Elon Musk and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland. Part I.

By Claire Berlinski

The Cosmopolitan Globalist

Jan 24, 2025

The Democratic Dilemma and Militant Democracy

Authoritarians are known for their ability to come to power legally, then destroy the rule of law. Hitler is the best known example.1 If it is difficult to strike the right balance between preventing this and avoiding undue restrictions on political expression in any democracy, it is all the more difficult in Germany, where at every turn you are blackmailed by history.

Germans are highly averse to surveillance, having experienced not only Nazism but also the Stasi, one of the most oppressive intelligence networks the world has known. For the same reason, however, Germans are averse to political figures and parties who seek to undermine the freiheitliche demokratische Grundordnung, or free democratic basic order. These are the constitutional principles enshrined in the German Basic Law, such as human dignity, equality before the law, the separation of powers, the rule of law, and minority rights.

The conflict between these two sensitivities has been called the democratic dilemma. The problem it entails is vexed: How can liberal democracies protect themselves from those who are willing to use their own liberal institutions to subvert it while remaining a liberal democracy?

Germany’s answer to this question devolves from the work of the political scientist Karl Loewenstein, who developed his ideas in response to the “seemingly irresistible surge” of interwar fascism. In 1937, he published Militant Democracy And Fundamental Rights in the American Political Science Review. I’ll quote from it at length, because it’s fascinating:

… Fascism is the true child of the age of technical wonders and of the emotional masses. This technique could be victorious only under the extraordinary conditions offered by democratic institutions. Its success is based on its perfect adjustment to democracy. Democracy and democratic tolerance have been used for their own destruction. Under cover of fundamental rights and the rule of law, the anti-democratic machine could be built up and set in motion legally. Calculating adroitly that democracy could not, without self-abnegation, deny to any body of public opinion the full use of the free institutions of speech, press, assembly, and parliamentary participation, fascist exponents systematically discredit the democratic order and make it unworkable by paralyzing its functions until chaos reigns. They exploit the tolerant confidence of democratic ideology that in the long run truth is stronger than falsehood, that the spirit assert itself against force. Democracy was unable to forbid the enemies of its very existence the use of democratic instrumentalities. Until very recently, democratic fundamentalism and legalistic blindness were unwilling to realize that the mechanism of democracy is the Trojan horse by which the enemy enters the city. To fascism in the guise of a legally recognized political party recorded all the opportunities of democratic institutions.

… If democracy believes in the superiority of its absolute values over the platitudes of fascism, it must live up to the demands of the hour, and every possible effort must be made to rescue it, even at the risk and cost of violating fundamental principles.

In the second part of the essay, Loewenstein undertakes a study of the measures European states had taken to defend themselves against the threat. France, Belgium, the Netherlands, England, the Irish free state, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, and Czechoslovakia, he writes, had risen to the occasion. They had (so far) successfully resisted fascism by transforming themselves into militant democracies. How, exactly? The effective measures, he reports, were surprisingly similar:

The most comprehensive and effective measure against fascism consists in prescribing subversive movements altogether. … [As a rule], such legislation is formulated very carefully in order to avoid discrimination against any particular political movement, thereby maintaining at least nominally the democratic principles of equality before the law and due process under the rule of law. … The decision as to whether a group is to be declared illegal lies with the discretionary power of the government, subject in some countries to an appeal to the court of the last instance. … Reconstituting a prescribed party under any pretense whatsoever is a crime.

…. All democratic states have enacted legislation against the formation of private paramilitary armies of political parties and against the wearing of political uniforms or parts there of (badges, armlets) and the bearing of any other symbol (flags, banners, emblems, streamers, and pennants) which serve to denote the political opinion of the person in public. These provisions—too lightheartedly and facetiously called “bills against indoctrination haberdashery”—strike at the roots of the fascist technique of propaganda, namely, self-advertisement and intimidation of others. … many states provided rapid remedies for forbidden incitement and agitation against and baiting of particular sections of the people because of their race, political attitude, or religious creed—in particular, because of their allegiance to the existing republican and democratic form of government.

… Perhaps the thornist problem of democratic states still upholding fundamental rights is that of curbing the freedom of public opinion, speech, and press in order to check the unlawful use there of by revolutionary and subversive propaganda, when attack presents itself in the guise of lawful political criticism of existing institutions. Overt acts of incitement to armed sedition can easily be squashed, but the vast armory of fascist technique includes the more subtle weapons of vilifying, defaming, slandering, and last but not least, ridiculing the democratic state itself, its political institutions and leading personalities. … Democracies which have gone fascist have gravely sinned by their leniency, or by too legalistic concepts of the freedom of public opinion. Slowly, the remaining democracies are remedying the defect. … All such restrictions on the use of free speech and free press were greeted by fascists with the outcry that the democratic state was violating the very essence of its principles of freedom. But the measures proved effective in curbing the public propaganda of subversive movements and in maintaining the prestige of democratic institutions.

….Finally, specially selected political police for the discovery, repression, supervision, and control of anti-democratic and anti-constitutional activities and movements should be established in any democratic state at war against fascism. …

Fire is fought with fire. Much has been done; still more remains to be done. Not even the maximum defense measures in democracies is equal to the minimum of self-protection which the most lenient authoritarian state teams indispensable. Furthermore, democracy should be on its guard against too much optimism. To overestimate the ultimate efficiency of legislative provisions against fascist emotional technique would be a dangerous self- deception. The statute-book is only a subsidiary expedient of the militant will for self-preservation. The most perfectly drafted and statutes are not worth the paper on which they are written unless supported by indomitable will to survive.

He concludes on a discordant note, warning that liberal democracy’s time may have passed:

Perhaps the time has come when it is no longer wise to close one’s eyes to the fact that liberal democracy, suitable, in the last analysis, only for the political aristocrats among the nations, is beginning to lose the day to the awakened masses. Salvation of the absolute values of democracy is not to be expected from abdication in favor of emotionalism, used for wonton or selfish purposes by self-appointed leaders, but by deliberate transformation of obsolete forms and rigid concepts into the new instrumentalities of “disciplined” or even—let us not shy away from the word—“authoritarian” democracy.

… In this sense, democracy has to be redefined. It should be—at least for the transitional stage until a better social adjustment to the conditions of the technological age has been accomplished—the application of disciplined authority, by liberal-men, for the ultimate ends of liberal government: human dignity, and freedom.

I hope this introduction to Lowenstein persuades you to read the whole essay. It’s a serious and unsettling argument. It has a powerful logic, yet its conclusions are self-evidently dangerous. It’s an unmistakably German argument. I wish I could ask my grandfather what he thinks of it.

Future generations, I’m sure, will look back at Western democracies and deplore us for doing so little to defend ourselves. But the idea of defending ourselves this way would be anathema to our contemporaries. In the first place, we lack an indomitable will to survive: You’ll look in vain for any figure on our political scene who exhibits a passion to defend constitutional democracy equal to the lunatic vigor of those who wish to destroy it. More to the point, the vast majority of our citizens understand liberal democracy to mean, “I have the right to behave in any way I please, with no limiting principle.” If a large cohort holds that being required to vaccinate themselves against communicable disease is an intolerable violation of their rights, imagine telling them that until they adapt to the conditions of our technological age, they require the tutelage of disciplined liberal authoritarians. That would go down a treat.

But entertaining this thought is a detour. Suffice to say Loewenstein argued that democracies have not only the right, but the affirmative duty to ban organizations and parties that seek to subvert it.


The Taxonomy of Extremism

The democratic dilemma is vexed for every democracy, but particularly for Germany, where it is has hardly been an abstraction. After the fall of the Third Reich, Germany took Loewenstein’s ideas very seriously and, under the watchful gaze of the occupying powers, ensured that the Basic Law enabled the banning of parties that seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order.

The law is not, however, insensate to the risk these powers pose. Banning a party is extremely hard to do so. The legal hurdles are high. It has been done only twice. In the 1950s, the Socialist Reich Party (the reconstituted Nazi party) was banned, as was the Communist Party of Germany. In 2003, efforts to ban the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party, or NPD failed on procedural grounds; in 2017, they failed because the court ruled that while it was assuredly true the NPD was unconstitutional in its attitudes and its goals, it was too insignificant to pose a threat. They would not ban the party simply for being obscene.2

Germany gives the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, or BfV) highly circumscribed powers to monitor parties that threaten Germany’s constitution. In another effort to balance political rights against the obvious, Section 86a of Germany’s Criminal Code prohibits the use of symbols associated with unconstitutional organizations, including (especially) those of the Nazis. But because it is fearful of going too far, it doesn’t prohibit the use of symbols that everyone knows damned well are just a substitute.

The AfD has long been described as “far-right” in Germany’s public discourse and media, but only in 2021 did Germany’s domestic intelligence agency classify it as a “suspected extremist” organization, a designation that permits intelligence officers to wiretap party members and employ informants to monitor its activities. It arrived at this judgement from publicly available information, such as the party’s program and statements made by its members, following years of observation. The BfV was unequivocal about the party’s youth wing, the Junge Alternative, or JA, and about three of the party’s state branches (Germany has 16 states). These, it said, were “confirmed right-wing extremist.”3

Under German law, an “extremist” organization is defined as a group whose activities are directed against the free democratic basic order. Such a group seeks to abolish the fundamental principles of a liberal democracy, such as the sovereignty of the people, the separation of powers, and the protection of basic human rights. The BfV has a taxonomy of extremism: right-wing extremism, left-wing extremism, Islamist extremism, und so weiter. Right-wing extremism is characterized by nationalism, antisemitism, racism, and xenophobia. The parts of the AfD that were confirmed as extremist organizations, according to the BfV, advocated an authoritarian state, undermined the separation of powers, and rejected pluralism in favor of a homogeneous national identity.

The German broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk has reported that more than 100 people who work for the AfD lawmakers and members of its parliamentary group belong to organizations classified as “extremist.” (The Flügel faction of the party, which was officially disbanded in 2020 but is believed to remain influential, is known for being particularly extreme.)

The AfD denies that it is neo-Nazi party, and unlike Elon Musk, its leading politicians don’t bust out the Hitlergruß with billions of people watching. But this means only that they don’t want their party banned and they don’t want to go to jail. They don’t need to make things explicit: They are very capable of conveying their meaning without violating the letter of the law.

Germany’s federal elections will take place on February 23. The AfD is currently polling in second place. It expects to take about 20 percent of the vote. It will not govern, because all of Germany’s major parties have stated categorically that they will under no circumstances consider the AfD as a coalition partner. The concern, however, is fourfold. First, unlike many radical parties, the AfD has not mellowed with time. To the contrary, it grows more extreme with every change of leadership.

Second, this is not the insignificant NPD, but the biggest opposition party in Germany. It took 15.9 percent of the vote on June 9—its best result nationwide since its founding in 2013—and its vote share is growing. Inevitably, its noisy presence on the political scene normalizes views that are antithetical to the free basic democratic order.

Third, Russia is working assiduously to bring it to power.

Fourth, so is Elon Musk.


The Secret Meeting in Potsdam

In January 2024, the German nonprofit research group Correctiv reported that high-ranking AfD politicians, neo-Nazis, members of nationalist student fraternities, and sympathetic businesspeople had met in secret in a hotel near Potsdam to plan the forcible deportation of millions of immigrants and German citizens.

“The meeting was meant to remain secret at all costs,” wrote Correctiv:

Communications between the organizers and guests took place strictly via letters. However, copies of these letters were leaked to CORRECTIV, and we took pictures. Our undercover reporter checked into the hotel under a false name and was on site with a camera.

Roland Hartwig, personal aide to the AfD’s leader, Alice Weidel—with whom Elon Musk recently giggled and stammered on a Twitter Space chat—was in attendance, as was the Austrian neo-Nazi Martin Sellner.

Sellner is a real piece of work. He became involved in Austria’s neo-Nazi seen as a teenager, coming to the attention of the authorities at the age of 17, when he confessed to defacing a synagogue with swastikas to protest the conviction of British Holocaust denier David Irving. Since then, the police have picked him up regularly for such acts of hooliganism as disrupting a performance of Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Schutzbefohlenen—which treats the odyssey of African migrants to Europe—by throwing blood on the stage. He is barred from entering the United States and United Kingdom; he was arrested in Switzerland and released on the condition that he leave immediately and never come back. After the meeting in Potsdam, he was also barred from Germany.

In 2012, Sellner founded the Identitäre Bewegung Österreich, the Identitarian Movement of Austria, which the BfV categorizes as part of the Neue Rechte, or new right, and the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance classifies as a far-right and neofascist.

The Neue Rechte superficially distances itself from the neo-Nazi scene. The Identitarian Movement of Germany, for example, uses a yellow lambda, not a swastika, as its symbol, and its slogans are carefully phrased. By “carefully phrased,” I mean, for example, this:

Das EIGENE bedingungslos verteidigen! Die WEISSE HAND ist unser Zeichen gegen alle, die unsere IDENTITÄT zerstören. WIR sagen: Bis hierhin und nicht weiter.

which may be translated,

Defend what is OURS unconditionally! The WHITE HAND is our symbol against all those who destroy our IDENTITY. WE say: This far and no further.”

Note that they do not use words like Rasse and Volk so as not to immediately recall National Socialist slogans. The intentionally vague “Das Eigene”—“one’s own”—is a favorite on the German far-right. So is “identity.” The vagueness of these words provides legal deniability. It also. allows the slogan to appeal to a wider audience. Those who hear it are free to interpret it as a call to defend German culture or European values. The symbol of the white hand, however, speaks for itself.

The Identitäre Bewegung Österreich is relentlessly hostile to the United States and deplores everything they consider to be an outgrowth of American imperialism. They oppose Austria’s NATO partnership. They oppose international sanctions against Russia. They reject capitalism, communism, and socialism in favor of essentialist Third Position economicsThey call for an “independent alliance of sovereign nation-states” with Russia. On their website and Facebook page, they cite Aleksandr Dugin, Dominique Venner, and Alain de Benoist as major influences.4

The author of the Christchurch mosque massacre, Brenton Tarrant, so admired Sellner that he sent him a considerable amount of money. Austrian investigators suspected that Sellner was Tarrant’s collaborator and raided his apartment in Vienna. After seizing his phone, computer and other devices, they discovered that he had deleted all of his exchanges with Tarrant 40 minutes before the raid, indicating that he had been tipped off. Sellner denied any involvement in the attacks. In 2019, a judge ruled that the searches had been unlawfully predicated and the investigation was dropped. (Continued)

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