Affirmative Past Versus Cultural Pessimism: The New Right Since German Unification1

Abstract

Whereas the New Right in Germany is generally defined as a political movement with a more or less coherent set of beliefs and goals, the movement also has a strong cultural dimension arising from its commitment to gaining what Gramsci refers to as cultural hegemony, i.e. acceptance in the pre-political sphere. The cultural dimension of the New Right was intended to provide the political movement with its intellectual foundations, but in practice it tends to be more open-ended, tentative and self-critical than the political sources, and studying these sources gives an insight into how New Right ideas take shape. The illuminating interaction of cultural and political sources is examined through the examples of New Right sources dealing with culture itself, remembering the Nazi past, and nationalism. The analysis demonstrates how a ‘feel-good’ culture is overshadowed by a profound cultural pessimism which sees little or no purpose in political action, how hopes of drawing a line under the Nazi past are countered by the view that this past is Germany's permanent fate (Botho Straus), and how post-unification ambitions for a resurgence of nationalism are undermined by a sense that nationalism has had its day.