Marie Müller-Zetzsche is a postdoctoral researcher at the Moses Mendelssohn Center in Potsdam and part of the research group “The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000”. She studied Cultural Studies and French at the universities of Leipzig, Lyon II, and Alcalá de Henares before earning her PhD in Cultural history at the University of Leipzig and the Université de Lorraine. Her current research project examines the development of far-right ideology and German-French ideological transfers after 1945 through the lens of far-right magazines.

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Far-Right “Political Writers” and Their Media

This lecture explores the role of far-right “political writers” and their media after 1945. Unlike intellectuals, these authors adopted an anti-intellectual stance while positioning themselves as part of an elite defending a "suppressed truth." Their writings appear mainly in journalistic formats but also in literary and poetic works. The term existed also in French as "écrivains politiques". Their inspirations included counter-Enlightenment thinkers like Edmund Burke and Oswald Spengler. Far-right magazines like Nation Europa and Défense de l’Occident became key platforms for these writers, fostering a community and ideological continuity. Their contributors included Nazi propagandists, SS veterans, and fascist intellectuals like Maurice Bardèche or Oswald Mosley. The magazines provided an international network, with translations between French and German publications and a significant readership abroad.

These writers saw themselves as the national opposition of their countries and thus as legitimate representatives of a supposed popular will. Their magazines functioned as ideological archives, preserving and republishing historical narratives. They also encouraged reader participation, reinforcing identity through letters, contests, and editorial engagement. In the 1960s, younger contributors sought to modernize far-right discourse, participating in new nationalist movements. While these magazines avoided direct political affiliations, they shaped far-right ideology by standardizing terminology, such as Europe-Action’s "Dictionnaire du militant" and the NPD’s "Politisches Lexikon." Their rhetoric escalated over time, aligning with violent movements. Bardèche supported the terror of the OAS, viewing it as a "new Resistance," while Nation Europa published Ehrhardt’s Werwolf manual, a guide to partisan warfare. Such publications influenced the rise of racist terrorism in the late 20th century. The legacy of these magazines lies in their role as bridges for fascist and Nazi ideologies into the postwar era. They cultivated a new generation of far-right writers, sustaining extremist narratives that persist today. By shaping discourse and providing ideological continuity, they helped shaping a far right political culture across generations. The lecture finally discusses to which extend the role of these media changed from the late 1960s onward.