The Affective Politics of the New Right in Germany

With the rise of the New Right and the party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) since 2013, Germany is witnessing an unprecedented politicization and political mobilization around issues of intimate relationships. The New Right not only deploys anti-immigration discourses, but successfully promotes traditional family values. In drawing on the empirical example of the initiative Demo für Alle (“Demonstration for all”) which is part of the civil society network of the AfD we argue that the New Right is providing a programmatic reaction to a crisis of intimate relationships, of gendered subjectivities and hence of relations to intimate others. It offers alleged coping strategies which makes them attractive for supporters. This crisis of intimate relationships articulates itself essentially as an affective crisis: it creates an “affective ontology” (Gould 2010). The decline of the traditional family model is experienced as a precarization of traditional forms of intimate relationships as well as of gendered subjectivities. Hence it is characterized by a diffuse feeling of insecurity, fear and disorientation. In analyzing the online-appearance and videotaped speeches we argue that the Demo für Alle offers an “emotional pedagogy” (ibid.) that implies an alleged explanation for the experienced crisis as well as a ‘solution’ for coping with the discomfort – namely the reactivation of traditional intimate relations. In this paper we will demonstrate the emotional pedagogy of the New Right including the reference to ‘natural’ intimate inequalities, the crisis of intimate relationships as jeopardizing the foundation of the whole of society and the interpellation of specific state apparatuses for securing intimate relations. In the conclusions we highlight the contributions of the paper for the discussion of the role of affect in political mobilization processes as well as for the understanding of the current repoliticization and contestation of intimate relationships.