Debate: New Right | The ethnic-nationalist triad

The French writer Renaud Camus became the key word for the European right with his conspiracy story about the “great population exchange”. Photo: imago/NTB Once upon a time there was a publishing house in Amsterdam: Castrum Peregrini, named after a refuge for Jewish young people and artists during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The hiding place was named after the impregnable Crusader fortress of the same name.

So much for the first part of the story. But Castrum Peregrini lived on after the Nazi era. The writer Wolfgang Frommel, a key organizer of the refuge, continued the name, now as the name of a secret society that was based on the historical George Circle, a literary meeting place of the so-called Conservative Revolution of the 1920s. As had once been the case with the George Circle, Frommel gathered around himself an elite, hierarchically structured community of young, exclusively male intellectuals. The religion that bound them was art and poetry. This resulted in the magazine and publishing house Castrum Peregrini, which existed until 2007.

After the Berlin elections there was a real “meltdown” in the German media landscape. Even supposedly liberal newspapers and TV formats took part in absurd scaremongering against leftists, migrants and protesting young people. Journalists such as Welt editor Ulf Poschardt and Springer columnist Harald Martenstein took the lead. But how is it that the supposed center is radicalizing so rapidly to the right? Right-wing extremism expert Volkmar Wölk looks at the ideological connections between the conservative and right-wing extremist scenes in France.

This could be the end of the story. But in 2020 another publishing house started in Vienna. Peregrini was dropped from the name and Castrum remained. Like the Amsterdam publishing house, the Vienna company sees itself in the tradition of “aesthetic fundamentalism” (Stefan Breuer) of the George Circle.

Publisher Ledio Albani and his entourage are considered part of the New Right. The publishing house published, among other things, volumes by the AfD ideologist Hans-Thomas Tillschneider and the AfD MP Maximilian Krah. The agreed close cooperation with the neo-reactionary magazine “Tumult” (Dresden) around Frank Böckelmann failed after a few months. Instead, Castrum now - like its predecessor - publishes its own magazine, named after Fiume, the city occupied in 1919 by the nationalist writer Gabriele d'Annunzio and his entourage, which to this day has cult status among the extreme right, as d'Annunzio's coup and the period afterwards are seen in these circles as the successful implementation of a "revolution from the right".

So when a well-known journalist like Ulf Poschardt, who sees himself as a liberal, not only has an argument with the new-right ideologue Ellen Kositza (Edition Antaios) at the 2026 Frankfurt Book Fair, but also presents himself at the Castrum stand, flanked by two employees of the publishing house and with the magazine “Fiume” in his hand, in the inevitable social media photo with a text that can only be understood as advertising, then it is not just a matter of one Photo, not only about some of the confrontational activities on X, but there is a long story behind this picture. A story with obvious ideological implications.

This is not just the story of the drift of an “ex-Marxist” (Poschardt about Poschardt) and pop culture theorist into the camp of the extreme right. Rather, the photo is a symbol of a new lack of distance, a lack of distance between liberals/conservatives and the extreme right, a lack of distance for which the protagonists no longer feel they have to justify themselves. Here we are flirting with breaking a taboo that no longer exists and should no longer be.

As in France, a merger can be observed within the extreme right.

The image becomes a symbol of the state of the country. While an increasingly openly fascist AfD is about to take over government in Saxony-Anhalt, respected media representatives such as the former "Welt" editor Ulf Poschardt are glorifying the historical pioneers of fascism. While democratic politicians are still debating what the AfD can actually implement from its election program at the state level, the Austrian identitarian Martin Sellner is already setting up his “Institute for Remigration” in Magdeburg. While democratic politicians are still reassuring themselves that the state parliament presidency is a largely representative office without any real powers, the state parliament vice-president of the AfD is already proving the opposite by being provocative at the memorial service for the victims of the anti-Semitic attack in Halle. And the CDU constitutional lawyer Ulrich Vosgerau lends support to the AfD man with the words: "On the other hand, there are also good reasons why it is a real shame that these self-proclaimed synagogue ques from Halle were not chased through the streets with the police baton."

Of course, it is illusory to believe that the AfD will de-radicalize itself in government responsibility. But their electorate doesn't expect that at all, argues social scientist David Begrich, one of the best experts on the subject. »The AfD's core electorate wants to be entertained. They want to watch Democrats being humiliated. The party was not elected to adhere to the rules of etiquette, but rather to break them." In this respect, Ulrich Siegmund's open threat against a journalist from the "Heute Show" corresponded exactly to the expectations of his followers.

Götz Kubitschek, strategist of the New Right as well as strategic advisor and companion of the AfD, can sit back contentedly and advocate a wait-and-see tactic without compromise. The AfD has now become a "people's party", but must open up further to the right and must not fall into "parliamentary illusions". Securing success through a “metapolitical foundation” outside parliaments remains indispensable.

Following the example of France, a fusion has long since emerged within the extreme right that the political scientist Marion Jacquet-Vaillant and the historian Nicolas Lebourg describe as “national syncretism”. The different, previously strictly separated movements of the extreme right are coming together and acting together, forming a common ideology. If the Young Nationalists, the youth organization of “Heimat” (formerly the NPD), are currently making it possible to have dual membership in Generation Germany, the youth organization of the AfD, this is an example of this national syncretism.

In France, as Jacquet-Vaillant and Lebourg note, this development has already progressed further and is more profound than in Germany. While the Nouvelle Droite there was previously known for its almost sectarian neo-paganism, in recent years more and more personal and ideological connections have emerged, particularly with fundamentalist Catholicism. A former neo-pagan Evola follower and author of the Nouvelle Droite magazines is now a Russian Orthodox priest.

Jean-Eudes Gannat was recently introduced as a new employee of “Éléments”, the most important magazine of the French Nouvelle Droite. Gannat originally comes from the youth organization of the then Front National, then moved into the notorious, militant student organization Groupe Union Défense and finally founded the local identitarian and Catholic-traditionalist group Alvarium in 2017. After it was banned in autumn 2021 due to violent actions and racist campaigns, he emerged as one of the heads of the Academia Christiana, an identitarian and Catholic think tank that is now closely linked to the Nouvelle Droite. Cadres from the right-wing extremist party Rassemblement National also ran on the list for which Gannat sits on the local council. What was once strictly separated has now merged into a single unit. The metapolitical foundation for Marine Le Pen's electoral success in the 2027 presidential election has been prepared.

The current cadres of the Nouvelle Droite can observe with satisfaction that the preparatory work carried out by their current since the early 1960s is now bearing fruit and the extreme right in France has made it from insignificance to the threshold of government power.

Crucial to this development is the creation of a triad, the “triad of the three big R’s”: replacement (exchange), remigration and réconquista (reconquest). They describe the problem (a population exchange that is supposedly taking place), show the solution (remigration) and name the goal to be achieved (reconquista), which if necessary must also be achieved through civil war. In their eyes, France is in a state of pre-civil war.

The term “Great Exchange” (the replacement of one people by another, as it is said to have been planned and promoted by the political and economic elites, the so-called globalists) has become particularly popular since the publication of the book “Le Grand Remplacement” by the writer Renaud Camus in 2011, which was very quickly translated and taken up by the extreme right in Germany. Now Camus' ideas are by no means original. In his study “Le Grand Remplacement ou la politique du mythe,” Pierre-André Taguieff points out that the core of this ideology was developed more than 100 years ago by Maurice Barrès, who believed he recognized an “invasion” by France and claimed that immigrant workers, and especially Jews, were displacing the “true French people.” What is called “Great Exchange” in the French context became “revolkulation” in Germany.

The only thing new about this triad is that it is now being played together by the extreme right at the European level. When Jean-Yves Le Gallou, the aged doyen of the Nouvelle Droite, wanted to hold his ultimately banned "remigration summit" on October 31st, AfD MP Torben Braga, Höcke's voice in the Bundestag, was scheduled to appear there alongside high-ranking former French officials and diplomats. It's growing together.

With us, no one has to pay to be informed. Sounds like a bad business model? It is too. But independent journalism and participation for everyone are more important to us than profit. Journalism still costs money: research, printing and all the people who do it. That's why we depend on you. We need 300,000 euros by the end of the year.

Donate once or regularly, every amount counts. So that nd remains.