September 5, 2025 • 31 mins
🎓 Stefan Fuchs (Wissenschaftsjournalist) im Gespräch mit Detlev Claussen (geb. 1948). Detlev Claussen war bis zu seiner Emeritierung 2011 Professor für Gesellschaftstheorie, Kultur- und Wissenssoziologie an der Leibniz Universität Hannover. Schwerpunkte seiner Arbeit waren unter anderem Antisemitismus, Rassismus und Nationalismus. In diesem Gespräch beschreibt Detlev Claussen den Kulturkampf der demokratischen Gesellschaften in Europa. Insbesondere in Deutschland ist die demokratische Vielfalt und Diversität unter den Beschuss insbesonderer rechter Parteien und Bewegungen geraten. So die rechtsradikale AFD, die homophobe und auf Lügen gestützte Strategien unterschiedslos von Donald Trump und Vladimir Putin kopiert, und damit Wortführer dieses demokratiefeindlichen Kulturkampfes ist. Detlv Claussen verortet die Ursachen jedoch weit vor der Gründung der AFD oder anderer rechtsradikaler Parteien in Europa.
/🎓 Stefan Fuchs (science journalist) in conversation with Detlev Claussen (born 1948). Until his retirement in 2011, Detlev Claussen was Professor of Social Theory, Cultural Sociology and Sociology of Knowledge at Leibniz University Hannover. His work focused on anti-Semitism, racism and nationalism, among other topics. In this conversation, Detlev Claussen describes the culture war being waged by democratic societies in Europe. In Germany in particular, democratic pluralism and diversity have come under attack, especially from right-wing parties and movements. The right-wing extremist AFD, for example, which indiscriminately copies homophobic and lie-based strategies from Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, is currently the spokesperson for this anti-democratic culture war. However, Detlev Claussen locates the causes far before the founding of the AFD or other right-wing extremist parties in Europe.
/🎓 Stefan Fuchs (journaliste scientifique) s'entretient avec Detlev Claussen (né en 1948). Jusqu'à sa retraite en 2011, Detlev Claussen était professeur de théorie sociale, de sociologie de la culture et des sciences à l'université Leibniz de Hanovre. Ses travaux portaient notamment sur l'antisémitisme, le racisme et le nationalisme. Dans cet entretien, Detlev Claussen décrit le combat culturel mené par les sociétés démocratiques en Europe. En Allemagne notamment, la diversité démocratique est particulièrement attaquée par certains partis et mouvements d'extrême droite. L'AFD, parti d'extrême droite qui copie sans discernement les stratégies homophobes et mensongères de Donald Trump et Vladimir Poutine, est actuellement le porte-parole de cette lutte culturelle antidémocratique. Detlev Claussen situe toutefois les causes bien avant la création de l'AFD ou d'autres partis d'extrême droite en Europe.
📚 Veröffentlichungen u.a. / publications a.o. / Publications, entre autres: - Detlev Claussen: "Grenzen der Aufklärung. Die gesellschaftliche Genese des modernen Antisemitismus. Frankfurt a.M. 1987. - Detlev Claussen: "Theodor W. Adorno. Ein letztes Genie." Frankfurt a.M. 2003 - Detlev Claussen: "Béla Guttmann. Weltgeschichte des Fussballs in einer Person." Berlin 2006.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Welcome to Audio Archive, the channel for historical interviews with writers, philosophers,
activists, and intellectuals from all over the world.
(00:34):
Hello, another conversation with Detlef Klausen.
The sociologist and Theodor W.
Adorno student unfolds his analysis of societal cultural development in Europe.
Detlef Klausen understands culture in the French sense as civilisation, as the relationship
of all individuals in all areas of a society to one another.
(00:57):
The societal culture understood this way is currently at war in Europe.
Civilisation enemies are right-wing and far-right movements such as the AfD.
Their goal is monoculture with battle terms such as German, family, white, Christian, and heterosexual, among others.
(01:17):
The monocultural civilisation is packaged.
Monoculture is to be understood in an agrarian sense, as monoculture against cultural diversity,
with the eternal mantra of blame assignment.
Foreigners are to blame, the LGBTQIA plus movement is to blame, black people are to blame, democracy
(01:39):
is to blame, the parties are to blame, and so on.
Blaming others not only resonates in Germany, but has a rather long tradition here.
With the annexation of the GDR to the Federal Republic, it was deliberately reactivated by right-wing extremists.
Detlef Klausen explains people's susceptibility to these authoritarian thought patterns with
(02:04):
the lack of democratic experience and low democratic participation, as is the case in East Germany.
Democratic modernity means the recognition of real difference, diversity, and participation.
The deliberate twisting of this reality, its propagandistic distortion into its opposite, is
the political essence of the AfD.
(02:27):
It packages criticism of the economy and politics nationally, in step with Donald Trump's MAGA
movement, Meloni's Italian neo-fascists, Gerd Wilders' Dutch racist gang, and others.
The goal of all these parties is the standardisation of the individual and its cultural dissolution
(02:48):
in the imagined pure Nazi national body.
Mr Klausen, in your opinion, is there a connection between the attacks of 11. September 2001 and 11.
November 1989, when the capitalist system and liberal democracy celebrated their greatest triumph
with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and economic globalisation was finally able to unite
(03:15):
the world into a single global market, when some even spoke of the end of history.
In this moment of triumph, the victors are struck by a wave of blind, terrorist violence.
It seems that this blind violence is the last possible form of protest against the total victory,
(03:40):
which nothing else can oppose.
What kind of society has emerged under the tones that are unleashed?
Is this the predicted triumph of instrumental reason by Horkheimer, which erases every specific
(04:02):
negation, every utopia, the other in general?
I would not speak of blind violence, precisely because I see it as instrumental reason seeming to triumph here.
And in that respect, I would also say that this historical moment of 1989, 1990 has been almost squandered.
(04:29):
It indeed offered great opportunities and still offers considerable opportunities overall.
But what we are experiencing is, on one side, a management of this process, which is understood
in a completely truncated way, of an economic rat race.
That the whole world is essentially just trying to compete economically for a cake that is to
(04:52):
be distributed by all means.
The violence that arises against this or seems to arise against it is much less blind, but much more calculated.
And everything we now know about the 11th.
September, this approach of Al-Qaeda, the strategy and the politics behind it, is much less
(05:15):
irrational and much less blind, but rather surprises with its rational calculation.
One could rather say that the Bush administration reacted blindly and less rationally and less calculated.
But under the notion of instrumental reason, that one could truly organise the world according
(05:38):
to the principles of instrumental reason.
But let us take again the opposing side, the side of fundamentalism.
It is, in a certain way, abstract.
The counter-model that this fundamentalism constructs is a construct of history, of originality.
(05:59):
It has no concrete social utopia to offer anymore, so in this sense perhaps blind.
It is not a social alternative that is being offered.
But that may also be the completely wrong claim.
It is a form of the promise of salvation.
Hamas, for example, entered the last parliamentary election campaign with Islam, that is the solution.
(06:22):
You could say, well, that is blind in that the consequences are not calculated at all.
But that is always something from extremely radical positions, which leads to a loss of reality.
Is there an inner connection, is there a dialectical relationship between this world of the
(06:43):
West, between this economically fundamentalism extended to a global scale, one might say.
They speak of the desubstantialisation of bourgeois society, of a capitalism stripped of its utopian elements.
Is there a connection between this development and this religious, extremist, radical response to it?
(07:09):
I think it is a completely false perspective to think that somehow fundamentalism is far away
and has nothing to do with this society.
No, this is a single global process that began long before people started talking about globalisation.
Fundamentalism is actually a consequence of secularisation.
(07:29):
And secularisation is not something that is limited to Western societies.
Secularisation, meaning the diminishing power of traditional religion, is something that has
affected the whole world for over 100 years, 150 years.
It is also a consequence of colonialism in the 19th century.
Century, which set this process in motion, with all its advantages and enormous disadvantages.
(07:55):
That is indeed the development of an irreversible process.
And now there are different forms of reactions to secularisation.
And indeed, fundamental opposition has already formed in the 1970s in the United States.
The entire radicalisation of the evangelicals played a very, very large role there.
(08:20):
And this is, by the way, also partly a problem in American domestic politics, because they became
political through the Reagan Revolution and Reagan was the first president who could rely on this majority.
So this happened in the 1970s in the United States.
This is exactly the same process in which the Ayatollahs gained more and more power in Iran.
(08:43):
These were the consequences of a fatal modernisation process that took place under the Shah regime.
But you see this in a simultaneity.
We can also look at other countries.
The comparable process has been the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
The Chinese Cultural Revolution has been the greatest break with tradition in the history of
a million-strong society, lasting over twelve years and actually creating entirely new conditions.
(09:10):
And on this basis, the reforms of Deng Xiaoping actually took place simultaneously. 1978, revolution
in Iran or however one might call it, in any case the overthrow of the Shah regime.
They called it the Reagan Revolution in the USA.
All of these are simultaneous processes.
This means that the radical capitalisation process, which is currently being observed with horror
(09:33):
in the West, was indeed based on the Cultural Revolution in China.
So you see, the whole thing is a global process that has different impacts.
In the Arab world at the end of the 1970s, there was the failure of Arab nationalism.
This means that Arab nationalism has not really managed to cope with decolonisation.
And this failure of Arab nationalism has triggered a strengthening of fundamentalist movements as a reaction.
(10:02):
And now you see, this entire geopolitical set is already coming together, which then collided after 1989, 90.
This means that this modernisation process, this secularisation process has somehow gone awry.
There are elements that have gone off the rails.
(10:24):
I would say, yes, it is a failed secularisation.
And this failed secularisation has not only occurred in societies in the East or South, but
first and foremost we must look at the core of the dynamics.
And the core of the dynamics of failed secularisation is to be found in the Western world.
And that is a huge problem.
(10:44):
And there is a lack of self-reflection on this.
Especially, for example, where there is now a confrontation between Western values and the rest of the world.
Regarding Western values on one side, think of the discussion about the European constitution. That is quite absurd.
At the same time, there is a call to uphold Christian and Jewish values.
Is it actually forgotten that there are a thousand years of anti-Semitism embedded in Western values?
(11:08):
It is not that simple with Western values.
And the other story is that Christianity, the Church, and the Enlightenment are mentioned simultaneously.
As if Giordano Bruno had not been burned.
All of this is completely forgotten.
This is a distortion of history like no other.
Using a phrase from Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, one could call this an Invention of Tradition. An invention of tradition.
(11:35):
This West has never actually existed.
And there is a lack of self-reflection on the failures of secularisation.
In this context, suddenly the entire debate on values, the discussion on values.
This actually denies that secularisation is a reality. A social reality.
And not some kind of programme of atheists.
Rather, this is a social reality.
And one must respond to that.
(11:56):
Consider what this actually is. What has developed here?
What are also the losses in this process?
And can something actually be done? Namely, to re-establish traditions.
But the will for the new is something that is lacking in Western society.
How would you describe these losses?
The losses are certainly such, and I do not want to be pushed into the cultural conservative corner.
(12:20):
But the losses are those of an abstract cult of management. Of feasibility.
And that all of this is to be accomplished by an intact individual.
So, what has also been celebrated in sociology as individualisation.
And my teacher Adorno rightly said 30 years ago, the more individualisation, the less individual.
(12:46):
So, it essentially means not individualisation; that was an ideology.
This is an ideology that completely overwhelms people because it actually shifts the responsibility
for a societal process onto the subjects.
And that is why we have deficiencies on all these levels.
And now, with incredible ideological intensity, the family is being brought back into play.
(13:09):
And the societal processes that have led to the change in the family are actually being denied.
One must consciously think about what living together means under today's conditions?
Multiple generations, how can they live together? How can they act?
One should think about that.
But it is something dreadful, the family as the last refuge against modernisation.
(13:31):
So under the cloak, basically, of modernity and individualisation, suddenly very reactionary elements are introduced.
And that also highlights the hypocrisy of this discussion about Western values.
That is to say, this solipsistic almost individualisation is a kind of new collective?
Yes, individualisation actually means the desubstantialisation of individuals.
(13:56):
Individuals are only considered from the perspective of the self-preservation principle.
That is also something that Horkheimer has already noted.
And this self-preservation principle is completely abstract. The desolidarisation, the deceleration.
In an emergency, everyone is their own next of kin.
(14:16):
And then it is introduced quite abstractly that we need patriotism again or something else,
any collective stories, which have previously been stripped of their substance in the social process.
And then the collective stories become all the more aggressive, biting, because they are so devoid of content.
If one follows their reasoning, then we have all, without really noticing it, become Americans.
(14:39):
America, the USA, is a laboratory in which recipes are experimented with that later claim validity
for the rest of the world.
If one takes that seriously, then we are facing a massive return of chauvinistic nationalism,
a sharp segregation of social classes and immigrant groups, a further hollowing out of democratic
(15:05):
institutions, and a renaissance of militarism.
Are the USA really still the model of world society?
Are they not rather an ageing empire that clings desperately to its slipping power and occasionally
even goes on a rampage?
(15:25):
Certainly, as far as the process of modernisation is concerned, the United States are still ahead of Europe.
Many things that happen in the USA can also be read as the European future.
But I would also say, unfortunately, we have many things that are good in America.
We do not have that at all here in Europe.
And that is precisely what is missing.
(15:48):
Let us only take the discussion about immigration.
This is also fiercely contested in the USA.
These are hard and sharp conflicts that are being fought out.
We will continue with the interview shortly.
Like us if you enjoy it.
But they are remarkably open, it is being contested.
And the voices are diverse.
(16:08):
The necessity of immigration is increasingly denied in Europe.
And that has actually worsened.
This is related to the invention of tradition that I mentioned.
And what is currently emerging in our neighbouring country, this French identity politics of Mr Sarkozy.
One can criticise Chirac as much as one likes.
He would never have done such things, such confrontational stories.
(16:31):
And fundamentally, the good aspects of the French tradition, the good aspects of modern tradition,
are essentially denied by Sarkozy.
That means, modernity was something in citizenship law that has been progressive in France and
has been comparable to citizenship law in the United States.
And we must not deny that.
(16:52):
Despite all the criticism of the Bush administration, American society has enormous potential.
The USA is not actually the bastion of militarism and chauvinism.
That is one side of American society.
But there are also enormous counterforces in this system.
And that also means the awareness that one must organise oneself for one's own interests.
(17:16):
This kind of self-activity, of political influence, even when it is difficult, means that one
cannot say that the parties have failed.
This kind of passivity, which is very widespread in old Western Europe, is different in the USA.
This kind of grassroots democratic understanding is much more widespread in the USA than in any European country.
(17:40):
Nevertheless, the European social state, the European welfare state would be a concrete counter-model
to the American way of life or way of politics.
Isn't it something a bit more modern, as it attempts to extend democracy into the economic realm?
(18:00):
Even if this welfare state is currently struggling, because the political power constellations
are different, is it not still the more modern model?
I do not know whether one can speak of a model.
In fact, in almost all European societies, the confrontation is currently taking place and the
confrontation is far from over.
(18:22):
How are the tasks of the state to be described for the shaping of society?
At the moment, I see rather the danger that many people, at least in continental Europe, do
not see at all that new tasks must indeed be assigned to the state and that this must be politically
and programmatically redefined, what the state actually has to deliver, and that many people,
(18:45):
with this disillusionment with the state and indeed a populist disillusionment with the state,
which is preached from right to left, by the way, this is always the danger in populism, that
it goes from right to left, that it is much, much greater in Europe and that in fact in the
USA there is rather a counter-movement that says the state must take on more social tasks or
(19:08):
the community must take on more social tasks.
This cannot continue like this.
Okay, I say the traditions are different.
In the USA, it is the tradition of self-organisation and in Europe, and I believe this accounts
for part of the passivity of present-day Western Europe, the political parties warn, but the
political parties are no longer capable of doing so.
(19:29):
I will say it quite maliciously, either engage in elite politics or engage in populism. They waver in between.
The greatest experts are those who can unite the two.
We have already spoken about Mr Sarkozy and his Ministry for National Identity.
However, he is by no means the only one.
(19:51):
These populist, nationalist, and xenophobic movements and parties currently have a great momentum in Europe.
This stands in a strange contradiction to the discourses of openness to the world, internationality,
and the appeals for the removal of all borders and barriers that accompanied the process of
(20:12):
economic globalisation right up until the 1990s.
Is this now a new phase?
Are we now in the midst of a great depression regarding this expansion to a global scale after an euphoric phase?
The tearing down of borders does not actually need to be demanded by anyone anymore.
(20:33):
This is the persuasion of open doors.
This is actually only done by people who somehow still do not have enough of deregulation.
And that also means that, in fact, it is known in every corner, in the USA, in England, where
deregulation has been pushed the furthest, that there is already a societal awareness far beyond
(20:53):
those who have preached this deregulation, that this cannot continue. Something must be done.
There is simply no societal control over the processes that take place there anymore.
I believe there is already an awareness of this.
The terrible thing is that this is being feigned again, and I would describe this more as a
(21:15):
crisis of the political system, that it is feigned that there is control over it by agreeing
on an area where it costs nothing, namely cultural conflicts.
Cultural conflicts are managed, or rather, these cultural conflicts are created.
And that is why something like the establishment of a Ministry for National Identity is, fundamentally, an absurdity.
(21:38):
But it is a clear indication of that.
We organise society in such a way that people can feel represented by politics.
And that is indeed a very questionable promise, because it excludes many people from the societal
process, who are defined as strangers, newcomers, ethnically different, who do not belong, these
(22:03):
are all very fatal signals.
And there is actually no self-reflection on the fact that this is extraordinarily harmful to society.
This only becomes apparent in Saxony-Anhalt in Halberstadt when a theatre troupe is beaten up
with the Rocky Horror Picture Show, then it somehow stands out.
Man, this is really bad for our image that something like this happens here.
(22:25):
But there is no thought at all that systematically, at different levels, a xenophobia is being
generated and that these are merely side effects of this xenophobia.
And that one has not at all become clear about establishing something new here after 1989, 90.
(22:46):
In fact, something like a cosmopolitan society that invites people to participate in the societal
process and also enables them to participate in the societal process.
Rather, one sees that all discussions we have had about citizenship rights, etc., are immediately
viewed from the perspective of exclusion. Who does not belong?
(23:07):
This entire debate about Turkey and Europe has quite fatal aspects.
There is no attention paid to the social reality at all.
There is no country outside the EU that is so intertwined with Europe, humanly, economically,
and in all other respects that matter and are so important.
And it is precisely from people like Sarkozy and Merkel that they speak of privileged partnership.
(23:30):
I don't even have to think long about it; I just need to open my ears.
With privileged partnership, racism already resonates through the formulation.
It is a completely false notion that racists are always people who foam at the mouth and chase after black people.
Rather, racism is also something structural.
(23:52):
And there is a lack of self-reflection on that.
They have coined the term 'everyday religion' for this almost obsessive tendency to construct
identities, to reconstruct the self, the home that belongs only to oneself. What is that?
(24:13):
Where is the connection to religion here?
Everyday religion, with that I actually respond to the fiction that the majority of a society
thinks about what is produced in the media.
The majority of a society does not think about what is produced in the social science faculties either.
With everyday religions, I try to consider how people process social change.
(24:39):
And in these processes of social change, categories like 'who am I' certainly play a role.
This question, 'who am I', which is difficult to answer when one honestly poses it, is exploited again.
One cannot simply say that.
The entire life story is attached to it, as is the place where one has lived.
All questions of class, origin, nation, gender, everything is connected under the question, 'who am I'.
(25:04):
And this question is indeed exploited in these identity discourses.
It is quite evident that until the 1970s of the 20th century, most people managed without the concept of identity.
But suddenly, identity became a real trend, and today everyone knows what to say about identity.
Most of the time, it is then the sound bites that first circulate in the academic world, and
(25:27):
from the academic world, they then move into the media.
Then it gets chopped up really small.
The Bild-Zeitung has absolutely no problem using the word identity.
So everyday religion answers the questions, who am I, where do we come from, and amusingly,
I heard this for the first time in Moscow, and it is indeed to be seen in connection with these
(25:50):
questions, who is to blame.
So these are the three everyday religious questions.
One must somehow be able to name culprits, even for the societal misery.
Where do we come from is also actually quite difficult to answer, because one must first clarify what we means. Who are we actually?
Who actually belongs to the we?
I am not just talking about my family.
(26:11):
People who can only comprehend the we-form within their family do reflect a piece of reality.
This means the disintegration of societal contexts, that only the family remains conceivable.
This is indeed a very important point, I believe, that people do think about it, even quite
normal people who do not work in media or science, do think about societal conditions.
(26:38):
But what is offered, and this is also a piece of media criticism and certainly also a criticism
of science, is that they actually exploit these everyday needs for explanation and do not attempt
to engage in a tension relationship, that one must indeed say, my consideration is.
(26:59):
Loss of tradition should not just be lamented nostalgically and then somehow aggressive answers
found, such as, we must isolate ourselves, very strict laws, and integration is the most important thing.
If one does not consider, integration, where should people integrate to?
What is actually the hard core?
(27:19):
Then we are back to the debate about leading culture.
Leading culture sounds great with leading culture, but what is it?
The contents of this leading culture are not clear at all.
For me, it actually means that it is a political-cultural task and a necessity that universities
and media have, namely something like a re-establishment of tradition, in which all who live here participate.
(27:44):
And that is why we also need these forces.
We also need this diversity.
From this diversity, culture emerges, and that is part of the concept of culture; it has just been forgotten. Culture unites the heterogeneous.
Culture, which also comes from the agricultural field, is the term.
And we all know what monoculture is.
Monoculture is rubbish; it means cotton everywhere, and gradually nothing else grows.
(28:07):
Culture actually means the care of differences, the care of diversity.
From these differences, something new emerges, something fruitful.
And this is not something that is given by nature; rather, culture is a social process.
A consciousness of this must be created.
And for this, institutions like educational institutions are ideally suited.
(28:29):
But if we only consider educational institutions in terms of economic output, we destroy exactly
what produces culture in these educational institutions.
And it is the same in the political process.
It is much more important that people participate in the political process. That means integration.
However, we do have the danger that most people, whether they are German citizens or not, do
(28:53):
not participate in this political process at all anymore because they can no longer identify their interests.
And that is the problem.
We must therefore engage people to be interested in politics, not just in politics in any way,
in a distant form, or only once on election day, but that one can really have a say in living
conditions, that one goes to their parents' evening, that one participates in self-governing institutions.
(29:21):
But today, for example, student life is organised in such a way that one thinks three times
about whether to participate in a student self-governance or whether one will exceed the regular study period.
But only in this way does one learn democracy.
Isn't that the flip side of instrumental reason, that it systematically excludes these discussions of values and goals?
(29:44):
Yes, or only leads to a discussion of values.
I say that values are not convincing at all if one preaches them or something like that.
Such things must be experienced.
And democracy is a context of experience.
That means one must also have the opportunities to act democratically.
And that can be promoted or it can be suppressed.
At the moment, such possibilities are being hollowed out.
(30:06):
And that is what I mean by desubstantialisation.
The possibilities of actually participating in a process of democracy, cultural production, are being hollowed out.
And that is very bad under the primacy of an economicism, which has always been attributed to Marxism.
He would view everything from the perspective of the economy.
And that is already inherent in the concept of value.
The highest thing we have to represent in a secularised world is value.
(30:29):
But if you listen closely, value, Value, is an economic category.
And one notices that this is a consequence of the economic modernisation process, as it began in the 19th. Century.
And we are actually in the final phase. Now it is divided.
On one side, we have an incredible amount of skill in technical reason, which is handled instrumentally.
And completely detached from any values, which, upon closer inspection, are also absent in those who preach them.
(30:57):
And are, above all, abstract.
And this abstractness is somehow, as you rightly said, related to the economic principle, which
is also an abstract one.
The economic value, the Value, is indeed an abstract value. Exactly.
The economic context of life is a process of abstraction.
(31:18):
And that is indeed the experience.
People do not find fulfilment in the economy.
And that the economy is a part of human life and not the goal of human life, one must somehow understand.
Thank you for being with us at Audioarchiv.
Follow us, so you won't miss an episode.
And don't forget the like button.
(31:38):
Until next week, your Audioarchiv team.
Welcome to Audio Archive, the channel for historical interviews with writers, philosophers,
activists, and intellectuals from all over the world.
(00:34):
Hello, another conversation with Detlef Klausen.
The sociologist and Theodor W.
Adorno student unfolds his analysis of societal cultural development in Europe.
Detlef Klausen understands culture in the French sense as civilisation, as the relationship
of all individuals in all areas of a society to one another.
(00:57):
The societal culture understood this way is currently at war in Europe.
Civilisation enemies are right-wing and far-right movements such as the AfD.
Their goal is monoculture with battle terms such as German, family, white, Christian, and heterosexual, among others.
(01:17):
The monocultural civilisation is packaged.
Monoculture is to be understood in an agrarian sense, as monoculture against cultural diversity,
with the eternal mantra of blame assignment.
Foreigners are to blame, the LGBTQIA plus movement is to blame, black people are to blame, democracy
(01:39):
is to blame, the parties are to blame, and so on.
Blaming others not only resonates in Germany, but has a rather long tradition here.
With the annexation of the GDR to the Federal Republic, it was deliberately reactivated by right-wing extremists.
Detlef Klausen explains people's susceptibility to these authoritarian thought patterns with
(02:04):
the lack of democratic experience and low democratic participation, as is the case in East Germany.
Democratic modernity means the recognition of real difference, diversity, and participation.
The deliberate twisting of this reality, its propagandistic distortion into its opposite, is
the political essence of the AfD.
(02:27):
It packages criticism of the economy and politics nationally, in step with Donald Trump's MAGA
movement, Meloni's Italian neo-fascists, Gerd Wilders' Dutch racist gang, and others.
The goal of all these parties is the standardisation of the individual and its cultural dissolution
(02:48):
in the imagined pure Nazi national body.
Mr Klausen, in your opinion, is there a connection between the attacks of 11. September 2001 and 11.
November 1989, when the capitalist system and liberal democracy celebrated their greatest triumph
with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and economic globalisation was finally able to unite
(03:15):
the world into a single global market, when some even spoke of the end of history.
In this moment of triumph, the victors are struck by a wave of blind, terrorist violence.
It seems that this blind violence is the last possible form of protest against the total victory,
(03:40):
which nothing else can oppose.
What kind of society has emerged under the tones that are unleashed?
Is this the predicted triumph of instrumental reason by Horkheimer, which erases every specific
(04:02):
negation, every utopia, the other in general?
I would not speak of blind violence, precisely because I see it as instrumental reason seeming to triumph here.
And in that respect, I would also say that this historical moment of 1989, 1990 has been almost squandered.
(04:29):
It indeed offered great opportunities and still offers considerable opportunities overall.
But what we are experiencing is, on one side, a management of this process, which is understood
in a completely truncated way, of an economic rat race.
That the whole world is essentially just trying to compete economically for a cake that is to
(04:52):
be distributed by all means.
The violence that arises against this or seems to arise against it is much less blind, but much more calculated.
And everything we now know about the 11th.
September, this approach of Al-Qaeda, the strategy and the politics behind it, is much less
(05:15):
irrational and much less blind, but rather surprises with its rational calculation.
One could rather say that the Bush administration reacted blindly and less rationally and less calculated.
But under the notion of instrumental reason, that one could truly organise the world according
(05:38):
to the principles of instrumental reason.
But let us take again the opposing side, the side of fundamentalism.
It is, in a certain way, abstract.
The counter-model that this fundamentalism constructs is a construct of history, of originality.
(05:59):
It has no concrete social utopia to offer anymore, so in this sense perhaps blind.
It is not a social alternative that is being offered.
But that may also be the completely wrong claim.
It is a form of the promise of salvation.
Hamas, for example, entered the last parliamentary election campaign with Islam, that is the solution.
(06:22):
You could say, well, that is blind in that the consequences are not calculated at all.
But that is always something from extremely radical positions, which leads to a loss of reality.
Is there an inner connection, is there a dialectical relationship between this world of the
(06:43):
West, between this economically fundamentalism extended to a global scale, one might say.
They speak of the desubstantialisation of bourgeois society, of a capitalism stripped of its utopian elements.
Is there a connection between this development and this religious, extremist, radical response to it?
(07:09):
I think it is a completely false perspective to think that somehow fundamentalism is far away
and has nothing to do with this society.
No, this is a single global process that began long before people started talking about globalisation.
Fundamentalism is actually a consequence of secularisation.
(07:29):
And secularisation is not something that is limited to Western societies.
Secularisation, meaning the diminishing power of traditional religion, is something that has
affected the whole world for over 100 years, 150 years.
It is also a consequence of colonialism in the 19th century.
Century, which set this process in motion, with all its advantages and enormous disadvantages.
(07:55):
That is indeed the development of an irreversible process.
And now there are different forms of reactions to secularisation.
And indeed, fundamental opposition has already formed in the 1970s in the United States.
The entire radicalisation of the evangelicals played a very, very large role there.
(08:20):
And this is, by the way, also partly a problem in American domestic politics, because they became
political through the Reagan Revolution and Reagan was the first president who could rely on this majority.
So this happened in the 1970s in the United States.
This is exactly the same process in which the Ayatollahs gained more and more power in Iran.
(08:43):
These were the consequences of a fatal modernisation process that took place under the Shah regime.
But you see this in a simultaneity.
We can also look at other countries.
The comparable process has been the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
The Chinese Cultural Revolution has been the greatest break with tradition in the history of
a million-strong society, lasting over twelve years and actually creating entirely new conditions.
(09:10):
And on this basis, the reforms of Deng Xiaoping actually took place simultaneously. 1978, revolution
in Iran or however one might call it, in any case the overthrow of the Shah regime.
They called it the Reagan Revolution in the USA.
All of these are simultaneous processes.
This means that the radical capitalisation process, which is currently being observed with horror
(09:33):
in the West, was indeed based on the Cultural Revolution in China.
So you see, the whole thing is a global process that has different impacts.
In the Arab world at the end of the 1970s, there was the failure of Arab nationalism.
This means that Arab nationalism has not really managed to cope with decolonisation.
And this failure of Arab nationalism has triggered a strengthening of fundamentalist movements as a reaction.
(10:02):
And now you see, this entire geopolitical set is already coming together, which then collided after 1989, 90.
This means that this modernisation process, this secularisation process has somehow gone awry.
There are elements that have gone off the rails.
(10:24):
I would say, yes, it is a failed secularisation.
And this failed secularisation has not only occurred in societies in the East or South, but
first and foremost we must look at the core of the dynamics.
And the core of the dynamics of failed secularisation is to be found in the Western world.
And that is a huge problem.
(10:44):
And there is a lack of self-reflection on this.
Especially, for example, where there is now a confrontation between Western values and the rest of the world.
Regarding Western values on one side, think of the discussion about the European constitution. That is quite absurd.
At the same time, there is a call to uphold Christian and Jewish values.
Is it actually forgotten that there are a thousand years of anti-Semitism embedded in Western values?
(11:08):
It is not that simple with Western values.
And the other story is that Christianity, the Church, and the Enlightenment are mentioned simultaneously.
As if Giordano Bruno had not been burned.
All of this is completely forgotten.
This is a distortion of history like no other.
Using a phrase from Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, one could call this an Invention of Tradition. An invention of tradition.
(11:35):
This West has never actually existed.
And there is a lack of self-reflection on the failures of secularisation.
In this context, suddenly the entire debate on values, the discussion on values.
This actually denies that secularisation is a reality. A social reality.
And not some kind of programme of atheists.
Rather, this is a social reality.
And one must respond to that.
(11:56):
Consider what this actually is. What has developed here?
What are also the losses in this process?
And can something actually be done? Namely, to re-establish traditions.
But the will for the new is something that is lacking in Western society.
How would you describe these losses?
The losses are certainly such, and I do not want to be pushed into the cultural conservative corner.
(12:20):
But the losses are those of an abstract cult of management. Of feasibility.
And that all of this is to be accomplished by an intact individual.
So, what has also been celebrated in sociology as individualisation.
And my teacher Adorno rightly said 30 years ago, the more individualisation, the less individual.
(12:46):
So, it essentially means not individualisation; that was an ideology.
This is an ideology that completely overwhelms people because it actually shifts the responsibility
for a societal process onto the subjects.
And that is why we have deficiencies on all these levels.
And now, with incredible ideological intensity, the family is being brought back into play.
(13:09):
And the societal processes that have led to the change in the family are actually being denied.
One must consciously think about what living together means under today's conditions?
Multiple generations, how can they live together? How can they act?
One should think about that.
But it is something dreadful, the family as the last refuge against modernisation.
(13:31):
So under the cloak, basically, of modernity and individualisation, suddenly very reactionary elements are introduced.
And that also highlights the hypocrisy of this discussion about Western values.
That is to say, this solipsistic almost individualisation is a kind of new collective?
Yes, individualisation actually means the desubstantialisation of individuals.
(13:56):
Individuals are only considered from the perspective of the self-preservation principle.
That is also something that Horkheimer has already noted.
And this self-preservation principle is completely abstract. The desolidarisation, the deceleration.
In an emergency, everyone is their own next of kin.
(14:16):
And then it is introduced quite abstractly that we need patriotism again or something else,
any collective stories, which have previously been stripped of their substance in the social process.
And then the collective stories become all the more aggressive, biting, because they are so devoid of content.
If one follows their reasoning, then we have all, without really noticing it, become Americans.
(14:39):
America, the USA, is a laboratory in which recipes are experimented with that later claim validity
for the rest of the world.
If one takes that seriously, then we are facing a massive return of chauvinistic nationalism,
a sharp segregation of social classes and immigrant groups, a further hollowing out of democratic
(15:05):
institutions, and a renaissance of militarism.
Are the USA really still the model of world society?
Are they not rather an ageing empire that clings desperately to its slipping power and occasionally
even goes on a rampage?
(15:25):
Certainly, as far as the process of modernisation is concerned, the United States are still ahead of Europe.
Many things that happen in the USA can also be read as the European future.
But I would also say, unfortunately, we have many things that are good in America.
We do not have that at all here in Europe.
And that is precisely what is missing.
(15:48):
Let us only take the discussion about immigration.
This is also fiercely contested in the USA.
These are hard and sharp conflicts that are being fought out.
We will continue with the interview shortly.
Like us if you enjoy it.
But they are remarkably open, it is being contested.
And the voices are diverse.
(16:08):
The necessity of immigration is increasingly denied in Europe.
And that has actually worsened.
This is related to the invention of tradition that I mentioned.
And what is currently emerging in our neighbouring country, this French identity politics of Mr Sarkozy.
One can criticise Chirac as much as one likes.
He would never have done such things, such confrontational stories.
(16:31):
And fundamentally, the good aspects of the French tradition, the good aspects of modern tradition,
are essentially denied by Sarkozy.
That means, modernity was something in citizenship law that has been progressive in France and
has been comparable to citizenship law in the United States.
And we must not deny that.
(16:52):
Despite all the criticism of the Bush administration, American society has enormous potential.
The USA is not actually the bastion of militarism and chauvinism.
That is one side of American society.
But there are also enormous counterforces in this system.
And that also means the awareness that one must organise oneself for one's own interests.
(17:16):
This kind of self-activity, of political influence, even when it is difficult, means that one
cannot say that the parties have failed.
This kind of passivity, which is very widespread in old Western Europe, is different in the USA.
This kind of grassroots democratic understanding is much more widespread in the USA than in any European country.
(17:40):
Nevertheless, the European social state, the European welfare state would be a concrete counter-model
to the American way of life or way of politics.
Isn't it something a bit more modern, as it attempts to extend democracy into the economic realm?
(18:00):
Even if this welfare state is currently struggling, because the political power constellations
are different, is it not still the more modern model?
I do not know whether one can speak of a model.
In fact, in almost all European societies, the confrontation is currently taking place and the
confrontation is far from over.
(18:22):
How are the tasks of the state to be described for the shaping of society?
At the moment, I see rather the danger that many people, at least in continental Europe, do
not see at all that new tasks must indeed be assigned to the state and that this must be politically
and programmatically redefined, what the state actually has to deliver, and that many people,
(18:45):
with this disillusionment with the state and indeed a populist disillusionment with the state,
which is preached from right to left, by the way, this is always the danger in populism, that
it goes from right to left, that it is much, much greater in Europe and that in fact in the
USA there is rather a counter-movement that says the state must take on more social tasks or
(19:08):
the community must take on more social tasks.
This cannot continue like this.
Okay, I say the traditions are different.
In the USA, it is the tradition of self-organisation and in Europe, and I believe this accounts
for part of the passivity of present-day Western Europe, the political parties warn, but the
political parties are no longer capable of doing so.
(19:29):
I will say it quite maliciously, either engage in elite politics or engage in populism. They waver in between.
The greatest experts are those who can unite the two.
We have already spoken about Mr Sarkozy and his Ministry for National Identity.
However, he is by no means the only one.
(19:51):
These populist, nationalist, and xenophobic movements and parties currently have a great momentum in Europe.
This stands in a strange contradiction to the discourses of openness to the world, internationality,
and the appeals for the removal of all borders and barriers that accompanied the process of
(20:12):
economic globalisation right up until the 1990s.
Is this now a new phase?
Are we now in the midst of a great depression regarding this expansion to a global scale after an euphoric phase?
The tearing down of borders does not actually need to be demanded by anyone anymore.
(20:33):
This is the persuasion of open doors.
This is actually only done by people who somehow still do not have enough of deregulation.
And that also means that, in fact, it is known in every corner, in the USA, in England, where
deregulation has been pushed the furthest, that there is already a societal awareness far beyond
(20:53):
those who have preached this deregulation, that this cannot continue. Something must be done.
There is simply no societal control over the processes that take place there anymore.
I believe there is already an awareness of this.
The terrible thing is that this is being feigned again, and I would describe this more as a
(21:15):
crisis of the political system, that it is feigned that there is control over it by agreeing
on an area where it costs nothing, namely cultural conflicts.
Cultural conflicts are managed, or rather, these cultural conflicts are created.
And that is why something like the establishment of a Ministry for National Identity is, fundamentally, an absurdity.
(21:38):
But it is a clear indication of that.
We organise society in such a way that people can feel represented by politics.
And that is indeed a very questionable promise, because it excludes many people from the societal
process, who are defined as strangers, newcomers, ethnically different, who do not belong, these
(22:03):
are all very fatal signals.
And there is actually no self-reflection on the fact that this is extraordinarily harmful to society.
This only becomes apparent in Saxony-Anhalt in Halberstadt when a theatre troupe is beaten up
with the Rocky Horror Picture Show, then it somehow stands out.
Man, this is really bad for our image that something like this happens here.
(22:25):
But there is no thought at all that systematically, at different levels, a xenophobia is being
generated and that these are merely side effects of this xenophobia.
And that one has not at all become clear about establishing something new here after 1989, 90.
(22:46):
In fact, something like a cosmopolitan society that invites people to participate in the societal
process and also enables them to participate in the societal process.
Rather, one sees that all discussions we have had about citizenship rights, etc., are immediately
viewed from the perspective of exclusion. Who does not belong?
(23:07):
This entire debate about Turkey and Europe has quite fatal aspects.
There is no attention paid to the social reality at all.
There is no country outside the EU that is so intertwined with Europe, humanly, economically,
and in all other respects that matter and are so important.
And it is precisely from people like Sarkozy and Merkel that they speak of privileged partnership.
(23:30):
I don't even have to think long about it; I just need to open my ears.
With privileged partnership, racism already resonates through the formulation.
It is a completely false notion that racists are always people who foam at the mouth and chase after black people.
Rather, racism is also something structural.
(23:52):
And there is a lack of self-reflection on that.
They have coined the term 'everyday religion' for this almost obsessive tendency to construct
identities, to reconstruct the self, the home that belongs only to oneself. What is that?
(24:13):
Where is the connection to religion here?
Everyday religion, with that I actually respond to the fiction that the majority of a society
thinks about what is produced in the media.
The majority of a society does not think about what is produced in the social science faculties either.
With everyday religions, I try to consider how people process social change.
(24:39):
And in these processes of social change, categories like 'who am I' certainly play a role.
This question, 'who am I', which is difficult to answer when one honestly poses it, is exploited again.
One cannot simply say that.
The entire life story is attached to it, as is the place where one has lived.
All questions of class, origin, nation, gender, everything is connected under the question, 'who am I'.
(25:04):
And this question is indeed exploited in these identity discourses.
It is quite evident that until the 1970s of the 20th century, most people managed without the concept of identity.
But suddenly, identity became a real trend, and today everyone knows what to say about identity.
Most of the time, it is then the sound bites that first circulate in the academic world, and
(25:27):
from the academic world, they then move into the media.
Then it gets chopped up really small.
The Bild-Zeitung has absolutely no problem using the word identity.
So everyday religion answers the questions, who am I, where do we come from, and amusingly,
I heard this for the first time in Moscow, and it is indeed to be seen in connection with these
(25:50):
questions, who is to blame.
So these are the three everyday religious questions.
One must somehow be able to name culprits, even for the societal misery.
Where do we come from is also actually quite difficult to answer, because one must first clarify what we means. Who are we actually?
Who actually belongs to the we?
I am not just talking about my family.
(26:11):
People who can only comprehend the we-form within their family do reflect a piece of reality.
This means the disintegration of societal contexts, that only the family remains conceivable.
This is indeed a very important point, I believe, that people do think about it, even quite
normal people who do not work in media or science, do think about societal conditions.
(26:38):
But what is offered, and this is also a piece of media criticism and certainly also a criticism
of science, is that they actually exploit these everyday needs for explanation and do not attempt
to engage in a tension relationship, that one must indeed say, my consideration is.
(26:59):
Loss of tradition should not just be lamented nostalgically and then somehow aggressive answers
found, such as, we must isolate ourselves, very strict laws, and integration is the most important thing.
If one does not consider, integration, where should people integrate to?
What is actually the hard core?
(27:19):
Then we are back to the debate about leading culture.
Leading culture sounds great with leading culture, but what is it?
The contents of this leading culture are not clear at all.
For me, it actually means that it is a political-cultural task and a necessity that universities
and media have, namely something like a re-establishment of tradition, in which all who live here participate.
(27:44):
And that is why we also need these forces.
We also need this diversity.
From this diversity, culture emerges, and that is part of the concept of culture; it has just been forgotten. Culture unites the heterogeneous.
Culture, which also comes from the agricultural field, is the term.
And we all know what monoculture is.
Monoculture is rubbish; it means cotton everywhere, and gradually nothing else grows.
(28:07):
Culture actually means the care of differences, the care of diversity.
From these differences, something new emerges, something fruitful.
And this is not something that is given by nature; rather, culture is a social process.
A consciousness of this must be created.
And for this, institutions like educational institutions are ideally suited.
(28:29):
But if we only consider educational institutions in terms of economic output, we destroy exactly
what produces culture in these educational institutions.
And it is the same in the political process.
It is much more important that people participate in the political process. That means integration.
However, we do have the danger that most people, whether they are German citizens or not, do
(28:53):
not participate in this political process at all anymore because they can no longer identify their interests.
And that is the problem.
We must therefore engage people to be interested in politics, not just in politics in any way,
in a distant form, or only once on election day, but that one can really have a say in living
conditions, that one goes to their parents' evening, that one participates in self-governing institutions.
(29:21):
But today, for example, student life is organised in such a way that one thinks three times
about whether to participate in a student self-governance or whether one will exceed the regular study period.
But only in this way does one learn democracy.
Isn't that the flip side of instrumental reason, that it systematically excludes these discussions of values and goals?
(29:44):
Yes, or only leads to a discussion of values.
I say that values are not convincing at all if one preaches them or something like that.
Such things must be experienced.
And democracy is a context of experience.
That means one must also have the opportunities to act democratically.
And that can be promoted or it can be suppressed.
At the moment, such possibilities are being hollowed out.
(30:06):
And that is what I mean by desubstantialisation.
The possibilities of actually participating in a process of democracy, cultural production, are being hollowed out.
And that is very bad under the primacy of an economicism, which has always been attributed to Marxism.
He would view everything from the perspective of the economy.
And that is already inherent in the concept of value.
The highest thing we have to represent in a secularised world is value.
(30:29):
But if you listen closely, value, Value, is an economic category.
And one notices that this is a consequence of the economic modernisation process, as it began in the 19th. Century.
And we are actually in the final phase. Now it is divided.
On one side, we have an incredible amount of skill in technical reason, which is handled instrumentally.
And completely detached from any values, which, upon closer inspection, are also absent in those who preach them.
(30:57):
And are, above all, abstract.
And this abstractness is somehow, as you rightly said, related to the economic principle, which
is also an abstract one.
The economic value, the Value, is indeed an abstract value. Exactly.
The economic context of life is a process of abstraction.
(31:18):
And that is indeed the experience.
People do not find fulfilment in the economy.
And that the economy is a part of human life and not the goal of human life, one must somehow understand.
Thank you for being with us at Audioarchiv.
Follow us, so you won't miss an episode.
And don't forget the like button.
(31:38):
Until next week, your Audioarchiv team.
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