Johannes Großmann is Professor of Contemporary History at the LMU Munich. He has conducted in-tensive research into the history of National Socialism, conservatism, the extreme right and anti-com-munism in the 20th century.
- Die Internationale der Konservativen: Transnationale Elitenzirkel und private Außenpolitik in Westeuropa seit 1945 (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2014).
- Zwischen Fronten: Die deutsch-französische Grenzregion und der Weg in den Zweiten Weltkrieg (Wallstein, 2022).
- with Agnès Dubler: Anti-communism and the Transnational Transatlantic in the ‘Long’ 1960s (= Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 22/1, 2024).
In the Background. The Transnational Career of Arvid Fredborg and the Nordic Roots of Authoritarian Libertarianism
The Swede Arvid Fredborg (1915–1996) was a conservative influencer avant la lèttre. Acting as a shadow man without interfering directly into everyday politics in a leading capacity, his contribution to the international coordination and programmatic renewal of the European radical right has, how-ever, remained largely unnoticed to this day. From the 1950s onwards, his extraordinary transnational career made him an efficient organiser and much-valued mediator within the right-wing conservative and far-right scene in the transatlantic world, an influential translator of ideological transformations and one of the masterminds of an authoritarian libertarianism that continues to be fundamental to the ideological orientation of the European far right to this day.
Already while studying at Uppsala University during the late 1930s, Fredborg stood out as a radical nationalist and anti-Semitic activist. His initial sympathies for Fascism and National Socialism faded, however, when he was sent to Berlin as a reporter for Svenska Dagbladet during World War II. After the war, he continued to work as a foreign correspondent, first in Portugal, then in Bonn, creating an impressive network of high-level international contacts. In the 1950s and 1960s, Fredborg became a kind of grey eminence within the conservative and rightist milieu in Western Europe. He was actively involved in the Centre Européen de Documentation et d’Information, which was founded in 1952 in Francoist Spain and developed quickly into a kind of ‘Conservative Internationale’. His simultaneous membership in the Mont Pèlerin Society made Fredborg a mediator between Christian conservative, radical right and neo-liberal, as well as between European and American currents of thought.
Based on his extensive transnational network, Fredborg created an exclusive club for likeminded poli-ticians, managers and intellectuals in 1959, the so-called Institut d’Études Politiques de Vaduz. His mag-azine ‘The International Background’ took up the topics and theses discussed in this club and linked them to the aim of an intellectual reorientation and modernisation of the right-wing political spectrum. In this way, Fredborg contributed significantly to the consolidation and self-ascertainment of the New Right on an international level as well as to the emergence of a specific, authoritarian conception of libertarianism.
My paper draws on a wide range of primary sources from several European archives, including the private papers of Arvid Fredborg. It offers a case study on the differences, similarities and flows be-tween national cultures and traditions of the extreme right, especially between Southern, Western and Northern Europe. It raises the question of individual agency and highlights the impact of personal networks on political reflection and decision-making processes. And it sheds light on the precursors and prehistory of today’s transnational co-operation between far-right parties and movements.