This new theory of war is nothing but an uninhibited transfer of the principle of art for art's sake to war: Ernst Jnger, Walter Benjamin, and the New Right

Abstract

Walter Benjamin's reception of Ernst Jnger and the new nationalists grouped around him during the years of the Weimar Republic is notable for establishing a link between their aestheticization of the war experience and Germany's military defeat. Benjamin's interpretation can also be extended to the new nationalist politics in the 1920s: the failed attempt to work out a programme which would reconcile the forces of nationalism and socialism gives way to a view of politics as style, hierarchy, and leadership. A parallel process is at work in Germany today among intellectuals of the New Right: through its project of intellectualization, the New Right seeks to distance itself from National Socialism and present itself as heir to the supposedly alternative tradition of the Conservative Revolution. The project fails, and the New Right moves towards the aestheticization of politics mapped out by the new nationalists.