doing so much more
yeah this is hard work um hello everybody and
welcome back to right rising the official
podcast of the far right analysis network
i'm your host alexander reed ross and today
i'm joined by the wonderful dr sophie
schmallenberger um dr sophie hello hi so dr
Schmallenberger is a researcher working at the
intersection of extremism studies, memory
politics, and democratic resilience. Her work
examines how far -right actors mobilize
historical narratives, emotions, and collective
memory on social media. She defended
her dissertation at Aarhus University
a couple of years ago and is doing
her postdoc research at the University
of Duisburg-Essen. Yes, perfect. alongside academic
research she collaborates with policy-oriented
institutions such as the institute for
strategic dialogue and engages with questions
of hybrid threats anti-democratic
ideologies anti-semitism and far-right extremist
mobilization primarily in digital environments
so welcome yes hi thank you so much
for having me here it is a pleasure um
been a long time since you uh were on uh fran
event i think that wasn't the last one
a webinar that we had yeah yeah yeah there
was maybe in 23 20 no 24 probably or even
before i feel like because like my child
was born in 23 so i it was either a year
before or a year after yeah that's always
like the uh inflection point you have a kid
and time just becomes a complete blur yeah
anyway it's fair to say it's been a while it's
been a little while um but you're still kind
of focusing on the alternative for germany
right the afd yes i mean they are hard to
if you if you're looking into far right uh or
anything related to the far right and germany
they are sort of hard to uh evade um so yeah
right so and they're uh right now they're
kind of surging in saxony i think the
latest yeah in um ah in saxony it's saxon anhalt
so it's not saxony oh but it's um not like
the english name just escapes me but it's
basically the federal state next to saxony
also in the former east so it's it you know it's
it's just a just for the german geography
enthusiasts um i can't really do german
geography because they have a bunch of cities
that are the same name but then with like a
thing after it you know like a word after it
to indicate like the river that it's on or
something like that yeah i shouldn't complain
because we have like a thousand cities named
springfield but yeah you also stole some
of our city names and we'll do it again too
so watch out can't trust us um so you've
written a lot about affect emotion and memory
in the social media presence of alternative
for germany and populism in general Your
dissertation is really cool. It's about kind
of feelings, right? Alternative feelings in
Germany or for Germany. Can you talk a
little bit about how emotions and affect
play into the alternative presented
by the AFD in terms of national identity
and German-ness? Yes. So that's a bit
of a trip down memory lane, you know, going
through the process of writing my thesis,
which has been a while ago, but what I
essentially try to argue, what I'm actually
arguing in my thesis and what I also still
stand by, even after reconsidering some of
the stuff I've written, is that far-right
movements and also populist parties and politics
should be understood as political projects
that enable certain ways of feeling or
enable people to feel in certain ways in a
specific national context. And, of course,
I'm not the first to argue that
emotions and affect play a role
in politics in general and in
populist and far -right politics
in particular. A lot, of course, has
been written about the role of passions
and desires in historical studies
of fascism, right? But also with regards
to contemporary right-wing or radical
right populism, others have pointed
out that these parties and movements do politically
mobilize feelings, especially feelings
like fear, as Ruth Wodag did in her
pretty famous book, The Politics of Fear, and
also anger. But I would argue that the majority
of research on the far right has focused
on what we call Ideologikritik in German,
so sort of a discourse critical approach that
sort of dissects and critically deconstructs
the ideological discourses and points
out how, for example, different visual or
rhetorical or discursive or argumentative
strategies are being used to construct racist,
anti-Semitic, ableist, queerphobic, misogynist,
and so on and so on dichotomies between
us and them, and how they justify certain
political positions and programs that these
parties promote, right? Of course, there's
also literature that looks on the
mobilization of emotions, like for example,
Wodak that I've just mentioned, but
that remains also often focused on,
let's say, very distinct and very
particular emotions, often what I would
call, or I guess we sort of commonly
as a society would categorize
as negative or destructive emotions
like anger, fear, hatred, rejection,
disgust, and so on. And what I was basically
doing in my dissertation was trying to develop
a more comprehensive perspective so going
beyond the focus on negative emotions
and looking at what kind of effects and
what kind of emotions are articulated within
far-right politics what these emotions and
effects afford within far-right politics
and what kind of subject positions what
ways of being and feeling do populist far
-right parties enable and in particular
since i was looking at germany um the afd um
so sort of in a broader uh sense i understand
political competition as a competition
between different structures of feeling
that underpin um different ideological um
projects and what i was interested in terms
of the AFD was in what ways these feelings
or these ways of being and feeling into the
world are articulated through their communication
on social media, because the AFD has
been very, very good and has been relatively
early to strategically use social media in
Germany, especially compared to basically
all other German parties, maybe except
for the pirate party that was a thing like
10 or 12 years ago. And yeah, as already the
title of my dissertation sort of hints at,
maybe the main argument is they afford an
alternative way of feeling German. And in
Germany, where sort of dealing with the past
and the commemoration of the Holocaust and
the sort of allegedly at least successfully
working through our past play such a central
role for national identity and the
german reason of state this is inevitably also
connected to a memory political component
or a memory political dimension so to
certain ways of feeling about the past of
course particularly when it comes to
far right party like the afd who from
its very beginning was always implicitly
or explicitly compared or
equated with the NSDAP as sort
of a new, you know, new version
of the NSDAP, which I would argue
is a little bit of a, maybe not a mistake,
but I just, I'm always a bit wary about like
understanding them as a NSDAP 2.0, not
because they are not a total danger for
democracy and a threat to various marginalized
groups in Germany. And they have, of
course, also tolerated neo-Nazis or people
with Nazi backgrounds in their party or
as their supporters. But I would argue
that the AFD is not sort of once, you
know, built around reviving Nazism as
such, but it's operating very strategically
in context of a post -national socialist
Germany. and its memory culture and
sort of the effective and discursive opportunity
structures that exist within post
-war German society. So rather than
offering an effective recurse
to historical racism and
national socialism, I would argue that
the AFD is offering sort of a way to
feel normal again, and that has
different components. Of course, on the one
hand, it's characterized by anger, fear,
mistrust, notions of oppression and
disgust and other sort of abject feelings
towards immigrants on the one side. So what
I think Kazmuda has described, right, is
this, what is that? Well, that's
horizontal, right, against immigrants and
then sort of vertical rejection towards
political elites. elite, so the people up
there, so to say. But I would also, I would
argue, or what my analysis of AFD social media
communication shows is, and it also includes
other feelings like love and affection,
for example, towards the sort of folkish
ethno-nation feelings of our, so sort of the AFDs
and their supporters, moral integrity
and sort of moral superiority, includes
affects of vulnerability, innocence, and longing
for what they frame as just a German or
like a normal German lifestyle in face
of what is often presented or
constructed as sort of
a deteriorating, chaotic presence
in total crisis. Right. And with regard to
national identity, this feeling of
German normality is. It's sort of, I would
argue, of particularly importance because
Germany considers, or like, you
know, the German exceptionalism is, of
course, very strong. So like this idea of
Germany as having this particular past and
building its, unlike all or most other
nations, building its modern identity upon
a rejection of its past, of course, means
that feeling normal again as a German
also sort of has a historical or like a
dimension that refers to how we deal with
the past. So the AFD also enables German
normality in that regard by basically not by
denying the Holocaust or Second World War as
such. I mean, again, there's, let's say,
some people within the AFD who maybe
also could be labeled Holocaust deniers or
do at least something that's very borderline
to Holocaust denial. But what the AFD
does rather is to obscure and omit
Holocaust and World War II and German
war crimes and so on. So basically,
they make them not matter that
much in sort of the bigger picture
of German history and basically
telling contemporary Germans, well,
you basically, you know, it did
happen, But you don't have to feel
anything about it anymore. We felt
guilty for long enough. And instead, they
offer sort of feelings of glory and
pride and achievement and affection
towards seemingly heroic and exemplary
and positive moments and personas
in German history. But, and that's
the last thing before I let
you speak again. At the same time, I
think it's important to understand,
which is something I would do different in
my thesis now compared to what I did
three years ago, is that it shouldn't be
so much understood as an oppositional
counter project to what I in my dissertation
call hegemonic. ways of being and
feeling German, but rather sort of an
extreme continuation of what has always
already been present in discourses on
national identity, but also in sort of
the spectrum of how Germans are able
to feel since the 1990s or since after
the war, basically. So the relation
in that sense is not oppositional,
but rather a continuum. And in
a sense, the AFD, if I would want to put
it very provocatively, has simultaneously
been a main driver, of course, of an
ongoing slight towards the right in German
political discourse. But at the same time,
I would say it's not necessarily or
at least not the only root cause for it, but
rather a symptom of the fact that
Germany has maybe not learned from its past
as well as it claimed. And that this
continuity between what was before and what
came after 1994, no, no, 1945, that's right
here, is maybe not as clear cut as we,
speaking as a German, have told ourselves
for a very long time. yeah uh and and there's
a lot of geographical sort of dynamics to
the to the puzzle right because yes it's uh
largely the former ddr that uh has kind of
gone in for the hour of day rather than west
germany and and the memory culture of the
east is quite different in the sense of um
proposing a much more devout or or you know
acting as though they had a much more devout
commitment to anti -fascism and always
pointing at bonn as sort of uh letting the fascists
in through the side door in sort of the
imperialist nato driven world so the east didn't
necessarily contend as much because they
weren't necessarily forced to contend as
much with the legacy of fascism being as they
were uh presenting themselves as the
greatest victories victors under the soviets or in
relation to the soviets yeah i mean it's um
of course that's um that's right and there's
certainly sort of traces of that on the other
hand i mean and this is not I'm not you know
that's not necessarily research perspective
but just the perspective as you know
I'm like my family is from eastern Germany right
so that's more of a oral history I don't
know like with a very small sample uh kind
of insight um I think one thing is of course
the GDR you know had this like we are the
anti-fascist uh you know alternative to western
Germany kind of thing. But it was not
necessarily what people sort of adapted or
believed. I mean, it was one thing like there was
in many ways, in many contexts, like a very
sort of divide between what they knew was
official state's program and identity and
what people sort of actually believed. And
of course, they said it when they had to, but
that didn't necessarily mean that everybody
felt like they were the heirs of anti
-fascism. And on the other hand, And so that
doesn't mean that there's not, you know, legacies
of that discourse, of course, still also
playing into whatever it is that's going on
in Eastern Germany. But I, you know, I got a
similar question in my, when I defended my
dissertation and I just, just always think,
I mean, with the reunification was, what
is it now, 35 years ago, right? And the GDR
was founded in 1949. So Eastern Germans
have lived longer on the sort of
like a unified German Federal
Republic memory regime than they have
lived in the GDR. Also, if we consider
that, you know, in the 1950s and
60s, also in Western Germany, we didn't
talk a lot about what our parents
had done, right, until sort of 60. So
it just always, I mean, again, I'm not a
historian or I haven't done research on that
topic in particular, but it just always
puzzles me that why these, let's say, 22 or
25 years that Western Germans had a bit more
of a critical reckoning with their past
should have, should be the only thing that
is, you know, like, or should be the main
thing that drives this Eastern West. divides
that we can see um today no i mean there's
got to be a lot more to it and i mean my
explanation is that was extremely simplistic
just coming from conferences where i've
heard other people talking about it right
yeah sure um no i mean i i would you know
also have to totally agree that has something
to do with memory but like i argued one
of my papers that it's i mean partly because
the AFD has just been very successful and
very good in co-opting memory of the peaceful
revolution and sort of this idea of
Eastern Germans being the real Democrats
who brought down the dictatorship into their
ideological projects, taken together
with feelings of marginalization and
devaloration that many Eastern Germans
lived through. in the 1990s and
that also their kids you know i mean my
generation sort of that forms the context
that my generation so people who are i
don't know 35 uh 30 years old now have grown
up with um and that that sort of is um maybe
more of an explanation of of how AFD has
gotten successful than sort of strictly
sort of GDR legacies understood as the time
that happened strictly within the GDR or
under the GDR regime. Yeah, certainly.
I think there's plausibly both
elements at play at the same time, right?
Because, you know, East Germany was
pretty heavily industrialized under
it you know its status as a socialist uh
country and then um you know in the 90s
pretty much all over europe the industrialization
totally transformed the socioeconomic
geography um and uh i think in in some cases
that was really devastating for you know the
the east they didn't kind of get incorporated
into the capitalist structure in the way
that they believed or the way that was sold
to them. And their pre -existing relationship
with Russia offered this kind of doorway to
this other explanation of, you know, kind of liberal
democracy is the enemy. Yeah, I mean, although
I would, you know... so what i think the
afd is is doing is i mean sure you have
you have the gdr nostalgics or austalgics
as we call them in germany because
aust is east right um and sort of the diehard
sed you know like i want the gdr back
kind of people or the hardcore pro russian
people i mean sure um and i guess there's
also been you know now with since the war in
ukraine or like also before that i mean
with digital media and social media and sort
of like disinformation campaigns from russia
of course that like you know people might
have also simply been exposed to so much
um i don't know hybrid warfare disinformation
uh kind of things that that sort of
like, you know, the pro -Russian sentiments
have increased again. But I would say
what the AFD in, at least in the campaign
that I looked at, which was the
2019 campaign, was doing very well is
sort of is offering, so to say, a third way
of saying, well, GDR was shit because it,
I'm sorry, but like, you know, it wasn't
good because it was a dictatorship. We were
not free and we wanted to be free and we
fought for democracy. um so we reject the
gdr but also actually the federal republic
right now is just like the gdr because we're
not free there's like opinion dictatorship um
we are being like our pensions are being cut
we we fought so hard for democracy and sort
of wealth and well you know for our well
-being and liberty and sort of economic security
and look what we got now and all the
politicians they don't know what we want anymore
and they don't listen to us um so actually we
are the true democrats right so there's not
and and in that sense i think by offering
this alternative they managed to do something
that the left in the early 2000s didn't
manage to do because also in the early 2000s
we had a lot of discourses going on about again
hostalgie like sort of eastern germans
whenever like of course that's a bit over the
top i mean eastern germans were had always
been constructed as sort of not so ready
for democracy because they've lived in a
dictatorship for so long and they were also a bit
more stupid and they just didn't know how
to behave in capitalism and in democracy um so
often criticism when it came from eastern
germans it was sort of and especially from
the left who of course had its own problems
with being the legacy party of the SED right
in part so um so it was always dismissed as
yeah well so you want the GDR back or what
so you you were always sort of immediately
pushed in the position of like somebody who
wants to build up the wall again basically
whereas now the AFD offers you a position where
you say no I don't like the GDR no that
no I'm not that but I also hate Merkel or
Schultz or Merz now um so be against the
current state of the art and the
federal republic as it is at the
moment while also sort of credibly
distancing yourself from the gdr because
the afd of course in a sense has
nothing to do with the gr because it doesn't
exist and most of its politicians in
the east are actually from western germany
right so so they also don't have a
sed legacy legacy i think one of the
things where the emotionality comes
into it is this sort of break with
time it's like rupture with the sort of
the strain and guilt of continuity
and an attempt to open a completely
different narrative that you know as you show
in your work i'm i'm actually just
destroying all my i had very nicely done
questions if i do say so myself and now i'm
just sprawling all over the place but as you
show in your work they um they their
version of history is like it goes back i
don't know to like the knights of franconia
or whatever and then yeah it's up to like
bismarck and then like doesn't even
talk about you know the holocaust and
then all of a sudden we're in you know a
dystopia you know and the dystopia was
caused by you know the liberal system yeah
not as a consequence of of the problems
in german history yeah i mean they have
like i mean i think it's just very nice
they have sort of a debate like so the
afd faction in the german parliament they
have like a debate room like every
faction i guess just has a room where
they can have their meetings or events and
they decorated it um with sort of i mean
questionable taste but like with with with
images right of of important moments in
german history and there's literally yeah
there's you know some things things things
things things. Then I think first democracy
in Germany, so 1918. And then there's a
gap. And then the next thing is the peaceful
revolution, right? So telling a sort of
history of liberation, revolution, national
emancipation and democracy by also having the
German flag in every picture, you know, as
a sort of like a the meme that go the
red thread that goes through all the um so
literally this gap that there is in the like
in in sort of like everything that happened
between 1918 and 89 um is very telling
because that's exactly sort of
the the version of of history
that they are trying to um promote
also i mean and you talked about the
the um the regional elections right i I mean,
also in their programs for, in their
educational programs, like for school
curricula, they're trying to push that through,
right? So that different things are
taught in Germany and that, you know, German
history classes in schools would become
more patriotic and focusing on the
achievements of, you know, of Germans and
German figures and the more
proud events. yeah so i mean this
kind of brings us back i mean you're writing
about sort of pre -political emotions and
the way that they kind of build consent for
their positions by creating an emotional
context in which they're they're more possible
um and a lot of this goes back but a lot
of german the history of german democracy
also kind of goes back to this this cultural
level right because and and you're writing
about this as well with that specific scene
of the different paintings um or pictures
and and one of them is uh the festivals that
were taking place in the early 19th century
which kind of like prefigured the 1848
movement and so i think like with this sort of
attempt to rid themselves of guilt and like
embrace this like cathartic public
awakening in many cases uh while also like focusing
really hard on the guilt you know um they
are like trying to formulate a similar
thing that you see in in the history of german
democracy which is this like cultural
festival you know uh or carnival or something
where they can sort of um propose a uh an
inchoate democracy a democracy that isn't
formalized and that gets so tricky right it's
like that populist you know permanent
plebiscite or whatever um because that is like
the situation where and you see it in
rousseau going all the way back to love
him dante unfortunately um this sort of
caesarism right this sort of like dictatorship
that can rise up over the masses through
their like loving consent in the sort of
festival environment yeah and of course i mean there's this sort of like It's hard to put
words on it Because these images
feel very German To me in a weird
way Like, you know, images Of the
French Revolution Don't And it's sort
of hard to put my finger on What
exactly that sort of Vibe Or, I don't know, is But Yeah, still this i
mean like i don't know there's just a weird
way of sort of heroism and uh what is it like
camaraderie instead of english word i don't
know but like this is yeah like the collective
and of course it's highly gendered as
well right um and sort of interwoven also
with like some kind of sense of this i mean
the german folkishness right like this is like
an inherent idea that our culture is just a
bit better than other people's culture and
a connection to sort of the homeland and
nature and like i i don't know like this
this very sort of deep that ontic like like
like this way of being in a sense that that that
that comes through in these pictures yeah
i'm not an art historian or any kind of
historian but uh yeah i think that's a there's
definitely an element in in there and sort
of in general in this whole sort of way of
painting german history and germanness that
that that sort of pulls exactly on this kind
of little string in the german national
conscience i don't know yeah this this question
might be a little bit absurd sort of out
of left field but do you do you think that
they're kind of offering a feeling of
transcendence to uh their followers you know their
supporters or do you think that because you
use the word omtick and this is the question
of transcendence is is sort of a hot issue
in in sort of german historiography or
whatever but i was wondering if if that's
something you think feel free to be like that
that's a dumb question i'm not yeah like i'm
not i'm not i'm not sure i I mean, I think
what they, in a sense, do relatively successfully
is sort of doing a bit of everything.
So I feel like for, you know, especially
if you see their youth organization
and sort of like parts of the party, like
that also have a very strong support for
Björn Höcke, like one AfD leader in
Eastern Germany, and there's all these events
that they are like, I mean, they're sort
of taking to the streets as a little
part of what they are doing. So I think
there's definitely sort of some kind of
level of, you know, bodily experience or
experience of community and revolution or
transcendence or, you know. um but i think that
sort of co-exists with some weird like german
like you can also just want to you know
be left alone in your garden and feel a bit
proud of your nation and have a nice barbecue
and vote for the afd you know so like
there's this weirdly and then they're also your
party So there's like, like it's sort of,
it offers different branches, I feel to
whatever different people feel like, because I
mean, there's like, I've been at a few
AFD demonstrations and you meet like a weird
kind of mix of people. Some just look like
they're going for their Saturday afternoon
walk in, you know, very sporty, functional
clothing and like they don't, they're
not in for the fascist revolution, but they
want to do a little bit for their country
and like go for a walk with their friends,
basically, you know, and it's a, it's a
very weird mix of, of, yeah. That kind of
resonates for me with the MAGA
movement in the US. In 2016, I went to
this rally, this Trump rally in Everett,
Washington, with some journalist
friends. And while we were there, I looked
back and I saw this kid who was probably
about 18 or 19. He's real thin, tall,
wearing all black. And, you know, his veins
were just like popping out and he was just so
into everything Trump was saying. um and
then afterwards we went up to this different
couple a middle-aged couple you know wearing
like you're saying kind of polo shirt and
like you know khaki shorts or something
like that and asked them you know what do you
think of of immigration and they're like they're
coming across the border like mosquitoes
and I was like holy crap like this is like
you know soccer mom and whatever and they're
like speaking in rhetoric that was really
alarming and strange and then we saw that same
kid and I walked up to him and I started
asking him questions and he was kind of like
stone-faced and wouldn't answer any questions
and just played dumb the whole time and I
was like that is so weird like we have this
obvious in my opinion apparently extremist
kid there who's probably into a lot of really
concerning things but won't talk about
anything and then we have these totally normal
people like you're saying like out on a walk
on a sunday and they're like saying the
most the same thing extremists would say you
know so i was like the aesthetics of this are
really weird but um so then this is you
actually do do a little bit of comparison with
the maga movement and afd when you talk
about the way that they kind of set the stage
with um kind of quirkiness they're like there'll
be like some like you know i don't know
how else to describe it some sort of like a
silly thing or you know a disarmingly kind of
um i guess hokey in a way uh which i guess
is described as banana populism which is yeah
like a playful way of spreading very radical
propaganda can you like describe this
like how that works and and you know how you
connect it to maga and stuff yeah i mean it
is sort of the whole idea for that was i think
no it was just before covid but then we
during covid we decided to start this this
block on but then a populism because it was
a um a few colleagues of mine that i met at
the summer school back in 2019 and uh and we
just sort of we did you know studied populist
parties in different parts of uh europe and
one of my colleagues is is from the u.s uh
so obviously also um in the u.s context and
what we just noticed is this like really
random stuff some of them posted like food
or cats or like yeah just just like weird
things that we were like what is why is
marine le pen posting her cats all the time
or like victor orban at the time he had
a lot of like photos with pickles and like
i mean just just and football and like i
don't like i mean just and like boris johnson
had a lot of fish i remember so that was
sort of what we were like this is i mean
but they are all doing that so of course
on the one hand sure it's social media
influencer logic right animals that's always
people find that cute and you know if you
have a cute cat you can't be that bad of
a person right so I like that's certainly
an element sort of it I don't know appeals
to the social media logics and
what we like to see on the internet but then I mean we
sort of started to conceptualize sort
of these weird grotesque humorous
and seemingly random or banal
or bananal as we then called it
mixes of political leadership figures with
sort of these absurd everyday objects and
practices and artifacts. And of course, again,
it's on the one hand making these contents
fun to engage with, but as you also
mentioned, they might be functioning
as a vehicle for conveying radical
messages. So maybe, you know, you're laughing
about the absurdity, but sort of the underlying
implications of what the post is saying
or tries to express might be sort of lost on
you. If you talk about Trump's head, you might
not talk about the radical stuff he's
saying, right? I mean, the memeability,
I mean, it corresponds very
well to social media. Logics is, of
course, also a way to maybe build this
parasocial relation between followers
and politicians, right? Oh, he's
just a regular guy. He also likes to
eat, I don't know, cheese and, I don't
know, like a cheesesteak or something.
Like, I don't know, whatever, like random
national dishes. But actually, what we
also found is it might seem absurd, but it
often actually involves what you could maybe
call, I don't know, culturally meaningful
objects that resonate with some specific
sentiments or have in their particular
national contexts certain connotations in a
given national context. Here again, like Orban
with the pickles, as my Hungarian colleague
argued, you know, like it sort of
resonates with a feeling of nostalgia about
the good old days in Hungary where your
grandmother, you know, would pickle everything. And, you know, Bolsonaro
with a Brazilian football shirt sort of
evokes feeling of this, you know, know
national joy memories sitting together with
your friends um and pride and of course also
sort of a the role that football plays like in
the brazilian context but certainly also
in other national contexts and sort of
national sports and all these sort of emotions
that that um does imply and i think we see
it also you know with the maga hats i mean
like it's such a everyday object um also
so american in a way like i mean a baseball
cap sort of like national one of your national
sports, at least, something so everyday
and ordinary and deeply anchored in
American culture. But these, I
mean, the simple slogan, right,
transforms it into something that
is politically branded. And it's
on the one hand, a completely banal
piece of apparel, but it becomes
certainly suddenly a signifier for your
allegiance to, I mean, radically or
increasingly radical or fascist ideologies.
On the one hand, these objects become
just a cap and at the same time,
they are not just a cap, right? They
politicize and polarize everyday life, no
matter where you go. So making this
ideological divide in society permeates into everyday environments
and situations and turn this into
basically something you cannot or hardly, I
mean, you maybe don't see them in certain
areas that much but you can hardly avoid
it um or escape it and you might see you know
someone with a mega hat somewhere where
you just if you just want to go to the
supermarket and there's a guy with a mega hat
standing in the queue next to you and like
your day is ruined or like at least you
sort of have this like this you know these
guys again so to become this weird effective
hot spots so you either like them or
you hate them right you cannot help but feel
something when you see them and either you'll
put them on your head or you just don't
want to talk to the person who's wearing
one um so there's actually i mean like
some very sort of micro political dynamic of
dividing and dividing and polarizing polarizing
society through these very random
objects so suddenly i mean it was maybe
not the case in the orban example right
but suddenly eating a pickle might mean
you also like orban because he loves
pickles obviously right so so these things
become a very everyday way of expressing
your political allegiance and annoying
your neighbors or your your friends
or your relatives um yeah i thought that
sort of made sense yeah yeah yeah totally i
mean it's it's it's um yeah you don't see as
many maga hats these days but i definitely
remember uh you know like walking
through an airport and there'd be somebody
you know at the at the restaurant or something
like that wearing a MAGA hat and it
would almost be like an act of aggression it
was like yeah like somebody like actively
wants to ruin your day in a way like
that's just the way that it's worn it's not even
like oh that happens to me and I'm sensitive
and it ruins my day it's like that is kind
of like the intention of what's going on
that you just kind of have to like grapple
with but there's this weird like plausible
deniability right because if you say sir could
you take that off it's like oh but i'm
just wearing a cap then ask everyone to take
their cap off right so it's this weird trolling
of doing a relatively aggressive act and
politicizing your environment but not
really like no one can really ask you to take
it off or not do that because you can always
say oh it's just a cap i mean like and in a
sense it becomes this weird like a thing that
you can't really do anything against but
still something that drives some sort of
tension or effective drives some sort
of tension in society. I don't
know how to call it. Anything more precise. Because it's not a
forbidden symbol in the US. But it's not a
swastika that I can't wear in Germany. right
it's like but but but still people you carry
with it all the ideas that it stands for and
you are scaring maybe you know people who
are threatened by by these ideas and political
programs right and i mean it is kind of
like a and i think this is what a lot of
republicans in those in the sort of like the
heat of the maga movement like at the mid to
late 2010s really wanted was to sort of
create this sort of counter punk attitude
right because in the 70s and 80s right like
punk was like this counterculture that would
sort of cause the same types of feelings
because it was so anti -conformist and the
statements it was making in public were politicizing
in a in a space that they felt was
depoliticized and sort of banal right um and
that's kind of precisely what the MAGA movement
was trying to do in the 2010s to polarize
yeah to to create also the adrenaline of it
you know to to sort of engage in these feelings
of uh deep discomfort and violence in a
normal social setting as a kind of uh
transgression that yeah and i mean also as a as
a sort of um what is it like a demonstration
or performance of power because you have
you know you you can manage to turn this
space into something it hasn't been before
yeah right there's you need certain privileges
in order to be able to do that right and you need to be in
a certain like position of uh i mean ideally you're
a white guy um but um yeah and
i guess some some also some weird and
i don't know like like sorry for the
gender it's sort of like a boyish pleasure
in just poking the beehive like a little
bit i mean sort of without actually having
it doesn't cost you anything right i mean
like you just put on a hat i mean it's
uh it's relatively low uh effort for you
but it's uh yeah yeah i mean exactly the the
context is completely distorted but the
the effort the kind of attempt to of
disruption and um destabilization is similar
um and i think like going back to sort of
the feelings and and that kind of stuff
there's this a desire to feed a rage machine
you know to just like get amped up on like
anger and aggression and power um but
that goes back to the afd because one thing
i wanted to ask you about and and one of
the reasons i i wanted to reach out is because
of this investigation that was recently
published by corrective how would you say how
would you pronounce that yeah corrective
yeah i knew it was gonna be that um i
just couldn't i just couldn't um so corrective
showed that the afd has produced an
ai tool that turns out rage bait like what
is this tool and what does it do and why are
people using it yeah i mean i at least
officially um it's not um they will officially
launched it in 2027 but the reporters
who you know who did the digging into that
they were sort of introduced to the tool
by like a guy working for the afd who was
very obviously already using it of some
sort so like they're saying
they're not using it yet really
or only for some like not to the full
fullest of its ability like so it's a little
bit you know unsure are they already using
it or is it you know still in development
um but essentially yeah what they have um
developed or accompanied and sort of was founded
under the uh the afd like uh federal
like yeah the federal afd basically um has
developed uh like a ai tool that generates
um campaign and communication material um
can, according to them, you know, do press
releases, but of course, especially, I mean,
given the day and age, we live in especially
social media posts. And, I mean, in the
thing, they were mainly talking
about, like, posts as in, like, pictures
and texts. I'm not sure if it can generate
videos as well, actually. So the way it works,
according to this report, is that
either you, you being like AFD, politician
or communications person, either
you feed it with a new story that
appears to be a good fit for your
communication strategy. and of course a
prompt like for example saying
generate a social media post that
includes our like central demand
from the AFD for example like create
a post that demands for immediate
remigration quote unquote so you can either
look for a news article or the system
apparently has its own catalog or like
sort of pulls out news stories
from right-wing leaning media
outlets so the afd employees don't
even have to look themselves but
they can basically just say i want
like a story on migrant violence in
dresden or something and it's it will
like find um a story um if there
is one um so they like basically what
this tool is offering is a ready-made system
uh to create far -right outrage and
scandalization that is programmed to maximize
the spread and the engagement of their
messages on social media in particular because
it sort of has an inbuilt algorithm that
rates posts for their outrage and spread
spreadability potential so it's like it's
rating stories basically of what will engage
people based on studies so you know Also, as
researchers, especially social media
researchers, that might also make us wonder
for, you know, what our research is
maybe being used for. And sort of stories
about migrant violence, according to that report,
you know, are what is usually sort of
highly rated by the system and what the
system sort of prefers to produce. so the tool
can on the one and of course streamline afd
communication because it's programmed with
sort of the afd's program in in mind and the
afd's central um um statements and strategies
um and it can maximize content production um
so it you know helps them to uh work further
towards the sort of this proverbial
flooding zone with yeah uh so basically just
pumping out content and content and content
with essentially no cost and effort beyond
developing and updating this tool right but
for the communication people um for example
at local level in some small afd chapter it's
basically no costs and no effort but it
takes probably like 10 minutes or five minutes
to to do the cost um which also enables
because of course on local level you can say give
me a story that is about whatever the
region or the city we are in so it also helps
the afd to immediately adjust their message
to a very local context so it can sort of
feed this image of how um like of the afd
being the party close to the people that
actually cares about the people unlike the elites
uh in berlin um and apparently it can also
be adjusted to different regional profiles and
rhetorical preferences so a little bit more
radical messages in the east where the
rhetoric of the party is generally a bit more
on the sort of right -wing extremist side and
a bit more seemingly harmless ones um in
western german context um and what the tool
has also what the report has also shown is
that it's sort of um it's very good in
softening and normalizing linguistically or
visually very radical um and anti-constitutional
statements so they are harder to identify as
anti-constitutional So in other words,
it also helps the normalization of the AFD's
messages and helps to spread sort of
generally coming back to stories about migrant
violence, right? This idea that we're living
in carnage and, you know, constant violence
that is, you know, coming from across
Europe's borders. And Germany is
basically being violated by the influx
of illegitimate migrants. I mean,
that's sort of the version of reality
that this tool helps. Painting, which
is, of course, you know, the great
conspiracy myth, just, you know,
with pictures now. Right, right, right. I've seen some like in
England when they had the riots there, I
think last year, there were some ai i was
talking to uh dr beatrice buarque uh on this podcast
and we were talking about this and i was
looking at some of these images and they're
like cartoonish so there's like a little
bit of like this like weird i don't know some
in some of these cases it's like a political
cartoon and the ai cartoon is like you know
the figures are almost like in this like
wacky sort of like presentation but
again like there's
extreme violence and like disgust and
like you know horror and ruinousness and
scandalization all of it in there as well
so there's this weird combination um but uh
she was saying she says that uh they you know
contributed to the exacerbated the the riots
in england um and i was wondering if you
think that this uh afd tool will have a kind
of similar effect at increasing violence for
people yeah i mean right as researcher it's
always uh some hesitation about predicting the
future but like i mean yeah i would say yes
because it's like it's fueling tendencies
that we have already seen in in the past
right it just makes them more coast efficient
um it's it's fueling narratives that have
already been propagated by the far right um and
as Beatrice has also pointed out uh in in
the podcast I think like these studies that have
shown that there is like connections between
extremist propaganda and actually and
sort of inflammatory messages and actual physical
violence um breaking out um also um what
i forgot to mention this tool um it seems
to be able to circumvent some so it's it's it's
running based on like big ai systems and
models right so the afd has not built its own
ai it's basically using claude and chat gpt
and gemini uh for different purposes um
in in that machine so to say um but it seems
to be actually able to circumvent um um like
guidelines and rules that these models have
for example they were able to generate like
a picture of a burning rainbow flag which
somehow you know shouldn't be able when you put that
into i don't remember i think it was chat
gpt they used but then sort of their ai
reformulated the prompt so that it would actually
you know be formulated in the way that would
end up doing it. At least that's
how they explain it. I'm not an
expert on AI. So that combined
with the sheer amount of sort of inciting
content and sort of this portrayal
of Germans or English people in
Beatrice's context, as sort of being
constantly victimized and immigrants as sort of
violent and criminal and I mean, almost
barbaric committing acts of violence all
the time um i think does fuel this version or
like makes violence seem i mean legitimate
maybe even unavoidable in as an act of
self-defense right i mean because because
i think what the afd is also managing to
do is is that violence that you direct either
against the state or against or like
political elites or immigrants doesn't feel
like you're the aggressor necessarily from sort
of the perspective point of view of
the person who's perpetrating it of
course they you know they might all you know some
people also just like violence maybe or have
other issues going on while they want
to engage in violent activities but i think
there's at least a sort of like effective
legitimization strategy of telling yourself
no this is not i'm not i'm just defending
my family or my country or or whatever
so that's of course, a narrative and a
story that people can tell themselves when
they take the streets. And I think another
thing that I was just, I mean, you know,
considering last week's events on the
European borders, what of course
these images also obscure is the
actual violence. that sure i mean a lot
of incidents of these i don't know some
like a asylum seeker committing a violent
crime of course i like a lot of them have happened
and of course there has been victims and
they deserve you know justice and like you
know they deserve to be mourned and they
deserve to you know be remembered and so on
right but what these images obscure is the
massive amount of violence and suffering that's
going on elsewhere, also the major dimension
of violence and suffering when we talk
about contemporary migration developments
and regimes that remain invisible, that these
pictures obscure if they become the
picture that symbolize contemporary immigration
into Germany. while of course at the
same time dehumanizing immigrants right as
as as notoriously violent and not human
in a sense but only surfacing as aggressive
invaders quote-unquote yeah i mean so one
thing that you mentioned in in your chapter in
the recent book germany's history wars is this
concept of limits of speakability um and
i wonder if this and this is kind of this
goes into the ways that the european new rights
and the german new right uh use kind of
emotions uh culturally embedded in order to
circumvent uh having to necessarily outline
and articulate and explain everything that
they're insinuating yeah um does it so
does it go does it does that operation kind of
also enable this kind of anti-rationalism
like are we talking when we're talking about
like the emotionality and the the sort of
focus of populism on emotions are we also
talking in a way about in because you know
some people have defined populism as anti
-rationalist you know going back to like the 80s
uh like taggart or whatever um so i was
wondering like if you where you where you kind
of land in in considering the off day anti
-rationalist because you're also kind of
saying like they're not like necessarily nazis
they are filling gaps they're they're filling
opportunity you know um i forget the word
that you used but uh they're they're taking
advantage of political opportunities in
order to like create this yeah i mean of
sort of yeah political cultural effective like
all kinds of opportunity structures that have
been which has not been politicized right
yeah which is highly rational yeah i mean
in that sense i think they've been
highly rational in the sense of
of identifying these and on and
in politicizing aspect so sort of
the sentiment of oh i don't want to think about
the holocaust anymore like i mean sorry like
but very colloquially spoken yeah it's
always been there like as long as i can think
we thought that you know like people
have been saying that when i had history
classes like oh not again hitler you know like
there's been studies about like denying any
involvement of your family to that and
like sort of this this idea for final final
line as we call it right under like yeah let's
just stop talking about it it's always
been like the afd hasn't brought that into
german society it's always been there um
it has somehow been i don't know moderated
or simply not been politicized um and
brought to the surface but the afd has sort of
taken that up and or it was again it was by the
nazi party right the ns um the npd back then
sort of the radical the ones that were
like basically saying yeah we are the new
nazis which was a bit yeah which was just
too much um because you know like and i think
this trick that the afd is doing is is
exactly not claiming to be the new nazis but
saying no no we also because they would
rhetorically always say no like that was bad like
and actually i mean similar to what trump
is doing right like national socialism you
notice something there's socialism in that so
actually Hitler was a socialist right so
sort of yeah you know it's an interesting
sort of so maybe the rational reality stops
when it comes to you know bending historical
terms but in that sense they have been
really strategic in and sort of extremely good
readers of of sort of some you know political
potential that has been there that sort
of started with the euro crisis where i
would also say i mean they were founded as an
anti-euro party right which i feel i mean
what you know was maybe a first step in breaking
sort of the german commitment to the
european union which has of course always
been constructed as like a legacy or lesson
learned from world war ii we are now responsible
that the european continent is gonna
you know live happily ever after because of
what did in the past um so there's always
been relatively broad consensus like a pro
-european one among german parties because that
had been part of our national identity right
in the afd by sort of starting to break
this and say no we should actually not pay for
the rest of europe like that was
sort of the first like it's not that
that wasn't speakable before but like
breaking the first maybe not a big taboo but like
a breaking a certain consensus of what
what we are supposed to do um and that's
that like and in that sense i don't think
it's it's it's been surprising that it's
sort of this turn towards the right
because that's that was the first baby step and
then you know we had the we had 2015-16
um and sort of the summer of welcoming
migrants sort of was over relatively soon
And, yeah, people started to remember that we
actually, Germans are actually a bit
racist after all. We haven't become super
nice people after 45. But, yeah, in that sense, they are rational. of course like the main stuff that they are
telling is either you know wrong I
mean factually wrong or I mean you
know this sort of conspiracy like
yeah they of course not rational
necessarily in that they
are fact based but I would
say that I mean in themselves they
have some sort of I would say an
emotional logic they feel right so
it doesn't matter and I mean I
would say that sometimes about
my own political beliefs if there's
just something I don't want to
hear even though it's sort of
factually right like I just don't
want to deal with it you know like I
mean I don't think irrationality is
something that we should attribute
only to populist and radical right
-wing actors, but that's to be
found every, I mean, you know,
like the Christian Democratic Party,
like with climate, we all, like it's
completely irrational what most parties in
this world are doing, right, if you would
only think about what's best for the survival
of humanity. So this claim, you know, that
they are the weirdos who only do the feelings
and we're actually the ones that handle
everything based on science and everything.
I mean, this is also not completely true.
Although, of course, they maybe use more
simplistic or sort of, I don't know how to say,
more pleasurable feelings than other parties i
don't know if that's a yeah i mean that's
a that's just me rambling i guess no i
mean that's that's very interesting so you know
they and that's kind of been what's enabled
uh more of an effect right is the is the
way that they've been able to galvanize
people's feelings uh which have previously sort
of felt more repressed i guess so so there's
that as well but they're also just such like
a important part of the repression that
they're trying to alleviate or whatever so it's
always a little bit yeah but there's also
i feel this little double bind of you
know again in a german context right because they
would construct that's what they say as a
liberation and i have to say like i mean in
a way of course it is because it breaks with
you know the state -sponsored official
ritualized kind of memory culture if we like
with context to german history or you know
saying racist stuff basically um like
you know this
official construction of germany as civic
nation but then again like i mean as a
german who's lived in Germany it's also like
you've always been able to say racist stuff
you know so it's also this weird construction
of like a of of repression and restriction
because you know like we like there's
never been a time in Germany where you you
know could not like I've heard a million times
people denying or trivializing the holocaust
and stuff like you know so and without
having any facing any repercussions or saying
racist stuff and so it's also this weird imaginary
of being oppressed by something that
they at the same time they create the
oppression that they then offer relief from in
a sense right um yeah it's their it's their
world um so which again is is part of that whole
like white privilege you know usurpation
of other people's suffering and struggle
um but you list uh female innocence motherhood
male heroism and masculine protection
and heteronormative continuity in propaganda
that quote mobilizes affects of fear threat
pride and belonging right so is are these
like are these types of gendered values present
in those ai rage bait creations in germany
because i know um buark is talking about
how they're very much there right that like
the male is defending the poor english woman
from these migrant hordes or whatever
right so and there's all this kind of history
that's sort of like really like myth that's
kind of inserted into that is it the same
in germany because the gender thing seems
similar yeah yeah yeah i mean i think it's it's
um you know the playbook of like gender roles
generally cultivated by far-right movements
right i mean there's of course you don't
have this little saint george and the dragon
you know this whole english mythology yeah
i'm not super familiar but of course sort of
you don't have have that um going on but
of course then you have the good uh you
know the well-trained uh athletic german you
know like you of course still have like an
ideal of a german man right um that's maybe
not a knight um but sort of more of a kind
of i mean yeah like kind of not like viking
aryan like i mean not not explicit
but but still i mean like they would probably
be blonde right so they are still of
course a resonance of like an ideal typology
of what it what a real german man looks like
that is um that is inherent um i mean i
haven't seen material or i i don't know if
i've seen material that this tool has
produced but But since it's being fed with
what the AFD has communicated before and
what their programs say and so on, I mean, I
assume it will only sort of exacerbate
these gendered images. And of course, I
mean, also when these victims of migrant
violence, quote unquote, is usually young
women right like our sisters and daughters
so like a innocence and i mean in a sense
like youth but also innocence uh as as
as a femininity and of course this you
know underlying the woman as you know
recreating the nation and nurturing the nation
and if they take a woman then the nation
will die basically so of course this
this sort of trope is is also also present and of
course this idea like idealization of the
nuclear family sort of basis for the like a
progressive patriarchic ideal of society which again is of
course not too far away from a German sort of
conservative mainstream that also sees mother,
father and child or ideally three or four
children as the ideal right so when the
main like conservative party is saying society
must be defended you know that kind of thing
um all the afd has to do is say well what
are they actually doing about it you know
yeah you have to get involved you know that
kind of thing yeah they usually they would say
oh look now uh friedrich merz is uh is saying
something about protecting german families
but yeah what what has merkel done and we
have been saying this for 10 years so like
who is the you know like he's just he's
just he doesn't mean it right we actually right
so it's uh yeah right so my last question and you kind of maybe i think made increase the stakes
of this question uh when you said that
they're kind of like emotionality is is stronger
in some ways i don't remember the exact
wording you used i'm probably butchering it
um but what do you think that people can
do to diminish the effectiveness of these
types of technologies and these images and this
emotional politics um that the the right is
using yeah i mean maybe not necessarily stronger
but i feel that's always i always try to
find a language that's not sort of morally
evaluating um i mean maybe maybe easier or
less complicated or more enjoyable i think
that was what i said sort of like uh not as
you don't have to be as reflective right if
you just if you just want to be proud of your
nation instead of like thinking about the
Holocaust you know I mean that's because
also through this whole like dealing with our
past we sort of in the end arrive at a notion
of national pride in being and having overcome
our darkest you know moment in history
but that's a bit more effective you know that's
that's more effective labor in a sense to
go through the shame and the guilt to then
arrive on a moral higher ground instead of
just saying nah I just I just like Bismarck
and I'm fine with that so what can we do
I mean that's I guess I don't know
probably at this point the 1 billion
dollar question but maybe and I'm saying
this carefully not react to them or
not give them more attention and
effective engagement than we absolutely need
to I mean and I don't mean you know i mean
we live in a attention is is currency and
the more time and attention we spend on
far-right actors the less time we have to do other
stuff um and i don't mean i don't mean
you know we yeah just abolish the far-right
analysis network just don't like to pay any
attention now i mean of course we we should
deal with this as as researchers and and so
on right and analyze it and and and and so on
um i think what i mean maybe more is refuse
to become attuned to these effective dynamics
and rhythms that the far right is trying to
enforce upon us like this sort of the constant
i mean this flooding the zone with shit
kind of like a constant outrage and like a
new scandal and a new thing and like a new
angry like something that happens that we sort
of react to i mean in in comments or that
we because it often becomes almost like all
we talk about is what they have said and then
we sort of agree that it's fucking horrible
sorry that it's very horrible and and
that's that's of course right um so and and of
course you know we we need to think about what
we do um and of course we should not you know
ignore the devastating consequences that
you know political actions have for those
who are targeted by it. But I don't know,
like the best we can do as I think to
spend sort of our time and energy and attention
and engagement in activities that counter
these destructive politics. I mean, I
think we should still be angry and we
should be outraged and we should be scared
because it's scary what's happening and
because, you know, their inhumanity
and and everything makes me scared
for my child and for a lot of my
friends and for their well-being. And
it's outrageous. But I think, I mean,
we have to somehow turn this into
practicing care for each other and compassion
and show solidarity by those who are
primarily targeted and effective by,
I mean, concrete violence or threats
of violence or the sort of implications
of certain policies and start having
discussions about a world that we imagine
that is not just responding to sort
of the cue that far -right actors are
giving. I mean, I mean, that all sounds
like very, very sort of hippie kind of
idealistic. And I know it's hard if you're
currently being, like stuff comes to
your new new stuff comes to to your phone uh
right and and it's um but i feel we have to
develop more than just a response to because
we're currently gonna have to come up with
new responses and i'm actually i'm really
like my poor boyfriend but like i'm getting so
annoyed my boyfriend's like oh like you see
like trump said this and this weird thing
and i'm just like i don't want i don't care
like i don't want to hear what this man is
saying and i feel if everybody had just
listened a little bit less to what this man
has been saying he maybe wouldn't be president
now you know if we just had been like
yeah i guess that's an old weirdo um yeah okay
now he's running for president yeah let him
do that i guess and of course there's a
lot of money behind him and i don't want to
diminish that but you know still um not talking
about what they've been saying but what
we um do instead i think a lot of education
conversations and discussions uh of
course also necessary a lot of young people who
who grow up on social media or who spend
a lot of time online especially also during
covet of of course um in the current
postdoctoral project i'm working on where we did
interviews with young people there's actually
immense need they really want to talk once
you get them talking about antisemitism in
that case um because they're alone with
it they just see a lot of weird stuff on
social media and they they don't know what
to do with it they don't know how to
contextualize it they know it's fake
but then again like what is not and like
they they really want to talk and
discuss um and I think that's not only for
young people because we spend a lot of time
online as well right I mean like to to sort of
um talk about what we think and what we what
we feel um about it and I think another
thing um you know which is of course super easy
to do is uh fight the structures and the
the conditions that enable the far right um
and facilitate their rise um starting with
social media companies whose algorithms i mean
work in favor of far right contents right
they are more likely to spread in the ways that
social media platforms work at the moment
the afd's ai tool is built on the basic of
the biggest AI models. Yeah, so, I mean,
like, advocate for laws and regulations for
the companies that are basically
profiting, I mean, very literally, from the
rise of the far right. And also contribute
to the fact that far right and hate propaganda
in general has become a business model. I
mean, a lot of people make their money, Not
necessarily, I think, because they are committed
to the cause, but simply because it
generates clicks and they get some, you know,
good money out of it. And sort of, yeah,
I know it's all very idealistic
and I, you know, I just, I just
like to think that we, there's
stuff we can do. Otherwise, I also get
depressed, I guess. um no i think that
that's really interesting it's kind of a
emotional independence from patriarchy in a
sense that you know we need a little bit
more because when our emotions are always
being kind of um reactive towards it uh yeah
we're still bound to it but if we can
actually create our own democratic society you
know we can have our we we can have
independence from the what what has been for a
long time a central cause yeah i mean
it's it's sort of also this like constantly
reacting i mean i'm not a psychologist but
it's me myself uh you know i'm also getting
sort of this it's exhausting i mean because
you feel constantly feeling like or
you're being chased to the next thing and it's
not really rewarding because there will be
another pile of crap on the next goalpost,
right? Because, you know, there's
another truth social post or whatever. So it's
just this, you know, deciding not to run that race that is
suggested to you is maybe one way out.
I mean, I don't think, probably not work
from one day to the other, But just refusing
what they are proposing in sort of a, not
only on the level of concrete political
demands and programs, but sort of on the whole
way of how the show is running, in a
sense, is maybe a way. while also and i think
there's also it's important to be outraged
and to be you know to express that that you
are that's something you know it's unacceptable
and uh because we also have to remind
ourselves of that because you know then
otherwise you become the couple in the
in the functional uh clothing who's uh
talking about immigrants as as mosquitoes
right um if you don't remind yourself
what humanity is and that we all deserve
it and that it's outrageous to to uh
to deny it to someone amen um um well
thank you so much dr schmallenberger really
appreciate uh all your work and uh you joining us
for this episode um do you have any i mean
you you publish quite frequently articles
and chapters and things like that do you have
anything up with the postdoc stuff that you're
doing yeah i mean i have uh again because
i had a kid right so there's this weird like
year and a half where i just didn't do
anything so that sort of reflects in the publication
hiatus that's uh currently uh going
on but i have a piece coming out with some
colleagues in Sweden, which is on how a different
party commemorated the liberation of
Auschwitz on social media. I mean, not a fun topic, but sort of diving into some discussions of
what Holocaust memory means for the present
in Germany, also in relation to all the
discussions about antisemitism in Germany,
and sort of policing of what some argue is antisemitic. And so on. And we're currently finishing up a paper
on the interviews that we did on experiences
with antisemitism on social media in
Denmark and Germany. Sort of the next things that hopefully come out. Wow, very
interesting stuff. Well, thanks so much
for joining us again. I am Alexander Reed
Ross and this has been the the Far
Right Analysis Network's official
podcast, Right Rising. And we've been
talking with Sophie Schmallenberger. Thanks again, Sophie. Thank you so much. How do I stop this? I can never stop that. There we go.