{"id":10819,"date":"2023-04-04T07:00:38","date_gmt":"2023-04-04T05:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/?post_type=undoingraceandracism&#038;p=10819"},"modified":"2023-04-04T16:37:16","modified_gmt":"2023-04-04T14:37:16","slug":"of-cars-and-riots","status":"publish","type":"undoingraceandracism","link":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/undoingraceandracism\/of-cars-and-riots\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Cars and Riots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<style>\n\t.dkpdf-download-icon { height: 1.5rem; }\n<\/style>\n\n\n\n\t<div class=\"dkpdf-button-container\" style=\" text-align:right \">\n\n\t\t<a class=\"dkpdf-button\" href=\"\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/undoingraceandracism\/10819?pdf=10819\" target=\"_blank\">\n\t\t\t<img src='\/wp-content\/themes\/boasblogs\/dkpdf\/download_red.svg' class=dkpdf-download-icon'\/>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t\n\t\t<!-- <a class=\"dkpdf-button\" href=\"\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/undoingraceandracism\/10819?pdf=10819\" target=\"_blank\"><span class=\"dkpdf-button-icon\"><i class=\"fa fa-file-pdf-o\"><\/i><\/span> Download PDF<\/a> &rarr; -->\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After 22 years, the social-democrat majority in the Berlin Senate has come to an end. At the election in February, the conservative party (CDU) received 28% of the votes, putting them ahead of the Greens and the Social Democrats (SPD), tied with only 18%, as well as the left-wing \u201cDie Linke\u201d (12%) and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), receiving 9%. Negotiations for a grand coalition between CDU and SPD are underway, and it is likely that the conservative candidate Kai Wegner will become the next mayor. Regardless of their success, it is my impression that the election illustrates how the CDU has succeeded in wresting the position of &#8222;protest party&#8220; from the AfD. They did so by launching a campaign geared towards a somewhat surprising electorate: car drivers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Against the backdrop of proposals by the Greens that included a car-free city center, the reduction of parking spaces, or a city toll, the CDU mobilized around the car. &#8222;<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdu-fraktion.berlin.de\/presse\/lokal\/2837\/Kein-Autoverbot-in-Berlins-City.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Red-Red-Green demonizes the car and wants to re-educate Berliners into cyclists<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8222;, reads the website of their Berlin branch. Remarkably, their program makes quite a few concessions regarding communal traffic policy: They demand the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cdu.berlin\/berlinplan\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">expansion of public transport, the extension of fare zones, the improvement of cycling and pedestrian paths, an e-charging infrastructure, and even dream of a Hyperloop<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> &#8211; a high-speed system developed by Elon Musk &#8211; for the city. But in the campaign, their candidate Kai Wegner preferred to present himself as a protector of motorists or a \u201cpatron saint of car drivers\u201d, as he stated in a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.berliner-zeitung.de\/politik-gesellschaft\/streitgespraech-spitzentreffen-wahlkampf-verkehr-gruene-vizebuergermeisterin-bettina-jarasch-versus-cdu-oppositionsfuehrer-kai-wegner-hier-streiten-sie-um-die-zukunft-von-berlins-strassen-li.300631\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">pre-election interview<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. In the CDU\u2019s election program, car drivers need to be protected from threats and demonization by the previous red-red-green coalition. This message was condensed onto the CDU\u2019s election slogans plastered across the city: \u201cBerlin ist f\u00fcr Alle da. Auch f\u00fcr Autofahrer\u201d \u2013 \u201cBerlin is for everyone. Including car drivers\u201c.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-10822\" src=\"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/CDU-Spiegel-920x517.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"920\" height=\"517\" srcset=\"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/CDU-Spiegel-920x517.png 920w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/CDU-Spiegel-550x310.png 550w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/CDU-Spiegel.png 948w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 920px) 100vw, 920px\" \/><figcaption>\n<p style=\"font-size: 80%; line-height: 125%;\"><em>The CDU Election Slogan \u201cBerlin Is for Everybody. Including Car Drivers\u201d at Hermannstra\u00dfe in Neuk\u00f6lln (copyright: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/auto\/berlin-wahl-wie-die-cdu-erfolgreich-angst-ums-auto-schuerte-a-6f34d056-5ee3-48a8-b8dd-f74c7493a639\">Haiko Tobias Sprengel\/DER SPIEGEL<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The CDU\u2019s focus on motorists was accompanied by a second focus on crime. On New Year\u2019s Eve, the Berlin police department reported 145 attacks on law enforcement and emergency personnel, including police officers, fire fighters, and paramedics. This report sparked a moral panic concerning the \u201cSilvesterkrawalle\u201d (\u201cNew Year\u2019s Riots\u201d) as they came to be called. Politicians and newspapers attributed the events to young migrant men in districts such as Neuk\u00f6lln, sparking a debate around the supposed unwillingness of migrants to integrate and the necessary strengthening of criminal. In the ensuing debates, the CDU demanded to know the first names of the suspects, so as to offer \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rbb24.de\/politik\/wahl\/abgeordnetenhaus\/agh-2023\/beitraege\/wegner-cdu-spd-koalition-vornamen-debatte-enteignungen.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">precise prevention measures<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d. In actuality, this inquiry was set to determine the migrant identity of the suspects not on the basis of their citizenship status \u2013 which by then was known \u2013 but on the basis of their name. Kai Wegner defended this controversial strategy, and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cdu-fraktion.berlin.de\/news\/lokal\/2948\/Silvesternacht-tabulos-aufklaeren-.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">accused the red-red-green coalition<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of turning a blind eye to migrant crime. After the initial debates, it was revealed that the number of attacks was much lower than originally reported, and that the majority of those arrested were German citizens. Racism was a crucial element of the discursive escalation: The riots were reflexively understood as a \u201cmigrant problem\u201d of insufficient \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/geschichtedergegenwart.ch\/spaltung-von-oben-zur-anti-demokratischen-und-rassistischen-logik-der-integration\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">integration<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d, and belonging to German society, according to the CDU\u2019s inquiry, was ultimately not established by citizenship but on a first-name basis. In the light of these circumstances, the slogan &#8222;Berlin is for everyone&#8220; read much differently. Berlin should in no way be there for everyone, but in a subtle way especially for the remarkable figure that is \u201cthe car drivers\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In this blog post, I argue that these two phenomena \u2013 cars and riots \u2013 are related. I thus follow-up on our research in the project \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.culturesofrejection.net\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cultures of Rejection<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d. In the project, we investigate how transformations of everyday life are interpreted in the context of multiple crises. We ask what offers for subjectification, for identification and rejection circulate, and how they are leveraged by right-wing actors. From this angle, \u201cthe car drivers\u201d in particular are a fascinating phenomenon. What is the symbolic significance of the car, that makes it a potent point for political mobilization? How do car drivers emerge as vulnerable figures in times of looming climate collapse? And what \u2013 if at all \u2013 could this staging of the car tell us about the current conjunctures of racism (Demirovi\u0107\/Bojad\u017eijev 2002)? In order to draw a preliminary picture of the current conjuncture and the strengthening of right-wing parties and movements, it is important to understand how social, political, economic and ideological antagonisms are negotiated when figures such as car drivers enter the scene (cf. Hall\/Massey 2014:209).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Cars in the auto-mobile society<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In this spirit, I want to attend to the car and its prominence in historical and current political discourse, before investigating its drivers. In his essay \u201cDriving While Black\u201d (2001)\u00a0 Paul Gilroy claims that cars \u201c.. are the ur-commodity\u201d. He writes that they \u201c\u2026help to periodize our encounters with capitalism as it moves into and leaves its industrial phase, they also politicize and moralize everyday life in unprecedented configurations\u201d (Gilroy 2001:104). The production of cars and the mobility they provided were foundational for the social formation of \u201cFordism\u201d, roughly dated between the 1920s and 1980s. Fordism shaped countless, intersecting dimensions of everyday life, ranging from the organization of work (the assembly line) and leisure time (holiday travel, consumption), the architecture of the city (suburbs and inner cities), the gendered division of labor and, not the least, the industrial relations of expropriation, extraction and exploitation with global impacts. Cars are materially and symbolically entangled with this societal model, and as such provide countless connotations ranging from freedom and ownership to masculinity and virility. In the German context, industry, politics, and media contributed to an entanglement of the car with narratives of national progress.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The car was initially a luxury and distinction object for the aristocrats in late 19<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">th<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> century Germany (Sachs 1987:581). The first attempts at turning it into the mass product that we know today were undertaken by the National Socialists. Their goal was, as Adolf Hitler put it in 1934, to \u201cremove its class-based and thus unfortunately also class-divisive character; it must no longer remain a luxury item but must become a utility&#8220; (quoted in Sachs 1987:584). National-socialist propaganda presented the motorization of the \u201cVolksgemeinschaft\u201d and the development of a robust automotive industry as a national path out of the turbulent Weimar years. The car stood for a uniquely German trajectory into modernity, based on expediency, utility, and the mastery of technology. The practical designs of German car models were contrasted with lavish and low-quality US-American counterparts by the press, exhibiting the supposed superiority of the German national character (Rinn 2008:103). Despite increases in production, actual car ownership remained a privilege for the few. By 1939, manufacturers such as Volkswagen were instead supplying war equipment by exploiting forced labor, in order to aid the struggle of the \u201cVolksgemeinschaft\u201d against its enemies (Heussner 2013:3).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After the war, the association of cars with national progress remained intact. After abetting the war effort, the automotive industry now provided a path towards the economic and social recovery of the Federal Republic. The \u201ceconomic miracle\u201d of the 1950s was founded on the growing sector \u2013 the total number of passenger cars tripled between 1953 and 1957 and production levels increased in the same vein \u2013 and its economic success abroad (Grieger 2019, Rinn 2008:119). The German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) made sure to present the industry as the \u201cengine for reconstruction\u201d that enabled the prosperity of the post-war year, and which rested on the efforts of industrious and strong-minded engineers (Rinn 200:113). Until the 1970s, &#8222;&#8230; the number of cars quadrupled, the number of driven car kilometers tripled, and the length of the federal motorways doubled&#8220; (Sachs 1987:586). Today, the quotidian significance of the car constantly increases and the country is plastered with highways, leading Wolfgang Sachs to speak of an \u201cautomobile society\u201d in his cultural history of the car (Sachs 1987). The German Automobile Club ADAC stresses new connotations of the car, now linking it more closely with freedom and individual liberty. According to the club\u2019s former Vice President Hans Bretz, freedom was \u201c&#8230;the highest and most desirable good of man, and [\u2026] the motor vehicle is the great mediator of this freedom.\u201d And further: \u201cIf you want to subjugate freedom, you must first shackle the mediator of this freedom\u201d (quoted in Rinn 2008:132). The discursive connection between car and freedom thus makes \u201cthe car\u201d a perfectly viable vehicle for moral panics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The industry also contributed to Germany\u2019s role on the global market. Out of the 3.3 million cars produced in West Germany in 1973, more than half were shipped abroad, contributing to Germany\u2019s later status as \u201cExportweltmeister\u201d. Beginning in the 1970s, the oil crisis and the growing competition from Japanese car manufacturers threatened the automotive industry\u2019s leading role. Societal concerns regarding traffic congestion arose and were later followed by concerns about the ecological consequences of motorization. More generally, the social formation of Fordism appeared to erode.\u00a0 The industry adapted to new production models by internationalizing and flexibilizing their manufacturing (Heussner 2021:4). To counter regulations on motorized traffic in the 1970s, industry and lobby groups doubled down on the link between freedom and the car. The VDA claimed that &#8222;traffic-policy dirigisme&#8220; threatens a \u201cspace of freedom\u201d afforded by the car (Rinn 2008:204) and the ADAC coined the slogan \u201cFree citizens demand free driving\u201d (\u201cFreie B\u00fcrger fordern freie Fahrt\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While Fordism entered a crisis, the car aided the new flexibilization of everyday life and patterns of social reproduction of post-Fordism (Haas 2018:555). Car ownership remains on the rise, and car manufacturers provide about 5% of the total German GDP, 4% of all German workers are <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.destatis.de\/DE\/Presse\/Pressemitteilungen\/2019\/04\/PD19_139_811.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in some way linked to the industry<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. But social and political conflicts concerning the car and the automotive industry have heightened, as climate regulations and civil society protests increase. The demanded shift away from combustion engines and towards electric cars involves structural changes to infrastructure, but also new production methods, different value chains focusing on batterie and semiconductors, and new international competitors. The fact that such a transformation cause anxieties not only about economic developments but about the looming \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.welt.de\/wirtschaft\/article235800700\/Niedergang-der-Autonation-Deutschland-Produktion-auf-Niveau-von-1974.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Decline of the Auto-Nation<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d indicate that the link between the car and the nation in Germany remains intact.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Victimized Drivers\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Taking this story of the rise and the continuing significance of the car as a background, when and how did \u201cthe car-drivers\u201d emerge in contemporary political discourse? Early attempts to pick up on \u201cthe car drivers\u201d as an instrument for political mobilization <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/politik\/alles-fordern-a-ac6760ad-0002-0001-0000-000013492988\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">date back to the late 1980s<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, when the crisis of Fordism was already in full swing. Following the example of the Swiss \u201cAuto Party,\u201d a steady stream of small parties emerged in Germany that specifically targeted \u201cthe car drivers.\u201d These included the \u201cAuto and Citizens&#8216; Party\u201d (ABD), the \u201cGerman Car Driver Interest Group &#8211; People&#8217;s Party\u201d (DAFIG), the \u201cAutomobile Taxpayer Party\u201d (ASP), or the \u201cCar Driver and People&#8217;s Interest Party\u201d (AViP). The chairman of the ABD claimed the \u201cAuto\u201d in the party\u2019s name indicates the \u201ceconomic basis of our prosperity\u201d (Anon 1989). In addition to the expected opposition to traffic regulations, the party programs demanded the expansion of security policies, the rejection of EU regulations, anti-migration and anti-asylum positions, and, in the case of the far-right DAFIG, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/politik\/alles-fordern-a-ac6760ad-0002-0001-0000-000013492988\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the priority of the interests of \u201cmembers of our people\u201d<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The longest-lasting of these parties was the \u201cCar Driver and Citizen Interests Party Germany\u201d (APD), founded in 1988. Against the perceived excessive environmental regulation and \u201cincreasing anti-car hostility\u201d the APD advocated for \u201cunrestricted traffic flow\u201d (Der Spiegel 1992). At the same time, it stirred up sentiments against \u201ceconomic refugees,\u201d while claiming that asylum seekers \u201ccome with wealth\u201d, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/politik\/wucherndes-gruen-a-c20681a8-0002-0001-0000-000013680454\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and demanded accelerated judicial and executive measures against immigration<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The satirical documentary \u201cDeckname Dennis\u201d (1997), surveys the political landscape of Germany in the 1990s. The film includes authentic interviews with APD board members, which in absence of other historical sources, provide some insight into their discourse on \u201ccar drivers\u201d. In it, the general secretary describes the APD\u2019s political allegiance: \u201cWe see ourselves as a party of the center. Specifically, right of the center\u201d (quoted in Frickel 1997). In the same sequence, a board member of the APD presents the situation of car drivers with a historical comparison, using more drastic language: \u201cThe car driver is the modern Jew, and if we don&#8217;t nip it in the bud, things will be very bad. (&#8230;) Here, a trend repeats itself, the persecution of a group of people, who, in this case, happen to be car drivers\u201d (quoted in Frickel 1997).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-10824\" src=\"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/apd-BBB-1995.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"280\" \/><figcaption>\n<p style=\"font-size: 80%; line-height: 125%;\"><em>Pictures of APD-Members in Front of the Brandenburg Gate in 1995. Copyright: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ddc-tv.com\/ddc\/frames_g.htm\">DDC TV<\/a> \/ \u201cDeckname Dennis\u201d (1997), Director: Thomas Frickel.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The same member comments on the 1993 \u201cozone experiment\u201d in Heilbronn, where industry and car traffic were reduced for four days in order to reduce pollution: \u201cLast year, in a city called Heilbronn near Heidelberg, we weren\u2019t allowed to drive our cars for four days, which meant it was like a small concentration camp in the city\u201d (quoted in Frickel 1997). Besides trivializing anti-Semitic violence and downplaying the Shoah, such statements exemplify the notion that car drivers are victims of dictatorial and potentially exterminatory policies. Positions such as these did not turn the \u201ccar parties\u201d into a \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/taz.de\/!1534389\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">super product that has the potential to become the third strongest political force in Germany<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d, as the APD chairman confidently postulated shortly before their dissolution in 2002. However, the various attempts to mobilize car drivers from the right can be seen as test balloons for current discourse strategies that built upon the invocation of a victimized subject from the right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We can see such an interpellation of a victimized subject in the discursive strategies of AfD as well. The party\u2019s foundational program questions climate science and the existence of global warming, and accordingly they routinely mobilize the supposed persecution of car drivers against climate policies, specifically the shift away from motorized individual mobility and towards electrical alternatives. In the 2023 Berlin election \u2013 the one that the CDU won \u2013 AfD candidate Kristin Birkner also addressed car drivers. Her poster read: \u201cHunt criminals. Not Car Drivers\u201d. Car drivers, in this case, are not criminals, yet they are illegitimately \u201chunted\u201d. Criminals, on the other hand, are not \u201chunted\u201d but they should be. By looking at the AfD\u2019s campaign material concerning their policy demands regarding domestic security, it becomes clear that crime is <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20230325035011\/https:\/www.afd.de\/innere-sicherheit\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">immediately and almost exclusively attributed to \u201cforeigners\u201d<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and calls for their deportation. The car drivers are interpellated in order to demand that the state should be tough on immigrants, not on car drivers who are implied to be, for lack of a better word, \u201cautochthonous\u201d. In \u201cFossil Fascism\u201d, Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective term this a \u201csyndrome of selection\u201d common to far-right positions on global warming. Instead of climate change, \u201cthe problems we really should fret about have to do with immigration\u201d (Malm 2021: 61).<\/span><\/p>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-10820\" src=\"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/IMG_1629-690x920.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"690\" height=\"920\" srcset=\"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/IMG_1629-690x920.jpg 690w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/IMG_1629-1080x1440.jpg 1080w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/IMG_1629-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/IMG_1629-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/IMG_1629-scaled.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/IMG_1629-690x920@2x.jpg 1380w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 690px) 100vw, 690px\" \/><figcaption>\n<p style=\"font-size: 80%; line-height: 125%;\"><em><i>AutoMotorSport<\/i><picture> is advertising a new Mercedes, <\/picture><a href=\"https:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/wirtschaft\/service\/mobilitaet-tempolimit-und-ausbau-der-autobahnen-deutschlands-kulturkampf-ums-auto-a-efa9ec0d-f9d8-4b70-a20b-292404f02539\"><i>Der Spiegel <\/i>titles: \u201cCulture War for the Car&#8220;<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A second invocation of car drivers in the service of rejecting migration can be found when one considers the above-mentioned convergence between the car and economic prosperity in the \u201cAuto-nation\u201d. Representatives of the AfD, including transport policy spokesperson Dirk Spaniel, member of the Bundestag Thomas Ehrhorn and federal leader Alice Weidel, claim that the ideological crusade against the internal combustion engine car threatens the economic prosperity of the Federal Republic. In 2020, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gKcaV6Uo_0Q\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ehrhorn held a speech in parliament that was widely shared on social media<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Ehrhorn addressed all car drivers, before launching into a speech centered on the relentless persecution of cars and their drivers by \u201cgreen ideology\u201d, embroiled in \u201ca never-ending war against the car and the German car driver\u201d, so that \u201cin the future, no sensible car with an internal combustion engine can be built in our auto-nation\u201d. In a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_Ujz8DWbuK8\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">YouTube documentary on the car industry<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> published by the AfD in 2019, Weidel claims that this \u201cwar\u201d is directed against the prosperity of German citizens and taxpayers, whose well-being and employment depends on the car industry. The Greens would turn Germany into a \u201clow-wage country\u201d where productive jobs would be replaced by \u201cpizza delivery men and parcel delivery drivers\u201d. The choice of examples is telling. With her worker example, Weidel evokes the figure of the largely migrant and precarious workers of the platform economy. The car drivers thus emerge as the counter-figure of the \u201cproductive\u201d worker imagined as a skilled laborer in an economy based on the combustion engine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Tolerance for Motorists<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The core of this program appears to be a stubborn insistence on a declining mode of production with the comprehensive program of social, cultural, political, and ideological socialization that it entails. It articulates a longing for the old times, where things were still in order and one\u2019s own status was secured. This nostalgia is accompanied by a second, highly relevant theme: a \u201cmoral panic\u201d that is directed against migration. The suggestion is made that if we really implement all the changes that come with the abolition of driving, then &#8211; in extreme terms &#8211; we will all become migrants.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The debates concerning the \u201cNew Year\u2019s Riots\u201d involved representatives of most centrist parties. But the CDU managed to forcefully present itself as a law-and-order party that protects Berlin residents and security personnel from the corrosive consequence that \u201cunregulated migration\u201d, as it is often termed, entails. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cdu-fraktion.berlin.de\/news\/lokal\/2948\/Silvesternacht-tabulos-aufklaeren-.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wegner demanded<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> an \u201cuninhibited investigation\u201d into the events and called for a \u201c\u2026strong state with clear messages &#8230; it is the only thing young migrants respect\u201d. Stuart Hall has analyzed similar linkages between crime, the moral decay of society and racist discourses. He and other authors of Cultural Studies understood such \u201cmoral panics\u201d as a \u201c\u2026bridge, between the real material sources of popular discontent, and their representation, through specific ideological forces and campaigns\u201d (Hall 1980:172). The conditions that characterized British pre-Thatcherism differ radically from today, but the mode of legitimizing authoritarian politics appears similar.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is demonstrated in the CDU\u2019s slogan \u201cBerlin is for everyone. Including car drivers.\u201d Here, motorized individual mobility is stylized as a marker of cultural difference and inserted into the liberal and so-called \u201cwoke\u201d language of diversity. The car and its driver are condensed into a figure worth protecting. The slogan demands tolerance, respect, and recognition &#8211; and establishes a discursive equivalence with questions of racism and sexism. A minoritarian and vulnerable character is repeated and, in this case, bestowed onto car drivers, who make their claim on authoritarian protection against threat and displacement. What applies to all oppressed groups, the implication goes, must especially apply here, where the prosperity of an entire societal model is at stake. Respect is demanded for those especially vulnerable minorities who are threatened not only by far-reaching climate protection measures but also by unregulated migration: car drivers. To understand how right-wing and reactionary politics manage to organize majorities in the current conjuncture, it is necessary to continue investigating such performances of vulnerability from the right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thanks to Laszlo Strzoda for productive discussions on the text\u2019s topic.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>References<\/strong><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-indent: -2em; padding-left: 2em;\">\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Demirovi\u0107, Alex, and Manuela Bojad\u017eijev, eds. 2002. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Konjunkturen des Rassismus<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. M\u00fcnster: Westf\u00e4lisches Dampfboot.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Frickel, Thomas. 1997. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Deckname Dennis<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gilroy, Paul. 2001. \u201cDriving While Black.\u201d in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Car cultures<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Materializing culture<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, edited by D. Miller. Oxford: Berg.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Grieger, Manfred. 2019. \u201cKleine Geschichte des Automobils in Deutschland.\u201d <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">APuZ<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Haas, Tobias. 2018. \u201cDas Ende Des Autos, Wie Wir Es Kannten?: Automobile Subjektivit\u00e4ten Im Wandel.\u201d <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">PROKLA. Zeitschrift F\u00fcr Kritische Sozialwissenschaft<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 48(193). doi: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.32387\/prokla.v48i193.1145\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">10.32387\/prokla.v48i193.1145<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hall, Stuart. 1980. \u201cPopular-Democratic vs. Authoritarian Populism. Two Ways of \u2018Taking Democracy Seriously.\u2019\u201d in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Marxism and Democracy<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, edited by A. Hunt. London: Lawrence and Wishart.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hall, Stuart, and Doreen Massey. 2014. \u201cZur Deutung Der Krise.\u201d in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stuart Hall: Populismus, Hegemonie, Globalisierung. Ausgew\u00e4hlte Schriften 5.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, edited by U. Mehlem, V. Rego Diaz, and N. R\u00e4thzel. Hamburg: Argument.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Heussner, Fred. 2021. \u201cDie Deutsche Auto-Liebe. Gef\u00fchlserbschaft Aus Dem Nationalsozialismus?\u201d <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Zivilgesellschaftliche Bewegung &#8211; Institutionalisierte Politik<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 42.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Malm, Andreas. 2021. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. London\u202f; New York: Verso.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rinn, Gregor M. 2008. \u201cDas Automobil als nationales Identifikationssymbol. Zur politischen Bedeutungspr\u00e4gung des Kraftfahrzeugs in Modernit\u00e4tskonzeptionen des \u201eDritten Reichs\u201c und der Bundesrepublik.\u201d Humboldt-Universit\u00e4t zu Berlin, Berlin.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sachs, Wolfgang. 1987. \u201cDie auto-mobile Gesellschaft. Vom Aufstieg und Niedergang einer Utopie.\u201d <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gewerkschaftliche Monatshefte<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 10(87):577\u201389.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em><strong>Alexander Harder, M.A.<\/strong> is a research assistant at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt University Berlin where he works at the VW-Funded project \u201cCultures of Rejection \u2013 Conditions of Acceptability in socio-spatial and digital environments\u201d. His research interests include digital anthropology, cultural studies and conjunctural analysis, as well as far-right politics. His new research project,\u201cThe Social Life of XG. Digital Infrastructures and the Reconfigurations of Sovereignty and Imagined Communities\u201d investigates the imaginaries of community in belonging that emerge in the context of the European expansion of digital Infrastructures such as 5G.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"autor":[637],"class_list":["post-10819","undoingraceandracism","type-undoingraceandracism","status-publish","hentry","autor-alexander-harder"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/undoingraceandracism\/10819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/undoingraceandracism"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/undoingraceandracism"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/undoingraceandracism\/10819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10829,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/undoingraceandracism\/10819\/revisions\/10829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"autor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/autor?post=10819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}