Right-wing extremism: Elfriede Jelinek: I hear a monster breathing

I already said it at the last demonstration against right-wing extremism and fascism, I feel strange, like a ventriloquist – that’s what I’m saying now – who lets his own voice speak like someone else’s, but which has always spoken. I said it, I’m saying it now, how many times will I have to say it? May? In “On the Concept of History” Walter Benjamin speaks of the chess machine that was famous at the time, which won every game, but someone else was playing, a disguised machine, so to speak, a small man, a hunchbacked dwarf, who was a master player and the doll, who supposedly played and won every game, actually controlled.

Always the same game

That’s how I feel. I’ve been sitting under the table for so many years, but I always play the same game because I have to play it, I play under the threat, so to speak, that if I stop something terrible will happen. Of course I’m totally overestimating myself. But now this doll emerges from the darkness of a tablecloth and speaks as herself. As me. Yes, talking doll, they will say that in a derogatory way.

Is there, as Benjamin says, a secret agreement between previous generations and ours? Didn’t this agreement unwaveringly declare that the past should never happen again, never again, not in a different way or in a similar way. We often heard this never again, in lip service, in conversations, in lectures, at celebrations, yes, the lips moved eagerly, you could see that. This should never happen again, it is a constant of civilization for us. Nothing that has ever happened is lost to history, says Benjamin, and I would add: nothing from which we want to learn something. We have been taught this for decades.

Nobody should know about this meeting, about this meeting in the hotel, where the serious heroes appear, and these are not the so-called little people who expect politicians to improve their situation if they only get rid of the annoying asylum seekers, refugees, i.e. those would finally get rid of those who want to take away the butter from their bread. But there is none of them who could give big donations in envelopes, who is here? There are financially strong entrepreneurs, right-wing academics without their associations, they no longer need them themselves, they want to let others bleed, there are members of the right-wing extremist AfD, leading figures who are constantly looking back, greedy for past greatness, in order to move forward even further to come and position yourself for the future.

It was obviously so beautiful under the Nazis, who they no longer knew, but about whom they have an unshakeable idea. They want to rebuild this society, promises the talented right-wing radical from a right-wing NGO, as Herbert Kickl, party chairman of the FPÖ, calls it, in his hatred of NGOs that have made it their mission to improve living conditions, no, that’s a complete one new NGO that just wants to improve its own situation and make itself the boss, it doesn’t care about anyone else, they probably all have to go anyway. So you want to make yourself master of us.

Heavy heroes

The generally popular constitutional arch is being chiseled out more and more; men and women sit there with chisels and hammers and work to ensure that more and more go into this arch, and the old and new Nazis are socially acceptable again. The rest can leave or will be taken away. The foreigners should get out – a decades-old slogan – and the locals should leave as if they weren’t even there anymore. The agreement between the previous generations, who have learned their history lesson but are now slowly dying out, and ours is slowly but surely losing its validity.

Things must finally move forward in the right direction. They have supporters with money, and they collect even more, as you could see at the Brandenburger Landhotel am See, but they get their votes from those who want to disenfranchise and impoverish them. An ideological battlefield from which the fallen are quickly removed so that new ones can fall. What they need space for. Foreigners out, they don’t want to live like we do, so we don’t give them the opportunity. Then they won’t be tempted to push us out, yes, the borders will be closed, the ranks firmly closed, social fraud will then be impossible because there will be nothing social anymore. There will have to be cleanups for that, and who could object to getting clean? Clearing up and tidying up will be the motto, people will be tidied up by tidy, heavy heroes who will hand over envelopes in the Brandenburger Landhotel. And an Austrian is always there – at least one! – we are always there when something needs to be exported that the Germans don’t yet have.

Enough of it

An illiberal democracy, the Hungarians already have it, we can soon export it, we have enough of it, one is enough for us. But we don’t have enough of it yet. Orbán has already said goodbye to democracy, so light-heartedly that they hardly notice it, otherwise they would all be on the streets against him every day. And it will happen here too, almost unexpectedly, society will be transformed and will also believe that it has changed itself so that people have a better life, of course among themselves, that is always promised.

I hear a monster breathing, I hear the breath of democracy growing weaker. I’m glad you’re all here and want to breathe new life into it. I hope it’s not too late.

Speech by Nobel Prize winner for literature Elfriede Jelinek at the demonstration against right-wing extremism in Vienna on January 26, 2024, in which around 35,000 people took part. The speech was delivered by the actress Mavie Hörbiger.