Research into the causes of susceptibility to populism in the not-so-new federal states resembles a patchwork of half-baked opinions, paternalistic behavior and victim myths.
The thesis presented here is: The East is right-wing extremist because of single men. The East – a bachelor? What does that mean?
Caught in the cultural downward spiral
Basically a self-fulfilling prophecy: The smart ones and the women (mostly in personal union) are moving away because there is a lack of jobs, daycare places, educational opportunities, bus stops and medical care. The brain drain has gone through various phases in the East. Millions left. The result: areas in which those who remained became increasingly radicalized. Regions in which no person or company from outside wants to settle today. A cultural and economic downward spiral.
The problem just doesn’t serve as a characteristic. To say that the East votes right because there are so many racist, homophobic, sexist single men living there is about as well-founded as saying that Oskar Lafontaine stole women from the Ossis.
Perhaps even more solid evidence can be found for the latter. In any case, the decline in women and the surplus of men are not specifically East German phenomena. They can be observed all over the world in isolated areas weakened by waves of deindustrialization and mass unemployment. Even when the valley has already bottomed out.
Felt truths thrive best where collective traumas are still fresh or have not been dealt with. The East is screwed because it was Germany’s screwed up for a long time. The only question remains: Why does he like himself in this role? Why have two parties that would like to abolish liberal democracy as quickly as possible achieved shocking success in Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia?
Because the field in which the fascists from the AfD and the crypto-left from the BSW sow lies and resentment has not yet been cultivated by other political actors. And because in the East the (GDR) tradition of complaining about “those up there” is much preferred to maintaining individual responsibility.
The East must reinvent itself
The SED’s successor party, the PDS/The Left, has been left with the power of interpretation for too long. And now? The mountain of challenges is huge: dealing with the legacy of the dictatorship, the consequences of reunification, a populist-fueled mentality shift from inferiority complexes to an Ostalgie-drunk pseudo-self-confidence in large parts of the East German population, etc.
One person who gets to the bottom of these issues with the necessary intolerance for the intolerant is the historian and freedom thinker Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk. He predicts an age of authoritarian systems. His books will not save us from this. But they are an antidote to right-wing and left-wing propaganda.