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Adorno on democratic ! The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/1478210320985378
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insights for resisting

right-wing extremism

Michalinos Zembylas
Open University of Cyprus & Nelson Mandela University, South Africa

Abstract
This paper examines Theodor W. Adorno’s notion of democratic pedagogy and the role of
emotions in re-educating and democratizing a society, particularly in light of the current political
situation in many countries around the world in which right-wing extremism is on the rise. The
paper revisits Adorno’s educational thought on critical self-reflection, focusing on his views on
educating emotions and the tensions between democratic pedagogy and a schooling of the
emotions. It is argued that Adorno’s contribution to discussions of the role of emotion in edu-
cation and his suggestions about how to resist and counteract fascism and right-wing extremism
are not only illuminating today, but also provide remarkable clarity and force of argumentation in
educational efforts to create critical spaces in the classroom in which moral and political learning
does not end up a form of sentimental manipulation.

Keywords
Theodor W. Adorno, critical self-reflection, affect/emotion, Holocaust, democratic pedagogy,
right-wing extremism

Introduction
The thought that after this war life could continue on ‘normally’, or indeed that culture could be
‘reconstructed’ – as if the reconstruction of culture alone were not already the negation of such –
is idiotic. Millions of Jews have been murdered, and this is supposed to be only the intermission

Corresponding author:
Michalinos Zembylas, Open University of Cyprus P. O. Box 12794, Latsia 2252, Cyprus
Email: m.zembylas@ouc.ac.cy
2 Policy Futures in Education 0(0)

and not the catastrophe itself. What exactly is this culture waiting for anyway? (Adorno, 1951/
2002: 55)

[O]ne might refer to the fascist movements as the wounds, the scars of a democracy that, to this
day, has not yet lived up to its own concept. (Adorno, 1967/2020: 9)

Upon returning to post-war West Germany from his exile, Theodor W. Adorno devoted
significant time and effort to numerous public lectures, dialogues and radio addresses in
which he reflected on what had led Germans under National Socialism to inflict unspeak-
able horror and death during the Holocaust (Parkinson, 2014).1 In these public interven-
tions, Adorno paid particular attention to the role of education and the political significance
of an education against Auschwitz (Cho, 2009). In one of his radio broadcasts in 1966
entitled ‘Education After Auschwitz’, Adorno famously stated that,

The premier demand upon all education is that Auschwitz not happen again. [. . .] Every debate
about the ideals of education is trivial and inconsequential compared to this single ideal: never
again Auschwitz. It was the barbarism all education strives against [. . .] and barbarism continues
as long as the fundamental conditions that favored that relapse continue largely unchanged.
That is the whole horror. (1969/1998a: 191)

By setting the prevention of another Auschwitz as the new aim of education in post-war
Germany, Adorno advocated an ‘education toward critical self-reflection’ (1998b: 193).
What is unique in Adorno’s educational thought on critical self-reflection, argues Cho
(2009), is that this practice is not self-centred, namely, it does not stop at the level of the
self or the individual; rather it refers to an expansive form of thinking in which the self is a
particular through which society as a whole is mediated. In this sense, Adorno embraced the
idea of ‘re-educating’ the German society (Heins, 2012) so that German citizens learn to
think, feel, and act differently – namely, to eschew fascist passions and behaviour in favour
of democracy (Parkinson, 2017).
Turning to Adorno’s various writings on education throughout this period until his death
in 1969, a central idea was that ‘democratic pedagogy’ would cultivate the capacity to a
younger generation for critical self-reflection, and ultimately, social change (Mariotti, 2014).
He claimed that democratic pedagogy must enable students to think for themselves and to
break free of the authority of teachers, parents and other adults (Snir, 2017). What would
emerge from this, according to Adorno, is that students would eventually be turned away
from the affective ethos of ‘ressentiment’ – which was prevalent in the period during
National Socialism as well as afterwards – toward self-reflection and autonomy of thinking
(Cho, 2009). What is remarkable about Adorno’s educational thought – especially in light of
a 1967 lecture that was recently published in print for the first time in German in 2019,
followed up by an English translation in 2020 (see Adorno, 1967/2020) in which he provided
the model for a type of education against right-wing extremism that was on the rise then in
West Germany (Dahms, 2020) – is how his ideas are relevant today ‘as the contemporary
moment has seen the return of Auschwitz in such places as Darfur, East Timor, Rwanda,
Sierra Leone, the former Yugoslavia’ (Cho, 2009: 75) and the list goes on and on.
The premise on which this essay rests – i.e. that Adorno’s concept of an education against
Auschwitz has resonance today – is not new; that premise is not the most important con-
tribution of this essay. The more important contribution is the analysis of the connection
Zembylas 3

between pedagogy and affect in Adorno’s educational thought to draw pedagogical insights
for resisting contemporary right-wing extremism.2 Critical thinking is often understood as a
cognitive activity; yet, revisiting Adorno’s thought on an education toward critical self-
reflection, it is shown that critical self-reflection is an intensely affective experience, an
idea that has gained growing attention within education in recent years (Danvers, 2016;
Zembylas, 2013, 2014).3 In his democratic pedagogy, Adorno suggests that a crucial aspect
of confronting fascism is the key role emotions play in the configuration and interpretation
of socio-political aspects of a community (Parkinson, 2017). The German population’s lack
of emotional connections to the tenets of democracy during and after the Holocaust raises,
according to Adorno, important issues about politics as a form of public pedagogy (see
Giroux, 2004) that educates the population’s emotions (see Parkinson, 2014).
Although previous scholarship on Adorno’s work has explored his philosophy on think-
ing, social critique and the role of education (e.g. Cho, 2009; Giroux, 2004; Heins, 2012;
Lewis, 2006; Mariotti, 2014; Snir, 2017), it has paid little attention to his views on an
education of the emotions in the work of ‘coming to terms with the past’.4 Hence, this
paper is interested in examining Adorno’s democratic pedagogy and the role of emotions
in re-educating and democratizing a society, particularly in light of the current political
situation in many countries around the world in which right-wing extremism is on the rise.5
The following questions are at the heart of this paper (cf. Parkinson, 2017): How does
Adorno’s democratic pedagogy envision a young generation or a population to be
‘taught’ to feel and act differently? What kinds of critical spaces are needed in schools to
create learning opportunities conducive to democratic political subjectivity? And, finally,
what are the tensions and possibilities emerging from a moral and political learning in
education that aims to combat fascism and right-wing extremism and to invoke embodied
democratic values, feelings and behaviours?
The essay begins with revisiting Adorno’s thought on education; the aim of this section is
to situate my analysis in the broader oeuvre of Adorno’s work. The second section focuses
in particular on Adorno’s concept of democratic pedagogy and discusses his vision of how
to turn the young generation away from the ‘wounds’ of the past toward a democratic
alternative. The third section turns to Adorno’s thoughts on educating emotions and the
tensions between democratic pedagogy and a schooling of the emotions. Last, the essay
examines the pedagogical insights emerging from Adorno’s democratic pedagogy and the
education of emotions, particularly in light of his recently printed lecture on ‘the new right-
wing extremism’. It is argued that Adorno’s contribution to discussions of the role of
emotion in education and his suggestions about how to resist and counteract fascism and
right-wing extremism are not only illuminating today, but provide remarkable clarity and
force of argumentation in educational efforts to create critical spaces in the classroom in
which moral and political learning does not end up a form of sentimental manipulation.

Adorno’s educational thought

Throughout his various public lectures and writings on education, Adorno was preoccupied
by the conditions that led to Auschwitz and which were still present in post-war West
Germany, as he repeatedly pointed out. As he tells us in Minima Moralia (1951/2002) –
he also made a similar point in several of his speeches (e.g. see Adorno, 1998c) – hierarchical
structures in schools were specifically taken advantage of by National Socialism to cultivate
authoritarianism and violence: in particular, there was hierarchy founded on intellect,
4 Policy Futures in Education 0(0)

achievement and grades, and hierarchy founded in physical strength. The violence enacted
in the social hierarchy of the playground was recalled by Adorno in his own childhood as an
example that demonstrated the connectedness between violence at the micro- and macro-
level. It is worth quoting Adorno at length here:

In a real sense, I ought to be able to deduce Fascism from the memories of my childhood. As a
conqueror dispatches envoys to the remotest provinces, Fascism had sent its advance guard
there long before it marched in: my schoolfellows. [. . .] The outbreak of the Third Reich did, it is
true, surprise my political judgment, but not my unconscious fear. So closely had all the motifs
of permanent catastrophe brushed me, so deeply were the warning signs of the German awak-
ening burned into me, that I recognized them all in the features of Hitler’s dictatorship: and it
often seemed to my foolish terror as if the total State had been invented expressly against me, to
inflict on me after all those things from which, in my childhood, its primeval form, I had been
temporarily dispensed. The five patriots who set upon a single schoolfellow, thrashed him and,
when he complained to the teacher, defamed him a traitor to the class – are they not the same as
those who tortured prisoners to refute claims by foreigners that prisoners were tortured? They
whose hallooing knew no end when the top boy blundered – did they not stand grinning and
sheepish round the Jewish detainee, poking fun at his maladroit attempt to hang himself? (2002:
192–193)

Mindful that the social and political pressures in post-war Germany were largely unchanged
and that acts of barbarism could easily be repeated in the future (Adorno, 1998a), Adorno
argued that education had to transform itself, ‘that is, it must teach about the societal play
of forces that operates beneath the surface of political forms’ (1998a: 203). In other words,
‘the mechanisms that render people capable of such deeds’ (1998a: 193) must be exposed and
dismantled, if another Auschwitz is going to be prevented. Importantly, then, Adorno’s
concerns about education and the Holocaust need to be situated in his larger social critique
of ongoing violence in the society, including the violence of capitalism that leads to frag-
mentation of life of which Auschwitz is the epitome (Cho, 2009; Lewis, 2006).
Adorno emphasized that dismantling the psychological, intellectual and social conditions
that made the Holocaust possible required a different mode of thinking, feeling and acting,
namely, a different model of education as a critical practice that could provide the means for
disconnecting learning from fascist ideology and its manifestations of violence.

A new categorical imperative has been imposed by Hitler upon unfree mankind: to arrange their
thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz will not repeat itself, so that nothing similar will happen.
When we want to find reasons for it, this imperative is as refractory as the given one of Kant
once upon a time. (1966/1995: 365)

What the new imperative called for was a new conception of education that would not only
transform the social institution of education as such, but also change the social structures of
culture in everyday life. As Adorno explained:

When I speak of education after Auschwitz, then, I mean two areas: first children’s education,
especially in early childhood; then general enlightenment that provides the intellectual, cultural,
and social climate in which a recurrence would no longer be possible, a climate, therefore, in
which the motives that led to the horror would become relatively conscious. (1998a: 194)
Zembylas 5

Adorno’s response to this new imperative was ‘an education toward critical self-reflection’,
namely, an education that produced reflective and autonomous individuals. For Adorno,
critical self-reflection was not a confession or self-discovery (Cho, 2009), but rather a pro-
cess of calling things into question and the willingness to resist the pervasive ideologies and
forces of repression that produced the horrors of the past (Giroux, 2004). As he pointed out:

In the attempt to prevent the repetition of Auschwitz it seems essential to me first of all to gain
some clarity about the conditions under which the manipulative character arises, and then, by
altering these conditions, to prevent as far as possible its emergence. (1998a: 199)

Critical self-reflection, then, is not simply concerned with learning particular modes of
knowledge and skills, but also un-learning the ideological, social and material mechanisms
that lead individuals to be manipulated. ‘If unlearning as a pedagogical practice meant
resisting those social deformations that shaped everyday needs and desires,’ explains
Giroux (2004), ‘critical learning meant making visible those social practices and mechanisms
that represented the opposite of self-formation and autonomous thinking so as to resist such
forces and prevent them from exercising such power and influence’ (798). In other words,
the pivotal issue here is how the cultivation of critical learning can function as a pedagogical
practice against manipulation; it is precisely the absence of such critical learning that paves
the way to horrific events such as Auschwitz, as Adorno seems to be telling us.
At the core of Adorno’s educational approach against manipulation and toward critical
self-reflection there were two issues of highly affective relevance: hardness (indifference
towards pain) and coldness (indifference towards others). Both were bred through the
German educational system, and so they must be unlearned through critical self-reflection
(Schick, 2009). For example, Adorno explained how hardness disallowed the expression of
emotions, creating a toxic cycle of indifference towards others’ pain: ‘Whoever is hard with
himself earns the right to be hard with others as well and avenges himself for the pain whose
manifestations he was not allowed to show and had to repress’ (1998a: 198). Also, coldness
as a profound indifference towards those with whom there were no close ties was another
psychological condition linked to the Holocaust. The result was the manipulative conscious-
ness of the fascist that was characterized by ‘a rage for organization, by the inability to have
any immediate human experiences at all, by a certain lack of emotion’ (1998a: 198). As
Adorno wrote further: ‘[i]f coldness were not a fundamental trait of anthropology, that is,
the constitution of people as they in fact exist in our society [. . .] then Auschwitz would not
have been possible, people would not have accepted it’ (1998a: 201). A few paragraphs later,
he emphasized that, ‘If anything can help against coldness as the condition for disaster, then
it is the insight into the conditions that determine it and the attempt to combat those
conditions, initially in the domain of the individual’ (1998a: 202).6
Importantly, Adorno did not believe that education as an act of critical self-reflection
alone could dismantle the institutional structures of society and culture; however, he
acknowledged that changing the powerful complex of economic and social forces began
with education (Giroux, 2004). Yet, Adorno understood education as more than social
engineering, explains Giroux; he imagined education as a democratic public space in
which changes could be carried out through individual and collective forms of resistance.
As Cho (2009) also points out, in advocating critical self-reflection, Adorno’s aim was to
make possible the investigation of social context; that is, to expose how individual and
collective identities are shaped, desired, felt, and experienced within social formations. On
6 Policy Futures in Education 0(0)

this account, Adorno’s understanding of critical education can play a crucial role in a
democracy by turning our attention to ways that can prevent fascist ideologies from elim-
inating the possibility of reflective thought and engaged social action.
In sum, Adorno’s educational thought offers important insights for addressing how crit-
ical education might prevent or challenge the conditions for fascist political ideology – in its
militarized or patriotic forms – to take root in conscious or unconscious ways (Lewis, 2006).
Contemporary education is, of course, different from the pre-war German education system
or its post-war manifestations, yet Adorno’s claim that an education for critical self-
reflection offers the strongest barrier to the recurrence of Auschwitz remains as compelling
as ever, especially in light of new forms of right-wing extremism and related forms of pop-
ulism that spring up nowadays. The next part of the essay focuses more specifically on
Adorno’s concept of democratic pedagogy and discusses his vision of how to turn the
young generation away from the ‘wounds’ of the past toward a democratic alternative.

Democratic pedagogy
As noted so far, Adorno’s main concern was that social institutions and norms, such as
schooling, especially under conditions of capitalist and/or fascist regimes, work to cultivate
an unthinking and passive citizenry; hence, the question for him was how to foster a more
critical and democratic practice of citizenship without simply offering a new regime of
authority or doing it through indoctrination and manipulation (Mariotti, 2014). Adorno’s
project of ‘democratic pedagogy’, explains Mariotti, grappled with this tension; his response
was that the systematic cultivation of critical self-reflection would make social change pos-
sible. As he wrote:

We are neither simply spectators of world history, free to frolic more or less at will within its
grand chambers, nor does world history, whose rhythm increasingly approaches that of the
catastrophe, appear to allow its subjects the time in which everything would improve on its
own. This bears directly on democratic pedagogy. (Adorno, 1998b: 99)

Adorno’s notion of democratic pedagogy promoted what he called ‘democratic enlighten-

ment’ (1998b: 100), by which he meant the creation of truly democratic social structures,
institutions and norms manifested in open, critical and receptive modes of feeling, thinking
and acting. Thus the praxis of critical self-reflection was for Adorno ‘the essence of true
democracy, but not the end of democracy. For democracy to fully flower and for its nor-
mative promise to be realized, the seed of critique must be allowed to bloom into a collective
world building and reworking of structures and institutions’ (Mariotti, 2014: 421, original
emphasis).
In particular, Adorno’s project of democratic pedagogy suggested that any viable edu-
cational project that wishes to promote democratic enlightenment would have to recognize
how capitalist, fascist or other oppressive and authoritarian regimes not only damage dem-
ocratic institutions, but also the ability of people to identify with democratic social forma-
tions, invest in public good, and feel compassion for those who suffer (Giroux, 2004). As
Giroux explains:

Adorno understood that critical knowledge alone could not adequately address the deforma-
tions of mind and character put into place by the subjective mechanisms of capitalism. Instead,
Zembylas 7

he argued that critical knowledge had to be reproduced and democratic social experiences put
into place through shared values, beliefs, and practices that created inclusive and compassionate
communities that make democratic politics possible and safeguard the autonomous subject
through the creation of emancipatory needs. (2004: 804)

Adorno’s project raises questions whether stable democratic institutions can be built on
feelings like compassion. How can compassionate feelings be combined with critical self-
reflection to create inclusive communities? Aren’t compassion and other feelings too elusive
to be guarantees of social justice and democracy?7 On one hand, it may be suggested that
Adorno’s stance – e.g. to feel compassion for those who suffer – may seem rather naı̈ve and
idealistic. On the other hand, his point is precisely that democratic pedagogy has to be
threaded through everyday life to dismantle the mechanisms of capitalism and fascism
that work to erode democratic social experiences (see Adorno, 1998b). Although cultivating
compassion in pedagogy cannot provide any assurance of social justice and democracy, it
does create openings to impact youth and society in productive ways.
In fact, in several of his writings and radio broadcasts, Adorno gave examples of how
democratic pedagogy could transform the spirit of people; for instance, he mentioned how
films, magazines and television programs could be presented, analysed and critiqued so that
citizens would understand how their inner desires and needs were exploited. In this sense,
teachers would create pedagogical sites that extend the range of democratic politics, and
students would learn how to resist the seductions of capitalist and/or fascist ideologies
(Giroux, 2004). The aim of democratic pedagogy would be to cultivate the capacity
for critique and reflection as a social and political practice rather than an individual cog-
nitive skill.

So that, to begin with, all we try to do is simply open people’s minds to the fact that they are
constantly being deceived, because the mechanism of tutelage has been raised to the status of a
universal mundus vult decepti: the world wants to be deceived. Making everyone aware of these
connections could perhaps be achieved in the spirit of an immanent critique, because there can
be no normal democracy which could afford to be explicitly against an enlightenment of this
kind. (Adorno and Becker, 1999: 31)

Adorno’s thoughts on democratic pedagogy, suggests Mariotti (2014), seek to outline a

strategy for slowly but consistently reworking social structures and collective identities in
order to cultivate the capacity for critical self-reflection and encourage ‘the countercultural
tendencies of everyday life, to turn pathologies into vaccines against conformity’ (435). It is
fair to say, as Heins (2012) also adds, that Adorno’s idea of democratic pedagogy as re-
education ‘focuses less on the restoration of democratic institutions than on the transfor-
mation of the ideas and habits of citizens’ (72).
Importantly, there are two crucial insights that distinguish Adorno’s idea of democratic
pedagogy from other manifestations of critical pedagogy, making Adorno’s analysis espe-
cially relevant to current political conditions. First, Adorno did not believe in forcing the
Germans into shame and guilt simply by telling them the facts of what happened under the
Nazi regime. As he rightfully says, ‘As far as wanting to combat anti-Semitism in individual
subjects is concerned, one should not expect too much from the recourse to facts, which
anti-Semites most often will either not admit or will neutralize by treating them as excep-
tions’ (1998b: 102). In this sense, it is not sufficient to simply teach what happened in the
8 Policy Futures in Education 0(0)

Holocaust, but to demonstrate the connection between fascist ideology and the mechanisms
of destruction of society. The goal of a democratic pedagogy inspired by Adorno’s ideas,
then, is to instil a sense of mindfulness of the destructive potential of modern society and a
habit of compassion (Heins, 2012) rather than imposing a morality of guilt and shame. I
have also argued elsewhere (Zembylas, 2019) that it is not productive for a democratic
pedagogy that aims to cultivate compassion and shared responsibility to focus on blame,
guilt or fault, but rather it needs to encourage students to interrogate the social conditions
under which they are responsive and responsible to others. In other words, it is more pro-
ductive to engage in an affirmative praxis (e.g. compassion) rather than getting stuck in a
moralistic framework of guilt and shame.
Second, a democratic pedagogy grounded in Adorno’s ideas takes into account its own
complicity with genocide and thus constantly transforms and re-invents itself on the level
of form rather than ameliorative content (Lewis, 2006). This is precisely why Adorno’s
message for educators was to avoid teaching methods which were akin to those used by
the Nazis such as endorsing coldness and hardness or repressing the emotions. Emotional
indoctrination, for example, even if it is for ‘noble’ purposes, such as teaching about/for
democratic citizenship, is deeply problematic, because pedagogy becomes complicit to
forms of violence. Democratic pedagogy as a form of anti-complicity pedagogy creates
pedagogical sites in which students are encouraged to take actions that actively resist
social harm in everyday life, yet not in a manner that forces them to do so (Zembylas,
2020). For this to happen, it is necessary that educators navigate students through the
affective and political dynamics of complicity in both critical and strategic ways. As Heins
(2012) explains,

A recurring motif in Adorno’s writings is the educational ideal of making the young generation
willing and able to face the horrors of the recent past without taking recourse to metaphysical
consolations and secular theodicies. He wanted students to grow emotionally and intellectually
sensitive [. . .] to be able to take in, absorb and communicate the traumatic rendering of the
barbarous crimes of Nazi Germany. (71–72)

Both of these insights emerging from Adorno’s idea of democratic pedagogy highlight
education as not the ‘solution’ of society’s barbarism, but rather a space of exploring the
tensions and challenges of preventing the rise of barbarism (Lewis, 2006). Adorno’s ideas
raise fundamental questions about how acts of barbarism are inextricably linked to peda-
gogical practices that produce cultures that legitimate violence, oppression, and injustice
(Giroux, 2004). The next part of the essay turns to Adorno’s thoughts on educating emo-
tions and the tensions between democratic pedagogy and a schooling of the emotions.

Democratic pedagogy and the schooling of emotions

Although emotion is often referred to in passing by Adorno in his writings, speeches and
radio talks, and while Freudian psychoanalysis dominates his efforts to explain and restruc-
ture the psychological makeup of the Germans, ‘affect remains, by and large, undertheor-
ized by Adorno himself’ (Parkinson, 2014: 48). As Parkinson explains, the role of emotion in
Adorno’s writings is not granted a theoretical or conceptual framework, which might
explain partly ‘why emotion remains marginal in the reception of Adorno’s body of thought’
(2014: 48). However, more recent scholarship – for example, by Parkinson (2014, 2017) and
Zembylas 9

others (e.g. Macdonald, 2011; Thiem, 2009) – attempts to shed more light on the centrality
of affect in Adorno’s post-war work and demonstrate how his understanding of pedagogy
emphasizes the necessary relationship between reason and affect in achieving critical self-
reflection and autonomy, yet without running into the risk of ‘kitsch sentimentality’
(Adorno, 1997).
As noted earlier in the paper, Adorno suggests that a democratic pedagogy that culti-
vates critical self-reflection – through educational institutions and families – is essential to
turn German citizens away from the enduring form of Nazi ideology in structures of logic
and emotion (Parkinson, 2014). If Auschwitz is going to be prevented in the future,
‘education as guidance into the world of emotive intellect, experience, and reflective
thought through otherness or difference becomes imperative for Adorno,’ points out
Parkinson (2014: 52). In the context of Adorno’s efforts for re-education, this requires
‘understanding emotions as part of a larger repertoire of behaviors of embodied subjects’
and ‘underscores the centrality of the spatial dimension of geo-political context’
(Parkinson, 2017: 98). In other words, Germans in post-war Germany should cultivate
critical and affective communities that are conducive to democratic sentiments, in part by
altering their affective and spatial relations.
The coldness and hardness that predominated among Germans during Nazi Germany
through the reign of cold rationalism undoubtedly played an important part in making
Auschwitz possible. As Adorno said about affect and its relation to irrationality:

. . . if they [people] have more affects and more passions, they will have less prejudices [sic]. I
would like to say, if they allow themselves more of their affects and passions, if they do not once
again repeat in themselves the pressure society exerts upon them, they will be far less evil, far less
sadistic, and far less malicious than they sometimes are today. (1998d: 299–300)

Within the normative spaces of schools and families, Adorno envisages modes of feeling and
behaviour that restructure intimacy – namely, intimate relations and interactions – as an
important aspect of the concept of maturity (Mündigkeit), that is, having the courage and
the ability of autonomy and self-determination (Parkinson, 2017). He rejects the Kantian
framework of autonomy in terms of rational interiority, and emphasizes that intimacy as a
set of affective and spatial relations in the family and educational institutions is precisely
what is missing from the Kantian concept of autonomy (Macdonald, 2011). Intimacy,
according to Adorno, corrects Kant’s concept of autonomy because there are ‘irreplaceable
faculties which cannot flourish in the isolated cell of pure inwardness, but only in live
contact with the warmth of things’ (1951/2002: 43). Hence, if the premier demand upon
all education is that Auschwitz not happens again, ‘we have to trust that “live contact with
the warmth of things” can happen in the university, the school and the classroom’ (Jessop,
2017: 419).
The schooling of emotion, then, forms an integral part of education toward critical self-
reflection, maturity and autonomy (Parkinson, 2014, 2017). It takes many forms ranging
from recognizing the role of emotion in developing self-critical awareness and combating
irrationality to re-educating the next generation of students and teachers so that emotions
are embraced in the classroom as a way out of the emotional coldness and hardness.
Without ever extensively addressing the role of emotion and affect in educational efforts
in post-war Germany, Adorno emphasized that re-education necessarily included an
10 Policy Futures in Education 0(0)

education of the emotions that entailed the cultivation of different feelings and affective
relations than those during the Nazi regime.

Undoubtedly there is much that is neurotic in the relation to the past: defensive postures where
one is not attacked, intense affects where they are hardly warranted by the situation, an absence
of affect in the face of the gravest matters, not seldom simply a repression of what is known or
half-known. (Adorno, 1998b: 90)

Thus, the work of ‘coming to terms with the past’, according to Adorno, has to be under-
stood as a process of learning how to develop democratic sentiments, which might entail, for
example, feelings of empathy for the other without invoking the destructive feelings of
hatred toward other individuals or groups, as in the case of anti-Semitism. As Parkinson
(2017) explains:

Adorno encouraged the emergence of a different palette of feelings than the fascist, militant
idealization of hardness or the repression of anxiety [. . .]. Adorno underscored that German
citizens would only become democratic subjects if, through experience and practice, they devel-
oped the capacity to tolerate a full spectrum of ambivalent, competing emotional responses – in
short the capability of tolerating feelings without resorting to defensive rage or hatred. (99)

In other words, thinking and being differently in the world would also mean feeling differ-
ently, namely, developing more emotive, intimate practices and spaces in which democratic
modes of feeling would be truly experienced. As Adorno said about the need to have
experiences of democracy in post-war Germany:

Democracy has not become naturalized to the point where people truly experience it as their
own and see themselves as subjects of the political process. Democracy is perceived as one
system among others, as though one could choose from a menu between communism, democ-
racy, fascism, and monarchy: but democracy is not identified with the people themselves as the
expression of their political maturity. (1998b: 93)

All in all, there are two important contributions emerging from Adorno’s thought on the
role of emotions in the process of critical self-reflection. First, Adorno helps us reimagine
critical self-reflection as an affective, spatial and embodied process – an idea that shifts the
emphasis away from rationalized, militarized and masculinist conceptions of subjectivity
and intersubjectivity and towards imaginaries that pay more attention to the role of affect
and emotion in democratic pedagogy. Indeed, critical thinking is often understood as a set
of measurable skills and competencies that have little to do with emotion; yet, growing work
in feminist and new materialist scholarship shows that critical thinking is also an intensely
affective experience that is complex, contingent and contextualized (Danvers, 2016; Other
and Author, 2016). Hence, acknowledging Adorno’s contribution on the role of emotion in
cultivating critical self-reflection and self-determination suggests the need to pay careful
attention to the critical spaces that can be created within and beyond educational institu-
tions to transform fascist into democratic sentiments.
Second, Adorno (1997) alerts us that salvaging the role of emotionality in critical
thinking and education is not an endeavour without difficulties (Thiem, 2009). One of
Zembylas 11

the most important risks is that this endeavour might end up cultivating ‘kitsch sentimen-
tality’, namely, the situation in which ‘emotionality becomes exhausted, arrested, and
neutralized in how it is circulated and rendered hermetic against transformations and
self-criticism’ (Thiem, 2009: 600). For example, if democratic pedagogy moralizes the
affective responses of students about the Holocaust insofar as it advocates that being
emotionally touched by this horrific event is the epitome of our moral goodness and
that such feelings are or should be representative of everyone, then students’ emotional
investments become kitsch sentimentality. Such generalizations that proceed affectively
through the emotionality of critical thinking, suggests Thiem (2009), ‘are problematic
because they are complicit in the unnoticed violence against the visibly excluded’ (603).
In other words, if emotionality fails to take into consideration the differences in human
conditions – e.g. the Holocaust is a unique event and yet, at the same time, there are
numerous other manifestations of human suffering – then the generalization of the
Holocaust as the epitome of evil will gloss over the social, economic, and cultural differ-
ences between the students, who are all presumed to be moved in the same way. In the last
part of the essay, I discuss the pedagogical insights emerging from Adorno’s democratic
pedagogy and the education of emotions, particularly in light of his recently printed
lecture on ‘the new right-wing extremism’.

Adorno’s insights on how to resist right-wing extremism

It is remarkable to realize the accuracy of Adorno’s (1967/2020) diagnosis of new right-wing
extremism in Germany, especially today in the context of a growing number of right-wing
movements around the world. The point is not to compare right-wing extremism nowadays
to Adorno’s analysis half a century ago, although as Dahms (2020) says, what may be most
striking

is not so much that his effort was directed at illuminating right-wing trends that are virulent
again today, but that he did so with astonishing clarity, efficiency and accuracy so many years
ago, while difficulties remain today to conceive of effective strategies to contain or prevent the
destructive potential of right-wing movements and politics. (130)

Although Adorno did not directly address the issue of education in his 1967 lecture on right-
wing extremism, the spirit of his analysis and the practical strategies and tactics he suggested
were very much in line with his overall efforts in other lectures and broadcasts (e.g. see
Adorno, 1998a, 1998b) to convey the urgency of re-educating German citizens; as noted
earlier, the aim of re-education was to foster critical and reflexive perspectives on the past,
present and future – ‘with regard to both individuals’ socially and historically situated
selves, and their particular society’s darker side’ (Dahms, 2020: 130).
A productive reading of Adorno’s 1967 lecture on right-wing extremism needs to be
situated in the historical and political context of electoral successes of the National
Democratic Party of Germany, a neo-Nazi party in West Germany. What was new about
this form of right-wing extremism, suggests Dahms (2020), was that this party promoted
ideas and approaches that although they were not identical with, in many ways they were
inspired by, the National Socialists. Adorno had already raised his concerns about the
12 Policy Futures in Education 0(0)

propagation of Nazis’ ideas in German society years earlier in his lecture on ‘coming to
terms with the past’:

I consider the survival of National Socialism within democracy to be potentially more menacing
than the survival of fascist tendencies against democracy [. . .] That fascism lives on, that the oft-
invoked working through of the past has to this day been unsuccessful and has degenerated into
its own caricature, an empty and cold forgetting, is due to the fact that the objective conditions
of society that engendered fascism continue to exist. (1963/1998b: 90, 98)

Adorno’s analysis highlights two possible interpretations for the proliferation of fascist
ideas, not only in post-war Germany but also nowadays: first, the appeal of fascism
and its ability to garner support despite (or perhaps because of) the unspeakable atroc-
ities it causes may be symptomatic of problematic dimensions of modern societies and
especially capitalism; second, this appeal to fascism may be expressive of the limitations
of formal democracy viewed as a poor substitute of substantive democracy (Dahms,
2020).
The point of departure for Adorno’s lecture on right-wing extremism is the theme he
addressed in his lecture on ‘coming to terms with the past’. As he said, ‘the thesis that the
reason for right-wing extremism, or the potential for such a right-wing extremism, which
was not yet truly visible at the time, is that the social conditions for fascism continue to
exist’ (1967/2020: 1). These social conditions, Adorno explained, were related to econom-
ics, and especially to emotions of fear under conditions of capitalism and globalization
(e.g. threat of impoverishment and unemployment), as well as threats to one’s established
national identity. As he wrote: ‘in both socio-psychological and real terms, there is a very
widespread fear of being absorbed by these blocs [U.S.A and U.S.S.R.] and, in the pro-
cess, being severely impaired in one’s material existence’ (1967/2020: 4). Adorno pointed
out that the fear of loss of identity and the fear emerging from capitalism and globaliza-
tion made fascism attractive not only to previously Nazi sympathizers but also to younger
generations, as they felt threatened by Germany’s collapse. These fears were taken advan-
tage of by right-wing movements to spread propaganda, just as it happened with the
Nazis.

The ingenuity of the propaganda used by these parties and movements is that it balances out the
[. . .] unquestionable difference between the real interests and the fraudulent aims they espouse. It
is the very substance of the matter, just as it was with the Nazis. When the means increasingly
become substitutes for aims, one can almost say that, in these extreme right-wing movements,
propaganda actually constitutes the substance of politics. (1967/2020: 13)

Adorno went on to observe how in its content, right-wing ideology ‘is one based on Nazi
ideology. [. . .] [I]t is amazing how little in the way of new elements has been added to the old
repertoire, how secondary and rehashed it is’ (1967/2020: 25).
After his diagnosis of the roots and expressions of right-wing extremism, Adorno pro-
vided a range of strategies and tactics of how to resist this movement. As Dahms (2020: 149–
150) correctly points out, Adorno’s numerous suggestions reiterate his call for critical self-
reflection made in other lectures and writings – a call that emphasizes the importance of
Zembylas 13

democratic pedagogy in social institutions, especially schools educating the younger gener-
ation. As he advised:

[O]ne of the most crucial aspects of how to resist this movement – the only thing that really
strikes me as effective is to warn the potential followers of right-wing extremism about its own
consequences, to convey to them that this politics will inevitably lead its own followers to their
doom too, and that this doom was part of it from the outset, just as Hitler started saying, at an
early stage, ‘Then I’d rather put a bullet in my head,’ and then repeated the claim at every
opportunity. So if one is serious about opposing these things, one must refer to the central
interests of those who are targeted by the propaganda. This applies especially to young people,
whom one must warn about every kind of drill, about the restriction of their privacy and their
lifestyle. (1967/2020: 17)

Expanding on the analysis Adorno presented in this lecture in conjunction with his reflec-
tions on democratic pedagogy and the role of emotions, as discussed earlier, there are two
valuable pedagogical insights that are reiterated here and are very much relevant in efforts
to resist right-wing extremism today. First, an important point of departure for democratic
pedagogy is to identify and understand how affective dynamics work in various sectors of
the society (e.g. families, schools, communities) to organize people’s emotional responses
(e.g. fear) to social conditions; these emotions are the ones taken advantage of by right-wing
movements and so it is crucial to examine under which circumstances there can be an
antidote to fear, and generally to the ideology of right-wing extremism and its practices
in everyday life (Zembylas, 2020). A key pedagogical challenge, then, is how educators can
use democratic pedagogy in their teaching to not only problematize but also demonstrate
the forms of damage and harm done by right-wing extremism. Needless to say, democratic
pedagogy in and by itself cannot fully eliminate the multiple dangers emerging from right-
wing extremism; however, it is important for educators to be constantly vigilant about the
possibility of employing moralistic pedagogic tactics that will end up cultivating ‘kitsch
sentimentality’ rather than critical self-reflection.
Second, another pedagogical insight emerging from Adorno’s analysis of right-wing
extremism is that Adorno advocated a very specific and increasingly important kind of
democratic pedagogy that creates spaces for critical self-reflection. These spaces
acknowledge how and why different young people articulate themselves affectively in
certain ways and what can be done to respond productively to those affective invest-
ments in the micropolitical settings in which they live (e.g. schools, families).
Consequently, Adorno’s approach inspires questions such as: How can democratic ped-
agogy refocus attention on how critical self-reflection feels, ‘rather than simply what it
is and what it is for’ (Danvers, 2016: 284)? What are the affects and emotions of
becoming ‘critical’ toward right-wing extremism? How are these affects and emotions
entangled with critical self-reflection, and in which ways can educational institutions
and practices cultivate affects and emotions of critical self-reflection without leading
students to kitsch sentimentality? Such questions move beyond what critical self-
reflection is, focusing instead on what it does in educational efforts to cultivate certain
emotions (e.g. empathy, compassion, solidarity) as antidotes to growing fascist tenden-
cies around the world.
14 Policy Futures in Education 0(0)

Concluding remarks
Trying to assess the continuing relevance of Adorno’s educational thoughts in the present
context, it is important to avoid superficial comparisons and generalizations regarding the
extent to which his ideas can be implemented as such half a century after his death. That’s
clearly not the point. Adorno’s lasting relevance should be understood in light of his acute
conceptualization of the possibility that manipulation and social engineering is possible –
either by fascists or even by those who claim to have ‘good intentions’ in the name of
‘noble causes’ (e.g. democracy, social justice). Adorno realized that the process of democra-
tization cannot happen unless people, especially young ones, are (re)educated to behave and
feel differently. Yet this process entails dangers that emerge from demanding an ‘education to
feel differently’, as the line between indoctrination and re-education is often blurry and con-
tentious. The success of democratization may be measured by the extent of a population’s
critical reflection on and resistance to right-wing extremist and fascist ideas, yet it is important
to keep in mind that the meaning and process of re-education are ‘ambivalent’, to say the
least. As Parkinson rightly points out in her discussion on re-education in post-war Germany:

[F]eeling differently might not always have meant reproducing behaviors outlined in programs
of democratization by the reeducation. Rather, this very resistance of the Germans to these
imposed ideological forms aimed at changing their life world in post-Nazi Germany might well
indicate the stirrings of engagement, the reconstitution of altered intimate geographies to include
political and broader social self-determination, which is part and parcel of a successful demo-
cratic habitus. In short, the agonistic, contradictory aspects of a democratic habitus do not
accrue spontaneously to a society with democracy as its formal mode of political governance,
but are part of an ongoing practice of vigilance and effort to maintain the spaces conducive to
democratic intimate geographies. (2017: 101–102)

In conclusion, Adorno’s contributions on how a democratic pedagogy that takes into con-
sideration the role of emotions can resist right-wing extremism suggest that critical educa-
tion has to be implemented in all sectors of society, all the time, at once, if a new Auschwitz
is going to be prevented. The prevention of Auschwitz will not be achieved by the school
acting alone, as Cho (2009) emphasizes: ‘The prevention of Auschwitz can only be done if it
becomes the project of the society as a whole’ (93). However, the point is not to make
Auschwitz as the (only) focal point of education, but to be vigilant about the possibilities of
both indoctrination and transformation. In the wake of growing right-wing extremism in
many parts of the world, what Adorno points out in his education approach highlights the
fundamental importance of cultivating both affectivity and criticality in youth so that the
demand ‘never again Auschwitz’ is always pressing and the contiguity of democracy is never
taken for granted.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/
or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Zembylas 15

ORCID iD
Michalinos Zembylas https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6896-7347

Notes
1. Many of these speeches and radio addresses were later compiled as essays in Critical Models:
Interventions and Catchwords (1998). It is estimated that between 1950 and 1969, Adorno gave
almost 300 radio talks, plus about the same number of public talks across Germany (Heins, 2012).
2. Throughout the essay, a parallelism is made between the German political situation before/after
World War II and Western civilization now (e.g. the current rise of right-wing extremism in many
countries). However, it should be clear that the historical, social and political conditions of the two
periods are very different, thus any comparison should be made with care. The premise on which
this essay relies is that despite these differences (e.g. the contemporary education system in
Germany and other countries is not the same as it used to be in the pre-/post-war era), it is valuable
to take into account Adorno’s claims. Also, despite some weaknesses that might be identified in
Adorno’s views on emotion and pedagogy – particularly in light of what we know nowadays about
the topic – he provides compelling insights in rethinking how the entanglement of affect and ped-
agogy can enrich contemporary efforts to contest fascism.
3. A pivotal issue here is the relationship between critical self-reflection and emotions. A growing
argument in several fields of study is that ‘emotions are core to reflexive processes’ (Holmes, 2010:
147), namely, reflections and emotions are closely intertwined and thus it is difficult to draw clear
boundaries between reflexivity and affectivity. Also, it is suggested that critical reflection requires
emotional flexibility to envisage alternative reasons for action (Mackenzie, 2002). As Mackenzie
points out, drawing on cognitive theories of emotion, ‘It is a mistake to conceptualize critical
reflection primarily in terms of backward-looking introspection. Not only does such a model of
reflection underestimate the complexity of our psychologies, it also overlooks the normative and
relational dimensions of reflection’ (191). These ideas challenge rationalist understandings of crit-
ical reflection and highlight that a reflective mind is connected with affectivity in ways that deserve
further exploration.
4. An important caveat is necessary at the outset of this paper. Adorno’s notion and critique of the
culture industry, particularly in connection to autonomy, self-reflection and fascist tendencies, are
relevant to the topic of this paper; however, I am not engaging directly with education and the
culture industry because my focus is on how pedagogy and affect are connected in Adorno’s cri-
tique of post-war Western society and become of significance for combating present-day right-wing
extremism. There are several recent works in philosophy of education that have touched on
Adorno’s notion and critique of the culture industry and their relevance for education (e.g. see
Jessop, 2017; Snir, 2017).
5. A highly relevant text to this paper is Adorno’s (1962) ‘Theorie der Halbbildung’, which has not yet
been translated into English. I am indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting this
text for future reference.
6. In my view, the ‘problem’ with fascism is neither a lack of emotions (as it may be
suggested by expressions like ‘coldness’ or ‘cold rationalism’) nor the ‘wrong’ emotions (e.g.
hatred, resentment), but rather both. Hence, as I discuss later, the notion of ‘re-education’ entails
addressing both of these possibilities, without implying that the idea of re-education itself is
unproblematic.
7. I am indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting that I raise these questions.

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Michalinos Zembylas is Professor of Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies at the

Open University of Cyprus and Honorary Professor, Chair for Critical Studies in Higher
Education Transformation at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. He has written
extensively on emotion and affect in relation to social justice pedagogies, intercultural and
peace education, human rights education and citizenship education. His recent books
include: Critical Human Rights Education: Advancing Social-Justice-Oriented Educational
Praxes (with A. Keet), and Socially Just Pedagogies in Higher Education (co-edited with
V. Bozalek, R. Braidotti, and T. Shefer). In 2016, he received the Distinguished Researcher
Award in ‘Social Sciences and Humanities’ from the Cyprus Research Promotion
Foundation.