We have a massive capitalist crisis on our hands with right-wing nationalist forces in most EU countries, absorbing social discontent, and a collapsing liberal center. To advocate in this scenario, as Steffan Wyn-Jones reminded me, a left-wing populism and nationalism that often overlaps with right-wing political recipes – even finding a temporary, if ambiguous, common ground (whether Golden Dawn in Greece, AfD in Germany, the Front National in France, or UKIP in Britain) – by invoking [Carl] Schmitt seems to me disastrous. After all, National Socialism thrived on the same amalgamation of left and right motives and constituencies during its rise to power, before any dreams of populist socialism were ended in the “night of the long knives” once the Nazis were in power. It may be naïve, but a broad-based transnational alliance of progressive forces seems to me the only remotely acceptable and realistic way forward.
—Benno Teschke, 2016
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