes of  100 concept 99–​100, 102, 113 ethnoregions for 113–​14, 117 as inter-​country co-​nationals  96–​97 as natural federations/​corporations 96

policies 101 politics 116 war of extermination against 105–​6 Volksgruppenräum (folk-​group spaces) 114–​15, 117 Volksgruppenrecht (folk-​group law/​ethnic group law) 88, 90, 100, 101, 105 concept 99 in international law, anchoring of 106, 108–​14 minorities conflicts, ethnical response to 94–​98 policies 101–​2 in postwar Europe 111–​15 proposed European models of  114 Schmitt’s views on 109–​14 theory 96–​97, 98, 110–​11, 115–​19 Volkspersönlichkeit (the Volk as a legal person) 96 “Volksstaat” (Volk state) 59–​60, 120–​21 Volksstamm (ethnic-​tribe)  91–​92 Volkstum (folkish cultural identity) 93–​95, 98 independence of  95, 98 policies 101, 108–​11, 112, 113 politics of  93–​94 Volkstumskampf (struggle of völkisch identities) 95, 130 Vollmer, Antje 131 Walker, Rob B. J. 69 Walter, Franz 174 Weber, Max 51 Wehler, Hans-​Ulrich  70 Weimar Republic 88, 158 “conservative revolution” 154, 163, 164, 170–​71, 176 constitution 60–​62 military and police 43 parliamentary system 60, 176 völkisch politics in the 98 Volkstum in the 95 Weissmann, Karlheinz 165, 169, 171, 177, 178 will of the people 47–​66 and “common good” 52, 53, 54 dilemma of representation 49–​53 “Inconstancy from the Number” 47–​49, 50–​51

21

Index “unchallenged presence” 58–​59 volonté générale (general will) 52–​53, 58 will as identity 54–​64 World War I 95, 99, 102, 103, 111 legislations for minorities, facilitation of 87, 90, 92 minorities protection provisions after 88, 92–​94 World War II 129, 135, 141, 149, 151

221

flight, expulsion and resettlement of Germans after 125, 128 minorities protections after 111–​12 Volksgruppen theory post 112 Yugoslavia 67 Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen: see Centre against Expulsions

2