German state elections confound the pundits

And the politics of (not) knowing who we are.

Recent elections in the German states of Thuringia and Saxony – both in the former East Germany – have caused predictable angst in the media about “the far right”.

The headlines feature results of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party which narrowly won the most votes in Thuringia (with 34.4%) and came a close second in Saxony (30.7%) behind the conservative Christian Democrats.

Equally perplexing, however, has been the sudden rise of a new left-wing party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), named after its charismatic leader – who’s been described as “a cult figure in eastern Germany”. In those two states, BSW scored 15.6% and 12%, coming third by taking votes off the Left Party and the Social Democrats.

AfD and BSW have a few things in common. They’re both against immigration and against the politics of diversity. They want to conserve and secure their traditional communities. They downplay climate policies. And they’re both soft on Putin and unwilling to lend further military support to Ukraine. As you might expect, however, the left-wing BSW is stronger on welfare policy and on raising taxes than the AfD.

AfD’s Thuringian leader, Björn Höcke, denies being a neo-Nazi, but there is documented evidence for it, at least by association.

With a Marxist education, Wagenknecht is strongly critical of capitalism and inequality. She’s clearly got no time for the “self-righteous” left.

The relative successes of these parties in states of the former East Germany build on a resentment of being “left behind” relative to other regions. There’s also a different sense of what “democracy” means, given the heritage of a Moscow-aligned communist regime that was in place for over 40 years. There’s little evidence that many people there want to return to Soviet-style communism, though. The appeal of populism comes from a sense that western representative government isn’t as “democratic” as it’s made out to be. Hence there’s a reaction against it, with a demand for more direct democracy (referendums) from those who are struggling economically. Representative government, which tends towards elitism, is often at odds with democracy, and many people in Germany and elsewhere are attracted to leaders who – to their ears – “say it how it is”.

When Germany was reunited after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, things were supposed to work out differently. East Germans would enjoy the freedom and prosperity of a liberal-democratic system and vote mainly for the traditional Christian Democratic or Social Democratic parties. The people of the former East and West would “grow together”. Things don’t always go according to plan, however. As one commentator has put it, east Germany “now claims the right to assert its own distinct identity”.

The Puzzle of Identity

This next part is a bit theoretical, but it might help explain some of things that are troubling us politically today, like the above.

There are three dimensions to the puzzling politics of identity. What we call “identity politics” occupies two of those:

A political push for diversity, or the inclusion of multiple “identities”. This tends nowadays to be more left-wing, but centre-right policies also favour diversity and immigration, for economic reasons.

A political push to preserve one kind of “identity”, or tradition or “our thing”, to the exclusion of new arrivals, settlers or troublesome minorities. This tends to be owned nowadays by the right (or far-right, e.g., Generation Identity), but trade unions and labour-friendly politicians sometimes oppose immigration, as does the BSW in Germany.

The third dimension is the identification of individuals, routinely through documents like birth certificates and passports, and now with digital tools such as face recognition. This is political, not just personal, because the state has to record “who you are” for administrative purposes including voting, and it has to guard against fakes and frauds.

At the heart of this is a contradiction in the way we talk about “identity”.

If we take the third dimension above, my “identity” is unique to me. I need to establish that it’s me (the one and only RealMe) who’s accessing my bank account or crossing a border, and not someone impersonating me.

The paradox lies in the fact that this unique status is established through features common to others.

My passport identifies me by reference to gender, nationality, date of birth, place of birth – none of which is unique to me. Not even my name is unique, as others may have it too. Personal names are proper nouns chosen from a large set of options found in our language. The passport itself is officially the property of the government. It’s not “mine”.

Apparently my DNA is unique – or the chance that an unrelated person has the same DNA profile is so low that it’s considered impossible. The puzzle of what we mean by “identity”, however, is illustrated by “identical” or monozygotic twins. They have the same DNA, they look alike, and hence they’re called “identical”, and yet they’re two persons with distinct names and “identities”. Face recognition machines can tell them apart – just like their mothers can. Together they’re identical; apart they’re two identities.

Mathematically, 2+2=4 is a relation of identity, as 2+2 and 4 have the same value, and yet they’re visibly different. Two red cubes that look alike may be described as “identical” when side by side, but they’re distinct objects that exist apart.

Does “identity” belong to one unique thing or person, or does it refer to the relations between things or persons that share some important features? Or both at once?

This gets messy when we talk about “identity politics”. “My identity” might be attributed to “my” gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, and/or other social-group categories. These are characteristics shared by millions of other people, with whom I supposedly belong, but whom I may not resemble. And none of these descriptors is unique to me.

This becomes a political problem if we misrepresent a person’s needs or opinions on the grounds of “their identity”. The individual can differ from the majority of the group to which they ostensibly belong. And the social group itself may be misrepresented.

“Identity” refers to two opposites: unique personhood and shared characteristics.

How do we get past this paradox of “identity”? It’s not that hard.

The abstract noun “identity” gets used literally, as if it were an inner ID card that we carry around.

Instead, I suggest thinking practically about how we act as identifiable persons in different situations and, at the same time, how we identify or belong with others, as members of groups. Finding ways to belong means differentiating ourselves from other groups, and that’s how a lot of politics happens. Opposing others demonstrates where I belong. And the names that identify groups are often supplied by their detractors or opponents.

I didn’t “have an identity”, all on my own, aside from being in a society. Other people named me, before I even knew who I was. I acquired self-awareness through interaction with others.

Identification is a relational and mutual process. We can look at it as mutual recognition – by which we develop as self-aware individuals, recognise others as such, and establish how we belong with or differ from one another.

But mutual recognition isn’t complete or perfect, and we do a lot of mis-recognition. We don’t fully hear others, we make assumptions about them, we feel afraid of them, and so we get into discrimination and conflict. Other people’s different ways may appear to us as threatening or offensive – realistically or not.

The idea of “identity” is a kind of after-thought – and not always a very helpful one – that emerges from those social interactions. While we need stable “identities” just to get a bank account and a job, the “card-carrying” model obscures the social interaction that produces them. It can solidify and exaggerate political differences.

If you’ve ever felt perplexed by identity politics, I hope this helps. The politics won’t stop happening, but “identity” is a paradox we can side-step.