Books in the hands of the New Right

According to researchers at the University of Stuttgart, no political movement is as engaged with literature as the New Right. Following a comprehensive analysis, they demonstrate that the ideological instrumentalization of prose and poetry has grown considerably in the German-speaking world. The New Right wants to use literature to gain cultural dominance and establish a broad social connection. In collaboration with academics from Germany and abroad, the group of Torsten Hoffmann explains how the New Right achieve this and how far they have progressed in a special issue of the Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte.

The online publication provides further information.

“In the 21st century, literary politics is no longer a sideshow of political work. It has become one of the most important areas of intervention for New Right think tanks,’ says Torsten Hoffmann, Professor of Modern German Literature at the Institute of Literary Studies (ILW) at the University of Stuttgart. As part of the “Neurechte Literaturpolitik” [New Right Literary Politics] project, Hoffmann and his team are examining books, reviews, reading recommendations, videos, podcasts, blog posts, publishing programs, and magazine articles from the New Right and those associated with it as well as party programs and speeches in which literature is ideologically instrumentalized. Not only books and poems by right-wing or New Right authors but also works from the established canon of classical and contemporary literature are used. Controversial essayists and writers such as Ernst Jünger, Gottfried Benn, and Botho Strauß are just as much a part of the literature list of the New Right as Friedrich Schiller, J.R.R. Tolkien, and authors shortlisted for the German Book Prize.

“The New Right wants to penetrate new milieus – from young people to the literature-loving educated middle classes and academic circles. The supposedly literary texts often contain much more radical positions than the explicitly political essays,” says Hoffmann. He and his co-authors define the New Right as a current within the far-right scene that has long sought to intellectualize itself in order to play in the meta-political field. According to Hoffmann, this meta-politics is not aimed at short-term electoral success but rather at ideologically influencing society, its values, ways of thinking, and narratives and thus indirectly influencing politics. “We have been seeing efforts by the New Right to play in non-political areas of society for some time now. What is new is the extent to which this is now happening,” says Hoffmann.

How has the literary politics of the New Right developed since the 1950s? What role does historical revisionism play in this? What are the current trends? In which areas of society are they visible? What strategies, actors, and institutions are behind this? Answers to these questions can be found in the new special issue “Neurechte Literatur und Literaturpolitik” [New Right Literature and Literary Politics]. Although the researchers do not yet see a mass phenomenon, they are observing how the New Right is increasingly targeting the education system and academic milieus and trying to establish right-wing reading groups in university cities. The reinterpretation of literature by the New Right is demonstrated in its treatment of the dystopian classic Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury describes a dictatorship in which books are banned and burned because they encourage people to think for themselves and endanger public safety. “The New Right compares this regime with our society and presents itself as a freedom movement against a supposed dictatorship of opinion,” says Hoffmann. 

The thematic issue “Neurechte Literatur und Literaturpolitik” goes back to the first literary studies conference on the New Right, which took place in Stuttgart from January 25 to 27, 2024. “We are working on a new and highly topical subject here,” says Hoffman, referring to the dynamic nature of this field of research, which is constantly changing and expanding. A workshop involving researchers from the political, social, and historical sciences is being prepared.

The project “Neurechte Literaturpolitik” has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) since 2023 and will continue to be funded until August 30, 2026.

Publication: Nicolai Busch, Torsten Hoffmann, Kevin Kempke, Neurechte Literatur und Literaturpolitik, Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte (2024) 98.

Further information can be found under the online publication and the project website.