The deputy Bavarian Prime Minister Hubert “Hubsi” Aiwanger is known for rough sayings and shirt-sleeved actions. At a demo against the heating plans for the Berlin traffic lights last Saturday in Erding, he was once again in top form, as can be read in the media: “Now the point has been reached where the silent majority of this country must finally take democracy back.” , thunderous applause from the screaming minority, and that one had to “drive these Berlin chaos around”.
The original text comes from Alexander Gauland 2017: “We will hunt them. We will take back our country and our people.” One can assume that with his agitation, Aiwanger did not call for the state elections in Bavaria in the fall and for Söder to be voted out of office, after all, he is not one of the “Berlin chaotic people”. Like Gauland and other would-be revolutionaries, Aiwanger uses the populist topos “We down there against those up there”. Only: Aiwanger is one of those “up there”. As mentioned above, he is the deputy prime minister of Bavaria.
The charge against elites who would pull the strings of power against the people is an ideologue that demagogues have always used. Interestingly, it works regardless of whether the person using it belongs to the powerful elite themselves. “I am your voice”, it also worked for Trump, the billionaire in the swank palace of Mar a Lago as the voice of the people. It’s not about truth or the development of concrete political alternatives, but about marking territory, about exclusion, about division, or in a word: about identitarian politics.
One may think what one wants of the traffic light government’s heating plans, but the fact that the traffic light was democratically elected in the 2021 federal election and that Aiwanger’s election victory was not “stolen” should not, despite all the desirable arguments about the right way to deal with the climate change are not in question.
The Süddeutsche writes today, “Söder has chained himself to Aiwanger. (…) ‘Flesh of flesh’, as they always say (…), but their flesh is slowly starting to smell. And the smell is now hanging in Söder’s clothes too. At the moment, identitarian political patterns are booming, and so are the well-known territorial markings. Some travel to De Santis and say proudly that they share his assessments, the simpler minds plagiarize Gauland. Some complain about the smell, others enjoy it. You may win elections with it at the moment, but problems are not solved that way.