(Non-)dominating fear: Analyzing the right-wing populist movement Pegida with neo-Kantian republicanism

I Introduction

Central to the right-wing populist East German movement Pegida (‘Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West’) is their aggressive and nationalist attempt to incite fear of migrants or religious minorities in the alleged name of democracy (Panorama, 2014). ¹ If fear means evaluating an object as a real danger (Nussbaum, 2001), then Pegida’s right-wing populist leaders create a fear-based legitimation narrative to convince people that alleged outgroups, such as migrants or religious minorities, should be evaluated as alleged objects of fear comprising an alleged real danger to democracy. To this end, these leaders create xenophobic or Islamophobic legitimation narratives, which already contain the word ‘fear’ in their name (phobia is the Ancient Greek word for fear). These fear-based legitimation narratives are closely intertwined with security-based legitimation narratives; the latter are used by Pegida to prove itself as the political movement that is needed to allay these fears also in the alleged name of democracy – in parenthesis: the fears which Pegida itself has generated. But contrary to what Pegida itself claims, its fear-based legitimation narratives are not created in the name of democracy, but legitimize what should not be legitimized, that is, denying the equal standing of every subject which leads to the exclusion of people, such as migrants or religious minority groups, for example, Muslims. By this, Pegida needs to be seen as an exemplary case. Although this is a German movement, similar scenarios can be observed especially in Europe, for example, in Italy under Giorgia Meloni, in Hungary under Victor Orbán, in Poland under the previous government built by the Kaczyński brothers or in France with Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, as well as in the United States with respect to Donald Trump’s evangelical supporters. Furthermore, Pegida is part of a transnational process that goes beyond the nation-state (see the pages 4, 7, 9 and 14 of this article).

In light of these observations, we need rational clarification of the normative foundations of fear in democracies, which could explain the reasoning behind the right-wing populist fear-based legitimation narratives, such as those of the East German Pegida movement. On the basis of these normative foundations, subjects should then be able to claim justice. This ‘should’ would extend the narrow scope of a mere empirical ‘should’ to encompass a moral claim, that is, the moral claim for justice. The article at hand revisits this desideratum and seeks to contribute a key perspective to it. In so doing, it aims to answer the pressing but so far unanswered question of how we are able to make transparent the reasoning behind Pegida’s fear-based legitimation narratives and to transcend their domination-based contexts. The article at hand proves the hypothesis that the neo-Kantian (i.e. intersubjectively enriched), ² republican thought of fear-sensitive, noumenal power is a good candidate to answer this question. To this end, this article brings neo-Kantian republicanism into dialogue with Frankfurt School Critical Theory and with affect theory.

Against this background, the article at hand is structured in three steps: Firstly, it asks what Pegida is. Secondly, it raises the question of why neo-Kantian republicanism enables us to address Pegida’s right-wing populist fear-based legitimation narratives. Thirdly, in light of the neo-Kantian assumptions this article goes on to sketch the dominating right-wing populist citizens of anger (Wutbürger), such as the Pegida supporters, and proposes enlightened citizens’ juries as a way to contest dominating fear narratives.

To do so, this article refers to wide-ranging, social-scientific material: the sociological analysis of Pegida (Rucht et al., 2015); the interviews from Pegida demonstrations broadcast by the ARD (Panorama, 2014); the collection of interviews and Facebook statements of Pegida (Jensen, 2017); the Leipziger Autoritarismus-Studie (Decker et al., 2022); the Neue Mitte Studie (Zick et al., 2023) and the recent studies on trust in political parties (Vehrkamp and Borgstedt, 2024; Faus and Mannewitz, 2019).

II What is Pegida?

The article at hand begins by introducing the right-wing populist movement Pegida. It then seeks to show that the existing debate in contemporary political theory and philosophy emphasizes the economic, cultural or political factors that lead to the rise of right-wing populism, but has so far overlooked the need to consider the structural asymmetries of the Pegida movement and their fear narratives in terms of power.

Today, we see the contemporary history-based rise of right-wing populism on a transnational level, in old democracies, such as in France, Great Britain or in the United States, but also in Germany, where there is a long tradition of xenophobic and especially anti-Semitic prejudices (Bianchi, 2012), and also in newer democracies, such as Poland, Hungary or Brazil (Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018; McCormick, 2023). Pegida is part of one of today’s key right-wing populist movements in Germany. It was founded in East Germany in 2014; at its peak, Pegida had about tens of thousands supporters. Although it is less dominant in the political landscape in 2024, it needs to be regarded as an important precursor of today’s right-wing populist party, AFD (Alternative for Germany), which is on the rise (Decker et al., 2022; Zick et al., 2023). The rise of the AFD was especially demonstrated by the most recent state elections in East Germany in September 2024; the AFD got almost 30 percent in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg (Erlanger and Schuetze, 2024; Tagesschau, 2024). Of course, the former East Germany is not the only region in Germany where one can observe right-wing populist tendencies, but the state elections of September 2024 showed that support for the AFD is especially strong here.

If two recent surveys by the Bertelsmann Foundation make visible that people have less trust than before in the established parties (Vehrkamp and Borgstedt, 2024; Faus and Mannewitz, 2019), then we need to see that Pegida leaders have helped to fuel this mistrust by creating a supposing ‘friend–enemy’ line (Schmitt, 1996 [1932], critical: McCormick, 2008). The ‘friend–enemy’ line is the schism between the alleged real people, which Pegida claims to represent, and the supposedly elite, corrupt system, which may include the government and the media, as Pegida puts it, the alleged ‘lying press’ (Lügenpresse, Panorama, 2014). This schism is centrally articulated in Pegida’s slogan ‘We are the people’ (Wir sind das Volk). Whereas this slogan originally belonged to the enlightened protests in the GDR, Pegida has given it a right-wing populist twist. The crucial point is now that Pegida combines this supposed schism with aggressive tendencies towards alleged outgroups, especially Muslims. Already their name – ‘Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West' – underlines this (Rucht et al., 2015). According to Pegida, one should be afraid of some people, such as migrants, that do not belong to the alleged real people.

Such anti-migrant stereotypes are present not only in peripheral, far-right milieus, as the social-scientific sources highlight, but also in more and more central parts of society, especially the middle class (Decker et al., 2022; Zick et al., 2023), such as in conservative, centre-right discourse. In the German conservative, centre-right party, for example, there is talk of ‘welfare tourism’ (Sozialtourismus, critical to this Tagesschau, 2022). And it is this conservative, centre-right discourse that paves the way for making anti-migrant stereotypes socially accepted (Owen, 2019). This tendency becomes particularly obvious in the case of Pegida, which has anti-Muslim stereotypes in its DNA (see again already the name Pegida ‘Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West’). These stereotypes need to be seen in their transnational intertwinement that goes beyond the nation-state. They are enmeshed in the transnational public sphere, which crosses national borders. This transnational public sphere encompasses media outlets, such as newspapers, social media and TV channels, whose influence extends beyond national audiences. Pegida uses especially the transnational, anti-Muslim discourses. For example, this discourse is widespread in France, especially in the secular debates on banning the headscarf from public institutions (cf. Laborde, 2008; Schuppert, 2017).

The accelerated right-wing populist tendencies, to which Pegida belongs, are reflected in the existing discourse in political theory and philosophy. Whereas democracy has long been regarded as a model of success (Held, 1995, 3), the current academic debate in political theory and philosophy is characterized by a discourse of threat about a seemingly ‘dying’ democracy (Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018, also Keane, 2009; Mounk, 2019). In order to explain the right-wing populist rise, the existing debate in political theory and philosophy has mainly focused on economic, cultural or political motives. Economic motifs entail the analysis of the economic decline of entire regions, such as East Germany or the US-American Rust Belt, previously the heartland of heavy industry and automotive industry, and have shown that people are less content with democracy in these regions (Franz et al., 2018; Fraser, 2017; Manow, 2019). Cultural motives entail the analysis of the resentment against the cosmopolitan, intellectual elite (Inglehart and Norris, 2019; Koppetsch, 2019; Mudde, 2007; Priester, 2012). Political motives involve the analysis of the missing representation of especially less educated people in political decision-making (Schäfer and Zürn, 2021). Armin Schäfer and Michael Zürn call this tendency ‘democratic regression’, an anti-democratic regression that takes place in democracies. In general, ‘regression’ stems from psychoanalysis and means ‘a step backwards’ (King, 2021). In contemporary discourses on political thought, the term ‘regression’ is widely spread and plays a crucial role in explaining the rise of right-wing populism (Forst, 2023; Jaeggi, 2023; Niesen, 2023). Of course, these discourses are very important; but they do not suffice to take the power structures into account that characterizes right-wing populist movements, such as Pegida. This article seeks to fill this lacuna.

III Why Kant?

Rather than applying idealist theories offering abstract fantasies about what a just political order without Pegida’s fear narratives would be like (cf. Plato, 1971 [370 v.Chr. ], Estlund, 2019), this article seeks to be realistic from the outset. Realpolitik teaches us that the language that frames a debate has real power (Scheuerman, 2011): it is under the power of this language-based frame that people develop and negotiate their points of views. In the context of right-wing populist, fear-based legitimation narratives this means: who has the power to determine the language of democracy? Is it the right-wing populist movement Pegida with its fear-based legitimation narratives, which it claims to express in the name of democracy, although these narratives contradict the principles of democracy? Hence, it is important to understand Pegida with its fear-based legitimation narratives as a hitherto neglected player in the power game and to be able to analyze its role in this power game. One might expect such an analysis to refer to the usual terms deployed to analyze the political order: political peace, humanitarianism or political development. But, as this article will argue, none of these terms is able to capture the structural asymmetries of the specific power game Pegida and its fear-based legitimation narratives are involved in. ³

Obviously, the language of political peace is very important and this article does not deny this. However, theorizing Pegida in these terms would generate a serious fallacy, which this article seeks to avoid. In the language of peace (Hobbes, 1984 [1651]), Pegida would be conceptualized as the criminals that disturb the political order of peace. Securing peace would then become the task of the police. This leads to two central questions: first of all, who defines Pegida’s alleged criminality? Secondly, who should be the police? Moreover, such a path would favour authoritarian solutions, which could secure a peaceful order, but at the price of autocratic rule. An autocratic regime would, for example, have no problem with establishing political peace by silencing the voices of political opponents. In this sense, the blind spot of theorizing Pegida in terms of peace would be that it neglects the structural asymmetries that Pegida generates.

The language of humanitarianism is also important (cf. Walzer, 1983; WHO, 2019), but it too would be unable to examine the structural asymmetries that this article seeks to investigate. In terms of humanitarianism, the question would be to what extent Pegida would provide access to basic needs, such as sufficient food, medicine and so on. But this perspective would mask the structural domination that helps right-wing populists such as Pegida. They disguise themselves as advocates of ordinary people who are in need of such basic needs, but in reality Pegida postulates nationalist, exclusionary solutions, which exclude migrants, for example, from access to basic needs.

The language of development is similarly insufficient to analyze Pegida as an important player in the power game. This language is problematic as it contains paternalistic patterns: Pegida supporters would be conceptualized as under-developed political players who, for example, are not so much developed in terms of social security (see Weiß, 2024). Similarly, it is important to note that also Pegida should not have the right to speak of others, such as migrants, in paternalistic terms.

This article suggests instead that the language of justice should be seen as the language best suited to making the structural asymmetries of Pegida and its fear-based legitimation narratives visible. The first question of justice is an analysis of power: this generates the terms in and through which subjects are respected in their status as equal normative authorities of a political order, who are not dominated by fear narratives. Hence, subjects should not only receive these terms; on the contrary, they should make them. In this way, the language of justice should contribute to the realization of non-domination. Non-domination means that no one should be subjected to arbitrary rule.

So, this article suggests neo-Kantian republicanism as a good candidate to theorize this kind of justice in terms of non-domination, which has attracted little attention so far. Neo-Kantian republicanism promises to provide the theoretical resources to normatively differentiate between right-wing populist, dominating fear narratives, such as those of Pegida, and non-dominating, enlightening fear narratives.

Usually, republicanism refers to Immanuel Kant’s legal philosophy, his Metaphysics of Morals, and encompasses the political autonomy of being free from arbitrary rule (Gerhardt, 2002; Niesen, 2005; Ripstein, 2009). In this sense, one is free as long as one’s own will does not conflict with the will of another person (MS, AA 06: 230; Kant, 1968). Republicanism, as developed in this article, however, is more broadly construed and goes beyond the legal frame. This republicanism is part of what Kant calls ‘the noumenal republic’ (respublica noumenon, SF, AA 07: 91.03; Forst, 2021). It sketches a moral claim. At the heart of the neo-Kantian republicanism put forward here is the moral claim that every subject should be respected in their status as equal normative authorities of a political order, that is, the Kantian ‘realm of ends’ (GMS, AA 04: 433.24), who should not be dominated by fear. The advantage of the neo-Kantian language is that we can specify this moral claim as a civic duty and not as a mere benevolent act. Hence, overcoming contexts in which subjects are dominated by fear, for example, by right-wing populist fear narratives, is a duty that everyone in the Kantian republic should fulfil. Neo-Kantian involves the view that subjects owe this civic duty not only to themselves, as Kantian thinking might suggest, but to other subjects. For living among subjects entails such a duty that we can understand in neo-Kantian terms as intersubjectively enriched. The language of civic duties makes it clear at the same time that subjects should not help to overcome patterns of domination because of the consequences, for example, the fear of sanctions, but due to the moral claim outlined above. This perspective also highlights the fact that a civic duty of this kind is not imposed. On the contrary, subjects should self-reflexively understand the necessity of such a civic duty through their rational insight into ‘the noumenal republic’. Furthermore, the Kantian language highlights from the outset that such a civic duty does not stem from the subjects’ experience, but from the non-empirical, transcendental insight into the condition of possibility of the Kantian republicanism, to which everyone belongs as a human being. In other words, before one tries to overcome patterns of domination that are generated by fear-based legitimation narratives, such as those of Pegida, one needs to understand that everyone should be respected as a member of this Kantian republic, as, to put it in Kantian terms, humanity should be respected in the person of every human being (Gerhardt, 2009). From this perspective, it should also be clear that this article does not refer to Kant in order to define what fear is; rather it refers to Kant in order to better understand how one is able to discursively deal with fear-based legitimation narratives. ⁴

Speaking in Kantian terms of a moral claim does not neglect the moral–political divide that is advanced by many (cf. Geuss, 2011). ‘Political’ is about mastering social conflicts of interests in the mode of the validity of political and legal norms and not of moral (or apolitical) norms. Today, Philip Pettit’s republicanism is widely understood as central in the political domain. For Pettit, non-domination encompasses a negative claim (Pettit, 1997). It is about how to secure people’s freedom of choice to such an extent that they are not subjected to the possibility of arbitrary rule. The neo-Kantian republicanism developed here is confluent with Pettit’s republicanism. For Kant, many years before Pettit, also developed an account of non-domination, focused on the non-dominated subject that should not be dominated by arbitrary rule. Kant’s republicanism, however, expands Pettit’s republicanism: firstly, while Pettit and main strands in the today’s neo-republican tradition consider states as actors who are responsible for securing the subjects’ freedom of choice (Bellamy, 2008; Pettit, 1997, 176), this article considers subjects as agents. For states can also undo the measures by which they seek to secure the subject’s non-domination. Here, the article at hand sees the necessity to provide an intersubjectivity-based view on non-domination, which remains valid regardless of the political reality of states. If intersubjectivity entails the question of how agents live among agents (Bianchi, 2016, 2024), then intersubjectivity-based non-domination has to deal with the relationship between agents and structure. With respect to this relationship, the following argumentation appears as central: If Pettit’s view barely focuses on structures (Pettit, 1997), and if it is Cécile Laborde’s merit to focus on structures (Laborde, 2010, see also Gourevitch, 2013), then this article stresses a dialectical view on the relation between agents and structures. If Laborde’s analysis stresses structures in terms of systemic domination, that is, for example, the institution of slavery, she develops a separate view on agent-relative domination, as she puts it, as an interactional domination, which relies on personal resources, such as intelligence. ⁵ By means of a dialectical perspective, this article seeks to show the interrelation between structural domination and agent-based domination. In this sense, the dialectical perspective entails the reversal of the relation between agent and structure and vice versa. Hence, agents uphold structures of domination, and structures of domination can then dominate agents; but to change structures of domination, it requires the agent-based reflexive, that is, enlightened rational insight into the structural domination in order to realize non-domination. With respect to right-wing populist fear-based legitimation narratives, such as those of Pegida, ‘structure’ means the power of right-wing populist fear-based legitimation narratives, and ‘agent’ encompasses the subjects that are directed by these narratives to different degrees and that can also question their power.

Secondly, this article also highlights the transnational aspect of neo-Kantian republicanism. Unlike neo-republican views, which stress domination and non-domination in bounded communities (Pettit, 1997), and that then expand this view in global terms (Laborde, 2010), this article underlines the transnational scope. If global means around the globe, then international stresses the relation between states and transnational encompasses relations beyond the state. Here, the article at hand pays particular attention to the case of the transnational public sphere filled with the various fear narratives. On this basis, it later delineates transnational domination and transnational non-domination.

Thirdly, unlike Pettit, Kant advances not only a negative claim on non-domination, but a critical constructivist claim. According to this claim, non-domination expresses the subject’s autonomy. In this sense, subjects should be viewed as the co-authors of the political order, who critically construct the realized practices of norms and who, on this basis, in a non-dominated discourse between free and equals are able to discern whether these realized practices meet the normative criteria of reciprocity and generality, which are immanent in the critical construction. ‘Reciprocity’ means that one can only claim what can be also claimed by others. Thus, reciprocity also encompasses equality: it is based on respecting the other as equal. ‘Generality’ entails general reasons that do not exclude anyone. Obviously, there can be reasonable disagreement, such as about the good life, religious truth or cultural identities, but in questions involving the moral claim, sketched above, there cannot be reasonable disagreement. Seen from this angle, neo-Kantian republicanism, that is, the Kantian language for democracy, ⁶ becomes the practice of justice. And justice means detecting and overcoming patterns of domination and thus realizing non-domination. In view of the moral claim of neo-Kantian republicanism, we can now call this kind of justice ‘moral justice’. Unlike distributive understandings of justice, which seek to compensate people for existing injustices (Cohen, 1997; Rawls, 1971), ‘moral justice’ aims at tackling already the causes of injustice. To repeat, this means detecting and overcoming patterns of domination. ⁷

This neo-Kantian republicanism brings us to the core of the argument of this article: whereas Pegida claims to formulate its right-wing populist fear-based legitimation narratives in the name of democracy, then this view of neo-Kantian republicanism, that is, the Kantian language of democracy, makes it clear that Pegida, contrary to what it says, does not speak in the name of democracy. For it fails to meet the normative criteria of reciprocity and generality, the core of neo-Kantian republicanism. Thus, Pegida violates the expression of the subject’s autonomy, that is, non-domination, and should therefore be qualified as morally unjust. In case anyone was expecting a catalogue of measures, it should be made clear that this article does not aim to spell out political recipes for how to treat fear-based legitimation narratives. Instead this article argues that what we need to do is identify and overcome patterns of domination and to realize non-domination in self-reflexive, say enlightening, thinking. Therefore, the focus of the article lies in setting out the demand for moral justice in the face of right-wing populist fear narratives, such as those of Pegida.

This Kantian critical constructivist claim is realistic in a threefold way: firstly, it provides a realistic perspective as it does not start from fixed, metaphysical ideals of justice, as Plato does (Plato, 1971 [370 v.Chr. ]), but from existing power struggles, which this article considers in terms of domination and non-domination. It thus outlines the power struggles of the fear-based legitimation narratives. Secondly, it is realistic insofar as these power struggles are understood as a necessary part of politics. Thirdly, it is realistic, as it provides a counterfactual, enlightened perspective on the existing power struggles by taking these power struggles as its starting point.

Unlike views that consider power in negative terms (Lukes, 2005), that is, against the subjects’ interests, or in positive ways (Arendt, 1972), that is, in the subjects’ interests, this article considers power in neutral terms, as Kant sees it. This view enables us to understand that the power of fear narratives is, in the first instance, neither negative nor positive, but neutral. From the outset, it is thus not said that power is in the subjects’ interest or not, for example, in the case of the power of fear narratives. The specific view of power advanced here in Kantian terms draws on the genealogy of noumenal power developed by the Kantian tradition of Critical Theory (Forst, 2015, 2017). ‘Noumenal power’ means that someone is motivated by something to do something that this subject would not have done without such a motivation. While Rainer Forst originally drew on Jürgen Habermas to develop his view of noumenal power, and later referred to Kant’s republicanism as a ‘realm of ends’, this article expands Forst’s view. In drawing on Kant, it sketches the power of enlightenment: Kant understands enlightenment as the public use of reason (WA, AA 08: 36. 36–7). ⁸ The question here is to what extent the power of fear narratives respects subjects in their status as enlightened co-authors, and to what extent the power of the public use of reason, in other words the power of enlightenment, is able to overcome patterns of domination. The Kantian view of the power of the public use of reason stands in the key tradition of the democratic reading of Thomas Hobbes, which does not build upon the classic Hobbes of the Leviathan, but on the less known Hobbes of De Cive (Hobbes, 2017 [1642]; McCormick, 1994; Ober, 2001; Tuck, 2016). Here, the power of enlightenment can be seen in the power of the ‘sleeping sovereign’ (Tuck, 2016), who should wake up if the government does not respect what they legitimized by voting. In this sense, this article draws on the Kantian view of the power of enlightenment, that is, the public use of reason, which should wake up people if dogmata are legitimized – such as dominating, right-wing populist fear narratives. It is this dialectical view, which stresses the reversal from the dominating power of fear narratives to the non-dominating power of fear narratives, that the article at hand considers as non-dominating, enlightening fear narratives (later on they will be further specified in terms of deterrence). Here, transnational means that enlightened fear narratives should not only have effects on the nation-state, but should also cross borders and wake up other subjects there.

Though there is a debate about the extent to which one can draw realistic perspectives on the basis of Kantian motives (see Geuss, 2011), this article will not go into this debate too deeply. For the purpose of this article it suffices to refer to the genealogy of the critical theory principle that Bernard Williams, a key figure of political realism, advanced in reference to Habermas’s discourse ethics (Williams, 2005). Williams introduces the critical theory principle as follows: ‘[T]he acceptance of a justification does not count if the acceptance itself is produced by the coercive power which is supposedly being justified’ (Williams, 2005, 6). Although Williams, of course, draws this principle while distancing himself from Kant, we see that Kant already stands in this line of the critical theory principle if we further go down Habermas’s road. For Habermas develops his discourse ethics by discussing Kantian motives (Habermas, 1983). Here, we implicitly see the Kantian motives insofar as acceptability entails the normative criteria of reciprocity and generality that are central to the neo-Kantian republicanism developed here. The critical theory principle is important for the analysis of Pegida advanced here, because it provides the distinction between acceptance and acceptability. We need this to differentiate normatively between the factual acceptance of dominating, right-wing populist fear narratives and their acceptability in terms of the normative criteria of reciprocity and generality. Seen from this angle, it becomes clear that it is not the majority rule that counts, or the acceptance, as shown by a possible right-wing populist majority, but the quality of the argument, for example, the quality of fear narratives, that is, their acceptability in terms of reciprocity and generality (cf. Habermas, 1992).

In light of this, the neo-Kantian motives that this article develops strengthen the Kantian tradition of Critical Theory in the Habermas (1992) Frankfurt School sense. For the neo-Kantian republicanism stresses the rational critique of the fear-based legitimation narratives in democracy. This includes the rational critique of unreason, too, which veils itself in the form of the alleged reason of the fear-based legitimation narratives, although this only alleged reason needs to be considered as ideological and thus as authorizing what is not authorizable. In this respect, Kant needs to be seen as an important predecessor of Frankfurt School Critical Theory (Forst, 2021; Horkheimer, 1981). For it is Max Horkheimer, in the early 1930s, the first director of the Institute for Social Research, who said that the task of Critical Theory (in the Frankfurt sense) consists of the rational critique of reason (Horkheimer, 1981). From early on, then, Kantian thought played a crucial role in Frankfurt School Critical Theory, as it was the legacy of Kant, but also that of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, that put the analysis of reason on the philosophical agenda. And it is then early Frankfurt School Critical Theory and its first director, Horkheimer, that showed the need to enrich the idealist Kantian and Hegelian legacy with social-scientific material in order to formulate the rational critique of reason that is part of a society in a specific time. This empirically enriched Kantian legacy constitutes the broader context in which this article is situated. This also makes it clear that this article does not merely apply Kantian motives to the political reality of fear narratives, but goes down the road of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. And this means that political reality and Frankfurt School Critical Theory mutually inform each other in the sense of the rational critique outlined above.

Of course, there are widely spread discussions in today’s Frankfurt School Critical Theory tradition (Gordon, 2018; King, 2021), that seek to build a critique of right-wing populism by drawing on the psychoanalytical work elaborated by early Critical Theory, especially by Erich Fromm and Leo Löwenthal, and later on by Horkheimer (on the authoritarian state) and by Theodor W. Adorno (on the authoritarian personality). These studies aim at highlighting the psychoanalytical structures that lead to a firm belief in fixed hierarchies, and the societal structures, that give rise to them. To do so, they are interested in analyzing both the dynamics of the psyche and the dynamics of the social, each of which has a life of its own. Based on this, they then seek to sketch the direct and indirect link between these two dynamics with a life of their own. In this sense, the authoritarian personality can be described by the German saying ‘nach oben buckeln und nach unten treten’ (referring to obsequious behaviour towards superiors and abusive behaviour towards inferiors), which can be socially triggered when the subject is under pressure. Building on these classics of social psychology and psychoanalysis, the contemporary studies reveal key differences in contemporary right-wing populist movements, such as the figure of the libertarian authoritarian, which was especially visible in the Covid-pandemic among the conspiracy-movement of the Covid-deniers. Certainly these studies are very important. However, as it is already very difficult to delineate the dynamics with a life of their own of the psyche, psychoanalytically informed critical theory is in danger of coming to one-dimensional conclusions, which analyze the link between the dynamics of the psyche and the dynamics of the social in overly simplistic ways, for example, by speaking of ‘father state’ (Vater Staat). To bridge the gap between the individual and the society, it would be necessary to follow the path of the subject’s socialization. But as the danger of paving the way for one-dimensional simplifications is too high, this article does not further go down this road.

Furthermore, the notion of enlightenment has a long tradition in Frankfurt School Critical Theory and has played a crucial role from early on. Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s Dialectics of Enlightenment, which Horkheimer and Adorno wrote in their Californian exile during World War II, can be regarded as a key text in Critical Theory (Horkheimer and Adorno, 2017 [1947]). They share Kant’s interest in detecting and overcoming patterns of self-assertion (Selbstbehauptung), which in Kantian language means arbitrary rule. While Horkheimer, Adorno and Kant share the view that rational critique, that is, the critique of reason, enables subjects to identify and overcome patterns of domination, it is Kant who presents a less negative understanding of enlightenment than Horkheimer and Adorno. Whereas Horkheimer and Adorno have a negative view on enlightenment, in that they see it entangled with dialectics all the way down, that is, the reversal from reason to unreason, or from freedom to domination, it is Kant who provides a progressive, enlightened view on political reality, which is able to transcend the political reality of domination. And it is this way of the progressive, enlightened view that the article at hand further follows.

To do so, this article reads Kant’s notion of enlightenment in terms of noumenal power. When Kant, as the major thinker of the notion of enlightenment, introduced the term enlightenment in his key text ‘Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?’, he referred to the ‘motto’ (trans. by the author, WA, AA 08: 35.07) ‘daring to use one’s own reasoning’ (trans. by the author, WA, AA 08: 35.05–06) which implicitly entails the understanding of noumenal power. For to repeat, noumenal power stresses that someone does something that this person would not have done without being motivated to do so by another person or narrative. Translating noumenal power into enlightenment terminology leads us to understand noumenal domination in terms of being directed. For Kant criticizes non-autonomous, dominated thinking as a thinking that is guided by others, be it a person, a book, a speech and so on (WA, AA 08: 35.13–15).

The notion of noumenal power is widely discussed within contemporary political theory (Haugaard and Kettner, 2020). Within these discussions, this article only wants to stress one main point. This is Clarissa Rile Hayward’s criticism that the cognitivist, or noumenal, account does not help to overcome structural domination, since non-cognitivist aspects, such as bodily power, are required (Hayward, 2020). The Kantian enlightenment motives, however, take a different road. Kant highlights that it is through noumenal, or cognitivist, power that subjects hold up narratives, such as fear narratives, which can then also have effects on the body; in turn, the power of enlightened reflection can contribute to the realization of non-domination, which can then also have effects on the body. Recently, reason-based Kantian Critical Theory, and thus also the notion of noumenal power, has been accused of establishing colonialist thinking (Allen, 2016). This is because Kant draws on reason and reason, according to Amy Allen’s argument, is the capacity that systematically establishes colonial domination. Allen, however, does not take into account the following words of Adorno, whose motives contributed to her criticism. According to Adorno and his motif of the ‘durschlagende Kraft der Vernunft’ (‘the overwhelming force of reason’, trans. by the author, Adorno, 2019 [1967], 55), subjects do not have any other capacity than reason to criticize such relations of domination. In this sense, reason has a dialectical task: to make transparent and overcome the reversal of freedom in domination, which is systematically co-constituted by reason (Bianchi, 2022). This insight is also valid for Kant’s works and his view of finite reason (Forst, 2021).

IV Pegida, the political reality of fear-based legitimation narratives and noumenal power

This section delineates the connection between Pegida, the political reality of fear-based legitimation narratives and noumenal power. To this end, it analyzes the fear-based legitimation narratives, that are spread by Pegida (see introduction and part 1), in terms of noumenal power. According to these fear narratives, people should be especially afraid of migrants, in particular of Muslims, as indicated by Pegida’s name ‘Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West’.

To repeat, noumenal power is one of the most important terms in contemporary political theory and philosophy (Forst, 2015, 2017; Haugaard and Kettner, 2020). Basically, it involves the cognitive power in and through which the space of reasons (Raum der Gründe) A, that is, the pool of reasons that is dominant in society, motivates a subject B to do an action X, which B would not have done without this motivation. In Kantian language, ‘cognitive’ encompasses the intelligible power of the space of reasons. In the context of fear, we are dealing with the cognitive realm that consists of the various fear-based legitimation narratives. This section outlines fear-based noumenal power from a (1) descriptive and (2) normative standpoint. To better analyze this double standpoint, the article reads the critical theory principle with its differentiation between acceptance and acceptability in terms of noumenal power. The description of fear narratives encompasses the acceptance of fear-based legitimation narratives, which does not have normative force (normative Kraft); only the normative evaluation of the fear-based legitimation narratives entails normative force; it is characterized by the notion of the acceptability of fear-based legitimation narratives; this normative evaluation departs from the description of the fear-based legitimation narratives, which the right-wing populist leaders generate. It critically constructs the counterfactual, enlightened and thus progressive perspective that is able to transcend the contexts of fear-based noumenal domination.

(1) In what follows, the description is sketched in terms of acceptance: The description of fear-sensitive, noumenal power involves the acceptance of fear-based legitimation narratives, which describes the space of reasons. This is filled with the various fear-based legitimation narratives in society, which motivate people to evaluate an object as if it were a real danger, so that they are afraid of this object. Although we use the term ‘evaluation’ here, this does not imply a normative perspective. This is because an evaluation that is put forward on the descriptive level could be ideologically compromised, which means that it authorizes what is not authorizable. We could also imagine a mafia gang or the Pegida movement that create fear-based legitimation narratives about their enemies, but these narratives are ideologically authorized. On the descriptive level, we are therefore only dealing with a fear-based ‘consciousness’ (trans. by the author, Anth, AA 07: 187.05) of possible dangers, as Kant puts it in his lecture on Anthropology. In other words, the fact that a fear-based legitimation narrative is dominant in a society and thus has an evaluative force (bewertende Kraft) does not mean that this narrative is in enlightened ways authorized. For power itself does not provide good, enlightened reasons, it just gives any reasons that explain why a legitimation narrative is in power.

Fear-based, noumenal power needs to be further described in its non-agential aspect. ‘Non-agential’ means that we are not always dealing with a person, such as right-wing populist leaders, who directly motivates a subject to be motivated to be afraid of something, but with a legitimation narrative, like Pegida’s fear narratives. ‘Structural’ further specifies the non-agential aspect. It informs us that the legitimation narratives are bound to social structures, such as customs, practices, conventional clichés and so on; these generate fear-based legitimation narratives, which are dominant in a society at a specific time and structure the subject’s thinking. Of course, it needs to be said that in today’s increased global interdependencies, such as those of late capitalist societies, the structural aspects of domination also increase compared to the forms of domination that were at stake at the time when Kant was writing, that is, in the 18th century (Hayward, 2000). Nonetheless, this article argues that neo-Kantian republicanism is able to systematically capture the structural asymmetries of noumenal power. But despite of the structural implications, we still need to take into account the agential picture behind the structural analysis. In the end, it is subjects that build such structures. So, if we only considered the non-agential picture, we would not be able to make agents responsible for generating such structures.

(2) The counterfactual, normative standpoint involves the notion of acceptability and is specified here by the notion of enlightenment. It takes the descriptive standpoint as its starting point. ‘Enlightenment’ has such importance for Kant that it could be understood as the key that opens up his work (Bianchi, 2024). To repeat, Kant’s classic understanding of enlightenment involves the public use of reason. The power of enlightenment, construed in this way, should enable subjects to detect and overcome the ‘guardians’ (Vormünder, WA, AA 08: 35.12) that do not respect subjects in their social standing as enlightened, non-dominated participants of the ‘noumenal republic’ in which subjects should not be dominated by fear.

Now we come to identify a specific type of ‘guardians’ in terms of ideological, fear-based legitimation narratives. Recent Kantian scholarship astutely stresses ideological legitimation narratives as those based on a single and contingent will (Møller, 2020), and this article expands this view. It centres on the ideological authorization of fear-based legitimation narratives, which is based on contexts of noumenal domination; it motivates people to authorize what is not authorizable, and what they would have not authorized without this motivation. In other words, ideological, fear-based legitimation narratives give people ideas about what they should be afraid of, such as alleged enemies – in the case of Pegida migrants or Muslims – without letting these subjects think for themselves in a self-reflective way – contrary to what Kant demands in his essay on enlightenment. These subjects are not able to understand that these ideological fear-based legitimation narratives are not authorized by reason, but by unreason. For such legitimation narratives exclude other subjects from being respected in their social standing as an equal, non-dominated normative authority of the fear-free ‘noumenal republic’. In this sense, right-wing populist fear narratives violate the normative criteria of reciprocity and generality, which the critical theory principle stresses and which are at the core of neo-Kantian republicanism, too. This kind of noumenal domination is transnational as the fear narratives, which direct the subject’s thinking, are spread beyond states and are not bound to the nation-state. This is especially the case for Pegida’s right-wing populist fear-based legitimation narratives, which suggest that Europeans should be afraid of Muslims. This fear narrative is found not only in German contexts, but also (in somewhat different form) in French debates on Muslim head scarfs.

Enlightenment does not fall into the fallacy of ideology. For it does not generate a god-like perspective that would determine by higher insight what should be a legitimate authorization of fear-based narratives. Instead, the kind of enlightenment that is relevant here needs to be specified as discursive enlightenment. It encompasses the understanding that subjects owe each other reasons for what should be considered as a legitimate authorization of fear-based narratives, and in discussing these reasons, they might come to new, better authorized reasons.

V Dominating citizens of anger

From this neo-Kantian republican perspective, we will now go on to analyze the fear-based legitimation narratives that are part of Pegida and more specifically, of the so-called ‘citizens of anger’ (Wutbürger). Obviously, political reality is more complex than the ideal type ‘citizens of anger’ might suggest, but it is nonetheless helpful to explain the dominating forces (beherrschende Kräfte) that their fear-based legitimation narratives have.

To briefly sketch the political intellectual history of the term citizens of anger (Wutbürger), we need to note that it is coined in the German public discourse in 2010. In that year, Dirk Kurbjuweit published the essay ‘The Citizen of Anger’ (Der Wutbürger) in the German news magazine Der Spiegel, mainly with reference to protesters against Stuttgart 21, a large and highly contested rail project. According to Kurbjuweit, ‘citizens of anger’ are indifferent to the public good. In the same year, the term ‘citizen of anger’ (Wutbürger) became so well-known that it was even voted ‘word of the year’ by the Society for the German Language (Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache). ⁹ Meanwhile, the term has spread well beyond the narrow scope of the Stuttgart 21 train project. Most notably, Habermas referred to the term ‘Wutbürger’ (Habermas, 2020) to criticize right-wing populist movements. In this context, there is also talk of the angry supporters of the Brexit-referendum in Great Britain (Geuss, 2016).

So far, Kantian scholarship has not paid much attention to Kant’s view of anger. There is also only a very small entry on anger in the recent Kant dictionary (Graband, 2021), which does not consider contemporary discussions on anger; furthermore this entry does not refer to anger in terms of noumenal power. The following lines seek to fill this lacuna. A look at the contemporary discussions on anger shows, that Kant’s view of anger seems to be important: these discussions on anger are mainly split into two camps, a negative and a positive one. But unlike these, Kant promises a discursive approach.

On the one hand, there is a liberal strand with Martha Nussbaum, whose work on political emotions plays such an important role that she can be regarded as one of the founding figures of the field of political emotions in political theory and philosophy (Nussbaum, 2001, 2013). Nussbaum takes a negative view of anger (Nussbaum, 2016); she argues that anger leads to revenge, and does not bring about justice, as a positive view would suggest. On the other hand, there is a feminist strand within affect theory and political theory, represented by Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, Bonnie Honig, Audrey Lorde, Sianne Ngai and Linda Zerilli, which stresses the emancipatory aspects of anger. Lorde, the heroine of Black feminist anger, considers anger as the driving force, that is, ‘the energy’ (Lorde, 1997, 127), that moves people to become active against racism. Ahmed goes further down this road (Ahmed, 2015). For her, anger energizes subjects to differently read and feel the world, in which there is something wrong, and it moves subjects to open up another future. Ngai goes in a similar direction (Ngai, 2007). Following her, anger is part of ‘grander passions’ (Ngai, 2007, 6). Here, anger is considered in emancipatory ways, as it entails ‘affective support of oppositional consciousness’ (Ngai, 2007, 128). Similarly, Berlant considers anger as emancipatory, as a way to resist the attachment to ‘cruel optimism’ (Berlant, 2011), which ‘is an obstacle to your flourishing’ (Berlant, 2011, 1). Here, anger can be seen as the required affective detaching force that empowers subjects to detach from their fantasies about and their cruelly optimistic attachment to the alleged ‘good life’, such as the so-called ‘American dream’, an attachment that stops them leading their own lives, according to Berlant. Honig also belongs to this group, though her view on anger differs (Honig 2021). What she shares with the other feminist theorists is the view that it is not deliberative discourse, so Honig, that enables people to think and feel differently. According to Honig, the affect that marks the Trump era is shock, which paralyzes the public and impedes reasoning. In contrast to the other feminist thinkers mentioned above, Honig views anger negatively, as being on the side of the right-wing populists like Trump (Honig, 2021, xv, 145). For example, Trump’s rage-based tweets provoke shocks (ibid.). ¹⁰

Of course, these two strands on anger in contemporary discussions are very important. But they assume a rather natural connection between anger and emancipatory aspects, as feminist theorists tend to do, or between anger and revenge, as Nussbaum does. In contrast, Kantian motives stress that there is not such thing as a natural connection. From the beginning one does not know whether anger is a heroic deed of justice or not. Thus, what we see in light of Kantian assumptions is that we need to build such a connection discursively, through argumentation, that is, normatively. From such a perspective, this article offers a reading of Kantian assumptions on anger as a contribution to today’s discussions on affect polarization. Current discussions in political theory frequently mention affect polarization (Borbáth et al., 2023, critical to affect polarization: Mau et al., 2023). Of course, polarization, or broadly speaking disagreement, is part of democracy. But it turns into a threat to democracy if right-wing populist movements, such as Pegida, gain power over the language in the discourse; this is, for example, the case when they formulate their fear narratives in the name of democracy, despite the fact that they do not contribute to the principles of democracy. Endre Borbáth, Swen Hutter and Arndt Leininger stress affect polarization as an effective theoretical resource to conceptualize the right-wing populist-based cleavages in society. Affects function as markers of the cleavages. Right-wing populist leaders incite negative affects towards the alleged outgroups and positive affects towards the alleged in-group, which is represented by the right-wing populist movement itself. These discussions also seem productive for an understanding of the right-wing populist movement Pegida. Anger thus has a negative function. In light of the Kantian assumptions, we can then understand the citizens of anger (Wutbürger) as part of a right-wing populist movement, such as Pegida. These movements focus their negative affect of anger on the alleged outgroups, such as migrants, especially Muslims, as indicated in Pegida’s name.

From this perspective, citizens of anger, as this section seeks to demonstrate, need to be characterized in novel ways by the specific type of fear-based noumenal domination that is referred to here as fear-based social regression. If regression usually means ‘a step backwards’, then fear-based, social regression is the specific step backwards in and through which people are confronted with such large and fear-inducing problems that they are open to being directed by the stereotyped security-based legitimation narratives presented by Pegida’s right-wing populist leaders as a supposedly easy remedy for their fear. In this context, we need to note: Pegida's leaders, firstly, construct the fear-based legitimation narrative that people should be afraid of migrants, as migrants would raise the crime rate or abuse the welfare system, so their typical stereotypes go (Panorama, 2014). The right-wing populist leaders then create the supposedly accurate security-based legitimation narrative that excluding migrants from society, especially Muslims, would help to overcome the fear, which they themselves generated. But based on the neo-Kantian republicanism we saw in the last section, that fear-based reasoning does not provide good reasons by itself; on the contrary, it can lead to the ideological authorization of fear-based legitimation narratives. Hence, the neo-Kantian legacy teaches us that we need to look beyond the reasoning of the fear-based legitimation narratives. An analysis of fear-sensitive social regression allows us to gain this much-needed perspective.

Here, we need to take a closer look at the functioning of the realm of reasons. This is filled with Pegida’s fear- and security-based legitimation narratives, which direct people’s thinking. To understand this better, we need to reformulate ‘to direct’ in terms of ‘being heard’. For usually, and this is especially the case for the Pegida movement (cf. Panorama, 2014), supporters of right-wing populism have the feeling of not being heard by the alleged system, that is, by the government, by the politicians, by the media and so on. This feeling provides an opening for right-wing populist fear- and security-based legitimation narratives; the people now feel as though they are heard by these narratives, that are constructed by the Pegida leaders. These leaders promise to hear and to ease their fear by providing the alleged corresponding security narratives, which function as an allegedly easy remedy. The supporters are therefore open to stepping backwards from their enlightening reasoning and allowing the Pegida leaders’ fear- and security-based legitimation narratives to take over this job. In so doing, however, they do not understand that these fear- and security-based legitimation narratives are ideologically authorized, as they do not meet the normative criteria of reciprocity and generality and that they thus legitimize what is not legitimizable. For they prevent the voices of alleged outgroups, especially Muslims, from being heard.

Here, it must be added that Pegida protesters should not be considered as opening up the political space in productive ways, as as Manow writes (Manow, 2019). This falls into the causality-normativity fallacy (Forst, 2023) and overlooks the fact that the Pegida protest is caused by anti-enlightenment ideas that exclude others, all the way down. So, if the Pegida protesters claim to be waking up subjects (to return to Tuck’s astute formulation of the contemporary democratic reading of Hobbes), then we can see with the help of Kant that this call is only masquerading as a wake up. In reality, it puts reason in ‘a dogmatic slumber’ (dogmatischer Schlummer, Prol, AA 04: 260.07), to put it with Kant.

To better see this point, let us further consider what Kant understands by anger. Anger, according to Kant, is similar to blind outrage, which restricts the enlightening ‘reform of the way of thinking’ (trans. by the author, WA, AA 08: 36.31). For it operates ‘rapidly’ (trans. by the author, Anth, AA 07: 255.14). Basically, anger emerges when something happens that one did not want and one becomes frustrated and disappointed. Then, one directs one’s own anger towards the people or the institutions that one considers to be responsible for the situation (Kast, 2023). In the context of right-wing populism, we deal, however, with an ideologically compromised process of directing. The Kantian view of anger is able to explain this: as already shown in the previous passages, Kant can make transparent the reasoning behind this directing process. The element added, namely, by Kant, ‘rapidly’, now further clarifies this ideologically legitimized direction procedure. As Kant highlights, people are ‘rapidly’ (in a reflex-like manner) provoked to react by the anger that is generated by the right-wing populist fear- and security-based legitimation narratives. This rapidness, however, means that they are less able to direct their anger in a self-reflective way that would ponder the reasons behind the legitimation narratives. Instead they rapidly direct their anger towards scapegoats and thereby authorize ideological fear- and security-centred legitimation narratives in a reflex-like manner. In so doing, they misunderstand the right-wing populist security-based legitimation narrative as an easy and fast solution, a remedy provided by right-wing populist leaders for their frustration, which is born of fear and anger induced by right-wing populist leaders, too.

To specify this kind of ideological authorization of fear-based legitimation narratives, it is necessary to distinguish between first-order fear-based, noumenal domination and second-order fear-based noumenal domination. The first involves the view that subjects, such as the Pegida protesters, dominate others, that is, Muslims, by excluding them from the space of reasons and thus by disrespecting them in their moral right not to be dominated by fear. Second-order noumenal domination comprises the view that the Pegida protesters also dominate themselves because of their socially regressive use of the ability of practical reason: they do not respect themselves in their moral right to be equal law-makers of the ‘realm of ends’. Instead they give up their own, enlightened thinking to the right-wing populist leaders and allow these leaders to think for them. Instead of respecting themselves as the animal rationale that can use the ability of practical reason to give good reasons (gute Gründe), subjects are then open to being dominated by dogmata, such as the right-wing populist, fear- and security-based legitimation scripts.

VI Non-dominating, courageous citizens' juries: The first demand of justice

As an outlook, this last section presents courageous citizens' juries as a republican innovation necessary to contest right-wing populist fear-based legitimation narratives. In so doing, this section aims to show that becoming such a political agent of courageous citizens' juries is the first demand of justice and not an instrument of democracy, as could be imagined if we were to follow Pettit (Pettit, 1997).

This general account of courageous citizens' juries stems from Kant’s understanding of courage. ‘Courage’ means to ‘daring to use one’s own reasoning’ (trans. by the author, WA, AA 08: 35.05–06). ¹¹ In the tradition of the contemporary democratic reading of Hobbes (McCormick, 1994; Ober, 2001; Tuck, 2016), non-dominating citizens' juries should have the courage to wake up subjects and to publicize if subjects are disrespected in their social standing as an equal and non-dominated law-maker and law-taker of the republic of enlightenment. In this context, fear gains the function of enlightened deterrence. This view tends to be forgotten in more recent literature on fear in political contexts (Illouz, 2022; Nussbaum, 2018), which focuses on fear as a danger to democracy. Considering fear in its function of enlightened deterrence has its roots in Renaissance republican thought, mainly in Niccolò Machiavelli (McCormick, 2011, 2012; Smith and Owen, 2011). The key aspect is that the function of enlightened deterrence can make political leaders more respectful of all subjects in their social standing as an equal and non-dominated normative authority, and thus stop these leaders from generating dominating fear-based legitimation narratives. This can occur if they have to fear being held to account by citizens' juries, for example, by the right to veto. The aspect of enlightened deterrence seems especially important with respect to those Pegida supporters who are protest voters and are not fully convinced by Pegida’s anti-migration agenda. In general, protest voters are not content with current politics and merely participate in right-wing populist movements, like Pegida, to signal their discontentment, without holding strong anti-migrant or anti-Muslim views. Here, deterrence can have the important function of signaling to these protest voters that they are crossing the red line of democracy that should not be crossed. ¹²

Fear-based deterrence promises to generate a double kind of structural moral non-domination. Like the two kinds of noumenal domination (see p. 17), structural moral non-domination has first-order and second-order features. First-order means that fear-based deterrence can motivate subjects to not dominate other subjects, such as alleged outgroups like Muslims, with fear-based legitimation narratives. Second-order then signals that fear-based deterrence can also motivate subjects to not dominate themselves by letting fear- and security-based narratives think for them, and to start thinking for themselves in a self-reflective way. This shows us that fear-based deterrence can fulfil two tasks: firstly, it can encourage people not to contribute (or to contribute less) to structural moral injustices because they are afraid of the sanctions imposed by enlightened citizens' juries. Here, however, we are not dealing with a moral fear-based deterrence, only with a hypothetical one that lacks the subjects’ self-reflection. It is only the moral type of fear-based deterrence that contains this self-reflection. Moral, fear-based deterrence involves the double kind of structural moral non-domination sketched above.

Citizens' juries, viewed this way, are not an instrument of democracy, as one might imagine from Pettit’s writings, ¹³ but becoming political agents of citizens' juries is the first demand of justice. What does this mean? Pettit is highly influential in starting the neo-republican debate on non-domination about 25 years ago. In reading the history of Anglo-European political thought, Pettit develops the notion of republican freedom as non-domination. He refers to this to analyze contemporary political contexts, for example, to provide a seminal critique of political domination (Schuppert, 2013), for example, in the workplace or in marriages. Today’s debate on neo-republicanism and its early roots in republicanism expands the critique of political domination to also criticize social domination (Coffee, 2012) and economic domination (Gourevitch, 2013; Leipold, 2020). Unlike the classic liberal picture of freedom in the tradition of Isaiah Berlin, which understands freedom as non-interference, Pettit sketches freedom as non-domination in the specified sense that a person should not be dominated by potential interference on an arbitrary basis, such as that of a boss at work or that of a husband at home (cf. Bianchi, 2024). By this, Pettit mainly understands non-domination as the protection of freedom of choice. This kind of non-domination needs to be called robust, as it is not arbitrarily generated, that is, by a happy coincidence (Pettit, 2012).

However, Pettit’s neo-republican approach (esp. Pettit, 1997) falls into the fallacy of consequentialism (see Laborde and Maynor 2008a, 17): it stresses the value of democracy by its consequences (for means-end-criticism see Habermas, 1996), that is, by its effort to protect freedom of choice. In contrast, the neo-Kantian republican account of courageous citizens' juries has the deontological advantage of not to stressing the consequences, ¹⁴ but rather the duty of citizens' juries to highlight and transcend the contexts of domination that harm the moral right to be respected as the equal and non-dominated enlightened subject of the ‘noumenal republic’. ¹⁵ For Kant, this political task is the first demand of justice. In other words, while Pettit understands democratic structures as the means to achieve the end of protecting freedom of choice and thus develops an instrumental account of democratic structures, then the neo-Kantian, republican account offers an intrinsic, deontological approach to democracy in terms of moral justice.

From this, it follows that courageous citizens' juries should not have a quietist political role, seeking to pacify the political order and preserve the conservative status quo. On the contrary, and as a side note, this is the reason why Kant speaks of courage, citizen juries should dare to speak up publicly in the name of those who have not been sufficiently seen and whose voices have not been heard (cf. Bianchi, 2024), that is, people who have not been respected in their moral right not to be dominated by fear – for example, Muslims, who were disrespected by the fear-based legitimation narratives that Pegida creates. Like Emile Zola, the citizen of courage who defended Alfred Dreyfus in the French anti-Semitic scandal in the late 19th century (cf. Bianchi, 2012), today’s citizens of courage in the form of the citizens’ juries should defend the principles of democracy and should publicly announce: ‘J’accuse!’