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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Today, a new kind of freedom fighter has emerged in our midst: liberal and open-minded, these individuals champion liberty and resent the imposition of more and more rules and exhortations that constrain their freedom. They are angry, disgruntled, offended. Why should they have to wear a face mask, get vaccinated or follow new rules on diversity and equality? They should be free to choose. They do not long for a glorified past or the strong arm of the state but argue instead for individual freedoms at all costs.
Carolin Amlinger and Oliver Nachtwey see this new freedom fighter as symptomatic of the rise of a new political current in Western societies – what they call ‘libertarian authoritarianism’. The rise of libertarian authoritarianism is a consequence of the promise of freedom in late modernity: the individual is supposed to be free and self-reliant, but in reality many people feel powerless in the face of an increasingly complex world, an experience that manifests itself in resentment, anger and hostility towards democracy.
Drawing on numerous case studies, the authors paint a vivid portrait of this new social figure of our time, showing how the unbridled pursuit of individual freedom can turn into authoritarian behaviour towards others, threatening the very basis of a free and equal society.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Freedom conflicts
Libertarian authoritarianism
The structure of this book
Notes
1 Aporias of Enlightenment: the Critical Theory of freedom
Critique of freedom
Freedom in Critical Theory
Liberalism and authoritarianism
Notes
2 Freedom in dependence
The birth of the individual
Negative individualization
Paradoxes of emancipation
Reified freedom
Notes
3 The order of disorder: social change and regressive modernization
The pitfalls of normative progress
Offended knowledge
Democracy and counter-democracy
Counter-epistemology
Paternalistic governmentality
Notes
4 Social aggrievement: on the social character of aversive emotions
Contours of social aggrievement
The phenomenology of aversive emotions
The expansion of the zone of aggrievement
The imaginary presence of narcissism
Notes
5 Libertarian authoritarianism: a movement for a reified freedom
The libertarian-authoritarian personality structure
Variants of libertarian authoritarianism
Social spaces of aggrieved self-affirmation
Triggers for an authoritarian drift
Notes
6 The demise of the truth seekers: fallen intellectuals
Crumbling foundations
Twisted freedom struggles
Excursus: Sloterdijk’s meditations
Intellectual
Querfronts
Overshooting doubt
Nostalgic activism
Partisans of the sign
Registers of critique
Notes
7 The re-enchantment of the world: ‘diagonalist’ protests
The pandemic era: conflicts over freedom, and the birth of a movement
The character of the
Querdenker
movement
Epistemic resistance
Conspiracy spirituality
Libertarian-authoritarian counter-communities
Notes
8 Subversion as a destructive principle: regressive rebels
Engagement and alienation
Moral condemnation and exclusionary critique
Authoritarian innovators
Regressive rebels
Notes
Conclusion
A critique of the state and the paradoxes of progress
The coming truth conflicts
Social freedom and democracy
Notes
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 5
Figure 1:
Sinus Milieus in Germany 2020/21
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Offended Freedom
The Rise of Libertarian Authoritarianism
Carolin Amlinger and Oliver Nachtwey
Translated by Jan-Peter Herrmann
with David Broder
polity
Copyright Page
First published in German as Gekränkte Freiheit. Aspekte des libertären Autoritarismus © Suhrkamp Verlag AG Berlin, 2022. All rights reserved by and controlled through Suhrkamp Verlag AG Berlin.
This English edition © Polity Press, 2025.
The translation of this book was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut.
Polity Press
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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-6084-4
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-6085-1 (paperback)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024934472
by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is the outcome of a collaboration between a literary scholar and a sociologist. The research on which it is based is likewise the result of collaborative study. Without the support of our fellow researchers and assistants, it would have been impossible to gather and analyse our empirical material. We therefore owe our greatest thanks to all of them. We are especially grateful to Nadine Frei, Maurits Heumann, Johannes Truffer, Daria Wild, Matthias Zaugg, Clara Balzer-Nelson, Max Kaufmann, Verena Hartleitner and Robert Schäfer for their collaboration in the empirical research projects and their assistance in preparing the manuscript for this volume.
We would also like to thank the participants in the research colloquium on socio-structural analysis at the Department of Sociology, University of Basel, for their thoughts and suggestions. Besides the aforementioned names, they include Helene Thaa, Mirela Ivanova, Linus Petermann, Jacqueline Kalbermatter and Simon Schaupp. Furthermore, we are infinitely grateful to Nicola Gess and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) project on ‘Halbwahrheiten’ (‘Half–Truths’) at the University of Basel – specifically, to Silvan Bolliger, Hevin Karakurt, Lea Liese and Cornelius Puschmann – for creating such a productive intellectual atmosphere.
We would like to thank Sidonia Blättler, Ulrich Bröckling, Adrian Daub, Alex Demirovic, Wolfgang Eßbach, Philipp Felsch, Johannes Franzen, Gunnar Hindrichs, Agnes Hoffmann, Vera King, Piotr Kocyba, Albrecht Koschorke, Nils C. Kumkar, Andrea Maihofer, Julian Müller, Johannes Paßmann, Dieter Rucht, Astrid Séville, Markus Steinmayr, Ferdinand Sutterlüty, Simon Teune, Hubert Thüring, Niels Werber and Eberhard Wolff for many inspiring conversations and discussions at conferences, workshops, in the context of research networks, or even just on faculty corridors.
We are grateful to our agent Aenne Glienke for her committed effort on our behalf. We would also like to thank our son for his stoic patience in those moments in which we had to once again hammer at the keyboard. He has our undying appreciation! Finally, we are forever indebted to our copyeditor for the German edition, Heinrich Geiselberger, for a particularly outstanding and reliable collaboration.
INTRODUCTION
My freedom needn’t be your freedom, too.
My freedom: yes! Your freedom: no!
My freedom is guaranteed by the constitution,
Yours has never mattered so far.
[Meine Freiheit muss noch lang’ nicht deine Freiheit sein.
Meine Freiheit: ja! Deine Freiheit: nein!
Meine Freiheit wird von der Verfassung garantiert,
Deine hat bis jetzt nicht interessiert]
Barbara Peters and Georg Kreisler, ‘Meine Freiheit, deine Freiheit’ (1985)
It might be an old friend from school, a colleague or a family member – and they have begun moaning that their freedom has come under attack. Probably, most of us have had this kind of encounter. Our conversations with them have changed. We avoid certain topics because we know that the argument may escalate all too easily. Sometimes, it is only the thread of a conversation, but in more serious cases even a longstanding relationship may be broken off. Children become estranged from their parents. Some even end all contact with them, as they can no longer bear to witness the process of mounting radicalization.
Often, the individuals concerned would describe themselves as open-minded and liberal and often they have a broad education. It is not so much the emergence of authoritarian populists like Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin that concerns them, nor that of right-wing populist parties. Rather, they feel suffocated by encroaching rules, regulations and prohibitions. They believe these latter have been devised by the ‘mainstream’ or, more recently, by the ‘woke’ crowd. They often perceive themselves as victims of a sinister establishment in which liberals, the political Left, the world of science and global corporations have joined forces to prepare a totalitarianism of unprecedented scale.
Many of the current conflicts in society eventually reach a point at which someone invokes the right to individual freedom. However, these struggles defend a concept of freedom that differs considerably from that once pursued by the emerging bourgeoisie and the workers’ movement. In these historical cases, the call for freedom was directed against an absolutist monarchy, feudal dependencies, the rule of the church and the guilds as well as state censorship. The concept of freedom was associated with the demand for equal civil rights, including free speech and universal suffrage. Today, civil liberties implying protection from a despotic state have largely been codified.
Freedom conflicts
The fact that we are generally protected from a despotic state does not mean that we are free to do whatever we want. Given the continuing highly unequal distribution of economic power (which is why some people – including ourselves – speak of a class society), ‘social advancement’ passes many people by. We have to stop at a red light, pay taxes and, when we are young, go to school. In other words, every society has rules that restrict its members’ freedom; including ones with an official, formal character, enforced by the state, for instance road traffic rules. At the same time, there are norms and conventions of a more informal nature: if an older person asks you to help them cross the road, you are not legally obliged to do so – you are free to ignore the request and continue on your way. Similarly, of course, you are allowed to eat a kebab on a crowded train – that is, should you be indifferent to the many appalled faces of your fellow passengers.
What we can frequently observe today is a libertarian notion of freedom. The rise of libertarianism is arguably the most astonishing phenomenon of these strange times.1 They traditionally privilege individual freedom over, and at the expense of, collective freedom. But another emerging characteristic, shared by its most prominent adherents – Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and the anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei – is that their libertarianism is infused with authoritarian tendencies. Like neoliberals, libertarians are sceptical of the democratic state, not as a threat to smoothly functioning markets, but as a machine that restricts individual freedoms. Neoliberals use the state to strengthen the market, whereas libertarians consider the state itself, the authorities and their regulations, to be invasive and harmful.2 Current libertarian prophets also mobilize against multiculturalism and what they perceive to be enforced solidarity with vulnerable groups, such as asylum seekers or minority groups, and were vehemently opposed to lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Libertarian prophets are not new – the twentieth-century writer Ayn Rand is the best-known representative. But also, economists like Milton Friedman and philosophers like Robert Nozick are intellectual exponents of libertarianism. With his support for the Chilean dictator Pinochet, Friedman is also a drastic representative of libertarian authoritarianism.
What is new, and worrying, is that in Germany, and across Europe, the libertarian social base has expanded significantly in recent decades. A new social character is emerging in modern Western societies: the libertarian-authoritarian personality. Together with our various research teams, we surveyed individuals who have started drifting in some way or another. Our research draws on more than sixty interviews with people from what is widely referred to in Germany as the Querdenker3 scene (forty-five) and followers of the AfD who are active in civil society (sixteen). Many of the encounters preyed on our minds for quite some time. Usually, our conversation partners did not initially strike us as the aggressive characters some of them ultimately turned out to be. We got to know them as friendly, even warm-hearted people. Yet, at the same time, they did give us the impression of being oddly disgruntled and disappointed with the world – we might say, offended. Over the course of the interviews, ever-new aspects of their personalities emerged, in particular their radical and authoritarian traits. They freely indulged in their rage – presumably also because our role as sociological observers compelled us to remain silent and refrain from objecting. Instead, we were there to listen, and only from time to time ask questions.
One of our interview partners was Mr Rudolph, the impoverished son of the owner of a manufacturing company. He had bought an assortment of cakes especially for the interview and, to go with it, he had prepared coffee: one pot regular, one pot decaf. A member of the Green Party from day one, a cosmopolitan who had travelled the world extensively, he related the turbulent story of his life and his never-ending commitment to the good cause. Rudolph sacrificed himself for his family, but no one appreciated it. Pouring coffee into our mugs politely and attentively, he told us that ‘half the world’ has already sat here at his kitchen table. And yet, there he was, flying into a fury when speaking about ‘foreigners swamping’ his homeland (Überfremdung). There was no stopping him, and the situation became particularly uncomfortable as he began fantasizing about taking revenge on those he deems responsible for this whole malaise.
Ms Weber, by contrast, yearns for a world of harmony. She meditates for world peace and teaches classes on this technique. What matters to her is human closeness, contact, touching – all of which children were entirely deprived of during the COVID-19 pandemic. She claims that this issue has been ignored by everyone, particularly by the media who have been ‘forced into line’ (‘gleichgeschaltet’).4 She strongly believes that ‘something is rotten’ in the state of Germany, that something is fundamentally wrong. The detail that far-right groups participate in the marches she attends does not bother her.
Whereas Ms Weber repeatedly apologizes for her inconsistent use of gender-neutral language, for others the ‘gender asterisk’ (Gendersternchen)5 used to this end has become the embodiment of the mounting unfreedom. Various intellectuals believe that it is increasingly impossible to defend positions that deviate from the ‘mainstream’, and issue warnings of a ‘dictatorship of opinion’. Many of them are erstwhile adherents of subversive theories and were once committed to an emancipatory transformation of the existing order. Today, they fight for a nostalgic ‘retrotopia’ (Zygmunt Bauman) in which everything will be restored to how it allegedly used to be. They traipse from one TV talk show to the next, spreading their sour breath of resentment and claiming in front of an audience of millions that they are being silenced.
As for the topic of this book: it is not a study of the libertarian prophets, but rather an investigation of the changes in individualism, the transformation of the political and intellectual public sphere, and, finally, the protest movement that can be subsumed under the term libertarian authoritarianism. Here, individual freedom is not social, but absolute.
The adherents of such an understanding of freedom perceive wearing a mask to cover their mouth and nose, or indeed gender-sensitive language conventions as obstacles that are holding them back. They regard any new or altered social conventions as externally imposed restrictions that illegitimately limit their scope for self-realization. Some go even further and turn against the very preconditions for freedom: they do not want to pay taxes (or only very low tax rates) but do not hesitate to use the roads that are paid for with tax money. They ignore the fact that cutting-edge medical research would be inconceivable without public funding and that a publicly provided school education is the very basis of individual self-development.
Today’s freedom conflicts represent the culmination of a process that has already been building over the past decades. It is manifested in the return of an interventionist state that decisively interferes with individual behaviour. In contrast to the traditional far right, those taking to the streets today are not in favour of a strong state but rather a weak, essentially absent state. Their almost frivolous subversion and furious rejection of other opinions, however, simultaneously indicate authoritarian attitudes. They deny solidarity to vulnerable groups, use a markedly martial tone of speech and are highly aggressive towards those they consider responsible for the restriction of their freedom. They spread far-right conspiracy theories but categorically reject the accusation of being in any way right-wing. This authoritarianism, which so vehemently insists on the individual’s autonomy, is an indicator that the established political coordinates are in disarray. What is the reason for this change? Have these people always been sympathetic to authoritarianism – and were we simply unaware? Or have they performed an abrupt biographical U-turn?
Although we are unable to deliver any final answers to these questions here, in this book we nevertheless present indicators that the root causes are to be found in the historical development of capitalist societies. In this sense, we regard libertarian authoritarianism not as an irrational movement in opposition to, but as a dark side-effect of, late modern societies. Their promise of individual self-fulfilment harbours a potential for disappointment that can flare up as frustration and resentment. The people we met were defending their freedom – albeit in a peculiarly apodictic, almost authoritarian manner. We understand this libertarian authoritarianism as a symptom of an individualist concept of freedom which defies social interdependence. From this perspective, freedom is not a collective and shared condition of society but a personal possession. Although the libertarian-authoritarian protest is directed against late modern society, it is a rebellion in favour of the latter’s core values: self-determination and sovereignty.
This is true for the man demonstrating against a patronizing government; the pensioner who feels harassed as a ‘staff member’ of the so-called Deutschland GmbH (‘Germany Ltd’)6; or those intellectuals whose scepticism turns into new ultimate justifications. Even when facing opposition, they stand by their views and are willing to accept significant detrimental consequences like losing their job or being shunned by their social circles. Furthermore, they want to understand the problems around them: either as part of their work or in their free time, they pore over heaps of books or scour alternative online news outlets. They are sceptical of authorities and generally recognized knowledge. But these claims to autonomy and self-fulfilment often remain unattainable, and so the promises of late modern societies seem hollow to them. As a result, they develop a grudge towards those people and institutions they hold responsible for their own failure. They are unwilling to accept the slight that they have suffered and fight back, either by joining the self-proclaimed resistance or incessantly posting comments against their enemy stereotypes on social media. Frequently, a logic of escalation sets in that compels them to adopt increasingly more radical positions.
The libertarian authoritarians we engage with in this volume at times feel helpless in the face of social change. This is not to say that the reverse also applies, namely that frustrating experiences must necessarily prompt anomic or even authoritarian reactions. Besides, the extent of ‘freedom’ in the pursuit of one’s own interests varies strongly between different classes, strata and occupational groups. There is no question that people are leading successful lives, they are in fact in the majority. People are able to adjust their claims and standards to the available options. However, some are fiercely determined to defend their individual scope of action against any potential restrictions. What drives them is a late modern sense of powerlessness, which we refer to as offended freedom. Regardless of whether these individuals participate in protest marches against an imagined dictatorship, indulge their proclivity for conspiracy fables or in their resentment against minorities – they all consider themselves to be among the few who see through the overbearing injustices of late modernity. They virtually never run out of energy and consider themselves freedom fighters or the vanguard in a new and fundamental social conflict.
Libertarian authoritarianism
In parallel with social change itself, authoritarianism has also undergone modifications.7 We consider libertarian authoritarianism to be a metamorphosis of the ‘authoritarian personality’ as described by Critical Theory in the twentieth century. In the studies on the Authoritarian Personality from 1950, co-authored by sociologist and philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, the authoritarian syndrome is characterized by a combination of distinct features, including, among other things, the rigorous adherence to conventional values, the subordination to an idealized authority, a binary concept of power, fantasies of superiority or general hostility.8 As we illustrate throughout this book, the first two of these characteristics were observable only to a very limited extent among the groups we surveyed. As libertarian authoritarians, conventionalism and, particularly, subordination are alien to them. In this sense, they display similarities with a type that the representatives of Critical Theory had identified early on but considered to be a marginal figure at the time. According to the social psychologist Erich Fromm, the authoritarian ‘rebels’, as he called them in 1936, ‘automatically react defiantly and rebelliously […] whenever such people encounter authority’.9 Yet, the one thing they most certainly were not was libertarian. They were ‘indifferent’ to a value such as ‘freedom’.10
The individuals we surveyed stubbornly defy social conventions, and are animated by the anarchic impulse to assert their objectives against all and any outside opposition. In the process, they frequently develop an untiring destructive activity that is framed as a heroic courage to stand by one’s principles. Their form of authoritarianism is libertarian, then, because it constitutes a resistance against any form of restriction of individual behaviour. It revives a negative concept of freedom in which the individual is situated in contradistinction to the social order. Libertarian authoritarians identify not with a leader figure but with themselves and their own autonomy.
An authoritarian rebellion may occur in social situations in which political authorities are losing legitimacy. In other words, when the promises coming from the self-proclaimed custodians of unsatisfied aspirations are no longer credible. At this point, popular admiration turns into hatred. During the second half of her time in office, former German chancellor Angela Merkel was commonly perceived as too weak by her critics from the right: during the euro crisis she was seen as being too yielding and soft towards the southern European countries. During the migration crisis of 2015, she was chided for having ‘opened the borders’. Following her famous statement, ‘Wir schaffen das’ (‘We can do this’), the accusation of weakness grew into a rancour that went far beyond right-wing circles.
Defiance of authority arises from the frustrated insight that this authority is flawed and fallible. And yet, even though this leads to a rebellion against authorities, the character structure remains essentially authoritarian. Libertarian authoritarianism fights against false authority and in the name of the legitimate authority of freedom. However, its attainment is no longer entrusted to some powerful leader figure but to the self-empowered individual. In the process, libertarian authoritarians also latch on to a binary ‘power complex’ which dwells on one’s own superiority and the opponent’s weakness.11 While one’s own group is glorified, there is a kind of ‘craving for punishment’ (‘Strafsucht’) of the outsider group.12 In contrast to more traditional authoritarians, who seek to point out their opponent’s alleged moral weakness, libertarian authoritarians indulge in exposing their opponent’s bigotry.
Critical Theory referred to the authoritarian personality of the twentieth century, which was submissive towards authority figures and hostile towards dissenters and minorities. Today’s libertarian authoritarians do not primarily yearn for the reinstatement of traditionalist values, nor do they submit uncritically to leaders. They consider themselves altogether modern and progressive, even though they are animated by their own power and superiority. They are authoritarian in the sense that they recognize no plausible values nor reasonable interests whatsoever – which might render compromise at least conceivable – among their democratic opponents. For these libertarian authoritarians, there can be no balanced, sober negotiation, seeing as their opponents unvaryingly pursue sinister objectives and secret plans.
The structure of this book
Before we engage with the character and social location of libertarian authoritarianism in greater depth, in the first chapter we turn to the ‘Aporias of enlightenment’, i.e., the critical potential inherent in the concept of freedom, indeed in a double sense. On the one hand, it constitutes the starting point for social movements that mobilize people in the name of freedom. On the other hand, the norm of freedom always implies a call to reflect on its contradictions and self-endangerment and critically inquire as to what extent it has been established in social reality. The central finding of Critical Theory with regard to fascism and capitalist mass democracies is that bourgeois freedom entails the possibility of regression. According to this understanding, although modern society creates material prosperity, it also restricts the scope of individual emancipation. It was assumed that the aporias of modern freedom harbour an authoritarian potential.
The second chapter, ‘Freedom in dependence’, traces these aporias and starts off by revisiting the historical origins of the modern individual. The emancipation from feudal dependencies failed to create truly autonomous individuals: instead, bourgeois society’s individualism fused with inequalities and difference. While the (propertied) bourgeois and merchants were free, the workers were ‘free in the double sense’: the latter were additionally free of private property and thus dependent on wage labour. Today, the basic constitution of late modern individuals is ambivalent. They are able to independently determine their own lives, but they are simultaneously subjected to social constraints. Proceeding from the sociologist Ulrich Beck, we analyse forms of negative individualization that limit the continued expansion of the individual’s scope for action.
In contemporary societies, the individual is performance-oriented and adapts to the law of competition in the capitalist market. At the same time, ever since the emergence of counter-cultural alternative movements post-1968, the concept of the ‘authentic self’ has become ever more influential. Particularly among the middle classes, the yearning for self-fulfilment merges with the urge for success and recognition. It is a blend that systematically causes disappointment. As a result, a reified notion of freedom develops, understood as an individual trait, not a social relation. Any dependencies experienced are ignored, even denied. The affirmation of such a purely negative freedom is a key source of libertarian authoritarianism.
In the third chapter, ‘The order of disorder’, we situate the predicaments of individuality within the social and political dynamics of late modern societies, in which we can also observe the workings of a regressive modernization. By that, we mean developments that are characterized by a contradictory simultaneity of modernization and counter-modernization. The change in norms and a heightened sensitivity towards instances of discrimination open up the political space but also cause closures and new conflicts. Under such conditions, knowledge, too, becomes fiercely contested: indeed, individuals may enjoy higher education levels and be familiar with a broad range of techniques of acquiring knowledge, and yet, paradoxically, their knowledge of reality continually decreases. The increase in global risks entails a dependency on third-party knowledge, and particularly on scientific expertise.
Similarly, the crisis of democratic representation may also be understood as a consequence of regressive modernization. The political system is perceived as closed and hermetically sealed, even as ‘postdemocratic’ (Colin Crouch). That said, the counter-movements critical of authority, too, frequently fail to achieve any correction of the problem, and, if anything, they exacerbate it. Plebiscitary demands are apodictically articulated, always displaying a tendency to overstate the case. In parallel to this, a kind of counter-epistemology, ongoing since the 1970s, has popularized scepticism towards modernity and its knowledge systems. Nevertheless, here, too, the critique has radicalized; it has become an end in itself and is now directed against general social reality. In both cases, progressive causes have been transformed and have produced a neo-authoritarian discontent.
In the fourth chapter, ‘Social aggrievement’, we address the affective tensions and frictions that are stirred up within the individual by the dilemmas of late modernity. Individualization increasingly shifts social conflicts into the self. Individuals become more susceptible to taking offence, they experience disappointment and frustration. As a consequence, negative affects may arise – such as shame, rage, grudge and resentment (Ressentiment) – and increasingly develop a life of their own. But what are the triggers that evoke such negative sentiments in some people? We ultimately see three dilemmas at work here: first, the paradox of egalitarian norms, the implementation of which entails an increased sensitivity towards injustices; second, a lack of aspirations, emerging from the incongruity between a legally stipulated ideal state and its deficient realization; third, situations of social anomie in which universally recognized aspirations (such as success) foster forms of behaviour that violate certain social rules. This may result from the over-identification with norms, but also from rebellious or even destructive practices, an overambitious obsession with success, a competitive mindset or a sense of superiority. Since the 1970s, such reactions have been associated with the figure of the narcissist, and today we see them returning once again among libertarian authoritarians. In this context, we regard narcissism, which continues to feature prominently in most current diagnoses of the times, not as a manifest civilizational disease but rather as an indication that the economy of imagination in late modern societies is deeply unsettled.
In the fifth chapter, ‘Libertarian authoritarianism’, we engage with the question of how to account for the normative disarray in which the ideal of freedom is conflated with profoundly illiberal views and practices. What are the key features of the libertarian-authoritarian personality structure? In what character traits does it surface, and through what types of behaviour is it expressed? Here we draw on the notion that libertarian authoritarianism is a symptom of reified freedom. The authoritarian personality, as conceptualized by Critical Theory, changes its form under the conditions of late modernity. We interpret the libertarian-authoritarian personality, which no longer follows any figure of authority, as a side-effect of the emergence of the liberated and self-reliant individual who is confronted with abstract dependencies and turns against them. In this sense, libertarian authoritarianism represents a demonstrative gesture of dissociation.
Although we do not consider the Critical Theory of authoritarianism to be obsolete, we focus on figures who were only marginal characters during the first half of the twentieth century but who have gained a stronger presence today: namely the above-mentioned ‘rebel’ who defies the forces that seek to restrict their independence, as well as the so-called ‘crank’ who loses themselves in conspiracy thinking and regards epistemological secession as a means of self-empowerment. However, the late modern expansion of the zone of humiliation, or offendedness, does not engulf all social spaces equally and, in our view, encompasses particularly those social contexts with a more individualist value system. In this chapter, we seek to comprehensively establish, based on distinct scenarios, the conditions under which contradictory, frustrating experiences can translate into libertarian-authoritarian attitudes and behaviours.
To this end, we illustrate the varying manifestations of libertarian authoritarianism on the basis of three examples. In the sixth chapter, ‘The demise of the truth seekers’, we investigate the ways in which the figure of the general intellectual, who rises to speak out publicly on behalf of freedom, equality or justice, can get tied up with regressive positions (though, of course, this need not necessarily be the case). The intellectuals we encounter in this study emphatically invoke the freedom of speech or the interest of the majority – albeit only to defend sectional positions. They exemplify a critique of society that has become ill-defined, causing ideological interferences between opposing political camps. What unites the intellectuals we surveyed is their fight against a common adversary: the identity politics of formerly marginalized groups and cultural minorities, scientific expertise or an alliance of state and media elites who have allegedly been forced into line. We conceive of these disconcerting coalitions as a reactive self-hardening against progressive change.
In this chapter, we examine intellectuals’ diminishing sphere of influence, engage with distorted freedom struggles, fought not least against the enemy image of ‘cancel culture’, and elaborate on specific cases that cut across traditional boundaries between political camps. We consider the work of Peter Sloterdijk, which we briefly summarize, to be an important precursor of what cultural scholar Diedrich Diederichsen has termed ‘post-ideological Querfronts’ (‘cross fronts’, i.e., left–right alliances). This is followed by three specific examples: the overweening intellectual criticism of government measures during the COVID-19 pandemic; the nostalgic class struggle against the identity politics of marginalized groups; and the transition from an erstwhile anti-hegemonic postmodern mindset to libertarian-authoritarian positions. Finally, we contemplate the ways in which the registers of social critique have shifted and changed in recent years – reflections that are instrumental for properly understanding the two subsequent case studies.
In the seventh chapter, ‘The re-enchantment of the world’, we analyse the protests of the so-called ‘Querdenker’ (or ‘COVID deniers’). The measures the government implemented to contain the COVID-19 pandemic represented considerable interference with people’s everyday lives. Everyone had to wear a facemask when out in public, cultural venues and gyms were closed, and even the individual freedom of movement was temporarily restricted. The government justified the far-reaching measures with scientific evidence on the risk of contagion and the severe disease progression. The ‘Querdenker’ not only fiercely criticized the measures as such, but also challenged the knowledge base they were founded on. Furthermore, besides denying the danger of a COVID-19 infection altogether, they frequently detected a large-scale conspiracy behind the measures.
For our analysis, we evaluated an online survey of 1,150 ‘Querdenker’ and conducted interviews with forty-five others, attended numerous protest marches and dug through Telegram channels. Many of the people we spoke to are from the remnants of the old ‘alternative milieus’. They are prone to new-age practices, indulge in esotericism, practise yoga and seek inner harmony. For other ‘Querdenker’, who instead come from the milieu of top performers, a hedonistic lifestyle and the meritocratic principle take centre stage; they are preoccupied with conspiracy theories and sympathize more strongly with the AfD. In their majority, they are people who tended towards the left in the past but are now moving towards the right. They are so alienated from representative democracy that they have no problem with attending the same marches as right-wing populist or even explicitly far-right forces. In a way, the ‘Querdenker’ represent the prototype of libertarian authoritarianism: in terms of lifestyle, for example bringing up a child, they support more anti-authoritarian positions, they are not particularly xenophobic and they are critical of hierarchies. At the same time, however, they defend a radical individualist concept of freedom that can quickly take on authoritarian contours. Many of them are obsessed with the idea of punishing those who have restricted (and continue to restrict) their self-determination (such as ‘the virologists’ or ‘the government’).
The eighth chapter, ‘Subversion as a destructive principle’, is based on an empirical study conducted in 2017. The non-governmental organization (NGO) Campact, which specializes in online campaigns on behalf of ecological and social causes, had contacted us in 2016: some subscribers to their mailing list were objecting to a Campact-led anti-AfD campaign in the run-up to the German general election in 2017. They expressed sympathies for the right-wing populist party, and more than just a few stated their intention to actually vote for them. Together with Campact, we wanted to find out why some people dedicated to progressive causes nonetheless develop an affinity for the AfD. For this purpose, we conducted sixteen biographical-narrative interviews with people who had criticized the campaign. Many of our interview partners have always despised authority, they struggle to submit to conventions and frequently come into conflict with their social environment.
Their inclination towards the extreme, the excessive or subversive has turned rather destructive more recently. They rail against refugees, Muslims or Jews, and in some cases obsess about fantasies of violence. Most of them have experienced existential disruptions or crises in their life, for which they blame a corrupted system that restricts their freedoms and gives preferential treatment to ‘strangers’. They are reminiscent of the rebels that were studied by Critical Theory, although they exhibit one key difference: their fundamental scepticism towards authorities prevents any kind of authoritarian identification, neither with a powerful leader nor with the nation. The group we refer to as ‘regressive rebels’ with reference to the studies on the authoritarian personality appear to be the most radical variant of libertarian authoritarianism. They consider the democratic system with all its liberal norms to be so severely suffocating that their – if only verbal – rebellion against it is extremely aggressive. Alongside the type of the regressive rebel, we also introduce the ‘authoritarian innovator’, who may be regarded as the former’s more moderate comrade-in-arms.
How, then, should libertarian authoritarianism be classified? How does it differ from the authoritarianism analysed by Adorno and his colleagues? Is it here to stay? We return to these questions once again in the final chapter. But, just to make it clear from the start: we have little hope that libertarian authoritarianism will disappear any time soon. At the same time, of course, we are not simply left at its mercy, defenceless. Alternatives do exist. We conclude the book by outlining possible courses of action that might not only improve our social coexistence and our relationship with nature, but which could also help drain the breeding grounds of libertarian authoritarianism.
Notes
1
The following paragraph is in part taken from our essay in
New Statesman
: Carolin Amlinger and Oliver Nachtwey (2023), ‘The new authoritarian personality: What is driving the resurgence of the libertarian far right?’,
New Statesman
, 7 December, available at:
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2023/12/new-authoritarian-personality
2
See Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi (2023), ‘What is Libertarianism?’, in: id.,
The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism
, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 9–33; Quinn Slobodian (2023),
Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy
, New York: Random House.
3
This term literally translates to ‘diagonal thinker’ and denotes something like ‘contrarian’ or ‘maverick’. It emerged as a self-description by those who doubted the existence and/or severity of COVID-19 and staged protest marches against the pandemic-related restrictions. In the UK, for example, these groups were referred to simply as ‘COVID deniers’. Here, we retain the term
Querdenker
, at times alternating with ‘diagonalism’ or ‘diagonalist’ in reference to Naomi Klein (2023),
Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Will Callison and Quinn Slobodian (2021), ‘Coronapolitics from the Reichstag to the Capitol: Defying conventional political labels and capitalizing on widespread distrust, a range of new movements share the conviction that all power is conspiracy’,
Boston Review
, 12 January, available at:
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/quinn-slobodian-toxic-politics-coronakspeticism/
4
The term
Gleichschaltung
(which roughly translates to ‘synchronization’) refers to the systematic Nazification process in early 1930s Germany, during which all areas of society, from trade to culture and education, and particularly the media, were brought under the full control of the Nazi party, preparing the ground for its totalitarian rule.
5
Transl. note: the gender asterisk is used in German nouns to convey gender-neutral and non-binary language. Specifically, it is placed after the root word and before the female suffix ‘-
in
’ (sg.) or ‘-
innen
’ (pl.). For example, the (male)
Lehrer
(teacher) thus becomes
Lehrer*in
(or
Lehrer*innen
in the plural).
6
Transl. note: This refers to the so-called
Reichsbürger
(‘Reich citizens’), who do not recognize the post-war German state nor its democratic institutions. They constitute a contentious character comparable to the sovereign citizens movement.
7
See Oliver Decker and Elmar Brähler (eds.) (2020),
Autoritäre Dynamiken. Alte Ressentiments – neue Radikalität. Leipziger Autoritarismus-Studie 2020
, Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag; Wilhelm Heitmeyer (2018),
Autoritäre Versuchungen. Signaturen der Bedrohung I
, Berlin: Suhrkamp; Wilhelm Heitmeyer et al. (2020),
Rechte Bedrohungsallianzen. Signaturen der Bedrohung II
, Berlin: Suhrkamp.
8
Theodor W. Adorno et al. (1950),
The Authoritarian Personality
, New York: Harper and Row, pp. 237–8.
9
Erich Fromm (2020 [1936]),
Studies on Authority and the Family. Sociopsychological Dimensions, Fromm Forum 24
, pp. 8–58, here: p. 54, available at:
https://fromm-gesellschaft.eu/images/pdf-Dateien/1936a-eng.pdf
10
Erich Fromm (1984),
The Working Class in Weimar Germany: A Psychological and Sociological Study
, Oxford: Berg Publishers, p. 226.
11
Adorno,
Authoritarian Personality
, op. cit.
12
Ibid.
Chapter 1 APORIAS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: THE CRITICAL THEORY OF FREEDOM
Freedom is the guiding trope of modernity.1 It is the key rationale underlying the bourgeois societies emerging since the eighteenth century, as well as of the rationalization, industrialization, democratization and individualization of all areas of life in these societies. Freedom is the trope on which modern society builds its own self-image. The question of what is meant by the term freedom, and how it is to be realized, is one of the ‘fundamental questions’ of community and society listed by Greek-French philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis: ‘Who are we as a collectivity? What are we for one another? Where and in what are we? What do we want; what do we desire; what are we lacking?’2 The semantics of the term freedom serves as the basis for negotiating the identity of both society as a whole and that of its members. Moreover, it indicates opportunities for self-realization through social institutions which can grant or deny freedom. Finally, it harbours a promise, an idea, which, through a normative imperative of action, encourages us to compare our social being to that of others.
Correspondingly, formulating a precise definition of the concept of freedom is no simple task: ‘There is no word that admits of more various significations and has made more varied impressions on the human mind than that of liberty’, noted French philosopher Montesquieu as early as 1748.3 To this day, the term is usually coupled to two horizons of meaning: firstly, a person’s freedom implies the absence of coercion, at least in those areas that are supposed to guarantee a sphere of freedom, such as in one’s private life, in science or in art. Secondly, freedom also implies a legitimate social authority which enacts the individual right to freedom and protects it from being violated, in particular the state, as an authority of power and decision-making.4 Which of the two meanings is dominant in public disputes says a lot about a society’s self-understanding.5 The respective semantics of freedom reveals the sense that members of society attach to it. Does individual freedom mean carte blanche for action, within a space protected from outside interference? Or is the freedom of the individual to be realized via social institutions? These specific emphases reveal how the social is substantiated through very varied rationales. The concept of freedom can legitimize state interference in individual independence (e.g., when the liberties of others are being infringed upon) or else contribute to the erosion of social cohesion (such as when individuals selfishly assert their own freedom to act at the cost of others).
Critique of freedom
Rather than defining the modern concept of freedom more closely, at this point we would first like to address its peculiar structure – which is what makes today’s synthesis of freedom and authoritarianism possible in the first place. Needless to say, the term freedom is marked by a broad-ranging plasticity. It is malleable and receives its force precisely through its intrinsic ambiguities. Whereas negative concepts of freedom emphasize the absence of external obstacles, positive ones underscore the inner intentions that precede free volition as well as the external preconditions required to protect individual freedom.6 In his The Principle of Hope, the philosopher Ernst Bloch, echoing Montesquieu’s remark from two centuries before, speaks of the momentousness of words able to harbour highly varied imaginaries: ‘The bigger the words, the more easily alien elements are able to hide in them. This is particularly the case with freedom, and with order, of which everybody often has his own idea.’7 Bloch insightfully observes that its enormous semantic range accommodates contrary meanings, including those which may at first glance appear unrelated to the term.
The concept of freedom proves itself in individual everyday actions, in which we find our notion of freedom either affirmed or denied, or at the superordinate level of political decision-making power which can strengthen or restrict individual rights and liberties. Images of freedom have a creative effect; while historically they have been placed in service of planned organization or, indeed, been politically abused, as a normative idea they elude any immediate control or direction. Rather, freedom as a social idea engenders new historical situations and new forms of behaviour. From the plurality of its meanings emerged its open, forward-looking potency, which resulted in its historical concurrence with social progress. This structural composition of the concept of freedom turns it into an essential resource of sense-making in modernity.
This is the backdrop against which a critique of freedom needs to be understood, indeed in two respects. On the one hand, it comprises all the both failed and victorious social struggles fought in the name of freedom. Advocating the realization of autonomy entails the critique of the societies which systematically prevent it. The bourgeoisie’s emancipation movement fought to implement universal civil liberties, the working class aimed for the elimination of its subordination within a capitalist structure, and the women’s movement – like the movements of social minorities – pursued the aim of no longer being discriminated against and attaining the right to lead a free, self-directed life. That is to say, historically, the fight for self-determination and self-realization has always motivated challenges to established social orders.8
On the other hand, a critique of freedom also requires the scrutiny of its own preconditions, so as to reveal its aporias and the ways it undermines itself.9 The reason why the concept of freedom is regarded with a degree of scepticism is its normative nature. The idea of freedom can founder on its own promises, for example, if they are delivered only insufficiently and in fragmented ways; it can set in motion unwanted side-effects, e.g., if, in order for opportunities for freedom to be granted, individual independence is restricted elsewhere. This calls for reflection on the limitations and contradictions inherent in real-life freedom. In this book, we seek to combine both these strands of critique: proceeding from the disturbingly regressive critique that is currently being articulated in the name of freedom, we analyse the aporetic structure of bourgeois freedom that carries a potential for social erosion in late modern societies. When institutions are regarded mainly as a restriction of one’s own free will and action, this says a great deal about our society and the social pathologies it engenders. After all, things have not always been this way.
Throughout modernity, freedom was usually spoken of in the same breath as progress.10 This is particularly noticeable in the Hegelian notion of the ‘cunning of reason’, according to which history progresses as ‘the development of the spirit’s consciousness of its own freedom and of the consequent realisation of this freedom’.11 The philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was convinced that reality was inherently reasonable, and that reason was realized both in the action of individuals and in the social world. Here, history is conceived as progress, in whose course the limited forms of realization of the spirit, which is objectified in world history, are overcome – leading to the realization of freedom.12 For Hegel, only after individuals have reached a mutual understanding about themselves, about what they are and what they want to be, can we even speak of history. He conceives of this form of reflective self-understanding in practical terms: it is sedimented in the rationality of social action. In this sense, freedom constitutes not only an intelligible yardstick for reason, but has its place in the moral organization of society.
Modernity is regarded as the most comprehensive emancipation project in human history. The ability to act on one’s own free will is no longer the privilege of a few, but a universal claim of bourgeois society.13 Consequently, the idea of individual freedom is inextricably tied to the social institutions designed to protect it. As philosopher Axel Honneth points out in his work Freedom’s Right, ‘[t]he enormous gravitational force exerted by the notion of autonomy derives from the fact that it manages to form a systematic link between the individual subject and the social order.’14 In this conception, the modern subject is not already free because it can decide according to its own will, but only once it is able to act freely during socially interactive processes. In modernity, autonomy, which is commonly associated with the independence from external forces, is a social product. The individual is independent not when detached from social circumstances, but within them. Conversely, the legitimacy of the social order depends on the degree to which it can guarantee individual freedom.15
Alongside the question of institutions providing opportunities for freedom, another aspect also comes into play, which may initially appear at odds with individual autonomy: namely, domination. Modern freedom rests on an asymmetrical order in which varying degrees of self-determination are legitimized. This applies not only to eighteenth-century societies. It was quite normal until well into the twentieth century for different social groups to be granted unequal opportunities to realize their autonomy. This pertains to workers who had only limited resources available; women, who were granted only limited participation opportunities (in Switzerland, for example, women’s suffrage was not introduced until 1971, and in one of its cantons not until 1990); or migrants, who were largely legally forced (and, in part, still are today) to lead an existence outside of the social community. Freedom and oppression may at first glance appear as opposites, but both are closely connected to the idea of bourgeois freedom. Although people were legally free in bourgeois society, the bulk of the population still had to subordinate their lives to the relentless rhythm of the production line. The bleak reality on the shop floor seemed to contradict the philosophical ideal of freedom, as Theodor Adorno summarizes in his Negative Dialectics (1973 [1966]):
Ever since the seventeenth century, freedom had been defined as all great philosophy’s most private concern. Philosophy had an unexpressed mandate from the bourgeoisie to find transparent grounds for freedom. But that concern is antagonistic in itself. It goes against the old oppression and promotes the new one, the one that hides in the principle of rationality itself. One seeks a common formula for freedom and oppression, ceding freedom to the rationality that restricts it, and removing it from empiricism in which one does not even want to see it realized.16
Adorno is not insinuating some unfulfilled idea behind a real unfreedom; rather, in his view, the bourgeois concept of freedom sublates an antagonistic principle inherent to the society on whose foundations it emerged. That is how, by eliminating estate-based barriers and privileges, bourgeois society created the bourgeois, who always pursue their private interest, and complemented them with the citoyen, the citizen invoking liberal basic and human rights. This Janus face is the ‘principle of rationality’ of bourgeois society which Adorno refers to in the quote above: although it guarantees, for the first time ever, comprehensive liberties, it simultaneously – because this idea of freedom largely means economic freedom – establishes a new system of oppression. Here, we can discern an obvious parallel with Karl Marx’s critique of human rights (or ‘rights of man’) written in 1844: in his review essay On the Jewish Question, Marx reconstructs the droits de l’homme as the rights of a person who pursues their selfish private interest and exists in isolation from society. For Marx, the universal right to liberty is based on a separation of individual interests; the ‘right of man to private property is, therefore, the right to enjoy one’s property and to dispose of it at one’s discretion (à son gré), without regard to other men, independently of society, the right of self-interest’. And he adds: ‘This individual liberty and its application form the basis of civil society. It makes every man see in other men not the realisation of his own freedom, but the barrier to it.’17 The institutional framework that was supposed to advance the autonomy of the individual proves in reality to be a means of safeguarding private interests. Since its very inception, Critical Theory has regarded it as its task to point out this discrepancy between the formally guaranteed freedom of the modern individual and its actual potential for self-determination in reality.
Freedom in Critical Theory
In November 1964, Adorno kicked off his final course on the philosophy of history with a lecture that likely fell on sympathetic ears among the students present. He told them that ‘it can be said that a direct progress towards freedom cannot be discerned’.18 A year before, the first of the Auschwitz trials had begun in Frankfurt’s City Hall, the Römer, which brought the suppressed crimes back into the consciousness of a Federal Republic of Germany still healing its wounds after the experience of World War II. One thing the trial demonstrated was that the ‘cunning of reason’ did not necessarily lead to individual self-determination but rather – in the form of the Holocaust – to the abandonment of any concept of humanity whatsoever. Given the immediate historical backdrop, the disillusioning realization that Adorno used as the premise to his lecture is more than understandable, in this sense. Modern society was founded on a pathos of freedom which failed to materialize in reality. This is the very point from which Critical Theory’s diagnosis of pathology proceeds.
The question of the individual’s historical liberation from natural and man-made constraints provided the key normative reference point for the Frankfurt School, which took shape at the Institute for Social Research (IfS – Institut für Sozialforschung) in Frankfurt from 1931 onwards under its director, the social philosopher Max Horkheimer.19 The institute had been founded in 1923 by Felix Weil, the son of a wealthy business owner who wanted to use his inheritance to support the production of socialist theory. Unlike his predecessor Carl Grünberg, as director Horkheimer set himself the goal of developing a social theory which included the inner workings of psychology alongside capitalist economic structures. The affiliated scholars, such as psychologist Erich Fromm, economist Friedrich Pollock or literary sociologist Leo Löwenthal, dedicated themselves to the emotional state of workers and employees or the state’s function for capitalism, before the institute was shut down by the Gestapo in 1933. These studies were continued by the researchers who headed into exile, including Adorno and Horkheimer, whose works would have a significant impact on the image of the Frankfurt School. Both retained their faith in the historical promises of Enlightenment and the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Precisely because they held onto these ideals, the fact that they had not materialized led to a bleak, pessimistic perspective on progress. In their view, reality was revealing that individuals were willing to submit to civilizational constraints that robbed them of their individuality. This background, then, explains their critique of freedom in bourgeois society. In 1947, they published their Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments in New York, dedicated to Friedrich Pollock on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday. The title already provides a hint that the two did not associate the project of modernity with an optimistic faith in progress, but that they rather intended to reflect on its aporias, as they clarify in the Preface, written in exile in California in 1944:
We have no doubt – and herein lies our petitio principii – that freedom in society is inseparable from enlightenment thinking. We believe we have perceived with equal clarity, however, that the very concept of that thinking, no less than the concrete historical forms, the institutions of society with which it is intertwined, already contains the germ of the regression which is taking place everywhere today.20
This influential study works through two social experiences characteristic of Western societies in the twentieth century: the emergence of capitalist mass democracies and fascism. These two experiences nurtured the realization that the modern concept of freedom also harbours the possibility of regression – or, in more drastic terms: of ‘self-destruction’.21 The contradictory nature of the Enlightenment lies in the fact ‘that the self-implementation of Enlightenment changes into its negation’, as philosopher Gunnar Hindrichs emphasizes.22 In other words: the threats of authoritarianism and unfreedom are not looming outside of modern society, but rather develop inside of it, arising from its internal composition. The book appeared at a time when fascism had only just been defeated in Europe. Yet to Horkheimer and Adorno, this did not imply that it had been overcome once and for all. In their Californian exile, they encountered (and studied) people who in their view were susceptible to fascist and authoritarian propaganda even though they did not openly identify with it.
Based on the Greek myth of the Odyssey, which, according to philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas, holds an archive of the ‘almost lost traces of a primal history of subjectivity’,23
