Antisemitism as a political strategy and the development of democracy
Results
We understand parliamentary debates as democratic controversies that should also be analysed as such.[1] However, within the academic literature on democracy and parliaments little attention has been paid to the analysis of such debates. This has left a gap in the research that we have not only reconstructed and explained at the level of the history of ideas[2] but also partially closed through the integrated use of different social scientific and linguistic approaches.[3]
For the purpose of the analyses, we developed a concept of democracy that highlights conflict as the central moment of parliamentary debate. In order to underpin this focus on conflict, a radical democratic approach drawing on the works of Jacques Rancières was selected and developed as an analytical concept.[4] This concept of democracy focuses on rhetoric and gives rise to a normative definition of democracy as a speech event with (democratic) equality as its guiding principle. Finally, this emancipatory understanding of democracy enables a classification of parliamentary debates – or rather the contributions to them - based on their attitude to antisemitic rhetoric.
In relation to the thesis of the disappearance of antisemitism as a political strategy in Parliament - regarded as a place where the limits of the publicly sayable are defined - we found confirmation that antisemitism no longer functions as a “general strategy”. It emerged that antisemitism as a political strategy underwent a radical transformation in the immediate postwar period. The drawing of a distinction in parliamentary rhetoric between “emigrants” and “stayers” served to mitigate political divisions[5], entrench the idea of a consensus democracy and anchor the model of social partnership, the “consociational” model[6]. The tabooing of antisemitism in public discourse took effect only gradually. However, from the mid-1950s onwards the use of antisemitic rhetoric was rendered increasingly problematic so that it almost/ gradually ceased to function as a strategic tool.
Although the use of antisemitism as a political strategy in Parliament was visibly discredited, we were nonetheless able to identify forms of the treatment of antisemitism with strategic significance:
1. The denial and/or downplaying of the existence of antisemitism in society and politics. This strategy was used primarily in relation to the “outside world” (i.e. the Allies) and reflected the grand-coalitional consensus. So, while antisemitic prejudices were still openly expressed in the semi-public sphere of the Ministerial Council in 1946, they tended to be concealed or articulated subliminally in the plenary debates – i.e. when the Allies were watching.[7] Individual cases of public antisemitic utterances by members of Parliament and other political representatives support the view that antisemitism as a “private attitude” remained tolerated for a long time.[8] The need to avoid giving the “outside world” the impression that there is antisemitism in Austria has remained active throughout the Second Republic and has quite often been turned against people who have drawn attention to antisemitism by denouncing it.[9]
2. Another strategy is that of accusing political opponents of antisemitism (whether justifiably or not) in order to call their democratic credentials into question or promote one’s own priorities. Thus, for example, the accusation of “incitement” can be linked to Nazi propaganda and antisemitism, thereby imputing an anti-democratic mentality to political opponents.[10] Similarly, under the ÖVP-FPÖ government, the opposition attempted to make a major issue out of an antisemitic utterance (by Jörg Haider about Ariel Muzicant), probably with the aim of intensifying EU pressure on the government.[11]
3. An ostentatious distancing from antisemitism or even a turn to “philosemitism” has also served as a strategy for democratic self-presentation and a means of deflecting accusations of antisemitism. Instead of reproaching “emigrants” for their lack of love of country and cowardice, since 1980s their “devotion” to Austria and heroic efforts on its behalf have been praised.[12] In relation to the development of democracy in Austria, we show that the treatment of antisemitism in Parliament has regularly been connected to debates about the state of democracy. This has confirmed our hypothesis that research into antisemitism would also yield insights into the democratic political culture of Austrian parliamentarianism. Through the analysis of plenary debates, shifts in the boundaries of the publicly sayable can be identified.
4. An aggressive repudiation of accusations of antisemitism serves as a counter-strategy to widen the boundaries of the “publicly sayable” with regards to antisemitism again. Those who accuse a political opponent of antisemitism are in response attacked as anti-democratic. They are alleged to be using moralistic posturing to avoid addressing real political arguments. Example: The “Nazi/fascism cudgel”.
In the early years of the Second Republic (1945 – mid-1950s), a relatively large number of, often uncoded, antisemitic statements were still being uttered in Parliament. Moreover, so-called “Nazi jargon” was also sometimes used unthinkingly and unopposed. This changed at the latest during the phase of political transformation of the 1960s, with the crisis of the Coalition and the first single-party (ÖVP) government in 1966. Antisemitic utterances in Parliament would henceforth be sanctioned and generally deemed antidemocratic.[13] By the early 1970s we find that the taboo on antisemitism in the National Assembly is already effective. Thus, an instance of antisemitic heckling in 1972 led to uproar in the plenum.[14] The new sensitivity to speech in Parliament went hand in hand with social changes. This also affected Parliament’s approach to Nazi jargon and coded antisemitism, leading to a perceptible tightening of the limits of the sayable in the second half of the 1980s. This resulted, among other things, in the increasing use of the rhetorical strategy of “calculated ambivalence” defined by Josef Klein and Ruth Wodak as the use of ambiguous speech in order to test the limits of the sayable. Moreover, there have been cases of politicians strategically overstepping the boundaries in order to present themselves as “taboo-breakers”.
The issue of the development of democracy also comes to the fore in implicit and explicit controversies about the concept of democracy. The project therefore also investigates parliamentarians’ competing understandings of democracy and in particular the related rhetorical constructions of the people whether as demos or nation[15]. We found that the democratic ideal of non-essentialist pluralism and equality is only rarely met and that Jews, in particular, have not been equally included.[16]
Moreover, the analyses show that exclusion from the Austrian demos often takes place rhetorically through intersectionally related categories. Understandings of demos and democracy are often expressed in gendered metaphors that express allegedly essential inequalities, legitimate exclusion and load “we” constructions with specific meanings.[17] Thus, in plenary debates about the Austrian neutrality law, the “Austrians” were presented as an especially peace-loving nation, which, nonetheless, also meets the standards of heroic manliness.[18] Antisemitic stereotypes, which until the mid-50s were quite often openly expressed, are based on precisely the same ethnically homogeneous and masculinist self-conception to which the right-wing parties now also currently hark back. In theoretical terms, this is rooted in Schmitt’s definition of the political as constituted by the friend-enemy distinction and sharpens the implicit connection of membership in the Volk with the readiness to fight, i.e. manliness.[19]
In the 1990s Austrian parliamentary debates increasingly referred to the concept of a “democracy that can defend itself” (“militant democracy”) which created a nexus between the understanding of democracy and the construct of a “political centre”.[20] In this period, a definition of the demos emerges that places it in opposition to an elite (“establishment”) and calls representative democracy into question. In contrast to this, since the very beginning of the Second Republic understandings of democracy and demos that emphasize participation and gender-neutrality have also found expression in Parliament. Such ideas were expressed by, among others, Jewish re-emigrants such as Marianne Pollak and Shella Hanzlik.[21] Here we find the articulation inside Parliament of the same/a similar? emancipatory understandingof democracy and demos that underpins our analytical concept.
References to project publications
[1] Löffler, Marion/Palonen, Kari (forthcoming), ‘Editorial: Parliamentary debates: a style of democratic politics’, in: Parliaments, Estates and Representation.
[2] Bechter, Nicolas (forthcoming) ‘The Parliament as a Research Object in German Political Science’, in: Parliaments, Estates and Representation.
[3] Nicolas, Bechter (forthcoming): Politikwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf Debattenanalysen am Beispiel von Antisemitismus im österreichischen Nationalrat, Univ.-Diss, Universität Wien.
[4] Löffler, Marion: Rancière in Parliament: Practicing Democracy in Plenary Debates, in: Parliaments, Estates, and Representation (in review).
[5] Bechter, Nicolas (2017), ‘Die Zweite Republik als Gründung der Parteien: Das Lagerstraßenkollektiv’, in: Saskia Stachowitsch und Eva Kreisky (Eds.): Jüdische Identitäten und antisemitische Politiken im österreichischen Parlament 1861-1933, Böhlau, Wien, 276-282.
[6] Bischof, Karin (forthcoming), ‘Austrian postwar consensus and anti-Semitism – rhetorical strategies, exclusionary patterns and constructions of the “demos” in parliamentary debates’, in: Journal of Language and Politics.
[7] Löffler, Marion (2017), ‘Restitution: Wiedergutmachung übersetzt in die Sprachen der Alliierten. Antisemitische Konnotationen einer Begriffsdebatte’, in Katharina Prager und Wolfgang Straub (Eds.), Bilderbuch-Heimkehr? Remigration im Kontext, Arco Wissenschaft, Wuppertal, 203-216.
[8] Nicolas, Bechter (forthcoming), ‘Politikwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf Debattenanalysen am Beispiel von Antisemitismus im österreichischen Nationalrat’, Univ.-Diss, Universität Wien.
[9] Bechter/Bischof/Löffler (forthcoming), Antisemitismus als politische Strategie und die Entwicklung der Demokratie: Debatten im österreichischen Parlament nach 1945.
[10] Löffler, Marion (2016), ‘Incitement. A Weapon of Militant Democracy and a Rhetorical Fighting Word’. Paper presented at the ECPR General Conference, 7 – 10 September 2016, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.
[11] Bischof, Karin/Löffler, Marion (2016), ‘Gendered Political Rhetoric of “Change” in Austrian Conservative Right-wing “Wenderegierung”’. Paper presented at the conference, Political Masculinities as Agents of Change, Interdisciplinary Conference, 9-11 December 2016, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK.
[12] Bischof, Karin (2017), ‘”Emigranten” und die Konstruktion des österreichischen Demos in Parlamentsdebatten nach 1945’, in Katharina Prager und Wolfgang Straub (Eds.): Bilderbuch-Heimkehr? Remigration im Kontext, Arco Wissenschaft, Wuppertal, 191-202.
[13] Bechter, Nicolas/Bischof, Karin/Löffler, Marion (2017), ‘Kontinuitäten und Brüche zwischen Erster und Zweiter Republik’, in Saskia Stachowitsch und Eva Kreisky (Eds.), Jüdische Identitäten und antisemitische Politiken im österreichischen Parlament 1861-1933, Böhlau: Wien, 269-275, here 272f.
[14] Löffler, Marion/Bechter, Nicolas (2015), ‘Anti-Semitism as a Political Strategy in the Austrian “Nationalrat”: The Critical Discourse-Historical Approach in Parliamentary Debate Analysis’. Paper presented at the ECPR General Conference, Université de Montréal 26 - 29 August 2015.
[15] Löffler, Marion (2017), ‘Österreichische Nation und Eigenstaatlichkeit’, in Saskia Stachowitsch und Eva Kreisky (Eds.): Jüdische Identitäten und antisemitische Politiken im österreichischen Parlament 1861-1933, Böhlau, Wien, 282-293.
[16] Bischof, Karin (2017), ‘Juden und Jüdinnen als Teil des österreichischen Demos’, in Saskia Stachowitsch und Eva Kreisky (Eds.), Jüdische Identitäten und antisemitische Politiken im österreichischen Parlament 1861-1933, Böhlau, Wien, 293-300.
[17] Bischof, Karin/Löffler, Marion (2015), ‘The gendered construction of the Demos: Parliamentary debates on the Integration of former Nazis into Austrian citizenship 1945 – 1929’. Paper presented at the 4th European Conference on Politics and Gender, 2015 June 11-13 Uppsala, Sweden.
[18] Löffler, Marion (forthcoming), ‘Neutral masculinity: an analysis of parliamentary debates on Austria’s neutrality law’, in Men and Masculinities.
[19] Bischof, Karin (forthcoming). ‘Austrian postwar consensus and anti-Semitism – rhetorical strategies, exclusionary patterns and constructions of the “demos” in parliamentary debates’, in Journal of Language and Politics.
[20] Bischof, Karin (2016), ‘Loewenstein's Concept of 'Militant Democracy' and its Use. Austrian postwar parliamentary Rhetoric and its underlying Concepts of Demos and Democracy’. Paper presented at the ECPR General Conference, 7 – 10 September 2016, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.
[21] Karin, Bischof/Löffler, Marion (2016), ‘Das (frauen)politische Engagement jüdischer Remigrantinnen und Parliamentarierinnen – Marianne Pollak und Hella Hanzlik’. Paper presented at the conference, The Migration of Political Thought. Austrian Jewish Socialist Émigré(e)s between Exile and Homeland (1933-1955), 14-15 November 2016, Verein für die Geschichte der ArbeiterInnenbewegung, Wien.
