If the right is rising, one must first look to the left

The AfD is on the rise in Germany.

We are not talking about an ordinary country, but one that still carries the weight of its Nazi past, a country that dragged the old continent into catastrophe in the first half of the 20th century and is responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people.

In the Saxony-Anhalt state election held on September 6, the AfD received approximately 44 percent of the vote, reaching the highest state election result in its history.

Naturally, alarm bells began to ring.

In the federal elections held last year, it received 20.8 percent of the vote nationwide, increasing its 2021 rate of 10.4 percent by exactly 10.4 points and securing 152 seats in parliament.

In other words, the result it achieved in the state of Saxony-Anhalt was no coincidence.

The strengthening of the far-right in Germany is deeply concerning. However, if we only look at the result at the ballot box, we may miss the reasons that gave rise to that result.

The real question that needs to be asked is this:

Why are German voters turning to the AfD?

The easiest answer to this question is:

“Racism is on the rise”

Then, let's label the millions of people who voted for the AfD as “racist” in one fell swoop and close the file!

How easy!

At the same time, it is comfortable...

Because when you morally condemn the voter instead of trying to understand them, you do not have to face your own political failure.

Germany is no longer the old Germany.

Let us establish this fact first.

Germany, once the showcase of Europe's welfare society, has turned into a country today where broad segments of the population live with anxiety about the future.

You look at the options offered by mainstream politics; more or less, they all sing the same tune. The names of the parties, their logos, and their election manifestos are different. But when it comes to the inequality created by the neoliberal system and savage capitalism, the unjust distribution of wealth, the devaluation of labor, and the erosion of the social state...

They all start to sound the same.

It is possible to understand the attitude of the right here. Because they are the driving force of the neoliberal order.

But what about the left?

Isn't the historical duty of left-wing parties to object to the inequality created by capital, to defend the rights of labor, to expand the scope of the social state, and to produce policies that will make the lives of working people easier?

So what happened that they fell into the wake of the right?

Let us be clear: the left, which should have been a balm for the wounds opened by savage capitalism, has over time accepted the boundaries, mechanisms, and even the philosophy of this order. It began to replace labor with identities, class with cultural, religious, sectarian, and even sexual conflicts, and economic justice with symbolic debates.

In other words, as the left moved away from class-based politics, it began to flounder in the shallow waters of identity-based politics.

It could not put forward a concrete economic program against unemployment, poverty, precariousness, the housing crisis, and the deterioration in income distribution; instead, it adopted a style based on how one should speak to different segments of society.

More importantly, it set out to manage the right's economy while marketing itself as the left. Can there be a left that is ashamed to ask for higher wages for workers, that speaks of the “balancing” power of the market instead of promising a stronger housing policy to tenants, that does not object to privatization but discusses how privatization can be made more “social,” and that avoids ending precariousness in working life and instead tries to manage it?

In short, if you remove the material reality that determines people's lives from the center of politics, you leave the anger of those people to others.

This is exactly where the far-right in Germany stepped in. What they did was extremely simple. They took the anger produced by the economic system and replaced the real culprits with easy targets. Thus, they turned class anger into identity conflict.

The left, instead of taking the worker by the hand and freeing them from this lie, tried to explain to the worker why they were thinking incorrectly.

Then, when the right rose, they were left in shock!

Should we laugh or cry?

Let us repeat once more. The European left has long since given up on producing a real alternative to the right's economic program.

The real rupture is here.

Before trying to convince its voters, the left began to look down on them. Instead of asking the worker who was drifting away from them, “Why are you leaving?”, it preferred to say, “You are already ignorant, racist, and reactionary.”

Thus, it not only lost its own voters; it also became unable to understand why the voters it lost had disappeared.

This is not just a strategy error. Let us make the correct diagnosis: this is a political identity crisis.

Because if a movement that defines itself as the representative of the working class no longer questions why a significant portion of the working class does not trust it, it means there is a serious problem.

Unfortunately, the left is calculating how to negotiate with capital instead of fighting against it. Instead of eliminating inequality, it suggests making inequality more tolerable. Instead of changing the system, it is putting makeup on it. And then, when the far-right emerges from the ballot box, it sounds the alarm for democracy.

Of course, the alarm should be sounded. But it should also look in the mirror a little.

Because explaining the rise of the far-right solely by the success of the far-right is to ignore half of politics.

The most important reason for the rise of the right is the space vacated by the left. As the left retreats from class-based politics, the right organizes class anger in its own language.

As long as the left does not talk about the economic problems of the worker, the right becomes the interpreter of the worker's anger. For this reason, the European left should no longer fear only the rise of the right. It must also face its own political bankruptcy.

There is not much point in a left that cannot win back the worker lecturing about democracy against the far-right.

It needs to remember its own voters first.

First the class...

First the labor...

First the bread...

Because when you cannot offer people a future that will change their lives, you cannot determine who will manage their anger.

In other words, if the right is rising...

Let us end our article by saying that one must first look to the left.