Left-Extremist Endeavours

Low intellectual level of
German right-extremists
No "cultural revolution
from the right"
VI. Intellectualization Efforts of Right-Wing
Extremism
From the beginning, the intellectual level of right-wing extremism
in the Federal Republic of Germany, by contrast to the extreme
right-wing camp in other countries, was low. Accordingly, the
former National Chairman of the party "The Republicans" (REP),
Franz SCHÖNHUBER, now working as a journalist, commented that,
within today’s right-extremist camp in Germany, intellectuals
stood apart 79) . This deficit, apart from being due to the historical
incrimination of right-wing extremism in Germany, also explains
the lack of a political theory developed in terms of substance, the
low public esteem in which representatives of right-wing
extremism are held, and the lack of an elaborate strategy for their
political line. While intellectualization efforts are being made from
time to time, they have failed to achieve any significant success.
In the first half of the 1990s, first efforts were made - but later
discontinued - to attain the aim of, and hope for, bringing about a
"cultural revolution from the right" (Alain de BENOIST 80) ) which
was intended ultimately to effect changes in political
developments through public political discourse.
"New Right" disappointed By now, disappointment has spread throughout the camp of the
"New Right Wing": the supporters of this intellectual trend - these
are individual journalists who disseminate their views in various
publications - are going on from the political ideas of the
antidemocratic "Young Conservatives" of the Weimar Republic
and, like these, call for an authoritarian state intended to dominate
society unilaterally. Over the past few years, many of them
at most only occasionally published a few texts. Therefore, there
have been no appreciable programmatic discourses or anthologies
which could have had any effect in the sense of a "cultural
revolution from the right".
"Thule Seminar" The only political organization which might be classed with the
"New Right", i.e. the "Thule-Seminar" in Kassel (Hesse), has also
remained largely inactive: its journal "Elemente" was no longer
published, and its director Dr. Pierre KREBS only sporadically appeared
as a speaker at meetings of right-extremist organizations
such as the "Nationaldemokratischer Hochschulbund" (NHB -
"National-Democratic University/College Union") of the NPD 81) .
"National Revolutionaries" Similar trends are to be observed among the supporters of the
"national-revolutionaries". They also want to continue intellectual
models from the era of the Weimar Republic, but gear their
thinking not so much to the state but rather to the people which
they regard, from an antipluralistic stance, as ethnically and politically
homogeneous. Many "national-revolutionaries" joined the
"Deutsch-Europäische Studien-Gesellschaft" (DESG - "German-
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