The bubbling crucible of horror video games has brewed some underwear-dampening gameplay over the last two decades. Heart-stoppers such as Outlast and Amnesia: The Dark Descent leave their mark on the psyche of gamers brave enough to endure their scares, but one game has been the muse to up the ante in current survival entertainment and JumpCut wanted to commemorate its twentieth birthday.
Konami’s 1999 survival horror for Playstation has remained timeless amongst retro gamers. Remaining visible in the media’s eye, various adaptations on multiple platforms have invited non-gamers into Silent Hill, including a visual novel, feature film and seven sequels to the original game (The most recent being Downpour in 2012). These adaptations have spread the myth of this pastime to all niches of civilization, ensuring we all receive a dream from Pyramid Head.
Harry Mason is the protagonist in the foggy American town as he searches for his missing daughter and consequently interferes with a cult’s ritual to birth the deity they worship. With a combination of third-person combat, exploration of real-time 3D environments and crucial puzzle-solving, the quivering player must learn the true origin of this town’s evil and beat the game that – depending on your choices – offers five different conclusions.
Director Keiichiro Toyama lacked in horror culture, but his interest in UFOs, the occult and David Lynch movies influenced and encouraged the game’s development. Though Silent Hill was compared to Resident Evil, it established a distinct approach to prompt fear by creating a disturbing atmosphere for the player, in contrast to Capcom’s action-oriented base. A combination of thick fog, darkness and vintage technical grain aided Silent Hill’s scare-o-meter, combined with composer Akira Yamaoka’s jarring industrial score, who had to explain to Team Silent that the noises they heard in his music were not glitches.
Toyama guided the design and narrative of Silent Hill away from a B movie format and towards psychological horror that had a lasting effect on gamers and provided a gateway to the silver screen. Its plot and nightmarish images caught the eye of Christophe Gans when he directed his 2006 cinematic adaptation, replacing Harry Mason with female lead Rose Da Silva (Radha Mitchell) because Gans saw feminine qualities in Mason. Mitchell’s emotionally-driven Rose offered a new dynamic for the franchise and Gans gifted us with a graphic look at the bubble-head nurse, for which, we thanked him for.
Silent Hill is a horror aficionados paradise and an Ori and the Blind Forest player’s biggest NOPE. This nineties classic was transformative for gaming on the gore scene, updated for modern platforms thanks to Konami’s release of the Silent Hill 2 & 3 HD Collection. Whether you play alone, in a group of namby-pambies, or with your mama, this sublimely atmospheric godfather of horror games has to be experienced at 2 AM in complete darkness and don’t forget your pocket radio.
If there is an argument to be made that the United States is the biggest purveyor of terrorist activities across the world which we justify with the endless “Global War on Terror” (and that argument is not hard to make), what does that say about our “War on Drugs”? Look at just a few of the recent stories from the headlines and judge for yourself…
The Justice Department lied repeatedly about “gun walking” firearms to Mexican drug cartels – There was a policy in place at the highest levels in the ATF and the Justice Department to ship weapons to Mexican “drug cartels”. This is at a time when violence in Mexico is at it’s highest level since the Spanish landed on their shores. In February the Assistant Attorney General wrote the following to an investigating body of congress; it was a complete fiction… a lie… and congress now has the emails to prove it.
“”ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation into Mexico,” wrote Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general.” the Hill
Darrell Issa has backed off his calls for Eric Holder’s resignation. He basically states that since the program is institutional in the Department of Justice and has been since the Bush administration (yes, yet another Bush program the administration of CHANGE kept), holding Holder responsible would be pointless. If corruption existed before the new head took over and the new head of the department continues the same corruption and illegality, I guess he gets a pass. That’s what passes for logic these days.
“This isn’t the first time the FBI and other agencies have been involved in investigations in which bad people are allowed to continue doing bad things in the name of going after bad people,” Issa said” CSM
In that vein, we take a look at another developing story, this one deals with the money made by the so-called “drug cartels” in Mexico.
Apparently, while the ATF was shipping weapons to the drug cartels, the DEA was helping them launder their cash. I shit you not.
“Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.
… Another former agency official, who asked not to be identified speaking publicly about delicate operations, said, “My rule was that if we are going to launder money, we better show results. Otherwise, the D.E.A. could wind up being the largest money launderer in the business, and that money results in violence and deaths.”” New York Times
According to officials who are only speaking out about this because the plan was exposed, the idea was much like the one they claimed when Fast and Furious came out… they were laundering the money so they could catch the bad guys. But as the NYT article pointed out, they have been doing it for a couple of the drug cartels “for years“
In Washington these days when you get caught doing something illegal and definitely immoral (like morality factors into any equation in DC anymore) all you have to do is say you were doing it to catch the bad guys. Arming thugs in Mexico to destabilize the country? Just say you did it to “catch the bad guys”. Laundering massive amounts of drug money for off the books financing of your destabilization teams? Just say you were doing it to “catch the bad guys”. Get caught fabricating “terrorist” plots to divert public attention from you SS style crackdown on legitimate protests in New York? Just say you did it to “catch the bad guys”
Seems pretty simple doesn’t it? And as long as you have over-paid stenographers posing as journalists in the MSM, it’ll work.
Here’s an interesting point brought up in the Times piece:
“The laundering operations that the United States conducts elsewhere — about 50 so-called Attorney General Exempt Operations are under way around the world…” New York Times
“About 50” drug money laundering programs “around the world“? What? And the AG is “exempt” from U.S. law while running them? Really? Really? That’s a lot of drug money. That’s a lot of drugs and ruined lives and crime and murder. And the AG is “exempt”?
Let’s take a trip back in the not-so-way-back machine to 2009 because remember, both Fast and Furious and apparently the drug money laundering program existed back then and god knows how many of the 50 other exempt operations did too. It was revealed by an Afghani counter narcotics official that U.S. and NATO forces were taxing the poppy growers and actually protecting their crops. (go to the link for an endless selection of photos of U.S. and NATO troops protecting the poppy fields)
“In November 2009, the Afghan Minister of Counter Narcotics General Khodaidad Khodaidad stated that the majority of drugs are stockpiled in two provinces controlled by troops from the US, the UK, and Canada. He also said that NATO forces are taxing the production of opium in the regions under their control and that foreign troops are earning money from drug production in Afghanistan.” Public Intelligence
His statement dovetails perfectly with something else we know about Afghanistan: 1. Afghanistan’s installed puppet president has a brother Wali, who is a notorious drug dealer with ties to the CIA and 2. the Taliban had nearly wiped out the poppy production in that country (drug dealing is a death sentence according to Sharia Law) until Baby Bush invaded in 2003 and got things going again.
Yes, you can go back to Iran Contra when it’s known that the CIA was shipping in cocaine and shipping out guns for another fascist coup.
Yes, you can go back to Mena Arkansas and the start of the Clinton rise to power.
Yes, you can go back to Ricky Freeway Ross and Gary Webb who showed that the CIA created crack cocaine and conspired to market it to the West coast of the U.S. Gary Webb wrote “Dark Alliances” exposing all of this shit and when he turned up dead with two bullets in his head, they called it a suicide.
Yes, you can go back to Frank Lucas, that’s the New York heroin dealer made famous by a Hollywood movie recently. He became the drug kingpin of the 60s and 70s because during the Vietnam War, for some reason, he was able to have loads of smack shipped right along on Army transport planes with no one supposedly the wiser. For years his shipments came in regularly and he moved tons and tons of Asian heroin into New York and other cities without anyone ever getting to wise, that is until the end of the Vietnam War.
Hell, for that matter you can go back to the Opium Wars when Britain was shipping the shit from India to China. The Chinese government didn’t like it too much. Go figure. I guess back then they hadn’t invented the Attorney General Exempt Operation. That makes it all ok.
You can go back to all of those things and see a pattern of hypocrisy, corruption, and the vile institutionalized exploitation of the human condition if you want to, or you can just read today’s paper and connect the dots yourselves. Or you can get drunk and watch a football game and thank god they haven’t kicked in your door… yet.
Now for the first time, all nine exhilarating, groundbreaking seasons of The X-Files, along with special features, can be yours to own on Blu-ray! Although they began as reluctant partners, FBI special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully (Golden Globe winners David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson) ultimately form a powerful bond as they struggle to unravel deadly conspiracies and solve paranormal mysteries. (The set contains full seasons 1 – 9).
When you consider the vast number of television shows that come down the pilot pipeline each and every year, it’s a virtual miracle that anything gets ordered to series. Then, when you consider that the number of shows that do make it to the airwaves only to get canceled almost immediately, it becomes a rarer event for a series to get a second season order, let alone a third, fourth, or in the case of Chris Carter’s seminal 1993 series ‘X-Files’ a grand total of nine seasons. How or why a show clicks with an audience and draws in millions of viewers willing to give up an hour of their time each and every week is a mystery – but something about ‘The X-Files’ connected with people.
As a fan of the show from the very beginning, I loved the its blend of science fiction, government conspiracy theories, and horror. It was around this time that I had discovered movies like ‘Blade Runner,’ ‘All The President’s Men,’ and ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’, so this wild blend of genres fit right into my bandwagon. As the ever true believer, Agent Mulder (David Duchovny) and the always skeptical Agent Scully (Gillian Anderson) would handle a case involving the big government conspiracy to hide the existence of extraterrestrial life, there would be a wonderful dip into a “Monster of the Week” to keep things fun, exciting, and at times more than a bit creepy – or in the case of one particularly notorious episode from season four, downright disturbing! But I loved ‘The X-Files’ and I kept tuning in week after week… for awhile. with any good show, the demand for more episodes from the broadcasting network started to put a strain on the creative team. Season five concluded with a hell of a cliffhanger ending in May of 1998 and served as the perfect segue to the series leap to the big screen that June with ‘The X-Files: Fight The Future.’ As great as the movie was and how perfectly it tied the events of Season 5 and Season 6 together, it also marked the beginning of the show’s downfall. The original intention of Chris Carter was to end the show at season five and then continue the exploits of Agents Mulder and Scully on the big screen. The network thought otherwise and required more episodes of the show as a condition for getting the film financed.
Fans of ‘The X-Files’ are well aware of the show’s precipitous drop off as the series was stretched thinner and thinner. As the mythology episodes moved from Black Oil to Alien Colonization to Super Soldiers, to Lizard People and back again, the credibility of the show wained – as did the patience of the audience. For a show about two people on the quest for the truth and answers to big mysteries and riddles, the show started offering up fewer and fewer solutions to stories and left entirely too many threads dangling. That isn’t to say that by the time Agent Doggett (Robert Patrick) and Agent Reyes (Annabeth Gish) appeared on the scene the show had become “bad,” it’s just that a number of the show’s tropes had become routine and tedious. Even as Anderson’s Scully moved from being a skeptic to a believer – there are just so many times that Scully could “not see” the big awe-inspiring moment.
Through all of the highs and lows of the series, there was a constant that made the show worth tuning into – the relationship between Mulder and Scully and their real life counterparts David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. While the pair absolutely had on-screen chemistry, it wasn’t ever forced into the realm of unnecessary romanticism or sexualized. The two viewed each other as equals and never once trivialized their respective genders. Both were strong-willed unique individuals with their own beliefs and biases, but they were also human and capable of irrational emotional outbursts – just like the rest of us.
When taking a look at ‘The X-Files: The Collector’s Set’ it’s easy to understand why this set wouldn’t be for everyone – namely because of the show’s slide in quality over the final three seasons. However, if you are a massive fan of the series, this set is an attractive and sturdy way to display one of the best shows to come to television. That said, if you’re not game for every season, 20th Century Fox was wise enough to release each season individually:
Season One (4/5)
X-Files
This first season has a couple of clunky episodes in there, but that’s to be expected with any series. It’s a show that is still finding its legs, but through it all the show delivered hours of great entertainment.
Favorite Episodes:
Ep 3 ‘Squeeze’ and Ep 21 ‘Tooms’ – I have fond memories of watching these two episodes on separate weekends with my best friend at the time. I remember us being totally freaked out by ‘Squeeze’ and then totally losing it when ‘Tooms’ started up and we realized it was a sequel episode! These two still stand among my all time favorite episodes.
Season Two (4.5/5)
The X-Files
This second season is much stronger, the mythology of government involvement in suppressing the evidence of extraterrestrials was coming together, the relationships of certain players were coming together, and the “monsters-of-the-week” were getting pretty intense.
Favorite Episodes:
Ep 2 ‘The Host’ and Ep 5 ‘Duane Barry’ and Ep 6 ‘Ascension’ – ‘The Host’ stands as my second favorite “monster-of-the-week” episode while ‘Duane Barry and Ascension prove just how big and important the mythology episodes can get with the abduction of Scully!
Season Three (4.5/5)
The X-Files
While the “monster-of-the-week” episodes were still the highlights of the show, this is the season where it felt like the mythology episodes started to carry a lot more weight and importance.
Favorite Episodes:
Ep 3 ‘D.P.O.’ and Ep 15 Piper Maru & Ep 16 ‘Apocrypha’ – ‘D.P.O’.’ was a real kick of an episode featuring guest appearances by Jack Black and Giovanni Ribisi. ‘Piper Maru’ and ‘Apocrypha’ gives us a glimpse of the mysterious “black oil” and this pair of episodes was just darn creepy.
Season Four (5/5)
X-Files
This is a season where just about every single episode clicked and was just a great piece of entertainment. Even the “bad” episodes were only bad because they didn’t quite live up to the other great episodes this season had to offer.
Favorite Episodes:
Ep 2 ‘Home’ and Ep 7 ‘Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man – ‘Home’ is perhaps the most notorious episode ever produced for the show and given its disturbing content, it’s easy to see why. It stands as my favorite “monster” episode of the entire series. ‘Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man’ stands as a pseudo-mythology episode as were given an abundance of information about “Cancer Man” and his involvement in any number of conspiracies dating all the way back to JFK’s assassination.
Season Five (5/5)
X-Files
Momentum was working for the show at this point. The series was building towards the June 1998 release of the movie and all of the episodes were working in such a way as to allow people who hadn’t yet seen the show to get caught up while featuring some good and creepy monsters.
Favorite Episodes:
Ep 3 ‘Unusual Suspects’ and Ep 14 ‘The Red and the Black,’ Ep 15 ‘Travelers,’ and Ep 20 ‘The End’ – ‘Unusual Suspects’ is just pure fun – the meeting of The Lone Gunmen. ‘The Red and the Black,’ ‘Travelers,’ and ‘The End’ offers up some of the best mythology episodes regarding the conspirators, black oil, and the alien colonization plot.
Season Six (4.5/5)
The X-Files
Fresh off the movie, the series picks up strong but isn’t able to hold the momentum very long. part of the issue is it doesn’t “look” or “feel” the same, as production had moved from Vancouver to L.A. – but it was still pretty good and was providing some solid entertainment value.
Favorite Episodes:
Ep 2 ‘Drive’ and Ep 20 ‘Three of a Kind’ – ‘Drive’ features guest Bryon Cranston in a hell of an intense episode while ‘Three of a Kind’ offers up some more Lone Gunmen fun with a follow-up to S05Ep3 ‘Unusual Suspects.’
Season Seven (3.5/5)
The X-Files
The show was still pretty good, but the stretching and altering mythology episodes started to wear thin. Thankfully the “monsters” episodes were pretty great and made this season worth watching.
Favorite Episodes:
Ep 3 ‘Hungry’ and Ep 4 ‘Millennium’ – Something about a guy being addicted to eating human brains made ‘Hungry’ a fun episode while ‘Millennium’ was a great crossover episode featuring Lance Henriksen as Frank Black. ‘Millennium’ also shows where Chris Carter’s attentions truly were at this point.
Season Eight (3/5)
The X-Files
While still a decent show, you can feel the creative team being stretched thin by the lack of Mulder and the need to introduce Robert Patrick as Agent Doggett. I always felt like this season was similar to the final season of ‘Northern Exposure’ where they were doing anything they could to find a reason to keep going.
Favorite Episodes:
Ep 6′ Redrum’ and Ep 12 ‘Medusa’ – These two episodes, in my opinion, show that the show still had a lot of creative juice in the tank at this point, but didn’t know how to focus it. As the mythology episodes became more and more redundant, the “monsters” became the real highlight and reason to keep tuning in.
Season Nine (3.5/5)
The X-Files
It’s difficult to know where to go with this season. The series at this point had clearly run out of juice, but still needed to come to a close. Thankfully there were a couple of good one-off episodes and a big conclusion brought the show home in grand order.
Favorite Episodes:
Ep 15 ‘Jump the Shark’ and Ep 16 ‘William’, Ep 19/20 ‘The Truth: Parts 1 & 2’ – Any Lone Gunmen episode is a good one and ‘Jump the Shark’ saw them team up with Michael McKean’s Morris Fletcher from Season 6. ‘William’ and ‘The Truth: Parts 1&2’ bring the series to a fitting and exciting conclusion. It may have been a very bumpy road to get to this point, but it was a satisfying end.
After a second less-than-amazing follow-up film, ‘The X-Files’ appeared closed – that is until late last year when it was announced that the series and lead stars would be returning for a limited 6-episode run. It’s nice knowing that interest in the series has stayed strong and the fan demand for more Mulder and Scully wasn’t simply regulated to a series of comic book spin-off adventures. It’s even more impressive when you stack it up against the other great shows that will be making their return in 2016 and 2017 with the likes of ‘Twin Peaks’ coming back and now after an incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign, ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000.’ I for one can’t wait to be sucked back in by that familiar ‘X-Files’ theme song by composer Mark Snow. Hopefully, the wait for these new six episodes will be worth it!
Robson Street is a major southeast-northwest thoroughfare in downtown and West End of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Its core commercial blocks from Burrard Street to Jervis were also known as Robsonstrasse. Its name honours John Robson, a major figure in British Columbia’s entry into the Canadian Confederation, and Premier of the province from 1889 to 1892. Robson Street starts at BC Place Stadium near the north shore of False Creek, then runs northwest past Vancouver Library Square, Robson Square and the Vancouver Art Gallery, coming to an end at Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park.
As of 2006, the city of Vancouver overall had the fifth most expensive retail rental rates in the world, averaging US$135 per square foot per year, citywide. Robson Street tops Vancouver with its most expensive locations renting for up to US$200 per square foot per year. In 2006, both Robson Street and the Mink Mile on Bloor Street in Toronto were the 22nd most expensive streets in the world, with rents of $208 per square feet. In 2007, the Mink Mile and Robson slipped to 25th in the world with an average of $198 per square feet. The price of each continues to grow with Vancouver being Burberry’s first Canadian location and Toronto’s Yorkville neighbourhood (which is bounded on the south side by Bloor) now commanding rents of $300 per square foot.
In 1895, train tracks were laid down the street, supporting a concentration of shops and restaurants. From the early to middle-late 20th century, and especially after significant immigration from postwar Germany, the northwest end of Robson Street was known as a centre of German culture and commerce in Vancouver, earning the nickname Robsonstrasse, even among non-Germans (this name lives on in the Robsonstrasse Hotel on the street). At one time, the city had placed streetsigns reading “Robsonstrasse” though these were placed after the German presence in the area had largely vanished.
Robson Street was featured on an old edition of the Canadian Monopoly board as one of the two most expensive properties.
It is the time of monsters. The organic crisis of the old neoliberal project has also brought forth the rise of a new radical right. Yet these monsters are quite different from one another: we have strong men like Trump, Kurz and Macron – political entrepreneurs shaping a new authoritarianism from positions of governance. Theresa May and Boris Johnson act quite similar, with less success, but unlike the others they are established representatives of authoritarian elite right-wing conservatism. They all share an anti-establishment discourse, although they have strong capital factions backing them.
The authoritarian-nationalistic regimes in Poland and Hungary (or Turkey) are distinct, and are in turn different from the radical right like the Front National, Geert Wilders’s PVV or the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the Austrian FPÖ and Italy’s Lega – both operating from a position of government. Very different from them, in turn, is the Five Star Movement. How can we understand these formations’ differences and commonalities? This question must be addressed to identify specific tactics and counter-strategies in the concrete countries (see Wiegel 2018).
Here, I will try to tease out a more fundamental question: how can we understand the reasons behind the rise of the radical right? Many different explanations exist, most of which are valuable in explaining certain aspects. But they exist in parallel at best, sometimes even in conflict with one another. So is there a specific relation that we could flesh out theoretically?
Beyond empirical detail, only a few attempts at systematic and subject-orientated research have been undertaken. Rarely are these conducted with recourse to or for the further refinement of critical theory. Of course, the phenomenon is extremely heterogeneous and highly dynamic and thus eludes simple explanation. It must be seen in the framework of a crisis and concrete transformation of the mode of production and living. Why has this phenomenon gained so much importance now, and not ten years ago? In fact, it was already there. I will thus seek to elaborate the concept of a generalized culture of insecurity, including highly distinct but intertwined dimensions in the context of an organic crisis of the old neoliberal project – insecurity in the field of work, family, territory and homeland, one’s own perspectives and history, gender identity or mode of living.
The following will draw on a research project conducted with the University of Stendal, a small town in eastern Germany and former stronghold of Die Linke that has now become a bastion of the AfD. We also draw on our experience from the hundreds of door-to-door conversations and our pilot project in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
Although the Alternative für Deutschland is certainly not a workers’ party, when we look at its constituency and electorate it appears they receive a significant degree of support from workers and poor people. The French sociologist Didier Eribon calls this electoral decision an “act of self-defence” – to have a voice, to be heard in political discourse even when it is only a “negative self-affirmation.” This is true of our experience, as well. Betrayed by Social Democracy and disappointed by the powerlessness of the left, they turn to a new powerful narrative: the defence of hard-working men, of our nation, our culture, against the Other – Islam, refugees, globalization, gays and lesbians, the moralizing ’68 elite in government, etc.
This phenomenon is nothing new and well-documented. But why has it gained such momentum? Explanations often pose the dilemma of: is it the social question, or racism? In the words of Stuart Hall, we can say that “the problem is not if economic structures are relevant for racial divisions, but how they are connected” (Hall 1980, 92). He continues: “It is not the question if people make racist ascriptions, but what are the specific conditions under which racism become socially decisive and historically effective” (129).
A Culture of Insecurity
1989 marked an historical rupture that began with the crisis of Fordism in East and West 20 years before. This was a moment of generalized neoliberalism, with shock therapies in Eastern Europe and deindustrialization with social subsidies in eastern Germany. The east was a field of experimentation for neoliberal flexibilization and precarization, but was also the moment of phasing out the remains of West German and Western European Fordism.
The result was a widespread culture of insecurity – emblematic were the workfare programs all over Europe and the USA and the Agenda 2010 in Germany, which dismantled the old unemployment security system. The goal was to establish the largest precarious low-wage sector in Western Europe. The fear of falling was not limited to those at the bottom of the social hierarchy, but spread to the established so-called middle classes, who knew the safety net was fraying while experiencing a rapid intensification of work, flexibilization, and fluid structures of protection. The fear was used to produce “compliant workers,” as Klaus Dörre (2005) puts it.1
The implicit social contract – promising recognition and social security in exchange for hard work – was unilaterally broken. While unions were unable to oppose this development, frustration and anger often was directed toward groups assumed to be under less pressure, performing less and taking money from the state – the unemployed, people receiving social assistance, refugees.
As I said, this reaction was not particularly true for the lowest class segments, but rather emanated from the middle – those who had something to lose, who see themselves as the productive core of society. Even when they were able to maintain or even improve their social position and status, this came at the price of increased workloads, unrestricted working hours, and exhaustive flexibility requirements.2
Oliver Nachtwey (2016) found a brilliant metaphor for the situation: the image of a moving escalator going downward. One is not intended to stand still – one must struggle to avoid going downward, while moving upward proves even more exhausting. Only a few manage to take the escalator to the top. But the upper segments of society are closed off; the rich live in a world of their own.
Beyond the dramatic increase in inequality, hard divisions of respectability (not only small distinctions) were drawn: the bourgeois class produced popular images legitimizing the authoritarian education of the unemployed, migrants and other subaltern groups, pushing for a conscious class distinction from the under-performers. The parts of the working class which have something to lose draw a line against those further below, denying them respectability as well. The fear of not being respectable – the fear of falling and failing – produced a feeling of guilt leading to self-loathing directed against weaker groups and individuals: a revaluation of the self through the devaluation of others. The most effective forms of this are classism, racism, and sexism.
Beyond precarization, however, more dimensions are at the root of a culture of insecurity, and all are interconnected. A brief overview:
a) The Crisis of Male Subjectivity:
New forms of male individuality could not be generalized in neoliberalism – “emotional intelligence,” self-reflexivity, cooperative and communicative capabilities, gender equality, anti-sexist discourse and so on. In contrast, many feel a kind of feminization of work requirements as well as in family relations and child care, up to feeling forced to eat less meat. On the labour market, they experience women as fierce competition, while losing their role as family breadwinners and feeling the gender hierarchy at home has been turned upside down. Entire male-dominated sectors of the economy, often bound to a certain exploitation of nature, are threatened – from mining to automobile manufacturing. This challenges certain habits of skilled male labour, already under pressure from permanent technological requirements of re-qualification and further education. This leads to experiences of being incapable of meeting requirements – incurring a certain nostalgia for the good old notions of family, clear gender roles and male work habits. This might be a reason why men of a certain age are particularly likely to vote for the radical right and why anti-genderism is so central for them.
b) The Crisis of Female Subjectivity:
Promises of emancipation through integration into the labour market encountered several “glass ceilings”: the pay gap, omnipresent requirements of being flexible incompatible with family life – even with a more or less equal distribution of care work or delegation to others, often illegalized migrants – the new family models (Gabriele Winker) are not working, not only because of increased requirements on the job, but also because of new aspirations concerning (quality) time with children and life partners (but also to meet the competitive pressures on children within educational institutions, concerning one’s own fitness, etc.). Out of this stress between increased requirements and own aspirations, some develop a nostalgia for old family models – exaggerating the value of motherhood, especially where these new experiences meet with conservative values. This may be a reason why women vote for a radical right which is so anti-feminist – after all, liberal feminism rarely addresses these needs and problems, particularly for woman of the popular classes.
There are other dimensions as well, but we lack the space to delve into them. I will simply name them:
c) Insecurity due to certain kinds of lifestyles growing outdated, losing their claim to what is culturally “normal.” Old milieus dissolve and new modern, diverse, cosmopolitan, multi-cultural and multi-lingual lifestyles seem to dominate media and advertising. The world and experience of skilled workers is no longer the standard – it becomes unsettled, proletarianized. Being sensitive to gender, ecologically responsible, accepting of gay and queer people, using a non-discriminatory language etc. – all of these are perceived as “political correctness” directed against persistent but outdated habits. This often meets with pre-existing prejudice and may revert into aggressive denial and intolerance.
d) Insecurity due to “external threats”: experiencing the demise of social infrastructures (especially schools, public transport, public administration and police, public security in general), particularly in certain regions, causes real social problems but is not traced back to the roots of neoliberal reform, instead falsely associated with assumed external causes like “migration into our social systems,” ”’kanakization’ of our schools,” “parallel societies,” migrant delinquency or Islamism, even terrorism, but also job insecurity because of multinational corporations, European reforms, or competition through labour migration. This often links up with pre-existing racial prejudice, which becomes increasingly important for individuals against this backdrop.
e) Insecurity through discharged democratic institutions and organized irresponsibility: who decides on new requirements, what kinds of life experiences and identities are still represented, where do I have a voice in family decisions, in living my own identity, in transnational production chains or in despotic low-wage relations? Economic imperialism is eating away at individual responsibility. One cannot direct demands toward a super-powerful globalized market. Politics seems to have deprived itself of power vis-à-vis the market and detached itself from the people, even become corrupt. Democracy is becoming a play without any real actors. This may often be articulated mistakenly, but the experience is real: feeling helpless and powerless, without control of one’s conditions of life. This reverts into “anger without a target” (Detje et al. 2013), and to an “extreme fatalism” (Haug 1993, 229): “You can do nothing about it.”
The point is: when the various dimensions come together, this can condense into a state of panic (Balibar/Wallerstein 1990, 271). The radical right is mobilizing and fuelling a “moral panic” (Demirović 2018, 29). This way, they encourage the subaltern to disconnect their feelings from efforts to understand the reasons behind their predicament and translate them directly into resentment, racism, coldness, and denial of solidarity instead. The reward is attention and false grief from above: “We have understood, and we take your worries and concerns seriously,” etc. (32).
Bizarre Everyday Consciousness and Right-Wing Populism
Most of the time, however, we encounter a bizarre form of everyday consciousness (Gramsci), not a coherent and closed view of the world, but what W.F.Haug calls “proto-ideological material” (Haug 1993, 52), meaning impulses and elements of feeling and thinking which are not yet ideologically determined. The impulse of discontent and anger is not in itself ideological. This depends on how it articulates itself or is articulated along with other elements. Thus, discontent can be translated into solidarity and horizontal practices of association from below, or revert into hierarchical forms, depreciating and excluding the Other.
If we seek to understand the rise of the radical right, it is less about right-wing attitudes in the population (as can be found in polls for the last 20 years or so) than it is about how these loose, proto-ideological impulses, feelings, forms of thinking, desires and aspirations – often in contradiction to one another – are integrated into a political project, giving them a coherent articulation. This explains why right-wing attitudes may decline in the polls, while the right-wing agenda continues to rise in the public eye.
This is not a mono-causal process: proto-ideological material is formed and processed in constant discourses in various ideological apparatuses such as the media and political parties, but also in schools, on the shop floor, in associations or in the family. At the same time, social individuals appropriate political discourses in the sense of active subjectivation, adapting them to their respective conditions in order to gain at least a “restrictive capacity to act” (Holzkamp 1987). The question is “how the social individuals integrate themselves in to the existing structures (and discourses), thereby shaping their own subjectivity” (F.Haug 1983, 16). But we also have to ask why leftist or solidary discourses are less effective than elsewhere, for instance in Spain or Greece (see Candeias and Völpel 2013).
Especially when the experience of solidarity is lacking or disappointed, this opens a window of opportunity for the radical right. When the experience of solidary practice or the prospect for their possible success is absent, this may lead to stubborn dissidence, as represented also by the radical right: their dissidence at the same time defends the status quo of existing social relations, the “good old past,” while questioning them partially. There is a dominant feeling of “extreme fatalism,” very aware of its powerlessness against “those at the top,” re-enacting a rebellious gesture, combined with an “extreme voluntarism” (Haug 1993, 229) against the weaker social groups at “the bottom and outside,” very aware that they face little danger of being sanctioned for that. This attitude is in “opposition to the ruling bloc in power,” but is “dangerous” only where the foundation of capitalist rule is not concerned (222). The radical right enables social individuals a “nonconformist conformism” (Thomas Barfuss): an attitude of resistance toward the ruling power bloc, at the same time requesting (in a form of interpellation) for their action to depreciate and actively exclude “the Other” – migrants, those “unwilling to work,” the “toxic ‘68er,s” feminists, etc. This can be experienced as stabilizing a restrictive capacity to act under heightened conditions of insecurity.
The new authoritarianism could be read as an “attempt to build a coalition with parts of the petit bourgeoisie and the working class from the side of the bourgeois class, without the need to make concessions. It works like a short circuit between the forces of the bourgeoisie and the subaltern” (Demirović 2018, 34). In doing so, this does not lead to a simple rejection of democracy, but to its reactionary re-making – an illiberal democracy – a plebiscitary strategy, dividing and mobilizing along the lines of racism, nationalism, religion, sex and gender, or form of exploitation of nature, “reproducing and disarranging the bizarre everyday consciousness, converting into neurotic subjectivities” (ibid).
Their form of mobilizing is connected to an imagined self-empowerment of the subaltern, based on the promise of taking back control. Once the different proto-ideological elements are articulated in a coherent way, it is much more difficult to re-articulate them in a different manner.
New Relations of Representation
Against the backdrop of this culture of insecurity, modernized radical right parties – the ugly siblings of neoliberalism – could be established in many European countries over the last 20 years. In Germany, they vanished time and again, but authoritarian or racist attitudes spread nevertheless. With the rise of the Alternative für Deutschland, one could say the country reverted to the European norm (Opratko 2016). Its appearance led to a complete shift of the whole political and ideological spectrum toward the right, creating a new relation of representation (Demirović 2018, 28). The previous “anger without a target” found a representative to articulate this anger – not in the sense of simple expression of that anger, but in a specific coherent and increasingly radical way.
The AfD began with the dream of a return to the Deutschmark and a strong national, one could almost say “imagined economy.” The rise could not have been consolidated with the critique of the Euro alone, however. The clear class character of the project, created by angry neoliberal professors looking with arrogance and disdain at the subaltern, would have been too obvious.
Only taking up and intensifying the anti-migration, anti-Muslim, anti-feminist, homophobic and anti-liberal discourse strategically directed against all minorities enabled the party to invert popular discord into popular compliance – against its own class composition concerning its constituency and leadership (cf. Hall 1982, 114). Polemics against “migration into our social security systems” and turning the social question into an ethnic question proved particularly effective (Wiegel 2014, 83).
Insofar as the ethno-nationalist and social wings of the party are becoming more influential (in the workplace as well), their notion of “exclusive solidarity” (Dörre 2005) could broaden their appeal in sections of the working class. It does not seem to matter that the party advocates for the most radical neoliberal reforms at the same time. In fact, they play with ambiguity, relativizing truth. This is one of their most effective strategies. They have succeeded in re-articulating the populist agenda and asserting right-wing hegemony in public discourse.
Most of the other parties are taking up this agenda, always with a shift to the right – even the media, and talk shows in particular. Now, it would seem, people can say whatever they want in public. An astonishing symbol was the last German government crisis between Horst Seehofer, Minister of the Interior and head of the right-wing Bavarian CSU (the sister party of the ruling CDU), and Chancellor Angela Merkel. It revolved around closed detention centres and how to send back refugees, completely ignoring the mass carnage in the Mediterranean. The radical right has set the agenda and are “on the hunt,” as Alexander Gauland, head of the AfD, said. Only a few weeks later, we watched huge crowds of Neo-Nazis parade through the small city of Chemnitz (formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt), giving open Hitler salutes and chasing people of colour through the streets, with a small number of police units unable and unwilling to stop the mob (while any leftist or anti-fascist activity is confronted with huge numbers of militarized anti-terror units). The head of the secret service (the so-called “Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution”), Hans-Georg Maaßen, denied the incidents and implied that media coverage and film footage had been “fake news.” Following extensive public outcry, this prompted another government crisis with Seehofer backing Maaßen, while Merkel and her coalition partner SPD demanded his demotion. In the end, Maaßen was removed from his position but only to become state secretary for internal security and cyber security. The crisis is still smouldering and the established parties are losing popularity, pushing more people toward frustration and toward the anti-elite course of the AfD.
The radical right’s strategy is combined with an open hostility toward parliamentarism and its democratic procedures, while using the parliament as a stage. Of course, post-democracy already began under neoliberalism, but now it approaches a rupture with democratic procedures – starting with Berlusconi, then Orbán, Trump, etc. The radical right, one could say, is doing the legwork for a new authoritarian project.
Attempts are ongoing to assert political control over jurisdiction (in Poland, Hungary, the USA, Turkey) and constrain freedom of the press, or at least disparage them as “lying press” while deploying fake news and “alternative facts,” often combined with a vulgar historical revisionism. The rights of minorities, women, unions, and science are at least questioned. A violent language becomes normal, affirming and relativizing physical violence, enforcing security discourses and repressive apparatuses. Expanding the range of acceptable language is expanding the space for maliciousness from open hatred to real individual violence. I think these are clear tendencies of what in German is called Faschisierung: not fascist regimes, but clear tendencies against a democratic and solidary mode of living.
Racism from Below as Reactionary Self-Empowerment and Expansion of One’s Capacity to Act
The production and combating of “the Other” plays a central role here.
The tremendous heterogeneity of the subaltern classes could serve as a fruitful foundation for solidarity in plurality, but of course could also be the foundation for strategically dividing the class. This is especially done by integrating factions of the class into a hegemonic project. Forms of chauvinism, racism, sexism, and classism in the everyday consciousness – as well as the distinction of certain professions from others, different modes of consumption and lifestyle – are useful elements to expand minor differences into real divisions.
A common pattern is to compensate one’s own (real or feared) social decline by depreciating others, because the feeling of dignity and individual social position is a relative one always in comparison to others. To allocate someone else a lower position makes one feel that they not at the bottom of the social hierarchy, maybe they still part of the middle class, part of a nation – in the German case, a successful export leader and football world champion (the latter may be weakened after the last World Cup, where Germany was knocked out in the first round).
Racism and nationalism were always present, but remained in a subaltern position in most people’s minds, emerging to the fore from time to time but not systematically. That they gained so much importance is also a symptom of the lack of effective class struggle (Balibar/Wallerstein 1990, 259). In the moment of this generalization of a culture of insecurity and crisis of the old neoliberal project, the articulation of the proto-ideological elements changes: what was marginal or less important takes on a central position in the ideological structure, becomes a point of condensation.
The ruling class seeks to divide the subaltern classes via integration into a hegemonic project. This is not a mere ideological phenomenon, but includes the realization of material interests: because of power relations and a strong workers’ movement, class compromise in Fordism was broadly inclusive, although it also produced an exterior and exhibited a patriarchal and paternalistic structure. In neoliberalism, the basis of class compromise was much smaller, more and more reduced to high-tech specialists and the core workforce in production. Export-nationalism, purchased at the dear price of austerity and wage restraint, still guarantees a highly contested degree of participation for a certain part of the working class. This kind of class compromise has high costs entailing subordination, increased flexibilization, tightened performance requirements, etc. This kind of class compromise with less and less concessions mobilizes tremendous fears of tailing to keep up in this universal “war of every one against everyone” (Hobbes, as cited by Haug 1993, 228).
This becomes evident with the constant burden of increasing contributions to social insurance and higher taxes, combined with declining benefits and crumbling social infrastructure – first due to German reunification, rising unemployment, the costs of the EU, and then the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees. The so-called middle classes and high performers are burdened more and more (so the story goes), while the real reasons – the dramatic re-distribution of wealth in favour of capital and the rich – are not discussed. One cannot do anything about it – otherwise they would have turned their anger against the ruling power bloc to offer at least a small portion of the economic success as part of the class compromise, albeit in a very subaltern position.
The feeling of bearing the burden grows even more when faced with heightened competition on the labour market, in housing, for access to high-quality social services, especially child care and schools, and for public space. Although the actual cause might be permanent neoliberal restructuring, some fear that with the arrival of so many refugees there will be even less left for them.
These unreasonable demands should also apply to the Other even more so, up to denying them individual and social rights. The higher the perceived pressure is, the harsher the break with solidarity vis-à-vis social groups outside the class compromise. Even a portion of those excluded, the poor, desperately want to be part of that compromise, struggling for recognition, adopting the images and forms of social exclusion against their own group to mark a distinction from them.
If it is true that racist ideology is primarily an ideology of those segments of those in-between classes – not only in the sense of ascending or descending class segments, but concerning “active negation of class solidarity,” as Balibar/Wallerstein put it (1990, 263) – then we could understand the radical right as a class alliance between descending segments of skilled labour, endangered segments of the working class that developed into a petit bourgeoisie defending their small residential property and consumptive status, between ascending individualistic high performers, family businesses under pressure from globalization, bourgeois intellectuals lacking recognition or experiencing marginalization in institutions. Concerning the descending class factions, one can speak of manifest or threatened social declassification (see Kahrs 2018), while the ascending segments and class factions are engaged in the struggle over the recomposition of the power bloc.
The mix of heightened requirements and unreasonable demands, experiences of declassification, insecurity, attempts to stabilize the self via imaginary communities (Benedict Anderson), racism and other forms of depreciating Others add up to a radical right articulation of initially independent phenomena. “The racial stigma and class hatred” against those below in the social hierarchy coincide with the category of migration (Balibar/Wallerstein 1990, 249). “Insofar as they project their fears and resentments, their desperation and defiance onto the strangers, they not only fight competition, as it is said, but they try to distance themselves from their own exploitation. They hate themselves as proletarians or as humans, in danger of falling into the mill of proletarianization.” (258) A constant interplay and entanglement of “class-racism” and “ethnic racism” (ibid) against the ones below and outside. The interpellation of racism (or anti-Semitism) “instantly operates like directing a magnet onto loose iron filings,” rearranging the whole political field – after which it becomes possible to “organize a populism from the right, that is to say an authoritarian constitution of Volk” (an ethnic unity of the people) (Haug 1993, 222).
Against this backdrop we can understand the growing significance of racism, chauvinism, nationalism, etc. as creating a more coherent everyday consciousness as active inscription of individuals into an ideological project from the right. This is connected with a transition from a latent to openly racist mode of living.
This is not a seduction by pied pipers of the far right, but an active subjectivation enabling a reactionary self-empowerment and expansion of one’s capacity to act. This may help to understand why the question of migration advanced as a central social line of conflict, inverting the hierarchical conflict between capital and class into a horizontal conflict between class factions in and outside of the class compromise.
The problem? The left cannot win on this terrain. We need to shift it.
Connective Class Politics from Door to Door
Thus, back to the manifold dimensions of a generalized culture of insecurity in times of an organic crisis of the neoliberal project, with uncertainty at work, in family relations, neighbourhoods and whole regions, future prospects, one’s own history, identity, gender or mode of living. This pervasive insecurity is the basis for subjective strategies to confront the situation, which in absence of experiences with solidarity receive an ideological supply from the right to win back control.
But one can link up from the left on the same basis. Most people do not have a closed view of the world, but a bizarre everyday consciousness in which conflicting impulses coexist. We have to be aware that it is much more difficult to win people back once they become part of a radical right project, seeking to lend coherence to their everyday consciousness with a radical right view of the world and a racist mode of living. But many are aware that the radical right will not solve their everyday problems of manifold insecurity, and feel discomfort and a guilty consciousness with the right. Die Linke lost 400,000 voters to the AfD in the last elections. We want them back. So, how to connect with them from the left?
This has been a focus of the debate around new connective class politics (cf. Luxemburg Special Issue, 2017) in recent years, i.e. a class politics reaching beyond the usual suspects (Candeias 2017), developing and experimenting with new concrete projects. This sometimes means simple things that seem so difficult: knocking on doors in disadvantaged neighbourhoods all over Germany (and especially in the left’s former strongholds), taking lessons from Greece and Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Great Britain and the USA (cf. Steckner 2017a, Pieschke 2016). We need patience and endurance to build active relations. We have to listen, debate, organize local meetings centred around everyday problems such as neighbourhood rent policies or struggles in and for health and child care services. We have to come back and try again. It was often a surprising experience for both sides: first to be approached at all, and then to have a political conversation focused on everyday problems.
We sent hundreds of militants to knock on doors all over Germany. Our activists of course encountered resentment and racism, even among people leaning to the left. Nevertheless: most of the time, a conversation was possible. Frequently, people responded the question of what has to happen for their situation to progress with “Asylanten” – a derogatory term for asylum seekers – “must go!” “Okay, but was your situation better before the refugees came – or do you expect it will be better when they are gone?”
“No! I know that this will not change, even with the AfD…”
People then started to talk about their own problems: that they have three kids, receive social assistance but are not able to pay the rent or buy enough food or a birthday present for their kids, and so on. Less political correctness and more listening and taking experiences seriously – without denying one’s political point of view.
Other studies confirm our findings: according to a recent study documenting a door-knocking project across more than 500 doors in Germany and France (Hillje 2018), the first things people would like to change if they were in power were: “higher minimum wages, universal basic income, and more assistance to single mothers” (15f).
The same study concluded that “when people talk about politics in their own words, fear of Islam, Euroscepticism, the ‘lying media’ or an emphasis on national identity doesn’t play a major role.” They do not even have anything against migrants, at least it is not a major point, but the feeling that politics follows the wrong priorities, is not serving their needs, especially in disadvantaged regions or neighbourhoods.
As discussed above, they do not necessarily believe that the AfD or Front National could really solve their problems (Hillje 2018, 10). This was also true for our conversations: voting for the radical right is more an expression of the desperate wish to be heard and have politics focused on everyday needs. We interviewed a middle-aged man who always voted for the left. After years of disappointment, he voted for the AfD. When we talked he was already sceptical that this would change anything for the better. We invited him to a longer interview. After a while we called again, he joined the local organizing initiative and will vote for the left again. This is not an isolated case. This is an opportunity for the left: to proceed from solidary forms of working together on social problems in the neighbourhood, building structures of mutual solidarity (see Candeias and Völpel 2013). This is what we are trying to develop and spread across the party, and to support movements doing similar things.
From this common ground on social issues, we can work on questions like racism and sexism as they are modified and reduced in significance to an initially reactionary capacity to act. However, we cannot stop there, as this leads to a silent toleration of these ideologies. Rather we have to work on this, with continuous training and political education, but moreover by organizing space for experiences of solidarity irrespective of one’s migrant background. Experience with refugees as part of organizing projects in the neighbourhoods is crucial. Moreover, it is at least as important to support the self-organization of migrants and refugees. How to do all this can be learned, requiring systematic training so people lose the fear of approaching the Other.
At the moment, we think it is the only and most promising way to win back those segments of the popular classes we have lost over the years – not only those who voted for the AfD, but the even larger number of people who do not vote at all (cf. Candeias 2015, Schäfer et al. 2013a, 2015).
Decisive is whether everyday experience is shaped by practical solidarity or by competition and isolation. It is not impossible that a successive practice of solidarity could be more attractive than the imagined self-empowerment of the radical right, without any solution for people’s everyday problems. It is about a “generalized capacity to act” (Klaus Holzkamp) on the path toward a common and solidary disposition about our own conditions of life – “taking back control,” but “for the many, not the few.”
A “helpless antifascism” (Haug) focusing too much on the radical right and its agenda, rushing from one counter-demonstration to another, defensively concedes the chosen terrain of struggle. We have to develop our own agenda and shift the terrain with concrete organizing around everyday social problems with connective class politics, focused not only on the antagonist from above and from the radical right, but creating its own broader basis for a lived solidarity for all (cf. Candeias 2017).
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