Reactionary Modernism

1999 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 291-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Cooper
Keyword(s):  
New Technology ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The West ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Legal Theorist ◽  
A Current

‘Reactionary modernism’ is a term happily coined by the historian and sociologist Jeffrey Herf to refer to a current of German thought during the interwar years. It indicates the attempt to ‘reconcil[e] the antimodernist, romantic and irrationalist ideas present in German nationalism’ with that ‘most obvious manifestation of means–ends rationality … modern technology’. Herf's paradigm examples of this current of thought are two best-selling writers of the period: Oswald Spengler, author of the massive domesday scenario The Decline of the West in 1917 and, fifteen years later, of Man and Technics, and Ernst Jünger, the now centenarian chronicler of the war in which he was a much-decorated hero, whose main theoretical work was Der Arbeiter in 1932. The label is also applied by Herf to such intellectual luminaries as the legal theorist and apologist for the Third Reich, Carl Schmitt, and more contentiously Martin Heidegger. At a less elevated level, reactionary modernism also permeated the writings of countless, now forgotten engineers, who were inspired at once by the new technology, Nietzschean images of Promethean Übermenschen, and an ethos of völkisch nationalism

What’s “Left” in Schmitt?

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew G. Specter
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
The Third ◽  
Chantal Mouffe ◽  
The Third Reich

Since the mid-1980s, the Western Left has split on how to evaluate the political and constitutional theory of Carl Schmitt. The analysis traces and historicizes a movement from aversion to appropriation of Schmitt’s writings in contemporary political theory. In the first half of the chapter Habermas is presented as developing his own positions in part through deep engagements with Schmitt’s thought. In the second half of the chapter, three contemporary political philosophers who are grouped under the label “left-Schmittian” are profiled. Contemporary left-Schmittians try to circumvent the Schmitt compromised by the “Third Reich,” but sometimes by diluting him beyond recognition. Close readings of Gopal Balakrishnan, Andreas Kalyvas, and Chantal Mouffe support the argument that contemporary left-Schmittians create a theory of domestic and international politics that are either normatively or institutionally deficient.

Hybrid Hate

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tudor Parfitt
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Black People ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The West ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Black Jews ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Racist Discourse

The study of Western racism has tended to concentrate on either the hatred and murder of Jews or the hatred and enslavement of black people. As chief objects of racism Jews and blacks have been linked together for centuries, peoples apart from the general run of humanity. In medieval Europe Jews were often perceived as blacks, and the conflation of Jews and blacks continued throughout the period of the Enlightenment. With the discovery of a community of black Jews in Loango in west Africa in 1777, and later of black Jews in India, the Middle East, and other parts of Africa, the figure of the hybrid black Jew was thrust into the maelstrom of evolving theories about race hierarchies and taxonomies. The new hybrid played a particular role in the great battle between monogenists and polygenists as they sought to establish the unitary or disparate origins of humankind. From the mid-nineteenth century to the period of the Third Reich, Jews and blacks were increasingly conflated in a racist discourse that combined the two fundamental racial hatreds of the West. While Hitler considered Jews “Negroid parasites,” in Nazi Germany as in Fascist Italy, through texts, laws, and cartoons, Jews and blacks were combined in the figure of the black/Jew, the mortal foe of the Aryan race.

Placement and Displacement

2019 ◽  
pp. 12-37
Author(s):  
Emily Richmond Pollock
Keyword(s):  
Military Service ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Forced Labor ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
The West ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Third ◽  
Art Form ◽  
The Third Reich

This chapter explores the historical and institutional basis for the West German renewal of opera in the postwar period. The chapter presents narratives of individuals involved in the creation of opera to contextualize opera’s restoration after 1945. Significant personnel continuity in the operatic ecosystem before, during, and after the Third Reich meant that the postwar opera industry was populated by men and women whose recent experiences included National Socialist ideology, military service, Allied bombing, the loss of family members, displacement, hunger, forced labor, imprisonment, and denazification. The chapter also sketches the institutional basis of contemporary opera, discussing seven opera companies and surveying the position of new and recent works within the postwar repertoire. From this survey, we see how the production of new operas enhanced companies’ prestige and was motivated by a perceived duty to promote modern composers, to challenge audiences, and to advance opera as a living art form.

Carl Schmitt and the "Third Reich"

Ratio Juris ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-264
Author(s):  
MASSIMO LA TORRE
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

The Language of Ideology: Lingual Manipulation of Readers in German Literature of the Third Reich

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Michael Press
Keyword(s):  
German Literature ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
The Third ◽  
Historical Argument ◽  
Underlying Basis ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
German People

In recognizing more than just hyperbole in their critical studies of National Socialist language, post-war philologists Viktor Klemperer (1946) and Eugen Seidel (1961) credit persuasive words and syntax with the expansion of Hitler's ideology among the German people. This popular explanation is being revisited by contemporary philologists, however, as new historical argument holds the functioning of the Third Reich to be anything but monolithic. An emerging scholarly consensus on the presence of more chaos than coherence in Nazi discourse suggests a new imperative for research. After reviewing the foundational works of Mein Kampf (1925) and Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930), the author confirms Klemperer and Seidel’s claim for linguistic manipulation in the rise of the National Socialist Party. Most importantly, this article provides a detailed explanation of how party leaders employed rhetorical language to promote fascist ideology without an underlying basis of logical argumentation.

Issues Surrounding the Development of the Neo-Nazi Scene in East Berlin

2000 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Brothers
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Culture ◽  
East Berlin ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

The rise of neo-Nazism in the capital of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) was not inspired by a desire to recreate Hitler's Reich, but by youthful rebellion against the political and social culture of the GDR's Communist regime. This is detailed in Fuehrer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Naxi by Ingo Hasselbach with Tom Reiss (Random House, New York, 1996). This movement, however, eventually worked towards returning Germany to its former 'glory' under the Third Reich under the guidance of 'professional' Nazis.

A war hero or a Hitler soldier?

2019 ◽  
pp. 50-57
Author(s):  
Pavel Gotovetsky
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
National Committee ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Third Reich

The article is devoted to the biography of General Pavlo Shandruk, an Ukrainian officer who served as a Polish contract officer in the interwar period and at the beginning of the World War II, and in 1945 became the organizer and commander of the Ukrainian National Army fighting alongside the Third Reich in the last months of the war. The author focuses on the symbolic event of 1961, which was the decoration of General Shandruk with the highest Polish (émigré) military decoration – the Virtuti Militari order, for his heroic military service in 1939. By describing the controversy and emotions among Poles and Ukrainians, which accompanied the award of the former Hitler's soldier, the author tries to answer the question of how the General Shandruk’s activities should be assessed in the perspective of the uneasy Twentieth-Century Polish-Ukrainian relations. Keywords: Pavlo Shandruk, Władysław Anders, Virtuti Militari, Ukrainian National Army, Ukrainian National Committee, contract officer.

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