Things seem to be different this time around. The current year, 2024, is unlike the year 1934 when Hitler solidified his fascist power ending democracy. Neither is it like 1939, the year when Hitler’s troops marched into Poland starting World War II.

This year is also fundamentally different for many German corporations. Unlike 90 years ago, German capitalism today does not seem to support the far right, the AfD, and right-wing extremists. In fact, the opposite is the case.

In historical terms, there used to be a strong link between Nazism and capitalism. Back in Nazi-Führer Adolf Hitler’s regime – the 1930s and 1940s – one of the victims of Nazism and leading representatives of critical theory or Frankfurt School – Max Horkheimer – said in 1939,

Whoever is not willing to talk about capitalism

should also keep quiet about fascism.

Today, there is quite a different link between Germany’s far right and capitalism. In recent months, millions of people have been rallying all over Germany against the far right. The two most significant banners were: “No thanks! Never again!” and “Never again is now!” 

Evidently, even German capitalism is convinced that anyone who votes for the AfD, risks their job.

Indeed, we can not learn only from history, for history does not repeat itself. As – logically speaking – history can never repeat itself. For example, philosophers like to argue that when you jump into a cold river the second time, it is not the same as the first time because you already know what it feels like. 

The same applies to history. In the USA, for example, the upcoming 2024 presidential election is not the same as the 2020 election. If history was to repeat itself, Biden would win, and Trump would lose in the 2024 election. But there is no automatism in history. 

However, there is also the well-known dictum that, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In other words, those who do not remember the 6^th of January 2021, are condemned to repeat Trump’s attempt to destroy American democracy. 

Yet, with no automatism towards a historical progress of humanity, there can indeed be reasonable doubts about the improvement of humanity that underlies the philosophy of history. This applies to Germany in 1933, and as it does in 2024. 

Not just for historical reasons, many – in fact, almost all – German companies are supporting an advertising campaign and the rallies that took, and still take, a stand against Germany’s far right, right-wing populists, Neo-Nazis, and the AfD. 

These rallies emerged after the now infamous Neo-Nazis Potsdam meeting in November 2023. The secret conference planned the deportation of millions of people not fitting the far right’s idée fixe of an Aryan Volksgemeinschaft. 

German companies are supporting democracy against the far right out of self-interest. And this, too, is reassuring. Even leading German newspapers like Handelsblatt, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Tagesspiegel, WirtschaftsWoche, and the weekly Die Zeit have been launching campaigns against the far right. 

Beyond that, more than 500 large and small companies, public foundations, the powerful Bundesbank (federal reserve bank), and business associations are also taking part – even celebrities and mega-stars like Helene Fischer.

From Adidas to Zeiss, all well-known corporations are part of the fight against Germany’s right-wing extremists. Meanwhile, German publishing houses are providing advertising spaces free of charge for the pro-democracy and anti-far right campaigns. 

The original initiators of the corporate advertising campaign have assembled a rather remarkable range of companies in Germany that support the anti-AfD stance. 

These companies strongly reject the plan of Germany’s far right to deport millions of people from Germany. The far right calls their plan to eliminate anyone not fitting into its Herrenmenschen (the infamous master race) ideology: “remigration”.

In reality, the far-right deportation plan means the forced banishment of spouses, friends, soccer players, acquaintances, lovers, neighbours, and colleagues at work. Set against this is the slogan, Never again is Now! Among others were:

• we have learned from history; 
• do not forget, we are all human;
• we are colourful not brown; 
• we stand together for an open country; 
• we are not manipulated by right-wing propaganda; 
• we already know where this can lead; and, 
• the AfD is brown and smells like shit – brown (e.g. brown-shirts) was Hitler’s colour. 

Unlike the hand-written poster at anti-far-right rallies, sentences of such clarity were not necessarily to be expected from managers of the German companies. Nonetheless, German capitalism is clear. It rejects the far right. Up until recently, entrepreneurs and German corporations have been hiding behind their business associations. 

For example, the CEO of German chemical giant BASF did not want to challenge the far right directly. The task of openly challenging the AfD was assigned to the president of the business organisation, the BDI – the powerful Association of German Industries.

In early 2024, the BDI’s Siegfried Russwurm announced, the AfD is bad for our country. In recent weeks, a kind of rethinking has been taking place among German CEOs and corporations. German capital made it very clear when saying, that the AfD is not acting in the interest of companies and corporations. 

On the downswing, it was not always certain if corporate representatives that produce consumer goods or sell them, are openly opposing the AfD. After all, some of their customers are AfD supporters. 

They thought – and some still think – that they cannot afford to oppose the AfD. This is how one can sum up the reactions of corporate CEOs, only a few years ago. 

Today, it is still striking to see who stays away from the broad anti-far right and anti-AfD advertising campaign of businesses. These businesses and corporate CEOs stick to their old logic. For example, food discounters like Aldi, Lidl, and Kaufland refused to be included. 

If you go shopping at the discount stores, even when it comes to political offerings, PR-managers of supermarket chains responsible for public relations feel that they are working for a corporation – not for politics. 

In one case, a CEO of a cosmetics company explains this logic: PR consultants have warned not to publicly oppose the political convictions of roughly 20% of Germans – those who support the AfD, according to recent public polling. 

Germany’s right-supporting clientele is about 15% in the western parts of Germany, and up to 34% in the former East-Germany. 

The boss of several Edeka supermarket stores in the East-German states of Saxony, Bavaria, and Thuringia, for example, recently got down on his knees in front of his customers. 

For his advertising brochure with the inscription “For Democracy – against Nazis”, he incurred what, even in Germany is now called a shitstorm. After that, he was prompted to the following explanation, which was partly caused by the infamous shitstorm:

through the exchange with our customers,

I learned that many more people identify

with the word Nazi than I thought.

Meanwhile, the attitudes of Mr Schwarz (Lidl, Kaufland) and the Albrecht brothers (Aldi) seem to be not too concerned with the far right, Neo-Nazis, and the AfD. Because, for them, it is about “cash – not courage”.

Simultaneously, there are corporate supports for the far right and the AfD. These businessmen have great sympathies and offer substantial support for the right-wing AfD. 

One of whom is the CEO of Müllermilch. There is no speculation about Mr Müller’s far right agenda. Worse, Theo Müller sees AfD-mini-Führer and officially labelled Nazi bitch – Alice Weidel – as a friend. Müller says, she often comes to visit.

Yet, these are isolated cases. Overall, times have changed and to the detriment of the AfD. The widely supported anti-far-right campaign of German companies makes that clear. 

Today, German companies have taken a stance against the AfD. Many in Germany understand the difference in today’s rejection of the far right and the AfD when compared to the support for the old fascist Nazi Party of the 1930s.

In the 1930s, the NSDAP was massively supported by Germany’s then dominant capital faction. Virtually all of Germany’s companies and large corporations, many of those that we still know today, chipped in during the 1930s. There are even corporations that financed Hitler’s Nazis – big time. 

Some of these corporations and their CEOs became what today is known as Nazi Billionaires. There is a rather long list of corporations that supported the Nazis.

Yet, today, things are very different from the 1930s and 1940s. In 2024, German companies are almost unanimously opposed to the far-right and the AfD. There are no longer any Nazi Ruhr barons who once offered financial and political support for Germany’s far right. 

Instead, since the 1950s, German industrialists of, for example, coal and steel plants have been forced to recognise trade unions and collective agreements. The achievements of the Revolution of 1918/19 were – to some extent, at least – during the 1950s: reinstated works councils and returned co-determination. 

Before all that, German capitalism had financed Hitler’s Nazi party in order to eliminate Germany’s once mighty labour movement. Hitler dutifully delivered what he had promised German businesses – with all the Nazi brutality, violence, torture, and murder the SA could muster. In other words, Germany’s capital got what it had ordered and paid for.

Yet, beyond German corporations financing Hitler, not all who believed Nazi propaganda were convinced by rational arguments. Many more believed the “sellers of hate” as they stimulated a mental centre with their anger, hate, and fear mongering. 

In the face of this, it seems that Germany’s educational-based system with its focus on rationality seemingly remained powerless to the challenges of Nazi propaganda.

For those who can be reached by fascist propaganda, the existential catastrophe that fascist politics propagates is a misbelief that is stored rather deeply in the authoritarian German family. In other words, Nazi propaganda triggers an interest in self-preservation that seems to be more helpful than any reference to a moral code. In short, fear overrides ethics – even in the country of Kant, Hegel, Gadamer, Schiller, Fichte, and Scheler. 

The propaganda of fear works particularly well with the external enemy that came in the form of communism and Jews (then) and comes in the form of Muslims and migrants (today).

Meanwhile, today’s advertising campaign and the mass rallies directed against the AfD have already helped to unsettle the AfD, and its three key Führers – the staunchly Neo-Nazi Höcke, the Swiss lesbian Weidel, and clueless Chrupalla. 

Self-evidently, the AfD’s propaganda is filled with fear. Worse, this fear does not disappear in the voting booths. To crank up fear, the AfD never grows tired of hyping up a so-called impending economic crisis – a remake of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West or Untergang des Abendlandes. 

Spengler was one of the chief ideologists of the so-called Conservative Revolution. He was a “respectable pedigree” to Nazi ideology. It ended with Auschwitz.

Yet, German entrepreneurs and employers want to ensure the existence of their businesses as well as capitalism. To them, the AfD’s economic policies are a threat to their businesses. Hence, they see the AfD as an existential threat. Recently, Volkswagen’s boss, Matthias Müller, called the AfD “right-wing extremist”. 

The VW CEO challenged the carefully constructed but utterly propagandistic self-image of the AfD. The AfD likes to make people believe that the AfD is just a normal conservative party and not an outright Neo-Nazi party.

Similarly, the president of Germany’s mighty Automobile Association “VDA” (e.g. VW, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Audi, etc.) – Hildegard Müller – called upon all German companies to stand up against right-wing extremism, and to act for democracy and the rule of law. 

Similarly, by mid-March 2024, nuts and bolts’ billionaire Würth had issued a public appeal against the AfD.

The vast majority of corporate bosses in Germany believe that anyone voting for the AfD, risks their own job. In addition, German CEOs are strongly convinced that voting for the AfD will lead to economic suicide. This is based on three arguments:

1. Exiting the European Union: 

German industry is convinced that, what the AfD calls “Dexit”, i.e. Germany’s exiting from the EU will wreck the industry. By leaving the EU – as Brexit has shown most dramatically – will inevitably lead to economic decline, just as it did in the UK. For Germany, the EU is the main market. It is even more important compared to the UK hence, losing this market would devastate the German industry.    

2. The Euro – Europe’s Currency:

The second hit on Germany’s economy would be the AfD’s plan to exit the European currency and the EU’s monetary system, to return to the Deutsche Mark. This, too, would hit Germany’s economy hard as it would severely diminish Germany’s exports to other European countries.

3. Labour Shortage:

Given Germany’s changing demographics with the rise of an aging society, for months, there has been a debate about the acute shortage of skilled workers in the country. In other words, the plan of Germany’s far right and the AfD to deport 13.4 Million non-Germans would exacerbate Germany’s labour shortage.

All in all, German capitalism, companies, corporations, businesses, and CEOs are terrified by the rise of the AfD. Unlike in 1933, today’s Neo-Nazis, the far right, right-wing extremists, and above all, the AfD are not supported by German capitalism. Unlike the secret Hitler and corporate bosses’ meeting of 20^th February 1933, today, German industry takes the extreme opposite position. 

Finally, and unlike the Nazi’s Freundeskreis Reichsführer SS of 1932, in 2024, there is no friendship between German capitalism and Germany’s far right AfD. 

After 90 years, German capitalism has truly understood that the future is not to be found in conquering Lebensraum and the glorious Herrenrasse but in economics, trade, commercial exchanges, and markets. 

As a consequence, German capitalism is dead set against the AfD, particularly after the secretly-held AfD-Neo-Nazi meeting which planned the mass deportation of all non-Germans.

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