Aspects of the New Right-Wing

Extremism Theodor W. Adorno

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CONTENTS
1. Cover
2. Front Matter
3. Aspects of the New Right-Wing Extremism
1. Notes
4. Publisher’s Note
5. Afterword by Volker Weiss
1. Notes
6. About the Authors

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Aspects of the New Right-Wing Extremism
Theodor W. Adorno

With an Afterword by Volker Weiss

Translated by Wieland Hoban

polity

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Originally published in German as Aspekte des neuenRechtsradikalismus © SuhrkampVerlag
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Aspects of the New Right-Wing Extremism
So, ladies and gentlemen,
I will not attempt to present a theory of right-wing extremism with any
claim to comprehensiveness but, rather, I will highlight with some
informal observations a few things of which you may not all be aware. It
is thus not my intention to invalidate other theoretical interpretations,
simply to add a little to what is generally thought and known about these
matters.
In 1959 I gave a lecture entitled ‘The Meaning of Working through the
Past’, in which I developed the thesis that the reason for right-wing
extremism, or the potential for such a right-wing extremism, which was
not yet truly visible at the time, is that the social conditions for fascism
continue to exist. So I will work on the assumption, ladies and
gentlemen, that, despite the collapse of fascism itself, the conditions for
fascist movements are still socially, if not politically, present. Here I am
thinking especially of the still prevailing tendency towards concentration
of capital, which one can calculate away with all manner of statistical
arts but which cannot seriously be doubted. At the same time, this
tendency towards concentration still creates the possibility of constantly
downgrading strata of society that were clearly bourgeois in terms of
their subjective class consciousness and want to cling to, and possibly
reinforce, their privileges and social status. These groups still tend
towards a hatred of socialism, or what they call socialism; that is, they
lay the blame for their own potential downgrading not on the apparatus
that causes it, but on those who were critical towards the system in which
they once had a status, at least in a traditional sense. Whether they are
still critical and have the same practices today is another matter.
Now, the transition to socialism or, more modestly put, even just to
socialist organizations has always been very difficult for these groups,
and today, at least in Germany – and naturally my experiences relate
primarily to Germany – it is even harder than it used to be. This is mostly
because the SPD, the German social democratic party, is identified with
a Keynesianism, a Keynesian liberalism that, on the one hand, deflects
the potential for a change in social structures that was part of classical
Marxian theory and, on the other hand, increases the threat of

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impoverishment, at least as a final consequence, for the social strata to
which I referred. Let me remind you of the simple fact of the creeping,
yet very noticeable inflation, which is a consequence precisely of
Keynesian expansionism. Let me also recall a thesis that I developed in
that study eight years ago, and which has meanwhile begun to gain
relevance considerably, namely that, despite full employment and all
such symptoms of prosperity, the spectre of technological unemployment
continues to haunt society to such a degree that in the age of automation,
which is less advanced in Central Europe but will undoubtedly catch up,
even the people who stand within the production process already feel
potentially superfluous – I put this very starkly – they really feel
potentially unemployed. In addition there is the fear of the East, both
because of the lower standard of living there and because of the lack of
freedom, which is experienced in very direct and real terms by the
people, the masses too, and also, at least until recently, the feeling of a
foreign threat.
We must now remind ourselves of the remarkable situation that currently
prevails with regard to the problem of nationalism in the age of the great
power blocs. For, within these blocs, nationalism lives on as an organ of
collective interest groups within the large-scale groups under discussion.
It is beyond doubt that, in both socio-psychological and real terms, there
is a very widespread fear of being absorbed by these blocs and, in the
process, being severely impaired in one’s material existence. Thus, when
it comes to the potential of right-wing extremism in agriculture, there is
no doubt an extremely great fear of the EEC and the consequences of the
EEC for the agricultural market.
At the same time, however – and this touches on the antagonistic
character of the new nationalism, or right-wing extremism – there is
something fictitious about it if one looks at the grouping of the world of
today into these few oversized blocs, where the individual nations and
states really play only a secondary part. No one really believes in that
any more. The individual nation’s freedom of movement is heavily
restricted by its integration into the large power blocs. One should not,
however, draw the primitive conclusion from this that, because it is now
obsolete, nationalism no longer plays a significant role; on the contrary,
it is very often the case that convictions and ideologies take on their
demonic, their genuinely destructive character precisely when the
objective situation has deprived them of substance. The witch trials, after

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all, took place not at the height of Thomism but during the Counter-
Reformation, and something similar is probably the case with, if I may
term it thus, the ‘pathic’ nationalism of today. This aspect of selling
something to people in which they themselves do not entirely believe
was, incidentally, already evident in Hitler’s day. And this fluctuation,
this ambivalence between an overwrought nationalism and the doubt
about it, which has to be covered up so that one can convince oneself and
others, so to speak – this could already be observed back then.
Now, let me draw a few initial conclusions from these rather basic
theses. For I think that what I have told you – that it is essentially about a
fear of the consequences of overall social developments – explains what
has been observed everywhere by polling institutes and was also
confirmed by our own work, namely that the adherents of old and new
fascism can be found in all areas of today’s society. I think the very
widespread belief that all these movements are a specifically petty
bourgeois phenomenon, as observed recently in French Poujadism, is
accurate in terms of their social character, shall we say, but that this
thesis is inaccurate when it comes to their distribution, even though
certain petty bourgeois groups are undoubtedly susceptible, especially
small merchants who are directly threatened by the concentration of the
retail sector in department stores and similar institutions. Aside from
them, another major group is the farmers, who are in a constant crisis,
and I would think that, until the agricultural problem is solved in a
radical way, one that is not artificial and based on subsidy and
problematic in itself, until a sensible and rational collectivization of
agriculture is achieved, this virulent breeding-ground will remain fertile.
Beyond this, however, these movements also show something like an
increasing discrepancy between provincial and urban areas. Specific
groups, such as the small winery owners in the German Palatinate
region, also seem especially susceptible. As far as the industrial backing
of these movements is concerned, we do not yet have genuinely concrete
evidence of this. One must be very careful in all these matters not to
think too schematically, for example by applying the schema of industry
pushing fascism – one must not operate carelessly with such models.
One must also bear in mind that fascism, whose apparatus always has a
tendency to take on a life of its own in relation to the central economic
interests, is not actually convenient for big industry, and that fascism was
adopted in Germany as a last resort, at the moment of an extremely

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severe economic crisis that evidently left the Ruhr industry, which had
gone bankrupt, with no alternative.
Of course there are old Nazi cadres. But here too, I would say – based
merely on observations that have been made in empirical social research
– that one should not think one is dealing simply with the so-called
incorrigibles, the type of people we merely shrug our shoulders about.
Young followers are undoubtedly being attracted too, especially the kind
who experienced the collapse in 1945 as fifteen-year-olds, shall we say,
and developed this extremely strong feeling that ‘Germany has to be on
top again.’
Perhaps I can say from a socio-psychological perspective, though
goodness knows I do not consider these to be primarily psychological
matters, that in 1945 there was no true panic, no true breakdown of
identification with the regime and discipline as took place in Italy, but
that it remained coherent to the end. Identification with the system was
never really radically destroyed in Germany, and this is naturally one of
the possibilities: that the groups I am referring to can take this up again.
One very often hears, especially when it comes to such categories as the
‘eternally incorrigible’ and similar consolatory phrases, the claim that
there is a residue of incorrigibles or fools, a so-called lunatic fringe, as
they term it in America, in every democracy. And then there is a certain
quietist bourgeois comfort in reciting that to oneself. I think the only
response to this is that, yes, something like this can be observed to a
varying degree in every so-called democracy in the world, but only as an
expression that, in terms of its content, its socio-economic content,
democracy has not yet become truly and fully concrete anywhere but is
still formal. In that sense, one might refer to the fascist movements as the
wounds, the scars of a democracy that, to this day, has not yet lived up to
its own concept.
Furthermore, to correct certain clichéd notions about these matters, I
would also say that the relationship between these movements and the
economy is a structural relationship, that it lies in that tendency towards
concentration and immiseration, but that one should not imagine it as a
short-term phenomenon, and that, if one simply equates right-wing
extremism with economic developments, one can arrive at very wrong
conclusions. Thus the successes of the NPD1 in Germany were already
somewhat alarming before the economic setback, and in a sense

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anticipated it – or, if you will, discounted it. One might say that they
forestalled a fear and terror that only subsequently became truly explicit.
I think this reference to anticipating terror touches on something very
central that, as far as I can see, is given far too little attention in the usual
views about right-wing extremism, namely the very complex and
difficult relationship with the feeling of social catastrophe that prevails
here. One might speak of a distortion of Marx’s theory of collapse that
takes place in this very crippled and false consciousness. On the one
hand, on the rational side of things, they ask, ‘What will happen if there
is a big crisis?’ – and that is where these movements are attractive. On
the other hand, they also have something in common with the type of
manipulated astrology one finds today, which I consider an extremely
important and typical socio-psychological symptom, because, in a sense,
they want the catastrophe, they feed off apocalyptic fantasies of the kind
that, as it happens, could also be found among the Nazi leadership, as
documents show.
If I had to speak psychoanalytically, I would say that, of the forces
mobilized here, the appeal to the unconscious desire for disaster, for
catastrophe, is by no means the least significant in these movements. But
I would add – and I am speaking especially to those of you who are
rightly sceptical about any merely psychological interpretation of social
and political phenomena – that this behaviour is by no means purely
psychologically motivated; it also has an objective basis. Someone who
is unable to see anything ahead of them and does not want the social
foundation to change really has no alternative but, like Richard Wagner’s
Wotan, to say, ‘Do you know what Wotan wants? The end.’ This person,
from the perspective of their own social situation, longs for demise –
though not the demise of their own group, as far as possible, the demise
of all.
If I could say one more thing about the specifically German aspect of the
rise of the NPD, the function of the concept of organization surely plays
a very important part here. For the first time, alone by adapting its name
to those of the other parties, the NPD carried out something like an
organizational mass appeal without the sectarian whiff that clung to the
NPD’s extremist forerunners, the Socialist Reich Party and the rest of
them. What works in Germany – and this seems to be a specifically
German element that cannot automatically be transferred to Austria – is

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something tightly and centrally organized, whereas anything that gives
even remotely the impression of a sect, that does not present itself from
the start as having all manner of support, is viewed with suspicion in
Germany and cannot have any mass appeal. It is one of the basic tenets
of German ideology that there must be no loners. It is no coincidence
that people repeatedly quoted Hindenburg as saying, ‘Be united, united,
united!’; and the fight against the ‘party nuisance’ – the idea that
political compromise per se is already something degenerate – this is
such a deep-seated belief in the German bourgeoisie that to this day, even
with the change of political form, little about this ideology has changed.
So people want to have support behind them, and that explains the major
role of the so-called bandwagon effect, as the Americans term it, namely
that these movements always act as if they have already had great
successes and attract people through the pretence that they offer
guarantees for the future and have all manner of backing. No doubt a
further element in this unity complex is the fact that, in Germany, the
nation-state is something that was realized only very belatedly, compared
above all to England and France. And the people in Germany seem to
live in perpetual fear for their national identity, a fear that clearly
contributes to an overvaluation of national consciousness. This would
also explain the panic that seizes Germans at the thought of division.
One should not underestimate these movements on account of their low
intellectual level and lack of theory. I think it would show a very weak
political eye if one concluded from this that they are unsuccessful.
Rather, what characterizes these movements is an extraordinary
perfection of certain methods, first of all of propagandist methods in the
broadest sense, combined with the blindness, indeed abstruseness, of the
aims they pursue. And I think that precisely this constellation of rational
means and irrational ends, if I can put it in such a simplified form, in a
sense corresponds to the overall tendency of civilization, which leads to
such a perfection of techniques and means while the overall social
purpose falls by the wayside. The ingenuity of the propaganda used by
these parties and movements is that it balances out the difference, the
unquestionable difference between the real interests and the fraudulent
aims they espouse. It is the very substance of the matter, just as it was
with the Nazis. When the means increasingly become substitutes for
aims, one can almost say that, in these extreme right-wing movements,
propaganda actually constitutes the substance of politics. And it is no

9
coincidence that the so-called leaders of German National Socialism, the
likes of Hitler and Goebbels, were first and foremost propagandists, and
that their productivity and imagination went into propaganda.
I do not, incidentally, think one should exaggerate the conflicts in the
controlling body of the German NPD. If my impression is correct, the so-
called hard or radical wing has triumphed. Here we should recall the
former relationship between the Nazi Party and Hugenberg’s German
Nationalists. They still have no mass base, and the mass base seems to
go hand in hand with that element of disaster politics, of self-
exaggeration, if you like, of that element of delusion.
In this context it is also interesting, and should be noted by political
scientists and especially by the actual politicians who analyse these
things, that such structures, despite the disasters, have a peculiar
constancy; that, despite the great catastrophe, something like the fact that
the German Nationalists were defeated in the power struggle with the
National Socialists seems to be repeating itself in the power struggles
within the NPD.
Political groupings outlast systems and disasters. In Germany, for
example, old National Socialist centres like northern Hesse, where there
was already a wild anti-Semitic movement in the 1880s, and northern
Bavaria seem to be especially susceptible. Groups that define themselves
almost automatically in opposition to both conservatism and the left,
because of this double front, tend towards right-wing extremism, and I
should imagine that you have observed this structure in Austria too. Of
course, one should not fail to mention all the manipulation and coercion
of these movements, the fact that they are somewhat akin to the ghost of
a ghost. It would be wrong, and it would be hysterical, if one imagined
these things in Germany today as a form of spontaneous mass
movement. But certainly such a movement can develop if the potential
offered by the objective conditions is seized and exploited in escalating
situations. And in this case it is no doubt true that the extremist groups
gain the upper hand through a dynamic that repeatedly shows itself in
these situations. We have not reached that point yet, but, on the other
hand, one should not take the numbers arrived at by the pollsters – which
are, incidentally, far from insignificant – as invariants. The fact that
people do not fully believe in the cause does not make things any better.
This does offer a possibility to develop a defence – one can certainly use

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these contradictions, and this only partial belief, to combat such
tendencies – but herein also lies the possibility, the potential of these
movements themselves: they grow into delusional systems, and there can
no longer be any doubt that so-called mass movements of a fascist nature
have a very deep structural connection to delusional systems. One
important factor here is the anthropological type, which I referred to in
The Authoritarian Personality as the ‘manipulative type’ – at a time,
incidentally, when all the material about the likes of Himmler, Höss or
Eichmann had not yet even come to light, working purely with the
material that we had gathered in our empirical social research. So these
are people who are simultaneously cold, without relationships, strictly
technological in their mindset – but also insane in a certain sense, as
Himmler was to a prototypical degree. And this strange unity of a
delusional system and technological perfection, this seems to be on the
rise and once again playing a decisive part in these movements.
On the other hand, ladies and gentlemen, one must naturally place great
emphasis on the differences compared to the Weimar period if one is to
avoid thinking in schematic analogies again. The first thing to mention is
the after-effect of defeat. This defeat, however, was covered up by the
period of prosperity. And this is where a decisive opposition to these
things can begin. One should not operate primarily with ethical appeals,
with appeals to humanity, for the word ‘humanity’ itself, and everything
associated with it, sends the people in question into a rage; they see it as
fear and weakness – just as, in particular incidents I know about, the
mention of Auschwitz led to calls of ‘Hooray for Auschwitz’ and the
mere mention of Jewish names already caused laughter.
The only thing – I will jump to this now, because I think it is one of the
most crucial aspects of how to resist this movement – the only thing that
really strikes me as effective is to warn the potential followers of right-
wing extremism about its own consequences, to convey to them that this
politics will inevitably lead its own followers to their doom too, and that
this doom was part of it from the outset, just as Hitler started saying, at
an early stage, ‘Then I’d rather put a bullet in my head’, and then
repeated the claim at every opportunity. So if one is serious about
opposing these things, one must refer to the central interests of those
who are targeted by the propaganda. This applies especially to young
people, whom one must warn about every kind of drill, about the
restriction of their privacy and their lifestyle. And one must warn them

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about the cult of a so-called order that does not answer to reason,
especially the concept of discipline, which is presented as an end in
itself, without anyone asking ‘Discipline for what?’ And obviously the
fetishization of everything military expressed in such lovely phrases as
‘soldierly man’ [der soldatische Mensch] belongs in this context.
A further difference one must keep in mind is that of political
intertwinement. Today, Germany is not a political subject in anything
like the way it was in the Weimar period. There is even a risk that
precisely this movement might remove Germany from world politics,
from the tendency of world politics as such, and completely
provincialize it. On the one hand, this places far greater real-world
restrictions on such a politics, unless other and far more powerful
countries also experience a triumph of right-wing extremism. On the
other hand, that very fact stirs up anger. And this anger is likely to be
vented especially in what one calls the ‘cultural sector’. I would
therefore argue – to say nothing about the direct interests that a cultured
person has in these matters – that, from the political perspective too, the
symptoms of reactionary culture and forced provincialization must be
observed with particular vigilance, because this – simply because these
movements have no room for manoeuvre in foreign policy terms – is the
area in which they can rage most and will surely try and try even more to
rage. There is a whole array of designated enemies. One of these is the
imago of the communist. In the Weimar Republic, the Communist Party
was very strong in numbers, and there was at least a certain plausibility
in the political rivalry between the Nazis and the communists, although
the deployment of the Reichswehr undoubtedly inflated the true
significance of what was called the ‘communist threat’. Today there is no
longer a communist party in Germany, and this has really given
communism a sort of mythical character – that is, it has become
completely abstract; and this peculiar abstractness means that anything
that somehow does not fit is subsumed under this all-purpose term
‘communism’ and opposed as something communist. The notorious
‘Congo Müller’, for example, a man who lived in Germany, a German
who had evidently played an especially gruesome part among the
mercenaries in the Congo, declared that, wherever in the world
communism needed to be opposed, he would immediately join the fight,
because this was in keeping with democracy.

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Now, this is divorced from any knowledge about the matter. Communism
has been reduced to a bugbear. One factor in this – as another bugbear –
is the concept of materialism, though people confuse, in a very primitive
fashion, the materialism of the pursuit of profit and the interest in
material advantages with the materialist theory of history, thus behaving
as if those who want to change this system were nothing but vulgar
materialists who simply want more.
Incidentally, I consider it one of the more peculiar divisions that still
exist within class consciousness – and we have quite concrete material
on this – that those who identify with bourgeois class consciousness in
the broadest sense consider themselves idealists, whereas the workers,
who are still the ones who have to foot the bill, show a certain kind of
scepticism that has little to do with the theory but stands in extremely
sharp opposition to the ideological nature of that so-called idealism,
which is a vulgar idealism – for there is not only vulgar materialism but
also vulgar idealism.
Then another bête noire, of course – as long as one cannot be openly
anti-Semitic and as long as one cannot murder the Jews, because that has
already happened – consists of the intellectuals, who are especially
hated. The phrase ‘left-wing intellectual’ is another one of these
bugbears. It appeals first of all to the German distrust towards anyone
who does not hold some office, some established position, who is viewed
as a kind of vagrant in life, an ‘air person’, as one used to call it in
Poland. According to this ideology, whoever does not participate in the
division of labour, whoever is not bound by their profession to a
particular position and thus also to quite particular ideas, but has instead
preserved their freedom of spirit, this person is a kind of rascal who
needs to be brought into line. The age-old resentment of the manual
labourer towards intellectual work also plays a part here, of course, but it
has been shifted and become entirely unrecognizable to itself.
Because these movements, which, as I say, are essentially no more than
techniques of power and by no means based on any developed theory –
because they are helpless in the face of the spirit, they attack the bearers
of spirit. As Valéry, who can hardly be accused of being left-wing, so
eloquently put it: ‘If someone is cleverer than oneself, he is a sophist.’
Here the separation of so-called rationality and so-called feeling is
reified. In this context I cannot refrain from pointing out that the

13
observations I made in The Jargon of Authenticity about the role of the
concept of the existential and existence in existential philosophy, at least
in its Central European manifestations, have been confirmed. In a recent
polemic against a professor who does not suit their agenda, for example,
the right-wing extremists said, ‘We will not have any discussions with
her; it is a matter of existential opposites.’ So you can see from this how
directly the concept of the existential is placed in the service of
irrationalism, of the rejection of rational argumentation, of discursive
thought as such. And I do think the toxic climate of existential
philosophy that prevails in German-language thought bears a
considerable share of the blame for the preparation of anti-
intellectualism among intellectuals.
Obviously, in spite of everything, anti-Semitism continues to be a ‘plank
of the platform’. It outlived the Jews, one might say, and that is the
source of its own ghostly nature. In particular, feelings of guilt are
fended off by rationalization: ‘There must be something in it, otherwise
they wouldn’t have killed them.’ Now, of course, there has been official
legislation to make these things taboo. But even the taboo about
mentioning the Jews becomes a means of anti-Semitic incitement, with a
wink and a nudge: ‘We’re not allowed to say it, but we understand each
other. We all know what we mean.’ And, in this technique of allusion,
the mere mention of a Jewish name is already sufficient to create certain
effects.
One technique in the new manipulation of anti-Semitism to which I
would like to draw your attention, so that you can perhaps study it a little
more closely and resist it, is cumulative effect. A publication like the
Soldaten-Zeitung, that is, the National-Zeitung, has developed a
remarkable virtuosity in never writing anything in one issue that is
extreme enough to warrant intervention based on the current, quite firm
laws against anti-Semitism or neo-Nazism. On the other hand, if one
looks at a number of issues in succession, one must truly be stricken with
the spirit of formalism not to see what they mean. And this danger, this
form of allusion that has been elevated to a sophisticated technique, is
one of those things that should not only be studied closely and
pinpointed; one should surely also try to find legal means by which a
democratic state would be able to intervene.

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So, as far as this ideology goes, the law prevents it from expressing itself
fully. One might say that all ideological expressions of right-wing
extremism are characterized by a constant conflict between not being
allowed to say something and those things that, as one agitator recently
described it, are intended to bring audiences to boiling point – and it did
not succeed in this, you will be reassured to know. This conflict is not
only external, however, for the requirement to adapt to democratic rules
also leads to a certain change in behaviour, and in this sense there is an
element – how shall I put it? – an element of inner division that these
movements tend to have in their revenant stage. Openly anti-democratic
aspects are removed. On the contrary: they constantly invoke true
democracy and accuse the others of being anti-democratic. And there is a
certain contradiction in the concessions to democratic rules, as the
demagogic element can no longer be indulged in so unreservedly. Recall
the problem of intra-party democracy, for example, which is guaranteed
by the German constitution. Where intra-party democracy is violated, a
party risks being banned. If it is maintained, however, this political form
is essentially irreconcilable with what is being espoused. This is another
aspect that should be taken into account in strategies for opposition.
In its content, of course, this ideology, in so far as it is an independent,
fully developed ideology – and I consider the ideological component
entirely secondary to the political will to have one’s turn – is essentially
based on Nazi ideology. When one reads the documents, it is amazing
how little in the way of new elements has been added to the old
repertoire, how secondary and rehashed it is. At most, they have tried to
usurp European integration, to speak of a ‘European nation’, but this has
evidently proved highly unappealing for reasons of nationalism, which is
an attempt to assert oneself in the midst of integration and is a stronger
force. So here we find another form of contradiction.
Something that plays a very important part in the ideology – and here I
am genuinely referring to a scientific problem, albeit a problem to which
I cannot presume to offer you any real solution – is anti-Americanism,
which was prefigured in the talk of ‘plutocratic’ nations and such things
in the Nazi period. In keeping with this anti-Americanism, it attempts to
usurp the idea of Europe as a ‘third power’. It is difficult to say what is
behind anti-Americanism. It probably stems partly from something that
is genuinely felt, namely that, even under formal democracy, people feel
deprived of the full freedom of political choice by the system of blocs –

15
and this is not only a feeling. I would like to point out here – perhaps I
can say this in passing – that by no means all elements of this ideology
are simply untrue, but that true elements are also used in the service of
an untrue ideology, and that the art of opposing this lies substantially in
picking out the abuse of truth for untruth and resisting it. The most
important technique whereby the truth is placed in the service of untruth
is that true or accurate observations are taken out of their context,
isolated, for example, by saying, ‘Life under Hitler was fine until he
started that stupid war’, without seeing that the entire boom between ’33
and ’39 was only possible because of the hectic war economy, by the
preparations for war. And there are a hundred similar things.
So this follows on from the whole complex around autonomy, which is
after all the aim of democracy but is not fully realized in the prevailing
system. If I am not mistaken, some of the most effective slogans of neo-
fascism use phrases like ‘Now one can choose again.’2 Or that – in a
variation on a slogan by Goebbels, with his reference to the ‘system
parties’ – they speak of the ‘licence parties’ – that is, the parties that
were licensed by the former occupying powers. And this was incredibly
effective, because people had the feeling that now, with this movement
that seeks precisely to abolish freedom, they are regaining their freedom,
their freedom of decision and spontaneity. I think it would be important
in particular to examine very closely this motive, which is very much
interwoven with that of anti-Americanism.
A fundamental aspect of this ideology is its fragmentary nature. Many
‘planks’ such as the eastward expansion, imperialism in the true sense,
have fallen away willy-nilly. The prospect of ‘tomorrow the whole
world’ is completely absent, which gives the whole thing rather a lack of
impetus and makes it rely more on desperation than was subliminally the
case in National Socialism. But let me say again that there was never a
truly, fully developed theory in fascism; it was always implied that what
mattered was power, conceptless praxis and, ultimately, unconditional
domination, and that spirit of the kind that expresses itself in theory was
secondary by comparison. And that in turn gave these movements an
ideological flexibility, of course, that can be observed so widely. This is
also part of the Zeitgeist: the predominance of a conceptless praxis,
which also has consequences for propaganda.

16
Let me close with some reflections on propaganda, which, as I hinted
earlier, I really consider the centre, even the matter itself in a certain
sense. This propaganda is less concerned with the dissemination of an
ideology which, as I told you, is too thin to draw in the masses. So
propaganda here is primarily a technique of mass psychology. It is based
on the model of the authority-bound personality, in the same way today
as in the time of Hitler or in the movements of the ‘lunatic fringe’ in
America or anywhere else. The unity lies in this appeal to the authority-
bound personality. One hears time and again that these movements all
promise something, and that is true as a characteristic of the lack of
theory. But it is false in the sense that there is a very specific, emphatic
unity in this appeal to the authority-bound character. You will never find
a single utterance that does not correspond to the schema of the
authority-bound personality. And if one uncovers this structure of the
appeal to the authority-bound personality, this truly sends the right-wing
extremists into a rage, and I think this constitutes a degree of proof that
one has struck a sore point in this structure. So the unconscious
tendencies that feed the authority-bound personality are not brought to
light by this propaganda; on the contrary, they are forced even deeper
into the unconscious; they are kept artificially unconscious. Consider the
excessive significance of so-called symbols that characterizes all these
movements.
But if one brings these things up, people suddenly become very
scientific; they explain that the evidence of the authority-bound
personality, that this cannot be proved statistically with the necessary
exactitude, and so on and so forth, and they use the methods of a
perverted positivism to inhibit experience, living experience. This,
incidentally, is the point at which the problems I had the privilege of
speaking to you about last night3 directly converge with those I am
discussing today.
Psychoanalysis is hated most of all, of course, along with anti-
intellectualism, the fear that the unconscious will become conscious, and
the authoritarian character, which form a kind of syndrome together. This
propaganda technique rests on both certain formal traits and varyingly
isolated individual topics. It has long been my conviction – and
Horkheimer and I have already worked on this particular problem in
America – that there are a relatively small number of recurring,
standardized and completely objectified tricks that are very poor and thin

17
in themselves yet, by being constantly repeated, gain a certain
propagandist value for these movements.
On the formal side of things, I would first like to draw your attention to
something one must take into account in one’s opposition, and it is not
such an easy matter. It is the appeal to concretism, as I call it. The
approach – and this is evidently cultivated especially by the NPD in
Germany – is always to work with an accumulation of data, especially
numbers, to which one cannot usually respond, with an undertone like
this: ‘What? Any child knows that! And don’t you know Rabbi
Nussbaum once demanded that all Germans be castrated?’ So,
completely mad and fantastic stories. I invented this example, I should
add, but the arguments are of that kind. They boast of knowledge that is
difficult to verify but which, because they are unverifiable, lend the
person who presents them a special form of authority. I think it is
therefore wise to be especially vigilant whenever people operate with
such seemingly very concrete assertions. This is combined with the
famous Hitlerian technique of the bare-faced lie. Thus, at German
election rallies, the NPD exaggerated the payments, the compensation
payments to Israel, tenfold – and systematically so. But then it came out,
and there were energetic demonstrations against it, and they are now
having considerable problems because of it.
Something that belongs in the same context is the ‘salami method’, as
some term it with a flippant German expression – that is, cutting off a
piece from a complex, then another and then another. So, for example,
using the pseudo-scientific pedantry peculiar to these movements, they
cast doubt on the number of murdered Jews. And first they say, ‘Well, it
wasn’t six million, only five and a half’, and from that point it soon
becomes dubious whether any were murdered at all, and finally things
are presented as if it had actually been the other way around. So I think
that one should view these matters with particular vigilance.
A further important characteristic of this way of thinking – and this is the
complement to con-cretism, as it were – is formalism. Especially a
formalism of the juridical kind. For example, saying that the Munich
Agreement was signed voluntarily by the Western powers and is
therefore still legally valid, including all the resulting claims – including
the Sudetenland, for example, and whatever else.

18
Then I think I have already said – no, I have not spoken about it yet, it is
something that I am not sure applies also to Austria; it definitely applies
to Germany, and I could imagine that it is also an immediate concern
here. It is what I call the trick of the official or the certified, by which I
mean that these groups use nomenclature that suggests they are approved
and supported by some official authorities. For example, the most widely
read rightist magazine, which is aimed at students, is called Studenten-
Anzeiger, which creates the impression, to the naive observer, that it is
produced by a student organization with the backing of the students,
whereas it is actually a purely propagandist affair. Similarly, the word
‘German’ is monopolized. Every conceivable thing is referred to as
‘German’, while the opposing parties, simply because they are at home
in Germany and operate there, are just as German as those who
monopolize the word.
But I would still like to address one trick here, for it is by no means a
mere trick but something one seriously encounters time and again. This
is the trick of ‘One has to have an idea.’ It is something one also finds
among relatively harmless and merely rather simple people, who say,
‘Well, what is to become of our young people? These young people have
no idea, and at least they give them an idea.’ Now, I spoke to you earlier
of vulgar idealism. I think this is really the prototype of what I meant by
vulgar idealism, because here the concept of the idea is pragmatically
turned into its opposite. That is, the idea is meant to exist not because it
is true, not for its objective substance, but only for the pragmatic reason
that one allegedly cannot live without an idea, that it is supposed to be
good to have an idea. The actual content of the idea does not matter. But
if one simply bangs on the table in the right way and says, ‘We have an
idea’, then this is already an effective surrogate for such an idea. So I
would say that here, whenever one hears the call ‘We must have an idea
again’, one should also be especially vigilant.
As far as nationalism is concerned, it does not usually appear in a general
form in the propaganda but concentrates very skilfully on certain allergic
points. For example, the claim that Germans suffer discrimination in the
world, to which one must quite simply respond that, after the
monstrousness of what happened, it is actually surprising how little
resentment has remained, how quickly it was forgotten. Or they speak of
denigrating national symbols, something that then leads directly to fits of
rage and acts of violence. The autonomy of the symbol in relation to

19
what it represents is another one of these allergic points that should be
very precisely analysed. The reason is probably that, in addition to the
expressive content of these symbols, there are implicit meanings quite
different from the merely national element they supposedly stand for,
and that the unconscious reacts to quite different threats when these
symbols are allegedly not adequately respected, as this propaganda
pretends. There is a similar tendency to brand those people who
recognize the Oder–Neisse line4 as ‘traitors to the country’. There have
been similar things before – one spoke of ‘fulfilment politicians’ in the
Weimar Republic. This is the complex one could term ‘punitiveness’
towards others.
Recently a major institution of public communication in Germany had a
meeting with a few NPD leaders to find out what concrete suggestions
they actually had. And the only concrete suggestion that came out of it –
and this is very telling – was that the death sentence for the murderers of
taxi drivers should be reintroduced. That is, I think that sounds very
laughable and insignificant, but it shows how significant a part a sadism
cloaked in legal ideas continues to play in these matters.
I will refrain from analysing in detail some of the other tricks that are
typical of the current situation. Such as the phrase, ‘So we’re not allowed
to do what every negro state is allowed to?’ – which raises the question
of what that actually is. Or the claim that German business has sold out
to foreign capital at the same time as there is a lack of capital within
German industry. Or the claim of foreign domination through guest
workers – when the need for labour power, despite increasing
unemployment, is in fact so great in a whole range of professions, the
most menial ones, that this need for foreign workers – I prefer ‘foreign
worker’ to ‘guest worker’, for I consider ‘guest worker’ an ideological
term – this need continues. Then obviously the whole complex of
‘degenerate art’, ‘cleanliness’, ‘clean canvas’ and whatever else is
connected to these things.
This area also includes the complex ‘enough admissions of guilt’, which
were never really demanded anyway. Then the claim that National
Socialism was initially healthy and then ‘got out of hand’. Generally the
doctrine of the healthy core. Then the claim of tallying up guilt. And
finally the polemic against the Nazi trials; Fritz Bauer once observed
quite correctly that the same people who insist on reintroducing the death

20
penalty demand that the murderers of Auschwitz go unpunished,
something one should definitely point out in this context, though I will
not deny that there is a very serious contradiction here, a contradiction I
have racked my brains to address theoretically.
Now, let me say just a few more words about the matter of resistance. I
think the ‘hush hush’ tactic – that is, the tactic of keeping quiet about
these things – has never paid off, and this development has surely
advanced much too far today for it to work. I have already told you that
one should appeal to the real interests instead of moralizing; I can only
repeat it once more. Perhaps I can also remind you of one of the findings
from our Authoritarian Personality research in America, which revealed
that even prejudiced personalities, who were certainly authoritarian,
repressive, politically and economically reactionary, when it came to
their own transparent interests, transparent to themselves, reacted quite
differently. So they were mortal enemies of the Roosevelt administration,
for example, but with those institutions that were of direct benefit to
them, such as tenant protection or cheaper medicines, that was where
their anti-Rooseveltianism immediately stopped and they behaved
relatively rationally. This split in people’s consciousness strikes me as
one of the most promising points of departure to counter the
developments I have discussed.
A further aspect is the turn inwards. What I mean is that, in opposing
these movements, one tries to convey that the substance of this entire
complex of authority-bound personality and extreme right-wing ideology
is not, in reality, the designated enemy, not about the people they rage
against; rather, it is about elements of projection. That is, the real
subjects of a study that would need to be understood and changed are the
right-wing extremists, not those against whom they mobilize their hatred.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I am not so naive as to think that one can
achieve a great deal with the people in question simply through this turn
inwards, for it is a substantial part – there is no more time for me to
explain in detail why that is – it is a substantial part of this syndrome that
these authority-bound characters are inaccessible, that they will not let
anything get through to them. Nonetheless – and I must ask you to
forgive me if I refer to The Authoritarian Personality once again –
nonetheless it transpired that, simply by making a socio-psychological
problem out of these personalities who behave in this way and not any
other, by reflecting on them, and on the connections between their

21
ideology and their psychological, their socio-psychological structures, by
making this a problem, a certain naivety in the social climate has been
eliminated and a certain detoxification has taken place. And I could
imagine that this might be a promising approach in the various German-
speaking countries too.
Finally, one should identify the tricks I have spoken of, give them very
drastic names, describe them precisely, describe their implications and
thus attempt to immunize the masses against these tricks, as it were, for
nobody wants to be the fool – or, as they would say in Vienna, nobody
wants to be the Wurzen. And it can certainly be shown that the entire
thing is based on a gigantic psychological Wurztechnik, a gigantic
psychological rip-off.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I repeat that I am aware that right-wing
extremism is not a psychological and ideological problem but a very real
and political one. Yet the factually wrong, untrue nature of its own
substance forces it to operate with ideological means, which in this case
take the form of propagandist means. And that is why, aside from the
political struggle by purely political means, one must confront it on its
very own turf. But we must not fight lies with lies, we must not try to be
just as clever as it is, but we must counteract it with the full force of
reason, with the genuinely unideological truth.
Perhaps some of you will ask me, or would like to ask me, what I think
about the future of right-wing extremism. I think this is the wrong
question, for it is much too contemplative. This way of thinking, which
views such things from the outset like natural disasters about which one
makes predictions, like whirlwinds or meteorological disasters, this
already shows a form of resignation whereby one essentially eliminates
oneself as a political subject; it expresses a harmfully spectator-like
relationship with reality. How these things will continue, and the
responsibility for how they will continue, that ultimately lies in our
hands. Thank you for listening.

22
Notes

11.A collective movement that initially united a spectrum extending

from national conservatives to right-wing extremists and, as a
party, became the leading German neo-Nazi organization. In the
new millennium it became largely insignificant.
22.The word translated here as ‘choose’, wählen, also means ‘to
vote’, which makes the statement ambiguous (Trans.).
33.In his lecture ‘On the Problem of Social Conflict Today’.
44.The border between Germany and Poland (Trans.).

23
Publisher’s Note
Theodor W. Adorno gave his lecture on ‘Aspects of the New Right-Wing
Extremism’ on 6 April 1967 on the invitation of the Austrian Socialist
Students’ Association at the new department building of the University
of Vienna. Adorno used seven pages of hand-written notes and
keywords; these have survived in his literary estate. The present edition
is based on the tape recording, which was also taken up into the Austrian
Media Library. The text is a pre-publication from the volume Vorträge
1949–1968, edited by Michael Schwarz for Suhrkamp Verlag, which will
appear in the series of Adorno’s posthumous writings under the overall
editorship of the Theodor W. Adorno Archive.

24
Afterword by Volker Weiss
Theodor W. Adorno’s deliberations on ‘Aspects of the New Right-Wing
Extremism’ from 1967 constitute one of the philosopher’s public
interventions. As a purely spoken lecture at the University of Vienna,
previously existing only as a tape recording, it has remained virtually
unknown. More than half a century later, however, one is struck by the
continued validity of his analysis, which reads in parts like a
commentary on current developments.
Adorno was ambivalent towards recordings and transcriptions, as is
known from the editorial history of other lectures he gave. To him, the
reproduction of the freely spoken word blurred its fundamental
difference from writing. He considered such reproductions part of ‘the
behaviours of the administered world, which even pins down the
ephemeral word, whose truth lies in its own transience, to place the
speaker under oath.’1 In contrast to the ephemeral form of oral
presentation, however, the content of this lecture is anything but fleeting
in nature and justifies the publication of what was spoken back then.
The Vienna speech can be read as a continuation of the 1959 lecture ‘The
Meaning of Working through the Past’.2 For all its current relevance,
then, it has a solid place in Adorno’s output. His deliberately loose
reflections served to explain to an Austrian audience the rise of the
German NPD, founded in 1964, which was gaining significant popularity
as a collective movement on the right. By 1968 it would gain seats in the
regional parliaments of seven German states. The narrow defeat of the
NPD in the 1969 general election was not yet foreseeable at the time of
the lecture. Because of the concrete topic, Adorno made his more
fundamental reflections on the historical and social conditions of this
development rather cursory. He gave more attention to the socio-
psychological dispositions of the Germans and the ways in which fascist
agitation functions.
Speaking in 1967, it was obvious that Adorno would invoke the
historical experience of National Socialism as a reference point. The
publication of the spoken text now augments the two stages of his
reflections with a third. In addition to his historical vanishing point,
National Socialism, and the immediate context of the speech, namely the

25
1960s, there is now a present in which an extreme right is once again
emerging as an influential political force. This lends Adorno’s words
their relevance; yet one should avoid any simplistic equivalence. In his
lecture, Adorno himself emphasizes the differences between his time and
the Weimar period. Likewise, analogies to National Socialism were
tenable only to an extent. The same applies to comparing the present day
in 2019 to the time fifty years ago. Reading the speech thus requires that
we distinguish between context-dependent and fundamental aspects. Its
far-sighted relevance must be seen in relation to its temporal, historical
core.
At times these two levels merge, for Adorno was speaking in Vienna not
only as a critical analyst of the situation, but also as a witness of the
time. He had experienced how willingly the bourgeois elites had
supported National Socialism – directly on 3 April 1933, when the
University of Frankfurt ended its association with the Institute of Social
Research (ISR). Max Horkheimer was dismissed immediately, along
with other staff considered undesirable either ‘racially’ or in their
worldview. No one, in Rolf Wiggershaus’s description of the events,
intervened to defend ‘their ostracized and persecuted colleagues’.3 With
the return of the ISR to the old world after the war, circumstances in
Germany approached the situation discussed in the lecture.
This decision to move the institute back to Frankfurt was by no means an
automatic one. Europe, as the outcome of the war had shown, was the
past. The staff at the ISR knew that the future of Western society, and
thus their object of analysis, would henceforth be decided in the USA.
The American model based on capitalism and democracy expedited the
development of serial production, mass consumption and the culture
industry – those fields that were central to their theory of society.
Tendencies that would shape Europe were anticipated there. Adorno saw
this as the manifestation of a historical tendency.4 This interpretation
discerned a historical development without equating the two models. The
difference lay especially, though not exclusively, in the Holocaust, which
was more a product of National Socialism than of Fordism.
But the ISR had never lost sight of Germany or National Socialism. A
lecture series at Columbia University in the spring of 1945, entitled ‘The
Repercussions of National Socialism’, testified to the contradictory
situation. On the one hand, the lectures proved how intensively the

26
institute was continuing its analysis of Germany and Europe. On the
other hand, it ‘clearly suggested that the crucial problems of Germany
and Europe were best studied from the USA.’5 Consistently with this, the
institute had based its large-scale project Studies in Prejudice on data
from the USA. Nonetheless, in 1949, the inner circle of the institute –
Horkheimer, Adorno and Friedrich Pollock – made the decision to
return. The step was also motivated by a paradoxical hope that, in
Germany’s less developed society, rudiments of a time before total
socialization, residues of educational ideals and bourgeois subjectivity –
in short, European culture – would have stayed alive, having vanished in
the fast-moving USA.
Finding the framework for a new beginning in Frankfurt was no easy
matter. Horkheimer described in 1948 how, at exploratory talks, the
university officials greeted him in a ‘sweet, slick and insincerely
honourable’ way: ‘They don’t know yet whether to see me as a relatively
influential traveller of America or as the brother of their victims, whose
intention is remembrance. They have to decide on the latter.’6 But soon
after the war, as in the USA, the political direction of the occupying
authorities in West Germany had also shifted from anti-fascism to anti-
communism. The new line was oriented towards ensuring German
loyalty in the incipient East–West conflict. This increased the resonance
echo of National Socialism in society, and the institute’s work focused on
this.
A group experiment was initiated in 1950, on the model of the Studies, to
assess the attitudes of young Germans to the Nazi dictatorship and the
occupation, to guilt and democracy, using new empirical methods
developed in the USA. The result described a demoscopic phenomenon
that is known to this day: a ‘non-public opinion … whose content can
deviate very considerably from the content of the public opinion, but
whose formulations circulate alongside those of the public opinion like
monetary units of a second currency.’7 This showed that the convention
of civilizatory-democratic chastening was scarcely capable of keeping
the latency of fascist elements under control. Any weakness in the higher
authority and the appropriate stimuli were enough to let it come rapidly
to the surface again, a pattern reminiscent of processes familiar from
psychoanalysis. The findings showed early on that fascism does not

27
require any party to survive, and that a party can quickly be formed by
falling back on such ‘non-public’ resentments.
This was not welcome news. In the light of the findings of the group
experiment, opponents of the institute resorted to a ‘tried and tested
procedure which is popular to this day: playing down the dangers from
the right, presenting the “exposers” of such dangers as totalitarian
moralists and idealists’.8 Today, by contrast, the pioneering work of the
ISR is as undisputed as its significance for current studies: ‘The
significant discussions about right-wing populism are based on questions
that could only be asked using the conceptual apparatus derived from the
institute’s studies on prejudice’, namely what ‘psychological advantage’
was gained through denigrations, why ‘one’s own (genuine or pretextual)
fear’ acted as a justification for resentments, and how ‘racism, anti-
Semitism and sexism’, as well as ‘the nation-state, capitalism and
racism, are connected.’9 The ISR and Adorno himself had spent decades
working on such complexes. In the light of this, his declaration in Vienna
that he simply wanted to add to a few thoughts was a remarkable
understatement.
At the moment of his lecture, then, Adorno was speaking from the
experience gained through emigration and research, as well as everyday
life in a country where, a little over two decades earlier, right-wing
extremism had been state doctrine. The central idea of his speech is a
variation on the oft-quoted warning, already formulated in 1959, that ‘the
survival of National Socialism in democracy’ is ‘more threatening than
the survival of fascist tendencies against democracy’. It is precisely the
latter that were now becoming visible in political events. While Adorno
had said eight years earlier that he did ‘not wish to go into the question
of neo-Nazi organizations’, it had now become necessary to pay
attention to this phenomenon.10
In ‘Aspects of the New Right-Wing Extremism’, Adorno speaks – as
before – of ‘pathic’ nationalism and discusses the tricks of the
propaganda as well as the traces of narcissistic injury in society as a
result of defeat.11 Even reflections on appeals to rational interest and the
full force of reason are developed once again. Through this reuse of
terms, it is not hard to recognize the ‘planks’ of the fascist ‘platform’ that
he and Horkheimer had already outlined in the Dialectic of
Enlightenment.12 The repeated reference to the structure of the authority-

28
bound personality is drawn from the study of the same name conducted
as part of the institute’s research on prejudice. Overall, the lecture evokes
several familiar motifs from the institute’s research, which already saw
the transition from Weimar democracy to National Socialism ‘not as a
rupture, but as a quasi-logical evolution’.13 Even after 1945, the
structural contradiction between democratic participation and the
tendency towards concentration of capital, which was at the centre of
analysis at the time, was not resolved. In that sense, Adorno says, one
might refer to the fascist movements as the wounds, the scars of a
democracy that, to this day, has not yet lived up to its own concept.
Despite all reservations about historical comparisons, Adorno’s examples
thus testify to the longevity of individual fields of conflict. Regional
continuities in electoral behaviour strike him as the ghost of a ghost, and
this revenant still haunts some places today.14 The failure of the less
radical forces in the NPD during the 1960s reminded Adorno of the part
played by the German Nationalists in the rise of the Nazi Party; this
pattern continues today in the failure of efforts to tame extremists. The
comments on the antagonistic character of nationalism and its resurgence
as an attempt to assert oneself in the midst of integration read like a
description of the current disengagements within the EU, exemplified by
the Brexit debates in the UK and the Vote Leave campaign’s slogan
‘Take back control’. The development of resentment still revolves
around the question of ‘how much control one feels one has over one’s
own life’.15 Adorno recognized this significance of emotions decades
before the revolt of the so-called angry citizens [Wutbürger] – a
development that refutes the belief that the introduction of the EU’s
single market had done away once and for all with a nationalism based
on fears of decline. Today too, the call for sovereignty, which already
had something fictitious about it back then on account of the complex
systems of reference in modernity, can become one of the main slogans
of right-wing anti-Europeans.
In its analysis of the connection between economy, society and subject
structure, critical theory operates on a terrain entirely its own. Adorno’s
remark on technological unemployment as a consequence of automation
can therefore remain succinct, as it takes up a long discussion on the
relationship between the constitution of the subject and technological
development in capitalism. Already in 1941, Herbert Marcuse had, in

29
some notes ‘on the social consequences of modern technology’, and
explicitly with reference to the ‘technocratic’ character of National
Socialism, retraced the decline of the bourgeois subject to a pure carrier
of efficiency and performance.16
Two years earlier, Max Horkheimer had described how ‘the extremely
technologically advanced industry’ undermined the principle of
liberalism, as its development ‘makes the sale of labour power
impossible for large sections of the populace’.17 The tendency towards
crisis is structural and generates a feeling of social catastrophe as a
distortion of Marx’s theory of collapse that extends into the middle
classes. This feeling caused something to shift in the subjects, for now
they await the emergency, or even long for it. Adorno thus sees the
contemporary economic crisis anticipated in the political one preceding
it, namely the rise of the NPD. The endpoint is not the striving for
change but an escape to gleeful apocalyptic rhetoric. Do you know what
Wotan wants? The end.
The knowledge that one could be more, but is not, still drives people to
acts of collective narcissism. Stefan Breuer summarizes this
phenomenon, which already featured in Adorno’s lecture ‘The Meaning
of Working through the Past’:
In making the collective subject of the nation or the leader into their
ideal and ascribing fantastic properties to it, individuals achieve part
of that archaic oversized self whose realization is impossible in the
existence of each on their own; at the same time, they liberate
themselves through projection from their own aggressions that are
tied to the ego-ideal, with the inevitable consequence that the world
is peopled by dangerous, vengeful objects against which the subject
must in turn defend itself: the drawback of the gratifications that
‘socialized narcissism’ provides is paranoia.18
This pattern continues to be effective. The experience of being
interchangeable as an employee can thus lead to the rightist phantasm of
a ‘great replacement’ between ethnic groups.19 Seeking help, concerned
individuals turn to an imagined sovereign. They see an authoritarian
nation-state no longer as a threat but as a protection and an incarnation of
what is their ‘own’ – a process that had led Horkheimer to remark
already in the 1930s that, in late capitalism, peoples changed ‘first into
recipients of support, then into followings’.20 Instead of being swallowed

30
up by an administered world, they prefer to choose a directly palpable
authority.
What is the value of these analyses for the present day? One must first of
all note the differences. Adorno’s warning of a simplistic attribution of
right-wing extremism to economic movements should be taken seriously.
The effects of the 1966–7 recession as the immediate background to the
developments described are comparable neither to the consequences of
the 1929 global economic crisis nor to those of current financial and
monetary crises. Adorno’s scepticism towards an exaggeration of
activities among former Nazi Party members was likewise correct. In
fact, there was a generational shift in the late 1960s that marked a
transition from an old to a new right. A fundamental aspect of this was a
substantial adaptation among the most extreme rightists after 1945, the
removal, as Adorno says, of openly anti-democratic aspects. They were
replaced by a new self-representation whose description by Adorno also
characterizes the right-wing populists of today: they constantly invoke
true democracy and accuse the others of being anti-democratic.
Today, the pressure to conform described by Adorno is greatly attenuated
via the culture industry. In the shadow of the commodity fetish there are
numerous possibilities for an individualized conformity whose effects
extend to the leadership of the current right; its charisma offers barely
more than a caricature of the past. Nor are the political frontlines directly
comparable. The confrontation with global jihad, a key element in the
incitement by right-wing populists, is – unlike anti-Semitism – not
purely a matter of pathic projection. Political Islam is a genuine actor
and must itself be understood as the product of a collective narcissistic
injury. By being willing to engage with this area too in future, critical
theory can show its ability ‘to react to current and concrete threats’.21
The ISR examined how fascism was able to rise together with Fordism.
The question today is, what did the remnants of bourgeois subjectivity
turn into in the subsequent period? Digitization pushed the automation
mentioned by Adorno even further. In the age of hi-tech, forcing human
labour into precarious areas again caused feelings of injury. Against the
background of the decline of the political left, Didier Eribon rightly asks
who really ‘takes into account’ that the superfluous, the precariously
employed and the leftovers of the industrial proletariat exist, ‘how they
live, what they think about, what they want’.22

31
These aspects point to a large gap in the debate about the current
authoritarian revolt, which is not based solely on racism. Rather, it
incorporates resentments that can be extended to such groups as
socialists and liberals. Those who are threatened by decline often lay the
blame for their misery not on the apparatus that causes it, but on those
who were critical towards the system in which they once had a status.
All those who suggest different models become a particular object of
anger, as shown by the current fixation of the extreme right on a left that
has been largely powerless for decades. The bugbear of a quasi-
dictatorial ‘left-green-infested, 1968-generation Germany’23 shows that
traditional bogeymen can still spread terror under completely different
social conditions. Abandoning all categories, the European Union is
referred to as the ‘EUSSR’, Germany as ‘GDR 2.0’ and the Affordable
Care Act (‘Obamacare’) as ‘socialist’, while the entire political
landscape, even large areas of democratic conservatism, are classified as
‘left’. Communism, already more imago than concept in 1967, and thus
divorced from any knowledge about the matter, can still be effectively
invoked.
The discourse continues to be marked by the intersection of anti-
intellectualism, anti-Marxism and anti-Semitism, Adorno’s bête noire,
which was already described in the chapter on anti-Semitism from the
Dialectic of Enlightenment. It has once again become rampant in the
figure of so-called cultural Marxism. This term, taken from the most
extreme sector of the US right, has meanwhile taken over from the Nazi
propaganda phrase ‘cultural Bolshevism’. It is common all over the
world and constructs a conspiracy theory with critical theory itself,
notably, at the centre.24
Powerful verbal attacks are also directed at a historical processing of the
National Socialist past inspired by Adorno. Trembling with pathos, a
leading AfD25 politician announced it was time to end an ‘idiotic politics
of dealing with the past’ and demanded a ‘U-turn in our remembrance
politics’.26 This rhetoric had already been used by the NPD; Adorno
summarizes it as the complex ‘enough admissions of guilt’. This recourse
to the past, something in which present-day right-wing populists in
Germany are no different from other right-wing parties of recent
decades, confirms how precisely Adorno had already grasped the
motives of those demanding an end to the ‘cult of guilt’.27 The injury

32
caused by the knowledge of the atrocities committed by one’s own
nation is turned against those who urge remembrance and against
remembrance itself. As early as 1959, Adorno recognized that one
element of ‘forgetting what has barely transpired’ was the ‘fury of one
who must first talk himself out of what everyone knows, before he can
then talk others out of it as well.’28 In his observation of these affects,
Adorno is speaking as the same returned ‘brother’ of the victims already
feared by the Frankfurt officials in the guise of the returned Horkheimer.
Even today, as in Adorno’s time, the mention of Auschwitz is as likely to
send people into a rage as general ethical considerations or appeals to
humanity, something expressed in talk of ‘do-gooders’ or the calls of
‘Let ’em drown’ directed at sea rescuers at a Pegida rally in 2018. Right-
wing agitators are now going even further, however, by regularly
equating themselves with the victims.29
Many of these affects seem like relics of another time, but their
anachronism is precisely what makes them effective. When the promises
of a prosperous present prove deceptive, when personal status is under
threat, then identity becomes a fetish and tendencies return that had been
thought overcome. As Adorno notes, convictions and ideologies take on
their demonic, their genuinely destructive character precisely when the
objective situation has deprived them of substance. Today the immense
pull of misogynistic and homophobic agitation in times of equal rights or
the revival of religious fundamentalism in the midst of a secular present
show how deceptive a sense of security in the light of civilizational
advances can be. Eribon is amazed how energetically ‘certain categories
of the population – gay men, lesbians, transsexuals, Jews, blacks, and so
on – have to bear the burden of these social and cultural curses’.30 As
one might say with recourse to the Dialectic of Enlightenment, they are
begrudged the purely abstract right to liberate themselves by those who
can understand happiness only as an expression of concrete power.31
Adorno’s observation that in these extreme right-wing movements,
propaganda actually constitutes the substance of politics is still
absolutely valid. Here he follows on seamlessly from Leo Löwenthal’s
False Prophets, whose analysis of fascist agitation in the USA, another
study belonging to the large-scale Prejudice project, highlights how
fundamental an invocation of emergency is in propaganda.32
Löwenthal’s findings are already sufficient to crush the hope that the

33
extreme right would moderate itself as soon as it grew used to certain
discursive rules or was politically integrated. Löwenthal describes the
systematic stimulation of the authoritarian personality as ‘turning
psychoanalysis on its head’. He argues that what applies to ‘mass
culture’ in general also applies to the technique of agitation: ‘It makes
people neurotic and psychotic and finally completely dependent on their
so-called leaders.’33
Adorno had already presented Löwenthal’s findings in 1944 at a
symposium held by the psychoanalyst Ernst Simmel.34 He knew that the
political destruction produced by the right-wing demagogues resulted not
from uncontrolled outbursts that could be curbed but actually from pure
calculation. For him it was beyond doubt that ‘fascist propaganda, with
all its twisted logic and fantastic distortions, is consciously planned and
organized.’ Yet it ‘does not employ discursive logic but is rather … what
might be called an organized flight of ideas.’35 This makes appeals to the
agitator’s reason futile. Adorno’s later sigh that one must truly be
stricken with the spirit of formalism not to see what they mean can be
directly transferred to offers of discussion today.
The effect of agitation is also guaranteed by the framework of the culture
industry, which it resembles down to its details. In the Internet age, the
combination Adorno notes between an extraordinary perfection of
certain methods and a complete abstruseness of the aims emerges all the
more clearly. Their manifestations as bots, trolls and fake news have
received much attention. Beneath this surface, what becomes visible is
precisely the constellation of rational means and irrational ends that
Adorno also identifies as an overall tendency of civilization beyond such
excesses. It is still the case that fighting propaganda is a futile endeavour
without reflection on the mechanisms of mass-produced information and
culture, as this framework is what allows propaganda to take effect in the
first place. In the light of this structure, discreet silence or downplaying,
the hush hush tactic, is equally ineffective.
This recalls Löwenthal’s objection to Walter Benjamin’s reflections on
mass culture, namely that Benjamin’s optimism that ‘the dissemination
of works of art made possible by mechanical and electronic means of
reproduction can also have a positive political effect’ in fact ‘ran counter
to all our experiences’ at the institute.36 Today the digital revolution has
not only taken mass culture to a new level but also provided the state and

34
business with further instruments to expand the complete administration
of society. Like their historical forerunners, the leaders of the
contemporary extreme right are virtuosos in combining propaganda and
technology. The successful employment of these means at the 2016
presidential election in the USA serves as a model for rightist
movements in Europe, which have been veritably Americanized since
then in both style and content. The transatlantic perspective adopted by
the ISR continues to be valid.
After almost three decades of digital communication, it is evident that
the hope of a technologically mediated boost in democracy cannot be
fulfilled as long as the culture industry’s framework of kitsch and
spectacle remains dominant. This problem also arises in activities against
the rising extreme right if they rely on the same patterns: simply
defending the status quo will fail as a defensive strategy without the
realization that the rightist renaissance is itself a result of that same status
quo. Adorno – and Löwenthal – already saw this connection over half a
century ago.
So there is no reason to historicize critical theory. At present the political
centre is becoming less wary of the far right, and parts of middle-class
society are returning to the constellation they abandoned in the liberal
post-war decades. They are once more applauding a fascist agitator who
demands ‘that the rupture must grow even deeper, that our language
must become even clearer, even more concrete’.37 The synthesis of the
educated elite and liberal democracy that has defined the intellectual
landscape of many Western countries since the 1960s is not nature-given;
it can end.
In these days too, the ghost with which Adorno’s lecture deals is far from
being put to rest; it is haunting society again as the new right-wing
extremism. This makes it all the more important to regain an awareness
of the structure of fascist agitation, as well as the socio-psychological
foundations of its success. The work done by Adorno and the Institute of
Social Research is an indispensable part of this.

35
Notes

11.Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Zur Bekämpfung des Anti-semitismus

heute’, Das Argument 6/29 (1964), p. 88. Also in Adorno,
Gesammelte Schriften [GS], ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), vol. 20: Vermischte Schriften, p. 360.
22.Adorno, ‘The Meaning of Working through the Past’, in Critical
Models: Interventions and Catchwords, trans. Henry W. Pickford
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp. 89–104.
33.Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories,
and Political Significance, trans. Michael Robertson (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1994), p.129.
44.When Germany capitulated, Adorno wrote to Horkheimer that
‘the war was won by industry against the military, in keeping
with the overall tendency of history.’ Letter from 9 May 1945, in
Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Briefwechsel 1927—
1969, ed. Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz, vol. 3: 1945—1949
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005), p. 101.
55.Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, p. 385.
66.Letter from Max Horkheimer to Maidon Horkheimer from 26
May 1948, in Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Alfred
Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, vol. 17: Briefwechsel 1941
—1948 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996), p. 976.
77.Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologie, vol. 2: Gruppenexperiment:
Ein Studienbericht, ed. Friedrich Pollock with a foreword by
Franz Böhm (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1955), p. xi.
88.Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, p. 477.
99.Marc Grimm, ‘Zur Aktualität Kritischer Theorie’, Zeitschrift für
PolitischeTheorie 8/1 (2017), p. 116.
10.
10 Adorno, ‘The Meaning of Working through the Past’, p. 90.
11.
11 The italicized terms, phrases and passages are direct quotations
from Adorno’s lecture in this volume.

36
12.
12 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of
Enlightenment, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2002), p. 172.
13.
13 Helmut Dubiel and Alfons Söllner, ‘Die
Nationalsozialismusforschung des Instituts für Sozialforschung–
ihre wissenschaftliche Stellung und gegenwärtige Bedeutung’, in
Horkheimer, Pollock, Neumann, Kirchheimer, Gurland, Marcuse:
Wirtschaft, Recht und Staat im Nationalsozialismus: Analysen
des Instituts für Sozialforschung 1939—1942 (Frankfurt am
Main: Europäische Verlags-Anstalt, 1981), p. 9.
14.
14 See Davide Cantoni, Felix Hagemeister and Mark Westcott,
Persistence and Activation of Right-Wing Political Ideology
(2019), https://rationality-and-competition.de/wp-
content/uploads/discussion_paper/i43.pdf.
15.
15 Uffa Jensen, Zornpolitik (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2017), p. 38.
16.
16 Herbert Marcuse, ‘Einige gesellschaftliche Folgen moderner
Technologie’, in Dubiel and Söllner (eds), Horkheimer, Pollock,
Neumann, Kirchheimer, Gurland, Marcuse, p. 341.
17.
17 Max Horkheimer, ‘Die Juden und Europa’, ibid., p. 34.
18.
18 Stefan Breuer, ‘Adornos Anthropologie’, Leviathan 12/3 (1984),
pp. 346f.
19.
19 See Renaud Camus, Le Grand Remplacement (Paris: David
Reinharc, 2011). The notion of the ‘great replacement’ is among
the central propaganda phrases of the New Right. The manifesto
published by the perpetrator of the 2019 Christchurch massacre
was likewise entitled ‘The Great Replacement’.
20.
20 Horkheimer, ‘Die Juden und Europa’, p. 37.
21.
21 Grimm, ‘Zur Aktualität Kritischer Theorie’, p. 120.
22.
22 Didier Eribon, Returning to Reims, trans. Michael Lucey (Los
Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2013), p. 46.
23.
23 Jörg Meuthen at the party conference of the AfD [see note 25
below] in Stuttgart in 2016.

37
24.
24 See Alice Weidel, ‘Die Angst der Kulturmarxistenvor der
Aufklärung und der AfD’, JungeFreiheit, 23 May 2018,
https://jungefreiheit.de/debatte/kommentar/2018/die-angst-der-
kulturmarxisten-vor-der-aufklaerung-und-der-afd. The term
‘cultural Marxism’ also plays a central part in the manifesto
‘2083’by the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik from
2011. Breivik was inspired in his worldview by the Norwegian
blogger ‘Fjordman’, whose texts likewise propagate a battle
against ‘cultural Marxism’. A selection was translated into
German after Breivik’s massacre, and another had previously
been published in English as Defeating Eurabia (Morrisville,
NC: Lulu, 2008). Robert Bowers, who was charged with
murdering eight people in 2018 at the Tree of Life Synagogue in
Pittsburgh, likewise saw himself as a soldier in the war on
cultural Marxism. See Samuel Moyn, ‘The Alt-Right’s Favourite
Meme is 100 Years Old’, New York Times, 12 November 2018,
www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/opinion/cultural-marxism-anti-
semitism.html.
25.
25 Alternative für Deutschland [Alternative for Germany] was
founded in 2013 as a right-wing populist party that made a name
for itself primarily through its criticism of European monetary
policy. After a change of leadership in 2015, it came under the
control of extreme right-wing cadres and changed its main issue
from monetary policy to immigration. It received 12.6 per cent of
votes at the general election in 2017 and is now represented in all
sixteen state parliaments.
26.
26 Björn Höcke in a speech on 17 January 2017 at the Dresden
restaurant Ballhaus Watzke.
27.
27 ‘A hundred years after the birth of the “ugly German” from the
spirit of British war propaganda, it is surely time gradually to
discard the cult of guilt and our national neuroses. The unpleasant
side of the “typically German” is now a pride in guilt, a pleasure
in pillorying oneself when others have long adopted a more
nuanced view.’ Michael Paulwitz, ‘Der Selbsthass blüht’, Junge
Freiheit, 23 May 2014, p. 13.
28.
28 Adorno, ‘The Meaning of Working through the Past’, p. 92.

38
29.
29 ‘The people who live in Germany have grown used to coping
with anti-Germanism, just as Jews had to learn to deal with anti-
Semitism.’ Rolf Peter Sieferle, Finis Germania (Schnellroda:
Antaios, 2017), p. 77.
30.
30 Eribon, Returning to Reims, p. 217.
31.
31 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 142.
32.
32 Leo Löwenthal, False Prophets: Studies on Authoritarianism
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1987).
33.
33 Leo Löwenthal, ‘Scholarly Biography: A Conversation with
Helmut Dubiel, 1979’, in Critical Theory and Frankfurt
Theorists: Lectures—Correspondence—Conversations (London:
Routledge, 1989), p. 258.
34.
34 Adorno, ‘Anti-Semitism and Fascist Propaganda’, in GS, vol. 8,
pp. 397—407. It contains this passage: ‘Since the entire weight of
this propaganda is to promote the means, propaganda itself
becomes the ultimate content’ (p. 399).
35.
35 Ibid., p. 401.
36.
36 Löwenthal, ‘Scholarly Biography’, p. 249.
37.
37 Götz Kubitschek in a discussion between Durs Grünbein and
Uwe Tellkamp at the Dresden Kulturpalast on 8 March 2018.
How permeable the boundaries have become is also demonstrated
by the fact that Uwe Tellkamp has published in Kubitschek’s
magazine Sezession: Uwe Tellkamp, ‘Der Moralismus der
Vielen: Offener Brief’, Sezession 87 (2018), pp. 27–31. It first
appeared online on 13 November 2018
(https://sezession.de/59871/der-moralismus-der-vielen-ein-
offener-brief-von-uwe-tellkamp).

39
About the Authors
Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) was a philosopher and sociologist. He
was one of the main exponents of critical theory as practised by the
Frankfurt School, which emerged from the Institute of Social Research at
the University of Frankfurt. In addition, with his lectures, radio
broadcasts and publications, he had a formative influence on cultural and
intellectual life in post-war Germany.
Volker Weiss, born in 1972, is a historian and publicist. His research
includes studies on the historical and contemporary extreme right. His
book The Authoritarian Revolt: The New Right and the Decline of the
West is considered one of the standard works on the New Right.

40
POLITY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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41
 Table of Contents
Front Matter
Aspects of the New Right-Wing Extremism
Notes
Publisher’s Note
Afterword by Volker Weiss
Notes
About the Authors

42
Índice
Front Matter 2
Aspects of the New Right-Wing Extremism 4
Notes 23
Publisher’s Note 24
Afterword by Volker Weiss 25
Notes 36
About the Authors 40

43
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
hand. A sword dance ensues, the four going round and round in a
circle. The gentleman with a sword contorts himself, prods viciously
at imaginary foes, and every now and then makes a playful attempt
to smite off one of the drummers’ legs. This performance being
terminated—accompanied the while by incessant shouting on the
part of every one in general—the actors retire, and the Emir holds up
his thin aristocratic hand.
Instantly a silence falls. The change is singularly impressive. The
Emir begins to speak in a low voice to a herald mounted on a raised
platform at his side. The herald, the perspiration pouring down his
face, shouts out each sentence as it falls from the Emir’s lips. As the
speech proceeds the Emir becomes more animated. He waves his
arm with a gesture full of dignity and command. And now the silence
is occasionally broken with sounds of approval. Finally he stops, and
it is the turn of the Resident who smilingly delivers himself of a much
shorter oration which, as in the previous case, is shouted to the
assemblage by the herald. I was able to obtain, through the courtesy
of the Resident, from the Emir’s Waziri a rendering of the speech of
which the following is a translation—

“The Emir greets you all with thanks to God. He thanks

God’s messenger (Mohammed). He gives thanks for the
blessings of his parents and his ancestors. He gives thanks to
the Europeans who are the gates of his town. He thanks all
White men. Next—you must attend to the orders which the
Emir gives you every year. I say unto you leave off double
dealing. Remove your hand from the people. Let them follow
their own courses. Separate yourselves from injustice. Why
do I say ‘Give up injustice’? You know how we were in former
days and you see how we are now. Are we not better off than
formerly? Next—I thank my headmen who assist me in my
work. I thank my servants who are fellow workers. I thank my
young chiefs who are fellow workers. I thank the men of my
town who are fellow workers. I thank my followers in the town.
I thank the village heads. I thank all the people of the land of
Zaria who are helping me in my work. Next—I wish you to pay
 attention to the commands of the English. And I say unto you
that all who see them should pay them respect. He who is
careless of the orders of the White man does not show them
respect. Though nothing happens to him he cries on his own
account (i.e. his stupidity is his punishment), for it is his
ignorance that moves him. Next—every one who farms let
him pay his tax. Every one who says this man is my slave, or
this woman is my slave, or these people are my slaves, and
uses force against them, let judgment fall upon him. What I
say is this—may God reward us! May God give us peace in
our land! May God give us the abundance of the earth! Amen.
Those who feel joyful can say—‘This is our desire! this is our
desire!’”

After a vain attempt to shake hands with the Emir, our respective
mounts altogether declining to assist, we ride out of the town
escorted by a couple of hundred horsemen. A little way past the
gates we halt while they, riding forward a hundred yards or so,
wheel, and charge down upon us with a shout, reining their horses
with a sudden jerk, so near to us that the ensanguined foam from the
cruel bits bespatters us.
As we ride home to the Residency two miles out of the town,
uppermost in the mind at least of one of us is the fascination of this
strange land, with its blending of Africa and the East, its barbaric
displays, its industrial life, its wonderful agricultural development—
above all, perhaps, the tour de force of governing it with a handful of
White officials and a handful of native troops.
 PART II
SOUTHERN NIGERIA

MAP OF SOUTHERN NIGERIA SHOWING THE THREE PROVINCES.

 CHAPTER I
NIGERIA’S CLAIM UPON PUBLIC ATTENTION

Nigeria is a geographical expression applied to a territory in West

Africa which by successive stages, covering a period of more than
one hundred years, under circumstances widely differing in character
and incentive, and almost wholly as the result of the initial enterprise
of British explorers and merchants, has passed under the protection
of Britain. With the discovery of Nigeria are associated exploits which
for romantic interest and personal achievements hold a prominent
place in British exploring records. The angry swirl of the Bussa
rapids must ever recall the well-nigh superhuman achievements of
Mungo Park, as the marvellous creeks and channels of the Niger
Delta evoke the memory of Richard Lander[2] and John Beecroft.
You cannot visit the Court of the Emir of Kano without
remembering Clapperton’s account of the awkward religious
conundrums with which the gallant sailor, the first European to enter
that fascinating African city, was amazed and confounded by one of
the present Emir’s predecessors; nor ride over the wide and dusty
road into the heart of Hausaland without thinking that but for Joseph
Thomson’s diplomatic tact in negotiating the early treaties with its
potentates, which were to pave the way for the statesmanship of a
Taubman-Goldie and the organising genius of a Lugard, Nigeria
would to-day be the brightest jewel in the West African Empire of the
French. The spirit of MacGregor Laird, the hardy pioneer who laid
the first foundations of British commerce in this country seems to
hover over the broad bosom of the Niger. The marvellous panorama
that unfolds itself before your eyes at Lokoja (the confluence of the
Niger with its tributary the Benue) conjures up the heroism and
tragedy of the Allan-Trotter expedition; while to negotiate in a dug-
out the currents that eddy round the famous ju-ju rock—still termed
Baikie’s Seat—is a reminder that somewhere in the blue depths
below lie the remains of Dr. Baikie’s ill-fated Day-spring.
 This land is, indeed, a land rich in heroic memories to men of
British blood. It is the more astonishing that so little appears to be
known by the general public either of its past or, what is much more
important, of the many complex problems connected with its
administration.

Nigeria is, at present, arbitrarily divided into two units, “Southern”

and “Northern;” the division corresponds with the historical events
which have distinguished the assumption of British control, and is to
that extent inevitable. But to-day, with internal communications and
administrative control rapidly extending, this situation presents many
drawbacks. In the absence of any considered scheme of general
constructive policy laid down at home, the existence of two separate
Governments with ideals necessarily influenced by the personal
idiosyncrasies of frequently changing heads in a territory
geographically united, through which the channels of a singularly
intensive internal trade have flowed for centuries, must of necessity
tend to promote divergencies in the treatment of public questions,
and, therefore, create numerous difficulties for the future. I propose
to deal with this subject in greater detail later on.
JU-JU ISLAND NEAR JEBBA.

(Photo by Mr. E. Firmin.)

 SHIPPING PALM-OIL ON THE NIGER AT HIGH WATER.

Meantime it would seem necessary at the outset to emphasize two

facts which the public mind does not appear to have realized. The
first is that Nigeria, both in size and in population, is not only the
most considerable of our tropical dependencies in Africa, but is the
most considerable and the wealthiest of all our tropical
dependencies (India, of course, excepted). Embracing an area of
332,960 square miles, Nigeria is thus equal in size to the German
Empire, Italy and Holland, while its population, though not yet
ascertained with accuracy, can hardly amount to less than fifteen
millions, being double that of British East Africa and Uganda with
Nyassaland thrown in, and nearly three times as numerous as the
native population comprised in the South African Union. The second
is that nowhere else in tropical or sub-tropical Africa is the British
administrator faced, at least on a large scale, with a Mohammedan
population, already to be counted in millions and increasing year by
year with significant rapidity. Until a few years ago the work of Great
Britain in West Africa, apart from a few trifling exceptions, was
confined to the administration of the Pagan Negro. The position is
very different now. In the southern regions of the Protectorate, where
its progression is a modern phenomenon, Islam is, from the
administrative point of view, a purely social factor. But in the northern
regions, where Mohammedan rule has been established for
centuries, under the Hausas, and in more recent times under the
Fulani, Islam has brought its laws, its taxation, its schools and its
learning. It is there a political as well as a religious and social force,
solidly entrenched. This fact which, administratively speaking, need
not alarm us—unless the Administration is goaded into adopting a
hostile attitude towards its Mohammedan subjects—does, however,
invest Nigeria with an additional interest of its own and does supply a
further reason why the affairs of this greatest of our African
protectorates should receive more intelligent consideration and study
at the hands of the public than it has enjoyed hitherto.
 CHAPTER II
THE NIGER DELTA

What is now known as Southern Nigeria comprises 77,200 square

miles, and includes the whole seaboard of the Nigerian Protectorate,
some 450 miles long, and the marvellous delta region whose
network of waterways and surpassing wealth in economic products
must be seen to be realized. Pursuing its southward course, the
Niger, after its journey of 2,550 miles across the continent from west
to east, bifurcates just below Abo into the Forcados and the Nun.
This is the apex of the delta, and here the Niger is, indeed, majestic.
From each of these main channels of discharge spring countless
others, turning and twisting in fantastic contours until the whole
country is honeycombed to such an extent as to become converted
into an interminable series of islands. The vastness of the horizon,
the maze of interlacing streams and creeks, winding away into
infinity, the sombre-coloured waters, the still more sombre
unpenetrable mangrove forests—here and there relieved by taller
growth—impress one with a sense of awe. There is something
mysterious, unfathomable, almost terrifying in the boundless
prospect, the dead uniformity of colour, the silence of it all. It is the
primeval world, and man seems to have no place therein.
Small wonder that amidst such natural phenomena, where in the
tornado season which presages the rains the sky is rent with flashes
only less terrific than the echoing peals of thunder, where the rushing
wind hurls forest giants to earth and lashes the waters into fury,
where for months on end torrential downpours fall until man has no
dry spot upon which he can place his foot; where nature in its most
savage mood wages one long relentless war with man, racking his
body with fevers and with ague, now invading his farms with furious
spreading plant life, now swamping his dwelling-place—small
wonder the inhabitants of this country have not kept pace with the
progression of more favoured sections of the human race. It is, on
the contrary, astonishing, his circumstances being what they are,
that the native of the Niger delta should have developed as keen a
commercial instinct as can be met with anywhere on the globe, and
that through his voluntary labours, inspired by the necessities and
luxuries of barter, he should be contributing so largely to supply the
oils, fats, and other tropical products which Western industrialism
requires. Trade with the outer world which the merchant—himself
working under conditions of supreme discomfort, and in constant ill-
health—has brought; improved means of communication through the
clearing and mapping of creeks and channels, thereby giving
accessibility to new markets which the Administration is yearly
creating—these are the civilizing agents of the Niger delta, the only
media whereby its inhabitants can hope to attain to a greater degree
of ease and a wider outlook.
The outer fringe of the delta is composed entirely of mangrove
swamps, whose skeleton-like roots rise up from the mud as the tide
recedes, and from whose bark the natives obtain, by burning, a
substitute for salt. For untold centuries the mangrove would appear
to have been encroaching upon the sea, the advance guard of more
substantial vegetation springing up behind it with the gradual
increase of deposits affording root-depth. Apart from the deltaic
system proper, produced by the bifurcation of the Niger and its
subsequent efforts to reach the ocean, the seaboard is pierced by
several rivers, of which the Cross, navigable for stern wheelers of
light draught in the wet season for 240 miles and in the dry for forty,
is the most important. The Benin River links up with the deltaic
system on the east, and on the west with the lagoon system of
Lagos, into which several rivers of no great volume, such as the
Ogun and Oshun, discharge themselves. So continuous and
extensive are these interior waterways that communication by
canoe, and even by light-draught launches, is possible from one end
of the seaboard to the other—i.e., from Lagos to Old Calabar.
The mangrove region is sparsely populated by fishing and trading
tribes. It is curious to come across signs of human life when you
would hardly suspect its possible presence. A gap in the whitened,
spreading roots, a tunnelled passage beyond, a canoe or two at the
opening; or, resting upon sticks and carefully roofed, a miniature hut
open on all sides, in which reposes some votive offering, such are
the only indications that somewhere in the vicinity a village lies
hidden. A visit to some such village holds much to surprise. Diligent
search has revealed to the intending settler that the particular spot
selected contains, it may be a hundred yards or so from the water, a
patch of firm land where, doubtless with much difficulty, a crop of
foodstuffs can be raised, and here he and his family will lead their
primitive existence isolated from the outer world, except when they
choose to enter it on some trading expedition. Further inland
somewhat, as for instance, near the opening of the Warri creek
(whose upper reaches, bordered with cocoanut palms, oil palms, and
ferns, are a dream of beauty), one of the many off-shoots of the
Forcados, where behind the fringe of mangroves the forest has
begun to secure a steady grip, neatly kept and prosperous villages
are more numerous. Their denizens are busy traders and there are
plentiful signs of surface civilization. An expedition in canoes to the
chief of one of these Jekri villages led us from a little landing stage
cut out of the mangroves and cleverly timbered along a beaten path
through smelling mud, alive with tiny crabs and insect life of strange
and repulsive form, into a clearing scrupulously clean, bordered with
paw-paw trees and containing some twenty well-built huts. A large
dug-out was in process of completion beneath a shed; fishing-nets
were hanging out to dry; a small ju-ju house with votive offerings
ornamented the centre of the village green, as one might say; a few
goats wandered aimlessly about, and a score of naked tubby
children gazed open-eyed or clung round their mothers’ knees in
affected panic. Beyond the ju-ju house a one-storeyed bungalow
with corrugated iron roof and verandah unexpectedly reared its ugly
proportions, and before long we were discussing the much vexed
question of the liquor traffic over a bottle of ginger ale across a table
covered by a European cloth, with an intelligent Jekri host, whose
glistening muscular body, naked to the waist, contrasted oddly with
the surroundings. These included a coloured print of the late King
Edward hanging upon the walls in company with sundry illustrated
advertisements all rejoicing in gorgeous frames. The walls of the
vestibule below were similarly adorned, and through a half-open
door one perceived a ponderous wooden bed with mattress, sheets,
pillows, and gaudy quilt (in such a climate!) complete.
 The deltaic region is the real home of the oil palm with its
numerous and still unclassified varieties, although it extends some
distance beyond in proportionately lessening quantities as you push
north. No other tree in the world can compare with the oil palm in the
manifold benefits it confers upon masses of men. Occurring in tens
of millions, reproducing itself so freely that the natives often find it
necessary to thin out the youngest trees, it is a source of
inexhaustible wealth to the people, to the country, to commerce, and
to the Administration. The collection, preparation, transport, and sale
of its fruit, both oil and kernels for the export trade is the paramount
national industry of Southern Nigeria, in which men, women, and
children play their allotted parts. Beautiful to look upon, hoary with
antiquity (its sap was used in ancient Egypt for cleansing the body
before embalment), the oil palm is put to endless uses by the natives
—its leaves and branches as roofing material, for clothing, for the
manufacture of nets, mats, and baskets; its fruit and covering fibre in
various forms for food (not disdained by the resident European in the
famous palm oil chop), for light, for fuel. To the Southern Nigerian
native inhabiting the oil-palm area the tree is, indeed, domestically
indispensable, while its product represents something like 90 per
cent. of his purchasing capacity in trade. How entirely wrong would
be any attempt at restricting his free enjoyment of its bounties needs
no emphasizing. The importance of the export trade in the products
of the oil palm may be gauged by the returns for 1910, which show
that Southern Nigeria exported 172,998 tons of kernels and 76,850
tons of oil, of a total value of no less than £4,193,049; and yet the
capacities of the trade, especially in kernels, are only in their infancy.
[3] Many districts, rich in oil palms are unproductive owing to
inaccessibility of markets or lack of transport; in others which supply
oil, the kernels, for sundry reasons, among which insufficiency of
labour to spare from farming operations no doubt predominates, are
not collected, although it is commonly reckoned that three tons of
kernels should be available for every ton of oil. In considering these
figures, realizing the future potentialities of the trade, and realizing,
too, the truly enormous sum of African labour which it represents
(every nut is cracked by hand to extract the kernel), one cannot but
reflect upon the foolish generalities which ascribe “idleness” to the
West African negro, whose free labour in this trade alone gives
employment directly and indirectly to tens of thousands in England
and in Europe, from the merchant and his clerks, from the steamship
owner and his employés on land and sea, to the manufacturer of
soap and candles and their allied trades; from the coopers who turn
out the casks sent out from England in staves for the conveyance of
the oil, to the Irish peasants who collect the stems of the common
sedge shipped out to Nigeria from Liverpool for caulking these
casks.
The bulk of the oil is exported to England (£1,191,000 value in
1909), but nearly the entire kernel crop goes to Germany, where it is
treated by the big crushing mills. It is possible that this state of affairs
may undergo considerable change within the next decade, and the
reason for it is, incidentally, of considerable economic interest, as it
is of moment to Nigeria. Up to within three or four years ago palm
kernels were crushed and the oil almost entirely used by the soap
trade, but chemistry has now found a process of refining and making
palm-kernel oil edible, as it may, perhaps, do some day for palm oil
itself, as a base for margarine, for which coprah and ground-nut oil
were formerly employed. This has had as a consequence an
enormous widening of the home market, and the soap trade has now
to contend with keen competition for the supply of one of its staples.
The resultant effect is the initiative of Lever Brothers (Limited), who,
finding the need of enlarging and giving increased security to their
supplies of the raw material, are, with commendable enterprise,
erecting three large crushing mills in Southern Nigeria, the one at
Lagos being already in a fair way to completion. If the numerous
difficulties they will have to face are successfully negotiated, the
ultimate result can hardly fail to be that of transferring the
considerable palm kernel crushing industry from the banks of the
Rhine to those of the Niger, besides creating a new export trade in
oil cake from the Niger to England and the Continent.
 CHAPTER III
THE FOREST BELT

Beyond the deltaic region proper lies the vast belt of primeval and
secondary forest of luxurious growth, giant trees, tangled vines and
creepers, glorious flowering bushes, gaudy butterflies, moist
atmosphere, and suffocating heat. Beyond the forest belt again lies,
with recurrent stretches of forest, the more open hilly country, the
beginning of the uplands of the North. When an authority on forestry
recently wrote that “British Columbia is the last great forest reserve
left,” he forgot West Africa. That is what West Africa has continually
suffered from—forgetfulness. The resources of the Nigerian forest
belt are as yet far from being fully determined, but sufficient is now
known of them to show that they are enormously rich. Besides the oil
palm and the wine palm (which produces the piassava of commerce)
the forest belt contains large quantities of valuable mahoganies,
together with ebony, walnut, satin, rose, and pear woods, barwood,
and other dye-woods, several species of rubber, African oak, gums
(copal), kola, and numerous trees suitable to the manufacture of
wood-pulp. Oil-bearing plants abound in great quantities, as do also
fibres, several of which have been favourably reported upon by the
Imperial Institute. The shea-butter tree, to which I shall have
occasion again to refer, is an inhabitant of the dry zone.
 THE TROPICAL BUSH.

The soil of this forest region is wonderfully fertile, and forest

products apart, the possibilities of agricultural development are
considerable. The three articles under cultivation by the natives the
Administration has of late years done its best to popularize have
been cotton, cocoa, and maize. For several reasons maize is an
uncertain quantity. The land bears two crops a year, the larger crops
ripening in July, but a wet August will play havoc with harvesting and
storing arrangements, while the amount available for export must
always depend upon local food requirements and available labour.
The cultivation of cocoa, for which the humid atmosphere, rich
alluvial soil, and abundant shade of the forest region seem peculiarly
suitable, has, on the other hand, steadily, if slowly, increased since it
was started fifteen years ago. In 1900 the quantity of cocoa exported
was valued at £8,622. It had risen in 1910 to £101,151. The efforts
made within the last few years by the British Cotton Growing
Association, supplemented by those of the Administration, to revive
on a large scale the export trade in raw cotton started by the
Manchester manufacturer, Mr. Clegg, at the time of the American
Civil War, has so far been partially, but only partially, successful. The
industry has progressed, but far less rapidly than its promoters
hoped.[4] Things do not move quickly in West Africa. In all these
questions several factors have to be taken into account, for which
sufficient allowance is not made in Europe. For one thing, the really
immense amount of labour which the Nigerian population is already
required to put forth in order to feed itself and to sustain the existing
export trade is not appreciated.
The idea that the native has merely to scratch the earth or watch
the fruit ripening on the trees in order to sustain himself and his
family is, speaking generally, as grotesque an illusion as that he is a
helpless, plastic creature with no will of his own. The native is on the
whole an active, hard-working individual, the ramifications of whose
domestic and social needs involve him in constant journeyings which
absorb much time, and if his soil is prolific in the bearing of crops, it
is equally so in invading vegetation, which has constantly to be
checked. He is also a keen business man and a born trader, as any
European merchant who has dealings with him will bear witness, and
he will turn his attention to producing what pays him best. In that
respect he differs not at all from other sections of the human race
amongst whom the economic sense has been developed, and he
cannot be fairly expected to devote his attention to raising one
particular raw material which a certain home industry may desire, if
he can make larger profits in another direction. The opening up of
the country, the increasing dearness of food supplies in the
neighbourhood of all the great centres, the intensifying commercial
activity and economic pressure so visible on every side, the growth
of population, and the enlargement of the horizon of ideas must
necessarily lead to a steady development in all branches of
production. But the native must be given time, and the country is one
which cannot be rushed either economically or politically.
No sketch, however brief, of the potentialities of the Nigerian forest
belt would be complete without a reference to the labours of the
Forestry Department, which owes its initiation to the foresight and
statesmanship of the late Sir Ralph Moor. Such reference is the
more necessary since the work of the department crystallizes, so to
speak, the conception of its duties towards the native population
which guides the Administration’s policy. No other department of the
Administration reveals so clearly by its whole programme and its
daily practice what the fundamental object of British policy in Nigeria
really is, and in view of the increasing assaults upon that policy by
company promoters at home, on the one hand, and the obstacles to
which its complete realization is subjected in Africa on the other, it is
absolutely essential that public opinion in Britain should become
acquainted with the facts and be in a position to support the Colonial
Office and the Administration in combining equity with
commonsense.
Briefly stated, the Forestry Department is designed to conserve
forest resources for the benefit of the State—the State meaning, in
practice, the native communities owning the land and their
descendants, and the Administration charged with their
guardianship, and while encouraging any legitimate private
enterprise, whether European or native, to oppose the wholesale
exploitation of those resources for the benefit of individuals, white or
black. It aims at impressing the native with the economic value of his
forests as a source of present and continual revenue for himself and
his children; at inducing native communities to give the force of
native law to its regulations and by their assistance in applying them,
to prevent destruction through indiscriminate farming operations and
bush fires, to prevent the felling of immature trees, to replant and to
start communal plantations. It aims at the setting aside, with the
consent of the native owners, of Government reserves and native
reserves, and at furthering industrial development by private
enterprise under conditions which shall not interfere with the general
welfare of the country. In a word, the Forestry Department seeks to
associate the native communities with the expanding values of the
land in which they dwell, so that for them the future will mean
increasing prosperity and wealth, the essence of the policy being
that these communities are not only by law and equity entitled to
such treatment, but that any other would be unworthy of British
traditions. It is what some persons call maudlin sentiment, the sort of
“maudlin sentiment” which stands in the way of the Nigerian native
being expropriated and reduced to the position of a hired labourer on
the properties of concessionnaires under whose patriotic activities
the Nigerian forest would be exploited until it had disappeared from
the face of the earth like the forests of Wisconsin, Michigan,
Minnesota, and Eastern Canada.
Apart from the question of safeguarding the rights of the people of
the land, our wards, the necessity of forest conservation in the
interest of the public weal has been taught by bitter experience, and
experience has also shown that scientific forestry can only be
profitably undertaken by the Government or by bodies whose first
obligation is the interest and protection of the community. The
Forestry Department of Southern Nigeria, short as its existence has
been, is already a revenue-making Department, for in the last ten
years it has either planted, or induced the natives to plant, trees
(some of which, like the rubber trees in Benin, are now beginning to
bear) whose present estimated value is £287,526, and has thus
added over a quarter of a million to the value of the capital stock of
the forests without taking into account the indirect effects of the
steps taken to help their natural regeneration. The Department has
many local difficulties to contend with, especially in the Western
province, which I shall have occasion to discuss in connection with
the general administrative problem facing the administration in that
section of the Protectorate.
 The character of its work necessitates that, in addition to scientific
training in forest lore, those responsible for its direction shall be
possessed of knowledge of native customs and of considerable tact
in conducting negotiations with native authorities, always suspicious
of European interference in anything which touches the question of
tenure and use of land. The Administration is fortunate in possessing
in the Conservator and Deputy-Conservator two men who combine
in a rare degree these dual qualifications. It is but the barest
statement of fact to say that Mr. H. N. Thompson, the Conservator
who went to Southern Nigeria after many years in Burma, enjoys an
international reputation. As an expert in tropical forestry he stands
second to none in the world. His colleague, Mr. R. E. Dennett, has
contributed more than any other European living to our knowledge of
Nigerian folklore, and he understands the native mind as few men of
his generation do. In view of its immense importance to the future of
the country it is very regrettable to have to state that the Forestry
Department is greatly undermanned and its labours curtailed in
many directions by the insufficiency of the funds at its disposal. No
wiser course could be taken by the administration than that of setting
aside a sum of borrowed money to be used, as in the case of the
railways, as capital expenditure on productive forestry work.
 CHAPTER IV
THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN PROVINCES

In connection with the internal government of the Protectorate it

may be advisable to refer briefly to the House Rule Ordinance of
1901 which has recently given rise to some controversy. The House
Rule Ordinance is a measure designed by the late Sir Ralph Moor to
prevent social anarchy from ensuing when slavery was abolished by
the British Government. It gives force of Law to House Rule. House
Rule is, in reality, the native form of government, which has existed
in Southern Nigeria for many centuries. In recognizing the former the
Administration acknowledges the existence of the latter for which it
can provide no substitute. Native society, as already stated, is in the
patriarchal state. The foundation of it is the “Father,” whether of the
family, of the community, or of the tribe. The members of the House
are, in a measure, apprentices. Under native law there are
obligations on both sides. It is a transitional stage, and should be
regarded as such, and allowed to reform itself from within. The one
difficulty, in this respect, is lest the Ordinance should tend to prevent
a gradual internal evolution towards a higher state by sterilizing any
healthy influences making for modification. A much greater danger
would be any sudden change which would throw the whole country
into absolute confusion. In the Western Province and in the Bini
district, where native rule has developed more rapidly than in the
Eastern and Central, the Father of the House is subject to the Father
of the district, and he in turn is subject to the Paramount Chief of the
whole tribe—the Supreme Father. There is, therefore, a check upon
despotic abuses by the head of the House. In the bulk of the Central
Province and in the whole of the Eastern Province, the head of the
House is virtually the head of the community, the higher forms of
internal control not having evolved. Any hasty and violent
interference which domestic “slavery,” as it is termed, in a country
like the Central and Eastern Provinces should be strenuously
opposed. It would be an act of monstrous injustice, in the first place,
if unaccompanied by monetary compensation, and it would produce
social chaos. But there seems to be no reason why the House Rule
Ordinance should not be amended in the sense of substituting for
Paramount Chieftainship therein—which is virtually non-existent—
the District Commissioners, aided by the Native Councils, as a check
upon the now unfettered action of the heads of Houses. To destroy
the authority of the heads would be to create an army of wastrels
and ne’er-do-weels. Native society would fall to pieces, and endless
“punitive expeditions” would be the result.[5]
For purposes of administration Southern Nigeria is divided into
three Provinces, the Eastern (29,056 square miles), with
headquarters at Old Calabar; the Central (20,564 square miles) with
headquarters at Warri; and the Western (27,644 square miles), with
headquarters at Lagos, the seat of Government of the Protectorate.
To the Western Province is attached, as distinct from the
Protectorate, what is termed the “Colony of Lagos,” comprising the
capital and a small area on the mainland—Lagos itself is an island—
amounting altogether to 3,420 square miles. The supreme
government of the three Provinces is carried on from Lagos by the
Governor, assisted by an Executive Council and by a Legislative
Council composed of nine officials and six unofficial members
selected by the Governor and approved by the Secretary of State.
Each Province is in charge of a Provincial Commissioner, although in
the Western Province his duties are more nominal than real. In none
of the Provinces is there a Provincial Council. The Central and
Eastern Provinces are sub-divided into districts in charge of a District
Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner, who govern the country
through the recognized Chiefs and their councillors by the medium of
Native Councils which meet periodically and over which the District
Commissioner or his assistant presides. These Native Councils or
Courts constitute the real administrative machinery of the country.
They administer native law in civil and criminal cases between
natives. They may not, however, except by special provision, deal
with civil cases in which more than £200 is involved, or with criminal
cases of a nature which, under native law, would involve a fine
exceeding £100 or a sentence of imprisonment exceeding ten years
with or without hard labour, or a flogging exceeding fifteen strokes.