Paul Huckenos is a renowned US political scientist and journalist. As the ex-editor of the foreign policy journal “Internationale Politik – Global Edition”, he has devoted himself to the great world events for years.
In 2017 he published a book entitled “Berlin Calling: A Story of Anarchy, Music, The Wall, and the Birth of the New Berlin”. Another Berlin after the fall of the wall saga. It also analyzes the underground and techno triumph from an American’s perspective. So Huckenos is also familiar with the scene. The internationally active publicist, with a suitcase in the German capital, is about the same age as Till Lindemann.
All of this is not entirely unimportant if you want to classify a current contribution by Huckenos in the “Foreign Policy” (FP) specialist forum. Headline of the longer treatise: “Rammstein Is Germany’s Scary New Normal – The band’s continued popularity is a sign of the country’s increasingly right-wing zeitgeist”.
Here – briefly summarized – the successes and the aesthetics of Rammstein (up to the current allegations of abuse) are linked to the rise of the AfD.
One conclusion reads: “The toxic masculinity of the band is part of a right-wing chauvinism that finds broad political expression in Germany today in right-wing populism – and which is currently on the rise”.
More or less bluntly, the author equates the Rammstein aura cultivated in videos and stage optics with a National Socialist aesthetic. Leni Riefenstahl says hello – “Triumph of the Will” and as once quoted in a Rammstein video. A (feuilleton) debate that was already being conducted in Germany after the first successes of the East Berliners in the noughties. The band itself has released a song called “Links 2 3 4”, which they want to be understood as a “our heart beats on the left” commitment.
In the years that followed, the tide turned. Influential German writers such as the cultural director of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, Alexander Gorkow, have weaved more than just a laurel for Lindemann & Co. During his time as head of the “Süddeutsche Magazin”, Gorkow dedicated an entire issue of the supplement to the volume – in a solemn tone and with long photo series.
That was in August 2012, on the occasion of a big US tour. The magazine says in the opening credits: “One of the biggest shows in recent pop history will start in four minutes. Ten thousand Americans will sing with Rammstein. SZ-Magazine accompanied the band through the days and nights in Canada and the United States. Welcome to a journey that leaves scars…”
A decade later, it’s not just the scars caused by Rammstein that look different. But the discourse has also shifted to the extra-musical.
The US colleague is currently turning completely different sentences than the tour fanboy from back then:
“Today’s German nationalism is not that of Rammstein’s performances, but Rammstein speaks to right-wingers who deeply despise Germany’s cultural borders and pursue their own violent strategies to expand them,” Huckenos said. “Since Rammstein brings up the same shadows of the post-war period – albeit, as the band assures, as ironic criticism – they are on the same side as the right in a precarious time.”
His conclusion, also in view of the current scandal:
“Unfortunately, the free ride that the German public is now revoking for Rammstein’s alleged sexual offenses – and perhaps also for the songs promoting gang bangs, bareback sex and drug-related assaults – still seems for the glorification of violence per se and hyperbolic nationalism to apply. It’s a sign of the increasingly right-wing zeitgeist of post-war Germany that Rammstein can get away with so many violations of German cultural norms – and still attract followers who want just that…”
While the charges against Till Lindemann have recently proven to be of little substance in the legal sense, the discursive assessment continues to be controversial. “FP” author Huckenos didn’t have to wait long for fan comments:
A writer named “TheQuestBro” writes, rather amused: “Ah yes, Nazis. Famous for their pyrotechnics and stage lighting…” This (re)opened another line of debate.