Issue 62 / September 2025
eds. Michaela Conen, Daniel Laufer, Dorothee Richter

Let’s Talk About… Anti-Democratic, Anti-Queer, Misogynist, Antisemitic, Right-Wing Spaces and Their Counter-Movements

There is a global movement towards authoritarian, patriarchal ideologies that are misogynistic, queerphobic, xenophobic and, last but not least, antisemitic. This involves resorting to strange, ideologically charged, twisted narratives that ignore differentiations, contradictions and historical events – fuelled by algorithms in favour of closed worldviews. This happens not only in authoritarian states, dictatorships and kleptocracies (see Russia), but also – disguised as social movements – in neoliberal democracies. The tolerance of ambiguity called for by Nathan Sznaider, i.e. the recognition and endurance of contradictions, has largely been lost in the process. We would therefore like to leave the camp debates in art and culture behind us and present intellectual, intercultural artistic and curatorial positions in Berlin in a series of panels.

With this issue, we want to look for some missing links in the history of cultural developments and hopefully show historical developments and contra­dictions, removed from the simplifying theory in which right- and left-wing tendencies are seen as being similar. One has to look into the historical connections and alliances carefully.