Entangled Crisis Narratives in Germany: Strengthening the Anti-Systemic Public?

Abstract

This article studies how crisis management and its narrative discourse are able to strengthen anti-systemic and far-right narratives. We compare government and opposition discourses during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020/2022 and the energy/inflation crisis of 2022/2023 in the German federal state of Saxony. The paper argues that the two crises were intertwined not only through the existence of a ‘new cleavage’ between political mainstream and right-wing populists, but also through the authorities’ public communication that contained similar ‘crisis management’ elements: a—fairly unprecedented—stress on urgency, lack of alternatives, and rejection of consultation, justified by how high the stakes were to public health and welfare, and to national security. Our study offers insights into the interconnectedness of crises narratives and underscores the importance of long-term crisis governance that needs to better acknowledge the risk of turning opposition to government policies and its discourses into far-right anti-systemic mobilizations.