Greens – rather a feeling

A human. A word, »so Robert Habeck smiles casually in the Bundestag election campaign. “Up the stream” (according to the title of his latest book) like a salmon to a spawling, the Greens politician moves from kitchen table psychology to kitchen table policy: “Remaining people.” The other messages of the green human beings are also sensitive and cozy: “together” and “confidence”. In “overcoming content” (as the party ”in the past, the Greens – their old slogan« not left, not on the right, but at the front » – are at the forefront. You can sunbathe in the late tabolutist shine: “We are the start,” it said at the Federal Party Congress.

“Green is more of a feeling than a policy,” said left journalist Friedrich Küppersbusch, who is known for his biting and funny comments on political events. But what politics is behind the emo messages? Bernd Stegemann, who has worked for years as a theater dramaturge (most recently at the Berlin Ensemble) and teaches “Ernst Busch” at the Berlin University of Actor Art, takes apart the Greens in his latest book. He knows from the theater that authenticity (“stay human”) is the effect of a staging. He also knows of system theory and Marxism that such productions disguise such productions.

«In the wrong hands. How green elites prevent ecological politics »is an ideology -critical pioneer. Stegemann does not simply hold an idealized past to today’s Greens, but directly criticizes their current progressive neoliberalism. Stegemann argues that the Greens failed to establish really ecological thinking in political. This means that it is a thinking that does justice to the excessive dimension of ecology and at the same time translates for the policy taking place in the interpersonal. In short: an expanded world awareness that puts the political categories and institutions to the test.

Because the Greens have failed on their mandate to create an action -capable ecological awareness, there is only one form of decline: ecology as a political ideology. Stegemann calls the form of this ideology “I-Centeration”. It’s not about world, but about ego relationships. About moralizing signals instead of system change. To classes instead of cross -class alliances. “The Greens are the party of new individualism and not the ecological change,” writes Stegemann. Only the new individualism-with all its virtuoso high-perfect self-optimization techniques, which belong to the “Professional Managerial Class”-is not a real individualism.

Stegemann follows the sociologist Andreas Reckwitz (“The Society of Singularities”), for whom conformist individualism is the hegemonic political form of the “new middle class”. Stegemann also calls her “creative class”. The trick of this class is to make the morally optimized self into the subject of history. On the one hand, the Greens presented themselves as “post -idologically” (“Our ideology is called reality”) and on the other hand as “moral preacher of the nation”. Stegemann calls this a “moral populism” that immunizes itself against criticism. It is called sensibly and democratically, everyone else is withdrawn from this noble predicate.

The communicative double strategy of the Greens is reminiscent of a soccer team that also poses the referee – and justifies the pedagogical measure that is mandatory. The historian Hedwig Richter and the “Zeit” journalist Bernd Ulrich fantasize in her much-discussed book “Democracy and Revolution. Paths from the self -inflicted ecological immaturity »(Kant and Lenin are humiliated equally in the title and content) of self -empowering green elites in the service of a higher good – a prime example of Stegemann’s thesis. He writes: “Greens do not represent the environment, but the inner world space of their milieus.”

“Fear communication” and “purity fantasies” determine the green tone for Stegemann. This can be confirmed from “Zero Covid” to “Zero Russia”. Or also in the fight against “disinformation”, “hatred and agitation”, whether with criminal charges or now new with a “network fire brigade”. And also the call “Follow the Science!” testifies to the discrete charm of expert tokrate: “Follow Our Experts!” Stegemann only breaks down how this political style (which is not only available, but ideally existed with the Greens) with cybernetic population control and emergency regime flirted, as well as the recently published left -wing brochure «time of ecology. The new accumulation regime »argues.

What is left out at Stegemann (his argument supports, however), is the economic turn of the Greens. There is no longer any question of democratization, instead the social-ecological war economy is forced, as Ulrike Hermann thought in her bestseller “The End of Capitalism”. Grin Chancellor Habeck has now been pruned with the demand for 3.5 percent military spending (referring to 3.5 percent of gross domestic product, which is around 150 billion euros per year at today’s status, i.e. 25 percent of the federal budget). Is that still eco? On the other hand, what Stegemann takes up is the failure of the Greens in agriculture as well as animal welfare.

If the early workers’ movement had thought and acted like the Greens today in questions of ecology, apart from a little charity of the “Upper Classes”, Stegemann said. His main argument is that the Greens are now so sworn in on neoliberal individualism that they are even in the way of a truly ecological thinking. In Stegemann’s words: «Green individualism turns ecology into a discourse event with which moral plus points can be collected in the academic distinction fights. And he makes ecological thinking a sentimental feeling that I am serving for the self -increase. » Not more.

Anyone who is not untouched by ideology knows that not only the Greens teases their class interests with a higher good. Instead of ecology and democracy, you can also refer to freedom, business or nation. For Stegemann, not only interests are veiled, but also to express resentment, how he outlines something very schematically: «The left despair. The right ones despise outside. The Greens despise down. ” That means: Instead of the power of the corporations, the simple population is treated by the Greens as a – difficult -to -educate – obstacle of their politics. Already in the corona crisis it became clear how violent this can be.

If you want to know what is behind the intrusive permanent smile from Habeck or the simple human messages of the green election posters, you should read Stegemann’s book. It explains how the Green Party does politics today and why this no longer has something to do with the brand core of ecology. And you also understand why the Greens attract so much rejection. The anger not only feeds itself from resentments, but also reacts-like the very readable sociology bestseller «trigger points. The consensus and conflict in the contemporary company »by Steffen Mau, Thomas Lux and Linus Westheuser points – at the hidden class conflict in the“ human, superhuman ”of the green milieu partie.

Bernd Stegemann: In the wrong hands. How green elites prevent ecological politics. Westend-Verlag, 176 pages, Br. 18 €.