Zur anachronistischen Wiederkehr des Antiimperialismus – Manichäismus, Autoritarismus und Antisemitismus in roten Gruppen. Vortrag mit Luise Henckel

In the organizer's words:

There is currently much speculation about the return of left-wing authoritarian groups whose vocabulary and appearance are diametrically opposed to the anti-authoritarian, anti-fascist consensus of the 21st century. In view of the decades that have passed since the slogans that drone out from those ranks, the persistence but also the apparent attractiveness of the anti-imperialist logic for a young generation may seem surprising at first glance.

However, anachronism has always been part of the rhetoric of anti-imperialism: Even in the conceptual-historical heyday of the early 1970s, the movement-logical self-designation had little to do with the Marxist critique of historical imperialism, but was rather already an interpretative term for the contemporary geopolitical situation, stripped of its claim to analysis. Ironically, today's use appears even more oblivious to history when current criticism of neo-imperialism by China or Russia, for example, is completely absent from these ranks and instead a Manicheanism between good and bad peoples is allowed to resurface. What should also not be missing is a romanticization of the working class and the reduction of criticism of the state and capital to personified approaches to explaining the world.

The fact that this perpetuates anti-Semitic tropes and ideas of redemption, which had already accompanied the anti-imperialist left's turn towards the glorification of ethnicity, does not require much theoretical reflection. However, the fact that anti-Semitism in contemporary anti-imperialism is not just a dragged along anachronism, but also - through the adoption of postmodern theoretical set pieces and contemporary "sloganization" - a processing of current late-modern conditions, albeit in an abbreviated form, often remains underexposed.
It could well be debated whether we are currently dealing with an actual return of such neo-guerrillas or whether the ideologems and forms of organization that have been dragged along have never actually left the left completely. Does this mean that the current boom is an expression of left-wing disorientation, a symptom of crisis or rather a successful concept of a political activism based on commodification, which only proves to be (left-wing) radical in its rhetoric and real in its anti-Semitism?
The lecture attempts to trace the current articulations of left-wing authoritarianism - in its martial-masculine as well as its collective-culturalist form of expression - historically and socially. The focus will be on the explanation for its persistence as well as the question of what this means for contemporary anti-fascist theory and practice.

Luise Henckel studied political science, cultural studies and political theory, currently works at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main and is doing her doctorate at the University of Halle on Jewish emancipation in the 19th century. She publishes and lectures on early critical theory, materialist state theory and (left-wing) anti-Semitism.

This event is part of the Action Weeks against Anti-Semitism and is sponsored by the AStA of the University of Cologne. Information on the series can be found at https://www.instagram.com/bga_koeln and https://bga-koeln.tumblr.com.