Stefan Fuchs (audio archiv - Wissenschaftsjournalist) im Gespräch mit Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (geb. 1968). Rolf-Ulrich Kunze ist Professor für Neuere und neueste Geschichte am Karlsruher KIT (Karlsruher Institut für Technologie). Der Historiker forscht insbesondere zu Protestantismus, Wissenschafts- und Kulturgeschichte sowie zur "material culture" der Technik. In diesem Gespräch spürt Rolf-Ulrich Kunze den Ursachen und Widersprüchen der "America First" Politik nach, bewertet den Einfluß der Tech Millardäre wie Elon Musk auf die amerikanische Politik und analysiert die ersten Monate der zweiten Amtszeit des US Präsidenten Donald Trump.
Stefan Fuchs (audio archiv - science journalist) in conversation with Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (born 1968). Rolf-Ulrich Kunze is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The historian specialises in researching Protestantism, the history of science and culture and the ‘material culture’ of technology. In this interview, Rolf-Ulrich Kunze traces the causes and contradictions of the ‘America First’ policy, assesses the influence of tech billionaires such as Elon Musk on American politics and analyses the first months of US President Donald Trump's second term in office.
Stefan Fuchs (audio archiv - journaliste scientifique) s'entretient avec Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (né en 1968). Rolf-Ulrich Kunze est professeur d'histoire moderne et contemporaine au KIT de Karlsruhe (Karlsruher Institut für Technologie). L'historien mène notamment des recherches sur le protestantisme, l'histoire des sciences et de la culture ainsi que sur la « culture matérielle » de la technique. Dans cet entretien, Rolf-Ulrich Kunze traque les causes et les contradictions de la politique « America First », évalue l'influence des milliardaires de la tech comme Elon Musk sur la politique américaine et analyse les premiers mois du second mandat du président américain Donald Trump.
Veröffentlichungen u.a. / Publications a.o. / Publications, entre autres:
- Alexander Karp, Nicholas Zamiska: "The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West." The Bodley Head 2025.
- Rolf-Ulrich Kunze: "Rekonstruktion des Politischen – Politikgeschichte heute." Kohlhammer 2023.
- J. D. Vance: "Hillbilly Elegy – A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis." Harper; Reprint Ed. Edition 2016.
- James Dale Davidson: "The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transformation to the Information Age." Touchstone 1999.
- Claus Leggewie: "America first. Der Fall einer konservativen Revolution." Fischer Tb. 1997
- Richard Hofstadter: "The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It." 1948 (s. dazu diesen Wiki Eintrag)
Every Friday a new historical interview with dialogue partners from all over the world.Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (00:08):
Welcome to Audioarchiv, the channel for historical interviews with writers, philosophers, activists,
and intellectuals from around the world.
Audioarchiv Team (00:34):
Hello. The second presidency of Donald Trump will politically and economically shake the global order sustainably.
With the recently initiated trade war, the world is experiencing a kind of neoconservative,
planetary real-lab experiment while the USA is simultaneously facing a frontal attack on its already weakened democracy.
(01:00):
In a kind of conservative coup, the 47th.
US President Donald Trump is attempting to extend the power of the executive beyond the limits
of what is constitutionally permissible and to undermine the separation of powers.
The attack on the American Constitution is flanked by a bitter culture war against women's rights,
(01:23):
minority protection, immigration, critical media, and even science.
The promises of Trump's populism, that one only needs to close the borders to bring prosperity
back to America, are being tested for their reality.
Will the already weakened American democracy withstand this frontal attack?
(01:46):
Will the courts be able to stop the flood of presidential decrees?
Are the USA swaying towards a kind of fascism?
And is a civil war likely with the failure of the conservative revolution at the end of Donald Trump's four-year term?
Rolf Ulrich Kunze is a historian and novelist.
(02:07):
In conversation with science journalist Stefan Fuchs, the Karlsruhe contemporary historian and
US expert Rolf Ulrich Kunze discusses the implications for the geopolitical role of the United
States and the dangers for Europe.
Stefan Fuchs (02:23):
So it has happened, he is back.
And the second act of the Trump drama promises to be more extreme.
The mega-MAGA populist is back, more radicalised than before, visibly consumed by resentments,
(02:44):
wounded ego, but above all with a plan on how to drain what he and his supporters call the swamp
in Washington, the so-called Deep State.
We are currently witnessing a coup in the USA, an attempt to abolish the separation of powers,
(03:06):
to undermine the famous checks and balances, a frontal attack on the rather dusty, plutocracy-
hollowed-out Constitution of the United States.
What do the bets look like?
Will the Republic by the people, for the people survive this onslaught?
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (03:31):
As a historian, I am a backward-looking prophet and I am actually turning around now and starting positively.
This peculiar Republic, which has emerged from a conservative revolution of the eighteenth century,
where a political order was adapted to an existing early capitalist economic system, is quite
(03:53):
different from the revolutions in Europe shortly thereafter, has already endured much that one
would not necessarily have expected of it, including the civil war in the nineteenth century.
But I do believe, as indicated by its classifications, that there is a dimension of disruption
(04:17):
present here that is also new within the horizon of what is possible in America.
This mixture of libertarian autocratic rule does partially connect to well-known motifs, particularly
the mentalities of American politics, such as isolationism.
(04:42):
Trump himself strengthens this association of similarity with President McKinley.
This is completely wrong, as high imperialism is a completely different phase, with different
political actors who act differently, but all of this does not fit together.
It leaves a paradoxical impression.
One looks as if into a mirror cloud of shards of glass, which shimmer differently, which appears
(05:06):
very dangerous, and indeed is very dangerous, the degree of destruction and energy is enormous
when one considers the speed at which the constitutional system is being ground down.
To answer your question, I believe that despite everything in this strange constitutional system,
you have already pointed out that it is highly deficient and, in my view, always has been from
(05:29):
the very beginning, due to this peculiar petrified character.
We have a core constitution from the late eighteenth century, the late Enlightenment, before
us, which has been very cautiously supplemented in certain areas.
But we have never seen a genuine process of constitutional revision in the USA.
Perhaps this is also precisely a reason for the peculiar and hard-to-imagine resilience of this system for Europeans.
(05:55):
It is so diffuse and so strange that there could be certain corners of resilience that might
eventually slow down this process.
I cannot say whether this will truly lead to the Republic, as we know it, being preserved.
I definitely believe that the role, the global power role of the USA will change.
Stefan Fuchs (06:17):
We are experiencing a cultural struggle of a very classical kind, with racist, misogynistic,
macho-celebrating, science-questioning, anti-democratic undertones, an attack on critical media,
and this from an administration that accuses Europe of exercising censorship because it wants
(06:38):
to combat fake news on social media.
We have now possibly equipped the planning of mass deportations with the data from tax advisors,
which overshadow the remigration plans of the far-right in Europe.
I believe this image of the so-called model democracy of America is decisively damaged.
(07:03):
If we now go back into history, the precursors and role models of this movement in American
history, which spans from the Civil War through the apartheid laws, Jim Crow after the victory
of the Union states, to Hitler sympathiser Lindbergh, to the right-wing populist Gingrich of
(07:23):
the Tea Party, and finally to the transformation of Baptists into ultra-right Christian nationalists
who want to abolish the separation of church and state.
What are the connections to these other right-wing movements in the United States?
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (07:42):
From my perspective, these connections are as the political scientist Claus Leggewie described
in a study in 1997, against the backdrop of his own research activities in New York, analysed
with the telling title "America First.
The case of a conservative revolution." I reviewed this book in 1997, kindly, but I did not
(08:05):
correctly assess the significance of this prediction either historically or in terms of current events at the time.
All the questions they ask could be answered there.
On one side, we have the deep traditions of social conflicts they mentioned in a paradoxical
(08:27):
society, as John Starnberg named it, which is the mother of all modern immigration societies,
but at the same time the mother of all xenophobic societies, which on one side enables individuality
and individualism in a radical way through manifest destiny as individual pursuit of happiness,
something we do not know at all in the European tradition, especially not in constitutional
(08:53):
tradition, and on the other side, through rigid forms of social control, among other things
through the evangelicals, ensures that exactly this is called into question.
And many examples could be found.
On one side, there was Prohibition, and on the other side, the first modern mass consumer society in the 1920s.
(09:14):
This is indeed, as Starnberg says, paradoxical.
And our European perspective on this is politically somewhat different from the American one,
as we imagine that this is distributed according to a left-right schema, so that one can string
together the examples they mentioned like a pearl necklace and then arrive at a certain image,
(09:36):
a right-wing threat to the Republic.
If one tries to look closer and also considers some disturbing American historical findings
that have existed since the 1970s, one can learn that this behaves obviously differently than we are used to.
And that there have also always been exactly such isolationist, prohibitionist, culture-war
(10:02):
traits on the not left, but progressive and progressivist side of the Democrats, so that this
political game, which we are fascinated by, particularly manifests itself in the presidential
election, is in a way only the surface of an overall paradoxically distributed society.
(10:26):
And in that respect, that is true.
So the chain of argument, the historical one they have constructed, certainly exists and leads
into the present of Trump, which we are currently experiencing.
I just believe that we do well to widen our perspective a bit to understand this and to see
that even under Democratic presidents like Lyndon B.
(10:46):
Johnson, for example, in his only social reform project of the 20th century, not coincidentally
called the Great Society, which went far beyond Obamacare, also played exactly these typical
mentality motives of chosenness and singularity.
By the way, a tangible everyday racism with Texan Johnson that was not yet addressed at that time.
(11:14):
So one sees, I always call it the Magnum P.I.
Image of American society after this series of the 1980s with Tom Selleck, the shining man,
the good one, with whom one likes to identify, who represents all the positive values of the
American constitutional order, including the commitment to ethics.
Unfortunately, this is more grey-scale in historical reality.
(11:36):
And we Europeans have indeed become accustomed, for certain reasons, through the close Atlantic
partnership since the late [years], to carry a certain image of America that may not be sufficiently nuanced.
Stefan Fuchs (11:51):
Now, it is not the case that the analysis of these MAGA supporters is entirely wrong regarding
the economic situation, regarding the living conditions of many Americans, possibly well over half.
So when one reads this bestseller by Vice President J. D.
(12:11):
Vance "Hillbilly Elegy", one gets the impression that at least the Midwest has regressed to a developing country.
Hopelessness, hungry children, social decay, the deindustrialisation of the Rust Belt, a crumbling
middle class that feels betrayed by an elitist democratic party, drug addiction.
(12:37):
The hillbillies as angry citizens.
The diagnosis of the Trump supporters is actually correct.
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (12:45):
Yes. It describes a significant economic part of a reality that has developed since the [years],
with serious political consequences, a shift.
Claus Leggewie in his book from 1997 already has the conservative revolution beginning in the mid-[years].
That is relatively early, so still before Reagan and his famous phrase (13:08):
"Government is not the
solution, government is the problem." Yes, there has been this economic divide in American society for a long time.
And there is, however, a historical mentality.
On the other hand, there is a deeply American, populist response to the fact that those who
(13:33):
are most personally affected by social decline can be particularly well captured by populist,
xenophobic derivations and authoritarian offers.
In the past, there was actually something opposing this until the [years].
That was one xenophobic derivation mechanism, in a certain way also that of Adorno's authoritarian
(13:56):
personality under different conditions, a society sorted quite differently with other social
patterns and opportunities for advancement.
What opposed this was that there were always new waves of migration and of people who played
a highly active role in the further development of this society.
(14:16):
So the engine of further development was migration.
That is why it has rightly been observed that South Korean Americans have essentially been the
German Americans of this time since the [years].
So a specific social role of high willingness to integrate, a great willingness to perform,
and strong willingness to identify has ensured that the existing xenophobic effects did not
(14:41):
disappear, but that they were faced with a positive identification model, so to speak.
We will continue with the interview shortly.
Like us if you enjoy it.
However, as they describe the situation, in certain parts of the country, such a far-reaching
socio-economic divide occurs that this mechanism is, so to speak, reversed; it no longer acts
(15:04):
integratively, it no longer holds this society together, but is used by right-wing populists
and extremists and right-wing radicals to divide and to cause disruption in connection with libertarian fantasies.
Then something happens or can happen that we are experiencing today.
Simply put, the engine of social development in the USA has been shut down.
(15:29):
And those who benefit from the given economic changes, from the disappearance of the middle
class, from the emergence of an oligarchic caste of billionaires, which one could not have imagined
in the years before, the ones who benefit the most from it are the people of the Heritage Foundation
and in the direct mafia-like environment of Trump.
Stefan Fuchs (15:51):
So I would like to follow this trail of right-wing populism.
First, perhaps, back to this critique of right-wing capitalism.
There is also this Steve Bannon, who is considered the ideologue of this movement, who already
located this original sin of American capitalism in this phase of financialisation in the noughties
(16:19):
with the peak of the financial crisis of 2008 during a speech at the Vatican.
At that time, capitalism had parted ways with its Christian-Jewish values.
And is now only driven by greed.
This could almost be a left-catholic critique of capitalism.
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (16:42):
Yes, and here too one can say again, well, in a certain way this is also the role of the historian,
to emphasise that there is nothing new under the sun, which is also not true.
Of course, the extent to which it happens is new, and the media in which it is spread have a
speed that was not known before.
But who still remembers the name Pat Buchanan today, who as an isolationist and early critic
(17:05):
of globalisation advocated exactly this, with the same kind of aggressive language that Bernon
has taken up, albeit in the context of a very different time.
In between, we have some further loops of globalisation also in the USA, of the divergence between
the East and West coasts, from fly over America.
(17:26):
Again, this theme of social division, which in a sense provides the fuel, the fuel of hatred
for exactly such an argument, has indeed existed in the USA throughout the entire 20th. century.
We are constantly experiencing this struggle of an isolationist understanding of capitalism.
(17:46):
I could now give examples from the discussion in the State Department about the Marshall Plan,
where essentially a very similar conflict was fought with different roles in a different time
between those who say we must absolutely develop capitalism here as a White Shining City on
the hill, as a new Jerusalem, and that should radiate to the rest of the world.
(18:12):
And then there were the contemporary internationalists who clearly said that if we do exactly
that, we will politically hand Europe over to Stalin, and we must not do that.
That is why we have an interventionist responsibility also in the export of a certain understanding
of capitalism in connection with democracy.
Emphasis on the former, not the latter.
(18:33):
As we all know, this has worked very well under specific conditions.
But that does not detract from the fact that there has been this conflict in the background.
Stefan Fuchs (18:42):
Your colleague, the US historian Thomas Frank, has said about this right-wing populism, successes
of the motto talking working class themes but doing rich people things, thus addressing themes
of the working class but acting in the interest of the rich, is reflected in the figurehead
(19:04):
of a billionaire who styles himself as the defender of the people.
This has something absurd about it, but is probably historically nothing new.
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (19:14):
Probably not in this form, as represented by Trump and his entire entourage.
Yet the radicality with which it is now openly displayed takes no account whatsoever of customs,
of traditions, of formative forces that exist from authorities and offices.
(19:35):
I believe that is new.
It is correct that the sorting of political directions that is taking place here is initially
difficult for us to categorise, because we have actually been discussing since the end of the
first 'Cold War' and since entering the 21st.
Century with Paul Kennedy and others that the old right-left classification, which we inherited
(20:01):
and developed from the 19th century, no longer works at all.
We have been saying this for a long time, providing various examples, Klaus Leggewie did this in 1997 as well.
But now it has really reached the White House that we have a new form of political style, where
I also find it difficult to use the usual labels.
(20:23):
It has elements that can be described as fascist.
On the other hand, however, essential structural features are also missing that I would expect
from the perspective of the 20th.
Century, such as a coherent ideology, we do not have.
We do not have a recognisable image of a new human being that is being constructed.
(20:45):
On the contrary, at this level there is a libertarian indifference towards how people live when
they have the money to live as they wish and can buy all the desirable services for themselves,
unlike the majority who can no longer do so.
That means, if we stick to it, the term fascist essentially reduces again to the psychological
(21:06):
and emotional aspect in Adorno, namely the authoritarian personality.
I think no reasonable person will deny that this plays an obvious role in the way politics is conducted here.
But this classic image of highly ideological movements that form and also uniform societies
is exactly what we do not experience.
(21:28):
This is largely countered by this dear libertarian approach.
Stefan Fuchs (21:32):
Yes, although something may be changing there.
So this strange coalition now suddenly with Silicon Valley and the large tech companies there
seems to be taking on a different form.
So this reconstruction of a certain ideal of masculinity.
(21:54):
This last book of the Technological Republic, written by Peter Thiel and his collaborators,
also talks about how the consumer-oriented activities of these tech companies are now being
placed in the service of a kind of survival struggle for the American nation.
(22:16):
So, there is indeed a certain ideological component developing.
But fundamentally, the Democratic Party is seen here as a traitor to its actual target group,
its historical target group, by aligning itself with this so-called creative class, that is,
(22:37):
the self-employed, university-educated independents, and turning away from the blue-collar workers.
What role does this transformation of the Democratic Party play, for example, under Clinton?
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (22:53):
Again, I do not want to repeat myself, and this is not new, but there is a completely forgotten
political scientist today, Richard Hofstadter, who, in the years he was active, already predicted
back then that the Democrats would have a problem due to social change, at least we are still
(23:14):
talking about the late period of FDR and the early years of Truman.
He stated during the ongoing Second World War that once it is over, and when this high industrialisation
for war mobilisation changes alongside the development of a consumer society, the Democrats
will face a problem because one of their main voter groups will disappear.
(23:35):
And that was only part of the problem for the Democrats in his prediction.
It also came from another side that Hofstadter had not anticipated, namely the disappearance
of the Dixiecrats in the American Southern states, that is, Democrats, including in Texas.
The best example is Lyndon B.
Johnson as a Texan, who had a core voter base that was thematically and content-wise typically
(23:59):
Southern and partly openly racist.
This shifted in the 1960s for all sorts of reasons.
The socio-economic factors are significantly in the background, but not alone.
We can already see the first elements of a genuine conservative culture war in the alliance
with the evangelicals in the Bible Belt.
As a result, a large part of the former Southern core voter base of the Democrats is disappearing.
(24:26):
These states are becoming even less Democratic in congressional elections than in presidential elections.
And now, of course, the Democrats have a real arithmetic problem.
They are losing a significant part of their safe seats, and on the other hand, they are socio-economically
losing a crucial support group.
And thus this phenomenon arises, that we have on the East Coast and the West Coast and for some
(24:50):
time, when Leggewy wrote his book in 1997, still have democratic core voters at the Great Lakes,
as it was said back then, on the border with Canada.
And in the meantime, it is no longer the case.
And yes, this can be interpreted as a betrayal of a certain support base and also of their concerns.
But on the other hand, it is also an expression of social change in American society, from which
(25:16):
the Republicans, as they have developed, have benefited far more than the Democrats, who were
forced to always chase after the agenda-setting of the Republican Party.
This is exactly what was criticised during the Clinton era, that he basically adopted many conservative,
neoconservative themes of that time and presented them in a softened form as democratic options,
(25:42):
with relatively good success, but essentially Leggewies' interpretation has actually confirmed
the relevance of the conservative revolution and enabled it in this way.
This is where the emotional accusation of betrayal also comes in.
Then other groups join in, such as the various minorities that we sometimes refer to.
(26:03):
Also a strange word, that large parts of the population are sometimes referred to as minorities,
which they are actually no longer culturally.
But even among them, there are developments of differentiation, as a result of which it could
be seen that quite a few of them suddenly also vote Republican.
And in any case, if not for Congress, then certainly in the last election so clearly for Trump,
(26:27):
as many critical observers did not expect.
Stefan Fuchs (26:30):
We have already talked about the strange combination of these libertarians, so to speak the
disciples of Ayn Rand on one side and then these nationalist movements.
This is anything but trivial.
I once took a look at the 1999 volume "The Sovereign Individual", a kind of manifesto of libertarian individualism.
(26:56):
There, the nation-state was effectively dismissed with the transition to the so-called information age, that is, cyberspace.
And now we suddenly have a turning point.
And Carl Schmitt admirer Peter Thiel and his Palantir CEO Alex Karp no longer want to see these
(27:17):
technologies merely as gadgets for consumption, but rather to put them in the service of a nation
that, from their perspective, is in a struggle for survival.
Is that more than opportunism?
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (27:34):
Yes, it is totalitarian in the starkness of this vision regarding what may remain of the state and statehood. In any case.
We will continue with the interview shortly.
Like us if you enjoy it, because it is now being executed by Musk as well.
It signifies the complete end of statehood, as Reagan probably could not have imagined with
(28:00):
his famous phrase about government.
So this has a dynamic and a radicality, and now also a media immediacy, because it no longer
takes place in small rooms of experts, but can also generate a mass following, which for the
first time in modern history raises the question of what future the state has.
Stefan Fuchs (28:22):
But that is paradoxical. Nationalists questioning the state?
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (28:26):
Yes, this is a new dimension that perhaps can be captured with Ann Applebaum's efforts in 'Autocracy
Inc.', which seeks to acknowledge this contradiction rather than explain it away, and to see
that on one hand we have totalitarian needs that have no historical precedent, because the concept
(28:47):
of totalitarianism does not fit here.
That is why she speaks more openly in political science terms of autocracy, because when we
say totalitarian, we immediately think of party armies and the ideology of the new man, which
does indeed appear in what Thiel expresses, but in a completely different way.
(29:08):
It addresses a completely different political point in the system.
And the interesting thing is that we now seem to have arrived at a sociocultural point where this also becomes electable.
That was the problem for these people back in the 2000s, that while they had the technologies
for it, which they could sell very well, they had already achieved mass sales, and that is how
(29:32):
they became what they are, namely billionaires.
But on the other hand, they are missing the acceptance in the masses, so to speak, as a Missing Link.
And they have that now.
Now Musk has media in which he can indeed operate himself.
He is no longer just a clown in the White House, but he is a clown on the internet.
Stefan Fuchs (29:51):
I believe that is a very important point.
Originally, these Big Tech brothers in Silicon Valley relied on the disruptive force of technology.
That did not quite work out.
They wanted to help democracy back then with these technological disruptions.
And now they have discovered that they can achieve a societal majority through these nationalist and right-wing populist tones.
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (30:21):
And that is fascinating, as it marks the difference from historical experiences we have.
Henry Ford was also a nationalist, an anti-Semite, and a fascist and admirer of Hitler.
And when he was encouraged, supported by not a few, including the usual suspects from the Republican
Party, to also become a presidential candidate, he ultimately declined and found his way back
(30:44):
to the screw business and to improving the processes, the terrorist processes in Dearborn.
And that is the difference.
They have understood from the Big Tech industry that they actually have to enter this setting
because they themselves have the opportunity to reproduce what they do there immediately and
(31:07):
can also use it accordingly with their digital media.
What they could not know, and perhaps we all do not know so precisely yet, is how this will
be received in the long term.
I mean, we are already experiencing the corners and edges of this system, as they promote a
certain style of communication that has to do with security gaps, as we have just learned.
(31:29):
So if one treats state secrets in the logic of chat groups, it will eventually not end well.
And it will not be resolved by the fact that the founder of this chat group, "Walts", in this
case says "mea culpa"; that may work once, but then, if something really terrible happens, if
something goes wrong during military operations because of this, it could take on a different dimension.
(31:55):
And here we are, basically back at the beginning of our conversation.
To be honest, I hope this is the case, certain resilience capabilities of the American political
system could then come into play.
The Congress still exists, it is still able to pose certain questions, to hold hearings in the House of Representatives.
This initially has minor consequences, depending on the balance of power.
(32:18):
But let's wait for the midterms, to see what happens, whether the balance of power remains as
it is at the moment or whether it changes.
If it changes, so to speak, the questions, at least the questioning possibilities of the legislature also grow.
Stefan Fuchs (32:33):
But a very powerful coalition is coming together.
These tech companies not only have incredible financial resources, they also possess the latest technologies.
AI is one example, but especially the AI gender, social engineering on social media platforms.
(32:56):
This, in combination with these socio-psychological motives of scapegoating, racism, nationalism,
this Technological Republic that Peter Thiel and his friends dream of, looks very bleak and
is, I believe, as powerful in its impact on society as was previously unimaginable.
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (33:24):
Yes, absolutely. This is bleaker than anything we have had in dystopian literature on this topic.
And as I said, what I expressed as hope must also be clearly stated.
Whether the traditional barriers of the system, the checks and balances, are sufficient to counter
(33:46):
this new alliance that is capable of buying Greenland and gifting it to the President, should they wish to.
Yes, at a certain point they are again reliant on military 'hard and real power'.
But that is also quite conceivable now in the deployment for such projects.
These are also things that, had we discussed them 10 years ago, we would both have said no,
(34:11):
no, no, that won't happen.
But the Gulf of Mexico is no longer called what it is called, and the Canadian-American border
is no longer taken for granted.
So we see that things have already started to slip there.
And there is a certain probability that this dystopian development will continue as long as
this alliance exists that you are referring to.
(34:32):
And on the other hand, the acceptance in American society among voters.
Stefan Fuchs (34:37):
Now, there may be hope on another front, namely this contradiction that is already hinted at
in this motif by Thomas Frank, that is, spreading working-class slogans but ultimately undermining
the taxes of the rich.
So one could summarise it as a conflict between Steve Bannon and Elon Musk, a fundamental internal contradiction.
(35:06):
The contradiction of right-wing populism in general.
One could almost say it is sui generis.
This means that, in the long run, Trump has only the choice of either betraying his supporters
or serving the interests of the tech industry and the financial sector, that is, Wall Street.
We do not need to speculate for long about what he will do in this conflict.
(35:28):
What happens when these angry citizens from the Hillbilly Mountains, these left-behind people
from the Midwest, realise that the Messiah could not bring about the golden age.
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (35:42):
Then he needs a third world war.
You cannot capture that anymore.
So this level of disappointment can initially generate civil war in the USA, but fundamentally
also serves as a matrix wherever this hinge-like connection between right-wing populism and
right-wing extremism functions in the same way, promising derivations and pseudo-solutions,
(36:08):
but the actual problems that the electorate reacts to and through which they are triggered do not disappear.
At some point, something will snap and happen.
To what extent, I can hardly imagine.
Well, we have, this is somewhat important, we have already had the precedent of a civil war-like development in the USA.
(36:31):
Even then, lifestyle models clashed that were then fought out.
The probability of this repeating itself is now low.
But we are talking about the best-armed country on the globe.
So there is no shortage of weapons.
Now it only depends on what happens in people's minds.
I am concerned about the volatility of the governing style.
(36:54):
Because, unlike during Trump's immediate second inauguration in January, I am no longer quite
sure whether this president really understands everything he triggers and can achieve, up to a 'Third World War'.
I'm not so sure anymore.
I believe that here, quite apart from the checks and balances, there are completely banal forms
(37:18):
of containment missing from an advisory team.
That certain types of meetings only take place in the 'Situation Room' and not in 'Chats', whether
they accidentally invite an Atlantic journalist or not.
The Russian intelligence service and the Chinese can do much more.
They don't even need to be invited; they are already here. One might ask that.
(37:39):
And whether a president of an administration that is so far removed from all usual traditions,
also from the perception of the international scene and the dangers that arise from acting in
a certain way, believing they can reenact high imperialism around 1900 in a sort of re-enactment,
(38:00):
I'll give you Ukraine and I'll give you Europe, I get Canada and Greenland.
This can lead much more quickly to situations just below a third world war, when on the other
side people like Putin and Xi are acting.
Stefan Fuchs (38:13):
Now there is another internal contradiction.
It is always said that America is withdrawing from Europe.
This contradicts the export attempt of Trumpism.
So Bannon talks about a global Tea Party that he would like to establish. J. D.
(38:34):
Vance wants to enforce the freedom of the internet worldwide, whatever he means by that.
What is the motive behind this export of Trumpism?
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (38:44):
I suspect it is indeed strongly ideological and has something to do with 'Manifest Destiny',
which they cannot let go of and see as an export model.
It just crossed my mind, as a historian of Protestantism I can say this, that it has a great
precedent in the history of the Vatican in the nineteenth century, when it lost its territorial
(39:07):
power due to the Risorgimento and the founding of the Italian nation-state, several popes came
up with the very effective idea of developing from a real political power on the map to a moral, ultramontane superpower.
And interestingly, this worked remarkably well, it was even extraordinarily modern in a way because it was media-oriented.
(39:32):
It was no longer based on the concrete possession of a, albeit manageable, European territory,
but rather it was a kind of spiritualisation, the mediatized spiritualisation of a very specific ideology.
And in that respect, it can certainly be successful in modern societies, especially under our media and disruptive conditions.
(39:56):
However, there are other things to consider.
There are also the differences between American society and European societies that have already
been mentioned in our conversation, which are still plural and do not, as Vance always says, represent the Europeans.
I do not know them.
So we are still able to distinguish ourselves from one another to a large extent.
(40:17):
And we can also see that the speeds at which this is received in different parts of Europe are still quite different.
Stefan Fuchs (40:23):
At the end of the conversation, Professor.
Kunze, the question of the conclusions for this Europe that one should draw from this second act of Trumpism.
There will likely be no return to the status quo after four years.
Even after Trump's end, Trumpism will surely continue to live on, similar to how Bolsonarism
(40:48):
continues in Brazil after Bolsonaro.
Perhaps more serious is the finding that economic inequality reached astronomical proportions
on this side of the Atlantic.
Here too, the middle class is crumbling.
Here too, the consensus on climate protection fails because many things are no longer affordable for the less well-off.
(41:13):
Here too, an ultra-right populism is flourishing as a parody of a social revolution.
Here too, the parties of the so-called democratic centre only defend the status quo.
Is Trumpism also a great danger in Europe?
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (41:32):
In any case, it is something we must take seriously.
Especially since we see to what extent the largest opposition party in the Bundestag is now
also engaged and thus not far away, taking place not in Hungary, but indeed in the Bundestag
and also long since in the European Parliament.
(41:53):
I myself am also a historian of the Netherlands, having been so for a long time.
So this danger is real.
And on the other hand, I see certain tendencies that could have an effect in counteracting such developments.
And simply put, that is our supranational tradition, which we have here in very few areas of the EU.
(42:17):
But we will be very pragmatic, and that somewhat repeats the history of the Western European
integration process from a technically military perspective.
We are repeating the ECSC process in the military sector.
We will indeed be forced, we are compelled to reorganise and re-establish ourselves militarily.
This will work more or less well.
(42:39):
But therein lies a gentle pressure towards a supranational organisation in these areas, as there is no other way.
It is neither economically nor technically possible in any other way.
And that was already a successful model.
Exactly this technoid form of supranational cooperation in the ECSC has then built the potential
(43:03):
for a manageable, but actually existing political core of European integration.
And I hope that this continues to have an effect.
And this is partly because that is the level at which problems can be solved, including economic
ones, through the relationship of scale, monetary ones, concerning the economic and financial
(43:27):
future of Europe, processes of inequality also within the EU, which we need to discuss.
This only truly came to consciousness during the financial crisis for the first time, but has not disappeared since.
All of this can no longer be resolved at the national level, but only at the supranational level.
And my hope is that therein lies a potential for effectiveness that shows people that problems
(43:51):
are being solved here and not just solutions are being promised.
Thank you for being with us at Audioarchiv.
Follow us, so you won't miss an episode and don't forget the like button.
See you next week, your Audioarchiv team.
Welcome to Audioarchiv, the channel for historical interviews with writers, philosophers, activists,
and intellectuals from around the world.
Audioarchiv Team (00:34):
Hello. The second presidency of Donald Trump will politically and economically shake the global order sustainably.
With the recently initiated trade war, the world is experiencing a kind of neoconservative,
planetary real-lab experiment while the USA is simultaneously facing a frontal attack on its already weakened democracy.
(01:00):
In a kind of conservative coup, the 47th.
US President Donald Trump is attempting to extend the power of the executive beyond the limits
of what is constitutionally permissible and to undermine the separation of powers.
The attack on the American Constitution is flanked by a bitter culture war against women's rights,
(01:23):
minority protection, immigration, critical media, and even science.
The promises of Trump's populism, that one only needs to close the borders to bring prosperity
back to America, are being tested for their reality.
Will the already weakened American democracy withstand this frontal attack?
(01:46):
Will the courts be able to stop the flood of presidential decrees?
Are the USA swaying towards a kind of fascism?
And is a civil war likely with the failure of the conservative revolution at the end of Donald Trump's four-year term?
Rolf Ulrich Kunze is a historian and novelist.
(02:07):
In conversation with science journalist Stefan Fuchs, the Karlsruhe contemporary historian and
US expert Rolf Ulrich Kunze discusses the implications for the geopolitical role of the United
States and the dangers for Europe.
Stefan Fuchs (02:23):
So it has happened, he is back.
And the second act of the Trump drama promises to be more extreme.
The mega-MAGA populist is back, more radicalised than before, visibly consumed by resentments,
(02:44):
wounded ego, but above all with a plan on how to drain what he and his supporters call the swamp
in Washington, the so-called Deep State.
We are currently witnessing a coup in the USA, an attempt to abolish the separation of powers,
(03:06):
to undermine the famous checks and balances, a frontal attack on the rather dusty, plutocracy-
hollowed-out Constitution of the United States.
What do the bets look like?
Will the Republic by the people, for the people survive this onslaught?
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (03:31):
As a historian, I am a backward-looking prophet and I am actually turning around now and starting positively.
This peculiar Republic, which has emerged from a conservative revolution of the eighteenth century,
where a political order was adapted to an existing early capitalist economic system, is quite
(03:53):
different from the revolutions in Europe shortly thereafter, has already endured much that one
would not necessarily have expected of it, including the civil war in the nineteenth century.
But I do believe, as indicated by its classifications, that there is a dimension of disruption
(04:17):
present here that is also new within the horizon of what is possible in America.
This mixture of libertarian autocratic rule does partially connect to well-known motifs, particularly
the mentalities of American politics, such as isolationism.
(04:42):
Trump himself strengthens this association of similarity with President McKinley.
This is completely wrong, as high imperialism is a completely different phase, with different
political actors who act differently, but all of this does not fit together.
It leaves a paradoxical impression.
One looks as if into a mirror cloud of shards of glass, which shimmer differently, which appears
(05:06):
very dangerous, and indeed is very dangerous, the degree of destruction and energy is enormous
when one considers the speed at which the constitutional system is being ground down.
To answer your question, I believe that despite everything in this strange constitutional system,
you have already pointed out that it is highly deficient and, in my view, always has been from
(05:29):
the very beginning, due to this peculiar petrified character.
We have a core constitution from the late eighteenth century, the late Enlightenment, before
us, which has been very cautiously supplemented in certain areas.
But we have never seen a genuine process of constitutional revision in the USA.
Perhaps this is also precisely a reason for the peculiar and hard-to-imagine resilience of this system for Europeans.
(05:55):
It is so diffuse and so strange that there could be certain corners of resilience that might
eventually slow down this process.
I cannot say whether this will truly lead to the Republic, as we know it, being preserved.
I definitely believe that the role, the global power role of the USA will change.
Stefan Fuchs (06:17):
We are experiencing a cultural struggle of a very classical kind, with racist, misogynistic,
macho-celebrating, science-questioning, anti-democratic undertones, an attack on critical media,
and this from an administration that accuses Europe of exercising censorship because it wants
(06:38):
to combat fake news on social media.
We have now possibly equipped the planning of mass deportations with the data from tax advisors,
which overshadow the remigration plans of the far-right in Europe.
I believe this image of the so-called model democracy of America is decisively damaged.
(07:03):
If we now go back into history, the precursors and role models of this movement in American
history, which spans from the Civil War through the apartheid laws, Jim Crow after the victory
of the Union states, to Hitler sympathiser Lindbergh, to the right-wing populist Gingrich of
(07:23):
the Tea Party, and finally to the transformation of Baptists into ultra-right Christian nationalists
who want to abolish the separation of church and state.
What are the connections to these other right-wing movements in the United States?
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (07:42):
From my perspective, these connections are as the political scientist Claus Leggewie described
in a study in 1997, against the backdrop of his own research activities in New York, analysed
with the telling title "America First.
The case of a conservative revolution." I reviewed this book in 1997, kindly, but I did not
(08:05):
correctly assess the significance of this prediction either historically or in terms of current events at the time.
All the questions they ask could be answered there.
On one side, we have the deep traditions of social conflicts they mentioned in a paradoxical
(08:27):
society, as John Starnberg named it, which is the mother of all modern immigration societies,
but at the same time the mother of all xenophobic societies, which on one side enables individuality
and individualism in a radical way through manifest destiny as individual pursuit of happiness,
something we do not know at all in the European tradition, especially not in constitutional
(08:53):
tradition, and on the other side, through rigid forms of social control, among other things
through the evangelicals, ensures that exactly this is called into question.
And many examples could be found.
On one side, there was Prohibition, and on the other side, the first modern mass consumer society in the 1920s.
(09:14):
This is indeed, as Starnberg says, paradoxical.
And our European perspective on this is politically somewhat different from the American one,
as we imagine that this is distributed according to a left-right schema, so that one can string
together the examples they mentioned like a pearl necklace and then arrive at a certain image,
(09:36):
a right-wing threat to the Republic.
If one tries to look closer and also considers some disturbing American historical findings
that have existed since the 1970s, one can learn that this behaves obviously differently than we are used to.
And that there have also always been exactly such isolationist, prohibitionist, culture-war
(10:02):
traits on the not left, but progressive and progressivist side of the Democrats, so that this
political game, which we are fascinated by, particularly manifests itself in the presidential
election, is in a way only the surface of an overall paradoxically distributed society.
(10:26):
And in that respect, that is true.
So the chain of argument, the historical one they have constructed, certainly exists and leads
into the present of Trump, which we are currently experiencing.
I just believe that we do well to widen our perspective a bit to understand this and to see
that even under Democratic presidents like Lyndon B.
(10:46):
Johnson, for example, in his only social reform project of the 20th century, not coincidentally
called the Great Society, which went far beyond Obamacare, also played exactly these typical
mentality motives of chosenness and singularity.
By the way, a tangible everyday racism with Texan Johnson that was not yet addressed at that time.
(11:14):
So one sees, I always call it the Magnum P.I.
Image of American society after this series of the 1980s with Tom Selleck, the shining man,
the good one, with whom one likes to identify, who represents all the positive values of the
American constitutional order, including the commitment to ethics.
Unfortunately, this is more grey-scale in historical reality.
(11:36):
And we Europeans have indeed become accustomed, for certain reasons, through the close Atlantic
partnership since the late [years], to carry a certain image of America that may not be sufficiently nuanced.
Stefan Fuchs (11:51):
Now, it is not the case that the analysis of these MAGA supporters is entirely wrong regarding
the economic situation, regarding the living conditions of many Americans, possibly well over half.
So when one reads this bestseller by Vice President J. D.
(12:11):
Vance "Hillbilly Elegy", one gets the impression that at least the Midwest has regressed to a developing country.
Hopelessness, hungry children, social decay, the deindustrialisation of the Rust Belt, a crumbling
middle class that feels betrayed by an elitist democratic party, drug addiction.
(12:37):
The hillbillies as angry citizens.
The diagnosis of the Trump supporters is actually correct.
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (12:45):
Yes. It describes a significant economic part of a reality that has developed since the [years],
with serious political consequences, a shift.
Claus Leggewie in his book from 1997 already has the conservative revolution beginning in the mid-[years].
That is relatively early, so still before Reagan and his famous phrase (13:08):
"Government is not the
solution, government is the problem." Yes, there has been this economic divide in American society for a long time.
And there is, however, a historical mentality.
On the other hand, there is a deeply American, populist response to the fact that those who
(13:33):
are most personally affected by social decline can be particularly well captured by populist,
xenophobic derivations and authoritarian offers.
In the past, there was actually something opposing this until the [years].
That was one xenophobic derivation mechanism, in a certain way also that of Adorno's authoritarian
(13:56):
personality under different conditions, a society sorted quite differently with other social
patterns and opportunities for advancement.
What opposed this was that there were always new waves of migration and of people who played
a highly active role in the further development of this society.
(14:16):
So the engine of further development was migration.
That is why it has rightly been observed that South Korean Americans have essentially been the
German Americans of this time since the [years].
So a specific social role of high willingness to integrate, a great willingness to perform,
and strong willingness to identify has ensured that the existing xenophobic effects did not
(14:41):
disappear, but that they were faced with a positive identification model, so to speak.
We will continue with the interview shortly.
Like us if you enjoy it.
However, as they describe the situation, in certain parts of the country, such a far-reaching
socio-economic divide occurs that this mechanism is, so to speak, reversed; it no longer acts
(15:04):
integratively, it no longer holds this society together, but is used by right-wing populists
and extremists and right-wing radicals to divide and to cause disruption in connection with libertarian fantasies.
Then something happens or can happen that we are experiencing today.
Simply put, the engine of social development in the USA has been shut down.
(15:29):
And those who benefit from the given economic changes, from the disappearance of the middle
class, from the emergence of an oligarchic caste of billionaires, which one could not have imagined
in the years before, the ones who benefit the most from it are the people of the Heritage Foundation
and in the direct mafia-like environment of Trump.
Stefan Fuchs (15:51):
So I would like to follow this trail of right-wing populism.
First, perhaps, back to this critique of right-wing capitalism.
There is also this Steve Bannon, who is considered the ideologue of this movement, who already
located this original sin of American capitalism in this phase of financialisation in the noughties
(16:19):
with the peak of the financial crisis of 2008 during a speech at the Vatican.
At that time, capitalism had parted ways with its Christian-Jewish values.
And is now only driven by greed.
This could almost be a left-catholic critique of capitalism.
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (16:42):
Yes, and here too one can say again, well, in a certain way this is also the role of the historian,
to emphasise that there is nothing new under the sun, which is also not true.
Of course, the extent to which it happens is new, and the media in which it is spread have a
speed that was not known before.
But who still remembers the name Pat Buchanan today, who as an isolationist and early critic
(17:05):
of globalisation advocated exactly this, with the same kind of aggressive language that Bernon
has taken up, albeit in the context of a very different time.
In between, we have some further loops of globalisation also in the USA, of the divergence between
the East and West coasts, from fly over America.
(17:26):
Again, this theme of social division, which in a sense provides the fuel, the fuel of hatred
for exactly such an argument, has indeed existed in the USA throughout the entire 20th. century.
We are constantly experiencing this struggle of an isolationist understanding of capitalism.
(17:46):
I could now give examples from the discussion in the State Department about the Marshall Plan,
where essentially a very similar conflict was fought with different roles in a different time
between those who say we must absolutely develop capitalism here as a White Shining City on
the hill, as a new Jerusalem, and that should radiate to the rest of the world.
(18:12):
And then there were the contemporary internationalists who clearly said that if we do exactly
that, we will politically hand Europe over to Stalin, and we must not do that.
That is why we have an interventionist responsibility also in the export of a certain understanding
of capitalism in connection with democracy.
Emphasis on the former, not the latter.
(18:33):
As we all know, this has worked very well under specific conditions.
But that does not detract from the fact that there has been this conflict in the background.
Stefan Fuchs (18:42):
Your colleague, the US historian Thomas Frank, has said about this right-wing populism, successes
of the motto talking working class themes but doing rich people things, thus addressing themes
of the working class but acting in the interest of the rich, is reflected in the figurehead
(19:04):
of a billionaire who styles himself as the defender of the people.
This has something absurd about it, but is probably historically nothing new.
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (19:14):
Probably not in this form, as represented by Trump and his entire entourage.
Yet the radicality with which it is now openly displayed takes no account whatsoever of customs,
of traditions, of formative forces that exist from authorities and offices.
(19:35):
I believe that is new.
It is correct that the sorting of political directions that is taking place here is initially
difficult for us to categorise, because we have actually been discussing since the end of the
first 'Cold War' and since entering the 21st.
Century with Paul Kennedy and others that the old right-left classification, which we inherited
(20:01):
and developed from the 19th century, no longer works at all.
We have been saying this for a long time, providing various examples, Klaus Leggewie did this in 1997 as well.
But now it has really reached the White House that we have a new form of political style, where
I also find it difficult to use the usual labels.
(20:23):
It has elements that can be described as fascist.
On the other hand, however, essential structural features are also missing that I would expect
from the perspective of the 20th.
Century, such as a coherent ideology, we do not have.
We do not have a recognisable image of a new human being that is being constructed.
(20:45):
On the contrary, at this level there is a libertarian indifference towards how people live when
they have the money to live as they wish and can buy all the desirable services for themselves,
unlike the majority who can no longer do so.
That means, if we stick to it, the term fascist essentially reduces again to the psychological
(21:06):
and emotional aspect in Adorno, namely the authoritarian personality.
I think no reasonable person will deny that this plays an obvious role in the way politics is conducted here.
But this classic image of highly ideological movements that form and also uniform societies
is exactly what we do not experience.
(21:28):
This is largely countered by this dear libertarian approach.
Stefan Fuchs (21:32):
Yes, although something may be changing there.
So this strange coalition now suddenly with Silicon Valley and the large tech companies there
seems to be taking on a different form.
So this reconstruction of a certain ideal of masculinity.
(21:54):
This last book of the Technological Republic, written by Peter Thiel and his collaborators,
also talks about how the consumer-oriented activities of these tech companies are now being
placed in the service of a kind of survival struggle for the American nation.
(22:16):
So, there is indeed a certain ideological component developing.
But fundamentally, the Democratic Party is seen here as a traitor to its actual target group,
its historical target group, by aligning itself with this so-called creative class, that is,
(22:37):
the self-employed, university-educated independents, and turning away from the blue-collar workers.
What role does this transformation of the Democratic Party play, for example, under Clinton?
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (22:53):
Again, I do not want to repeat myself, and this is not new, but there is a completely forgotten
political scientist today, Richard Hofstadter, who, in the years he was active, already predicted
back then that the Democrats would have a problem due to social change, at least we are still
(23:14):
talking about the late period of FDR and the early years of Truman.
He stated during the ongoing Second World War that once it is over, and when this high industrialisation
for war mobilisation changes alongside the development of a consumer society, the Democrats
will face a problem because one of their main voter groups will disappear.
(23:35):
And that was only part of the problem for the Democrats in his prediction.
It also came from another side that Hofstadter had not anticipated, namely the disappearance
of the Dixiecrats in the American Southern states, that is, Democrats, including in Texas.
The best example is Lyndon B.
Johnson as a Texan, who had a core voter base that was thematically and content-wise typically
(23:59):
Southern and partly openly racist.
This shifted in the 1960s for all sorts of reasons.
The socio-economic factors are significantly in the background, but not alone.
We can already see the first elements of a genuine conservative culture war in the alliance
with the evangelicals in the Bible Belt.
As a result, a large part of the former Southern core voter base of the Democrats is disappearing.
(24:26):
These states are becoming even less Democratic in congressional elections than in presidential elections.
And now, of course, the Democrats have a real arithmetic problem.
They are losing a significant part of their safe seats, and on the other hand, they are socio-economically
losing a crucial support group.
And thus this phenomenon arises, that we have on the East Coast and the West Coast and for some
(24:50):
time, when Leggewy wrote his book in 1997, still have democratic core voters at the Great Lakes,
as it was said back then, on the border with Canada.
And in the meantime, it is no longer the case.
And yes, this can be interpreted as a betrayal of a certain support base and also of their concerns.
But on the other hand, it is also an expression of social change in American society, from which
(25:16):
the Republicans, as they have developed, have benefited far more than the Democrats, who were
forced to always chase after the agenda-setting of the Republican Party.
This is exactly what was criticised during the Clinton era, that he basically adopted many conservative,
neoconservative themes of that time and presented them in a softened form as democratic options,
(25:42):
with relatively good success, but essentially Leggewies' interpretation has actually confirmed
the relevance of the conservative revolution and enabled it in this way.
This is where the emotional accusation of betrayal also comes in.
Then other groups join in, such as the various minorities that we sometimes refer to.
(26:03):
Also a strange word, that large parts of the population are sometimes referred to as minorities,
which they are actually no longer culturally.
But even among them, there are developments of differentiation, as a result of which it could
be seen that quite a few of them suddenly also vote Republican.
And in any case, if not for Congress, then certainly in the last election so clearly for Trump,
(26:27):
as many critical observers did not expect.
Stefan Fuchs (26:30):
We have already talked about the strange combination of these libertarians, so to speak the
disciples of Ayn Rand on one side and then these nationalist movements.
This is anything but trivial.
I once took a look at the 1999 volume "The Sovereign Individual", a kind of manifesto of libertarian individualism.
(26:56):
There, the nation-state was effectively dismissed with the transition to the so-called information age, that is, cyberspace.
And now we suddenly have a turning point.
And Carl Schmitt admirer Peter Thiel and his Palantir CEO Alex Karp no longer want to see these
(27:17):
technologies merely as gadgets for consumption, but rather to put them in the service of a nation
that, from their perspective, is in a struggle for survival.
Is that more than opportunism?
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (27:34):
Yes, it is totalitarian in the starkness of this vision regarding what may remain of the state and statehood. In any case.
We will continue with the interview shortly.
Like us if you enjoy it, because it is now being executed by Musk as well.
It signifies the complete end of statehood, as Reagan probably could not have imagined with
(28:00):
his famous phrase about government.
So this has a dynamic and a radicality, and now also a media immediacy, because it no longer
takes place in small rooms of experts, but can also generate a mass following, which for the
first time in modern history raises the question of what future the state has.
Stefan Fuchs (28:22):
But that is paradoxical. Nationalists questioning the state?
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (28:26):
Yes, this is a new dimension that perhaps can be captured with Ann Applebaum's efforts in 'Autocracy
Inc.', which seeks to acknowledge this contradiction rather than explain it away, and to see
that on one hand we have totalitarian needs that have no historical precedent, because the concept
(28:47):
of totalitarianism does not fit here.
That is why she speaks more openly in political science terms of autocracy, because when we
say totalitarian, we immediately think of party armies and the ideology of the new man, which
does indeed appear in what Thiel expresses, but in a completely different way.
(29:08):
It addresses a completely different political point in the system.
And the interesting thing is that we now seem to have arrived at a sociocultural point where this also becomes electable.
That was the problem for these people back in the 2000s, that while they had the technologies
for it, which they could sell very well, they had already achieved mass sales, and that is how
(29:32):
they became what they are, namely billionaires.
But on the other hand, they are missing the acceptance in the masses, so to speak, as a Missing Link.
And they have that now.
Now Musk has media in which he can indeed operate himself.
He is no longer just a clown in the White House, but he is a clown on the internet.
Stefan Fuchs (29:51):
I believe that is a very important point.
Originally, these Big Tech brothers in Silicon Valley relied on the disruptive force of technology.
That did not quite work out.
They wanted to help democracy back then with these technological disruptions.
And now they have discovered that they can achieve a societal majority through these nationalist and right-wing populist tones.
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (30:21):
And that is fascinating, as it marks the difference from historical experiences we have.
Henry Ford was also a nationalist, an anti-Semite, and a fascist and admirer of Hitler.
And when he was encouraged, supported by not a few, including the usual suspects from the Republican
Party, to also become a presidential candidate, he ultimately declined and found his way back
(30:44):
to the screw business and to improving the processes, the terrorist processes in Dearborn.
And that is the difference.
They have understood from the Big Tech industry that they actually have to enter this setting
because they themselves have the opportunity to reproduce what they do there immediately and
(31:07):
can also use it accordingly with their digital media.
What they could not know, and perhaps we all do not know so precisely yet, is how this will
be received in the long term.
I mean, we are already experiencing the corners and edges of this system, as they promote a
certain style of communication that has to do with security gaps, as we have just learned.
(31:29):
So if one treats state secrets in the logic of chat groups, it will eventually not end well.
And it will not be resolved by the fact that the founder of this chat group, "Walts", in this
case says "mea culpa"; that may work once, but then, if something really terrible happens, if
something goes wrong during military operations because of this, it could take on a different dimension.
(31:55):
And here we are, basically back at the beginning of our conversation.
To be honest, I hope this is the case, certain resilience capabilities of the American political
system could then come into play.
The Congress still exists, it is still able to pose certain questions, to hold hearings in the House of Representatives.
This initially has minor consequences, depending on the balance of power.
(32:18):
But let's wait for the midterms, to see what happens, whether the balance of power remains as
it is at the moment or whether it changes.
If it changes, so to speak, the questions, at least the questioning possibilities of the legislature also grow.
Stefan Fuchs (32:33):
But a very powerful coalition is coming together.
These tech companies not only have incredible financial resources, they also possess the latest technologies.
AI is one example, but especially the AI gender, social engineering on social media platforms.
(32:56):
This, in combination with these socio-psychological motives of scapegoating, racism, nationalism,
this Technological Republic that Peter Thiel and his friends dream of, looks very bleak and
is, I believe, as powerful in its impact on society as was previously unimaginable.
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (33:24):
Yes, absolutely. This is bleaker than anything we have had in dystopian literature on this topic.
And as I said, what I expressed as hope must also be clearly stated.
Whether the traditional barriers of the system, the checks and balances, are sufficient to counter
(33:46):
this new alliance that is capable of buying Greenland and gifting it to the President, should they wish to.
Yes, at a certain point they are again reliant on military 'hard and real power'.
But that is also quite conceivable now in the deployment for such projects.
These are also things that, had we discussed them 10 years ago, we would both have said no,
(34:11):
no, no, that won't happen.
But the Gulf of Mexico is no longer called what it is called, and the Canadian-American border
is no longer taken for granted.
So we see that things have already started to slip there.
And there is a certain probability that this dystopian development will continue as long as
this alliance exists that you are referring to.
(34:32):
And on the other hand, the acceptance in American society among voters.
Stefan Fuchs (34:37):
Now, there may be hope on another front, namely this contradiction that is already hinted at
in this motif by Thomas Frank, that is, spreading working-class slogans but ultimately undermining
the taxes of the rich.
So one could summarise it as a conflict between Steve Bannon and Elon Musk, a fundamental internal contradiction.
(35:06):
The contradiction of right-wing populism in general.
One could almost say it is sui generis.
This means that, in the long run, Trump has only the choice of either betraying his supporters
or serving the interests of the tech industry and the financial sector, that is, Wall Street.
We do not need to speculate for long about what he will do in this conflict.
(35:28):
What happens when these angry citizens from the Hillbilly Mountains, these left-behind people
from the Midwest, realise that the Messiah could not bring about the golden age.
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (35:42):
Then he needs a third world war.
You cannot capture that anymore.
So this level of disappointment can initially generate civil war in the USA, but fundamentally
also serves as a matrix wherever this hinge-like connection between right-wing populism and
right-wing extremism functions in the same way, promising derivations and pseudo-solutions,
(36:08):
but the actual problems that the electorate reacts to and through which they are triggered do not disappear.
At some point, something will snap and happen.
To what extent, I can hardly imagine.
Well, we have, this is somewhat important, we have already had the precedent of a civil war-like development in the USA.
(36:31):
Even then, lifestyle models clashed that were then fought out.
The probability of this repeating itself is now low.
But we are talking about the best-armed country on the globe.
So there is no shortage of weapons.
Now it only depends on what happens in people's minds.
I am concerned about the volatility of the governing style.
(36:54):
Because, unlike during Trump's immediate second inauguration in January, I am no longer quite
sure whether this president really understands everything he triggers and can achieve, up to a 'Third World War'.
I'm not so sure anymore.
I believe that here, quite apart from the checks and balances, there are completely banal forms
(37:18):
of containment missing from an advisory team.
That certain types of meetings only take place in the 'Situation Room' and not in 'Chats', whether
they accidentally invite an Atlantic journalist or not.
The Russian intelligence service and the Chinese can do much more.
They don't even need to be invited; they are already here. One might ask that.
(37:39):
And whether a president of an administration that is so far removed from all usual traditions,
also from the perception of the international scene and the dangers that arise from acting in
a certain way, believing they can reenact high imperialism around 1900 in a sort of re-enactment,
(38:00):
I'll give you Ukraine and I'll give you Europe, I get Canada and Greenland.
This can lead much more quickly to situations just below a third world war, when on the other
side people like Putin and Xi are acting.
Stefan Fuchs (38:13):
Now there is another internal contradiction.
It is always said that America is withdrawing from Europe.
This contradicts the export attempt of Trumpism.
So Bannon talks about a global Tea Party that he would like to establish. J. D.
(38:34):
Vance wants to enforce the freedom of the internet worldwide, whatever he means by that.
What is the motive behind this export of Trumpism?
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (38:44):
I suspect it is indeed strongly ideological and has something to do with 'Manifest Destiny',
which they cannot let go of and see as an export model.
It just crossed my mind, as a historian of Protestantism I can say this, that it has a great
precedent in the history of the Vatican in the nineteenth century, when it lost its territorial
(39:07):
power due to the Risorgimento and the founding of the Italian nation-state, several popes came
up with the very effective idea of developing from a real political power on the map to a moral, ultramontane superpower.
And interestingly, this worked remarkably well, it was even extraordinarily modern in a way because it was media-oriented.
(39:32):
It was no longer based on the concrete possession of a, albeit manageable, European territory,
but rather it was a kind of spiritualisation, the mediatized spiritualisation of a very specific ideology.
And in that respect, it can certainly be successful in modern societies, especially under our media and disruptive conditions.
(39:56):
However, there are other things to consider.
There are also the differences between American society and European societies that have already
been mentioned in our conversation, which are still plural and do not, as Vance always says, represent the Europeans.
I do not know them.
So we are still able to distinguish ourselves from one another to a large extent.
(40:17):
And we can also see that the speeds at which this is received in different parts of Europe are still quite different.
Stefan Fuchs (40:23):
At the end of the conversation, Professor.
Kunze, the question of the conclusions for this Europe that one should draw from this second act of Trumpism.
There will likely be no return to the status quo after four years.
Even after Trump's end, Trumpism will surely continue to live on, similar to how Bolsonarism
(40:48):
continues in Brazil after Bolsonaro.
Perhaps more serious is the finding that economic inequality reached astronomical proportions
on this side of the Atlantic.
Here too, the middle class is crumbling.
Here too, the consensus on climate protection fails because many things are no longer affordable for the less well-off.
(41:13):
Here too, an ultra-right populism is flourishing as a parody of a social revolution.
Here too, the parties of the so-called democratic centre only defend the status quo.
Is Trumpism also a great danger in Europe?
Rolf-Ulrich Kunze (41:32):
In any case, it is something we must take seriously.
Especially since we see to what extent the largest opposition party in the Bundestag is now
also engaged and thus not far away, taking place not in Hungary, but indeed in the Bundestag
and also long since in the European Parliament.
(41:53):
I myself am also a historian of the Netherlands, having been so for a long time.
So this danger is real.
And on the other hand, I see certain tendencies that could have an effect in counteracting such developments.
And simply put, that is our supranational tradition, which we have here in very few areas of the EU.
(42:17):
But we will be very pragmatic, and that somewhat repeats the history of the Western European
integration process from a technically military perspective.
We are repeating the ECSC process in the military sector.
We will indeed be forced, we are compelled to reorganise and re-establish ourselves militarily.
This will work more or less well.
(42:39):
But therein lies a gentle pressure towards a supranational organisation in these areas, as there is no other way.
It is neither economically nor technically possible in any other way.
And that was already a successful model.
Exactly this technoid form of supranational cooperation in the ECSC has then built the potential
(43:03):
for a manageable, but actually existing political core of European integration.
And I hope that this continues to have an effect.
And this is partly because that is the level at which problems can be solved, including economic
ones, through the relationship of scale, monetary ones, concerning the economic and financial
(43:27):
future of Europe, processes of inequality also within the EU, which we need to discuss.
This only truly came to consciousness during the financial crisis for the first time, but has not disappeared since.
All of this can no longer be resolved at the national level, but only at the supranational level.
And my hope is that therein lies a potential for effectiveness that shows people that problems
(43:51):
are being solved here and not just solutions are being promised.
Thank you for being with us at Audioarchiv.
Follow us, so you won't miss an episode and don't forget the like button.
See you next week, your Audioarchiv team.
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