Historian Ther in an interview: “There is a connection between neoliberalism and right-wing populism”

The rise of right-wing populists is also a consequence of neoliberal politics, says historian Philipp Ther. Post-communist Europe was a “pioneer” in this development. “If you look at an election map of Poland today, you can see that the right-wing nationalist ruling party PiS is particularly successful in regions that are usually described as ‘left behind’,” Ther said in an interview with ntv.de.

This does not mean that all voters of parties like the PiS or the AfD are unemployed or have low incomes. But many voters of right-wing populist parties have been affected by unemployment or social decline at some point in their lives. “So they don’t trust the prosperity they’ve earned; they don’t trust social peace.”

ntv.de: One of the causes of right-wing populism is the fear of change. As a historian, you are, among other things, an expert in transformations. Are transformations in modern times always associated with phenomena such as mass unemployment?

Philipp Ther: Not necessarily mass unemployment. But every profound change produces winners and losers. The transformation in Eastern Europe after 1989 also produced many losers. Prosperous regions such as those around Dresden, Leipzig and Jena also emerged in East Germany. But for many rural or small-town regions, the closure of local industry meant a turning point with drastic social consequences such as mass emigration: 1.4 million East Germans left their homeland in the first four years after unification. Such transformation experiences exist not only in post-communist Europe, but also in southern Europe, in the “Rust Belt” of the USA or in the industrial areas of central and northern England.

They describe these transformation processes as the result of neoliberal politics. “Neoliberalism” is often used as a fighting term.

I’m not in favor of building up neoliberalism as a bugbear – hitting this bag over and over again doesn’t necessarily produce new insights.

What does the term mean?

Neoliberalism as an economic model of thought and economic policy concept has a long history. In the 1950s, this was once a positive term that a certain economic school used to describe its teachings. Their approach was also a reaction to the global economic crisis after 1929, which almost everyone could still remember at the time. This concept was radicalized primarily as a result of the so-called stagflation in the 1970s – a time of inflation and stagnating economic growth. Neoliberalism was initially represented politically primarily by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan. In terms of content, it consists of a bundle of basic principles: privatization, liberalization and deregulation, always combined with an austerity policy. Germany achieved this policy in the 1990s.

However, not as radical as in Great Britain and the USA.

Neoliberalism differs from country to country, and there are different phases: the particularly radical one after the turn of the millennium, in which governments actually wanted to privatize everything that could be privatized, including core state competencies. There were certain corrections after the global financial crisis of 2007/2008, but during the euro crisis the Federal Republic pursued a neoliberal line. A new era has dawned due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the consequences of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, but neoliberal thinking has not completely disappeared.

What’s problematic about that?

An example: We are now paying for the “black zero” from 2012 to 2019 with delayed trains and dilapidated infrastructure. Savings were made at a time when you could have gotten into debt cheaply. In this respect, the austerity policy is now falling on the Germans themselves. Even in countries that have caught up strongly economically, such as Poland, the transformation has caused serious social problems. The upswing that began in Poland was very unevenly distributed. If you look at an electoral map of Poland today, you can see that the right-wing nationalist ruling party PiS is particularly successful in regions that are usually described as “left behind”, the so-called “Polska B”. In urban growth regions such as Warsaw, Gdansk or Poznań, however, people overwhelmingly vote liberal or left-liberal. Trump also won the 2016 presidential elections primarily in the Rust Belt, in the former strongholds of coal and steel, where the old industrial plants have been rusting away since the 1970s.

It is similar in Germany with the AfD.

This does not mean that all Trump, PiS or AfD voters are transformation losers, that they are currently unemployed or have a low income. These voters also include part of the middle class and very rich people. One of the reasons for this is that many voters of right-wing populist parties, even if they are better off today, have been affected by unemployment or social decline at some point in their lives. They therefore do not trust the prosperity they have earned, they do not trust social peace. And here lies the connection to the neoliberal reform concepts.

In what way?

Let us take the particularly vivid example of the transformation in Eastern Europe. There, a “shock therapy” was to be used to turn the supposed homo sovieticus into a homo oeconomicus – i.e. an economically thinking person out of subjects of the Soviet empire. And how did you do that? By cutting back social benefits, for which increasingly harsh conditions have been introduced. In Germany we know this as “Hartz IV”. Although it must be emphasized that the extent of such social reforms always depended on the level of prosperity in the respective country: In Germany, nobody had to go hungry because of Hartz IV. In countries that were poorer, these social cuts have brought not only relative but also absolute poverty. This gave rise to fears from which right-wing populists continue to benefit today. They are pursuing a “politics of fear” – my Viennese colleague Ruth Wodak has written an important book about it.

Is this neoliberalism the only reason for the rise of populist parties? Do Trump, the PiS and the AfD all have the same root cause?

Such developments should never be reduced to socioeconomic causes alone. In the USA in particular, the culture war that is taking place there also plays an important role. But the period after 1989 was already strongly influenced by a way of thinking in which profit and loss accounts were more important than other aspects that are also important for the cohesion of a society and also for its economic progress. The social reforms and certain consequences of globalization have not only upset part of the population, they have also frightened and traumatized them. These fears are available to populists in times of crisis – for example in the so-called refugee crisis of 2015/2016. On the other hand, such reforms have also led to a loss of solidarity in societies. This new nationalism, which is hidden behind the label “right-wing populism”, is particularly strong in societies in which neoliberal social reforms have had a particularly strong effect and in which social inequality is particularly high. This is an old topos of European history: societies without solidarity are breeding ground for nationalism and xenophobic attitudes.

Culture wars also exist in Germany.

This is often about things that are difficult to convey to a large part of society. Example of gender asterisks: I think that those who represent this concern should consider whether their strategy might be counterproductive. This makes it even more difficult for immigrants to learn the German language and how should this be translated into other languages? Above all, something should be done about the gender pay gap, i.e. the different pay of women and men for the same work.

Is right-wing populism a global phenomenon?

Populism is a universal phenomenon, which is why it is difficult to trace it to a single cause. At the European level, however, it is noticeable that post-communist Europe was pioneering – it began there at the beginning of the noughties, originally as a protest against the reform policy and against growing social and above all regional inequality. This protest can flow in different directions. In East Germany, the PDS or the Left Party initially benefited from this. But this party is obviously no longer able to retain protest voters.

We are conducting this interview on the assumption that the rise of right-wing populists and nationalists is not good for a democracy. You are a historian and not a political advisor. Would you still have any tips for politicians on what they could do to stop the rise of populists? Or is it too late because the reasons happened so long ago?

What you should definitely not do is follow these parties and their propaganda. People then prefer to choose the original. A second point would be to think about what has caused liberal, social democratic or even conservative parties to find themselves in a crisis. It is now known that social and regional inequality drives voters towards these parties. In welfare states that are still relatively strong, such as the Federal Republic, redistribution does take place. However, it is predominantly a redistribution within the middle class. But I admit that these are abstract slogans. Translating this into concrete policy is difficult. Especially since we live in times when cuts would actually be necessary to stop climate change and the extinction of species. In this respect, the current federal government is not to be envied. On the one hand, it must compensate for the standstill of the last two legislative periods and, on the other hand, it must shape the start of the green transformation in a socially acceptable manner. It’s not easy.

Hubertus Volmer spoke to Philipp Ther