Activating the socialist past for a nativist future: far-right intellectuals and the prefigurative power of multidirectional nostalgia in Dresden

Abstract

A widespread view on the success of populist far-right parties is that they mobilise economically left-behind voters via a backward-looking, nostalgic and thus illegitimate agenda. Yet, recent research has shown that it is often wealthy areas that vote for the German populist far-right AfD. Drawing on nationalism, memory-studies and social-movement literature, this article examines how nostalgia drives the activism of well-off local intellectual far-right groups. Based on ethnographic data gathered in Dresden, I argue that far-right intellectual activism in East Germany is facilitated by the convergence of two distinct but related forms of nostalgia. First, a positive nostalgia for a guilt-free past. Second, a negative nostalgia characterized not by a celebration of socialism, but the resistance to it. As multidirectional nostalgia this convergence makes the far right's political memory resonate with local individual and social memories providing the cultural opportunity structure for electoral success. Infused with a forward-looking 'anxious hope', it prefigures an alternative far-right future.

The Specter of the Past: Reconstructing Conservative Historical Memory in South Korea

“…30 Although some studies analyze the thoughts and logics of conservative thinkers and theorists from a political theory perspective, 31 studies on the role of right-wing intellectuals in invoking the past and building an identity are relatively lacking except for some case studies focused on Germany. 32 Through an "alternative" interpretive framework about the Nazi past, some reactionary German intellectuals tried to normalize German nationalism and to provide ideological resources for Far Right movements. Likewise, right-wing intellectuals in South Korea play a crucial role in framing historical events in such a way as to enhance the Right's political legitimacy.…”

Sweden then vs. Sweden now

“…This incoherence suggests that the group's users might also be approximated to nostalgics of, in Boym's terms, the reflective sort in as much as their modes and moods of nostalgia are more creative and individualised, 'ironic, inconclusive and fragmentary' [30]. This forces the recognition that reflective nostalgia might not be the preserve of progressive politics and that restorative nostalgia might not be the only nostalgic terrain of the far-right (see Göpffarth, 2020). Boym notes that restorative and reflective nostalgia can overlap in terms of the pasts they reference but not in the stories they tell [31].…”

Spiritualizing reason, rationalizing spirit: Muslim public intellectuals in the German far right

“…A self-defined Muslim anti-capitalist, Rieger and his group call for a 'jihad against the market society' (Lau, 2004: 3). In his conception of Islam, Rieger draws on anti-modernist German thinkers like Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, and Ernst Ju¨nger who form part of the German far right's ideological canon (G€ opffarth, 2020b;Sedgwick, 2019). The proximity of Rieger's ideas to the far right is reflected in his having co-founded the magazine Compact together with Ju¨rgen Els€ asser, a former communist activist.…”

“…Our most important insights build on ethnographic field research conducted separately among German converts to Islam (Özyürek, 2009, 2014) and German far-right intellectual circles (Göpffarth, 2020a, 2020b). Yet, for this article we also systematically analyzed the public writings of all Muslim background, ex-Muslim, or converted Muslim public intellectuals that appear in an emerging network of far-right websites and platforms, publishing houses, think tanks and broader networks (Göpffarth, 2020b).…”

“…Others have no direct links to the far right, yet their writings and ideas have proven popular among parts of the far right. In this article, we explore the place, function, and reception of born, ex, and converted Muslim public intellectuals in the German far right, which we conceive of as a broad social movement that expands beyond party politics (Castelli Gattinara and Pirro, 2019) to mobilize broader support (Caiani et al., 2012; Göpffarth, 2020a) for its white supremacist nativism (Mudde, 2007: 19).…”