Border between right and conservative: Why the firewall in cultural space is long gone

D ietmar Munier has been a fixture in the right-wing extremist publishing world for almost 40 years. Through his publishing group “Reading & Gifting” from Selent in Schleswig-Holstein, he sells books and brochures, posters, but also defensive weapons and axes. Newspapers from the publishing group of Erst! You can buy everything from German news magazines to German military newspapers in station kiosks. The 72-year-old rarely appears in public.

However, on the second weekend in November he will be a guest in Halle at the “Page Change” book fair. The fair, which was largely organized by the Dresden bookseller Susanne Dagen and is taking place for the second time this year, sees itself as a meeting place for the supposed “anti-mainstream scene”.

Munier will be there to discuss the need for printed news magazines. His conversation partner: Andreas Karsten, editor-in-chief of the magazine Erst!. The panel promises little controversy: Both come from the right-wing extremist milieu: Munier once started a solstice celebration with a Holocaust denier; Karsten comes from the right-wing extremist fraternities Hamburg Germania and Halle-Leobener fraternity Germania.

But the fair reveals a larger phenomenon: the border between extreme right-wing scenes and bourgeois-conservative circles is becoming increasingly permeable. Inspired by the AfD's electoral successes, spectrums that once seemed separate are coming together here.

This is already demonstrated by the opening guest: Harald Martenstein, columnist for Welt am Sonntag and Bild. The once left-wing author, who received the “German Language Prize” this year, has been railing against a supposedly left-wing zeitgeist for years. The fact that he appeared in the right-wing extremist fraternity Hamburger Germania in 2025 no longer bothers anyone in this milieu.

In terms of content, the various right-wing movements run through the entire book fair program. At a panel on “40 Years of Young Freedom” representatives of new right journalism will discuss – including Roland Tichy (Tichys Insight), Max Mannhart (Apollo News) and Ralf Schuster (Nius).

In addition to old cadres such as the former Saxon NPD state parliament member Arne Schimmer, activists from the identity scene such as Jonas Schick and Nils Wegner appear. They represent the network around the disbanded Institute for State Policy, which was classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Its co-founder Götz Kubitschek speaks in Halle with the authors of his Antaios publishing house Ellen Kositza and Benedikt Kaiser about the AfD's strategy.

AfD celebrities also arrive. Federal spokesman Tino Chrupalla is joined by Bundestag member Matthias Helferich, who once described himself as the “friendly face of the Nazis”.

Overall, characters with very different biographies appear, including lateral thinkers and former leftists such as the former left-wing politician Dieter Dehm, the former Green Party and CDU politician Vera Lengsfeld as well as the controversial political scientist Ulrike Guérot and the journalist Henryk M. Broder. They represent a cross-front dynamic that is primarily defined by the rejection of the established.

The theoretical underpinning for the progressive blurring of boundaries between the spectrum is provided by an article in the current issue of First!: In it, the AfD MP Matthias Moosdorf emphasizes that political power is based on the cultural and intellectual dominance in the “pre-political space”. The book fair in Halle shows what is meant by this: in the cultural sphere, the firewall to the right has long since been torn down - a development that is now gradually continuing in parliaments.