The code of German Neo-Nazis
Posted by Thomas Klikauer
As Neo-Nazis network grow ever more on the global level – despite their hatred of globalisation and an even stronger hated cosmopolitanism – their language becomes more globalised and more coded.
This might be called the coding of Neo-Nazi language. The use of such a coded language has four overarching goals:
- Coded language is designed and megaphoned to fire up their right-wing base.
- Such far right code-words are made to appear rather innocent to the unsuspecting outsider.
- Far right code-words serve to hide the true intentions of Neo-Nazis.
- Neo-Nazi code-words also serve an ideological goal: spreading the weird ideas of Nazism.
It remains imperative in fighting Neo-Nazism, to be aware of the far right’s coded language, how to decipher their language and to recognise the adjusted language used in the entire spectrum of the far right ranging from relatively mild right-wing populists to hard-core Neo-Nazis.
To understand how right-wing populists like the UK’s Farage, Germany’s Björn Höcke, Italy’s neo-fascistic Meloni, racist Trump, anti-Semitic Orban, etc. tick, one needs to understand, at least, fourteen of their most important themes:
- Cancel Culture:
Since the radical right does not want to take responsibility for its xenophobia, racist, offensive, discriminatory, anti-democratic, anti-Semitic, anti-feminist and anti-queer statements, legitimate criticism is quickly rejected. It is framed as cancel culture.
The far right claims that their much trumped up Cancel Culture destroyed the lives of white men. This is a standard right-wing hallucination. How false this is can be clearly seen not just on Modi, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Frage, Boris Johnson Victor Orban, Salvini, Björn Höcke, Le Pen, Javier Milei, but also in Donald Trump’s second presidency.
- Remigration:
Originally, remigration was a rather technical term used in social science for a return of exiles and migrants to their country of origin. Today, remigration has mutated into far-right fantasies of ethnic purity.
The term is mainly used by the extreme right. It is an ideological fighting word. Worse, it is a euphemism for racist expulsions, ethnic cleansing and the deportation of millions. Germany’s neo-fascist AfD party has adopted the term in numerous election programs.
- Gender Mania:
Also known as gender gaga, genderism, and gender ideology. These go hand in hand with anti-feminist narratives and right-wing exaggerations of overpowering women in order to discredit queer, emancipated lifestyles, diversity, and women in general.
Gender Mania also functions as an ideological shield for far-right excesses range from open trans and queer hostility and violence to the intimidation of science. For example, Germany’s AfD and many adjacent right-wing populists want to abolish gender studies at universities.
- Woke/Wokeism:
Originally, the term came from African-American emancipated circles in the 1930s. Woke were people who had enlightened themselves and had woken up, politically. They recognise the racist conditions and social injustices that dominated (then) and still dominate (now) the USA.
Yet today, wokeism is used by the global far right as a negative swear word and a right-wing fighting term to degrade progressive policies and liberal goals that advance humanity.
- Political Correctness or PC:
Similar to woke, PC is considered by the far right as an ideological topic of an allegedly excessive correctness. It is used to discredit anti-discrimination and minority protection.
Germany’s radical right likes to apply PC in order to present its right-wing followers simply as so-called angry citizens – the deeply anti-democratic Wutbürger.
It is a profoundly ideological slogan that is used to allude to an alleged restriction of freedom of expression culminating in the far-right phrase, what are you actually still allowed to say?
- Cult of Guilt:
The cult of guilt is a rather typical German idea. It is a historical revisionist catchphrase to re-frame history so that history mirrors far right fantasies. The cult of guilt term is used to ridicule the culture of remembrance of the Holocaust and Nazism.
Historical studies are accused of having a fixation on Nazism and the Holocaust which, allegedly, is supposed to prevent the Germans (read: the far right) from finding a positive relationship to their own nation (read: ultra-nationalism).
The cult of guilt was first used in the 1980s by Franz Schönhuber, a former member of Hitler’s mass-murdering Waffen-SS and founder of the right-wing populist Republicans.
The ideology was later taken up by AfD politicians. For example, AfD-Führer Gauland belittled Hitler’s Nazism as a little bird shit on Germany’s history. His “behind-the-scene” AfD mini-Führer Björn Höcke called for a 180-degree turn in memory policy. That means, the SS will be the victim.
The Swiss lesbian and AfD sub-Führer Weidel has also spoken of the cult of guilt. By re-framing historical realities, the neo-fascist AfD is trying to discredit the culture of remembrance for their chauvinistic goals.
- Sovereignty:
This works as a dog-whistle. Dog-whistling is the use of highly coded far right language to garner support from their believers. The key to dog-whistling is to do this without provoking any opposition.
The concept is named after ultrasonic dog whistles that are only audible to dogs but not humans. Far right dog whistle language appears normal to the unsuspecting listener but communicates specific right-wing extremist and Neo-Nazi ideologies to the intended audiences.
In Germany, dog-whistling is directed toward followers of the neo-fascist AfD, right-wing populists, Neo-Nazis, but also to the conspiracy-ideological Reichsbürger.
Germany’s right-wing extremists seek to throw European democracy onto the thrash heap in order to strengthen their ultra-nationalist and chauvinistic goals of isolation and, ultimately war.
Dog-whistling is also used in a historical revisionist context. This is the retrospective re-interpretation of Hitler’s brutal regime, its war of racial annihilation, and Nazism.
This is done by claiming that Germany is not a free country and is not sovereign. It is still occupied and subjugated by the victorious powers of the Second World War – a rather common far right hallucination.
Much of this is a mixture of delusions, madness, hallucinations, and far right conspiracy fantasies. But that is what is claimed.
- Climate Hysteria and Eco Dictatorship:
Despite the overwhelming scientific consensus and factual evidence, in far right circles as well as for right-wing populists, the man-made climate crisis of global warming is denied while climate activists are abused. Creating an awareness of global warming is framed as being a hysteria.
Measures to initiate the energy transition towards sustainability, CO₂ pricing and environmental regulations are quickly defamed as an expression of an alleged eco-dictatorship.
- Islamization:
Anti-Muslim and racist resentments often lead to a generalizing criticism of Islam within the extreme right, which knows no differentiations.
The words they and them are heavily used when mixing migration to Germany with refugees.
The German particularity is that they are reviled in typical racist terms like knife-wielding men and headscarf girls.
The far right and adjacent Neo-Nazis make no distinction between Islamism (an ideology) and Islam (a religion).
Instead, what has been fabricated is a general warning against something called Islamization. This is presented as the coming end of a right-wing extremist fabrication called the Christian Occident.
This sort of anti-Islam resentment contradicts Germany’s freedom of religion guaranteed in Germany’s constitution, known as the Basic Law.
It is nothing new when a self-appointed law-&-order political party (the AfD) undertakes to violate Germany’s constitution. Historically, the law-&-order claim while doing the exact opposite, dates back to Hitler’ Volksgerichtshof and one of the worst Nazis of Hitler’s inhuman regime: Roland Freisler.
- Old or Cartel Parties:
As a reminiscence of Hitler’s master-propagandist Goebbels who used the same term, today’s far right AfD wants to establish a binary worldview of: we against them.
It is the old political “divide-&-conquer” strategy that defames Germany’s democratic political parties as the outsider. In this ideology, Germany’s democratic parties are the them. Worse, the them is the enemy to be destroyed.
All this is done by an anti-democratic political party. Yet, being elected does not make a political party a democratic party.
In Germany’s last free elections of 1932, Hitler’s Nazi party, the NSDAP, received 33% of the votes. It was not a democratic party – yet it destroyed democracy. Virtually the same goes for the neo-fascist AfD.
The goal of the AfD is that political opponents – seen as enemies – are to be liquidated. Before that, they are discredited and framed as being a detached elite.
Significant programmatic differences between Germany’s democratic parties like neoliberalism, social-democratic, conservatives, environmentalists, socialists, etc. are conveniently ignored.
Simultaneously, the authoritarian-nationalist-racist AfD describes itself as the only real opposition. While Germany’s democratic parties are framed as post-democratic parties.
In typical Orwellian Doublespeak, an anti-democratic party frames democratic parties as being anti-democratic.
- The Lying Press or Lügenpresse:
Heavily used by Hitler’s propaganda henchman Goebbels, the term lying press re-emerged during rallies of an East-German extreme right thuggish outfit called Pegida.
Today, it is often used in the AfD as a campaign term against press freedom and free media. It is also designed to prepare the general public for the eventual elimination of Germany’s important system of public broadcasting.
While creating plenty of fake news, misinformation (accidental) and disinformation (planned), the right uses the term lying press to camouflage their fake news. Germany’s free press is abused as system press or state news.
Historically, the term lying press has existed as an anti-Enlightenment concept of a struggle against a free, independent and liberal press that began to emerge during the 19th century. The term lying press also has anti-Semitic connotations. Likewise, Nazi demagogues used the term as a catchphrase against other ethnicities, i.e. non-Aryans.
- Ethnopluralism:
Ethnopluralism is a racist concept for the wishful thinking of an ethnically pure nation. Hitler’s anti-Semitic Volksgemeinschaft is such an example.
Any mixture of cultures and people is rejected. The term is a euphemistic trivialisation of racism. It simply replaces the term race with ethnic. For Neo-Nazis, the latter is the code-word for the white master race.
- Cultural Marxism:
The term Cultural Marxism originated in the American far right movement. It appeared almost 500 times in the so-called manifesto of the Norwegian right-wing terrorist and mass murderer Breivik.
It is an anti-Semitic cipher for a supposed Jewish-Marxist world conspiracy. According to this conspiracy fantasies, Jewish-Marxism has infiltrated America via teaching, the press, and Hollywood.
Worse, it is framed as being the driving force for feminism, civil rights movements, protests against the Vietnam War, the Iraq war, etc., against Black Lives Matter, and against the environmental movement.
- Globalists and the Globalist Elite:
With the help of the conspiracy narratives against globalism, the extreme right likes to suggest that there is a worldwide network of so-called dark forces pulling the strings in the background.
According to this conspiracy fantasy, the so-called rootless globalists are defined to exist in contrast to the people – a homogenous mass of the far right.
Worse, these – never defined – so-called dark forces wanted to forcibly vaccinate people. This, too, never happened during the global Covid-19 pandemic.
The same goes for the conjured-up hallucination of a Covid dictatorship. At other times, the globalist elite is about to enslave us all.
It is the shortened and conspiracy-ideological resentment set against the so-called globalist elite. The target is less the business elite but more the invented liberal elite that runs democracy.
Its anti-Semitic connotations carry images of enemies such as, for example, the philanthropist and Jewish billionaire George Soros.
Hungary’s far right and anti-Semitic Viktor Orbán has demonized Soros in his election campaigns. According to Orban’s conspiracy fantasies, Soros allegedly planned something the far right calls population exchange – also known as Great Replacement. In the delusionary world of Orban, this even extends to a so-called the Soros Plan.
In this conspiracy fantasies, the evil globalists always plan a New World Order. In any case, the globalist elite wants, according to this conspiracy fantasies, to erase national and cultural identities.
In the end, it’s always the Jews who are to be blamed. Much of this carries connotations to the nonsensical Nazi ideology of something called the Jewish-Bolshevik world conspiracy.
Similar conspiracy-ideological narratives spin around something called the Atlantic Bridge and the never to be missed Rockefeller and Rothschild families.
Much of this also extends to the Freemasons and the infamous Illuminati. The Illuminati are one of the most silly, bizarre, ridiculous, outlandish and nonsensical conspiracy fantasies ever invented.
In the end, conspiracy fantasies like these are used to draw the unsuspecting into the orbit of far-right ideologies. A right-wing coded language helps to do just that.
It hides right-wing extremism and Neo-Nazism until a newly recruited person is locked into the ideological space of Neo-Nazism.
The second function of far right coded language is to hide Neo-Nazi ideologies behind a smokescreen of words and phrases that seem innocent while transmitting hard-core Neo-Nazi ideologies.
Photo: (source: https://www.img2go.com/ai-creator-studio)
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