On 28 May 2020, Björn Höcke, the leader of Germany’s far-right party Alternative für Deutschland in the state of Thuringia published a glossy picture of himself on his Facebook profile. On the photo, one can see him sitting on a park bench reading a magazine called Die Kehre (Magazine for the Protection of Nature) a new far-right magazine whose first issue was published in spring 2020. Its title and content is, as the magazine’s self-description says, “inspired by” Heidegger’s 'Die Technik und die Kehre', one of the philosopher’s post-World War Two works, “in which he sees in technology the emergence of the highest danger” for “our human being.” The magazine, edited by a member of the so-called Identitarian Movement, aims to establish an understanding of environmental protection that overcomes a “narrow focus of ecology on climate change” and that includes the “teaching of the environment as a whole, including cultural landscapes, rituals and customs.”
Contributors include former anti-socialist GDR dissidents who, in recent years, have claimed a new dissidence to a contemporary totalitarian German political regime. In his comment to the post, Höcke argues that Heidegger’s thought and the Magazine show how the protection of nature can be reclaimed by the far right from the “homeland-hating Green party”.
Höcke’s celebration of Heidegger and the magazine is one among many examples showing how the far right, in Germany and beyond, has been celebrating the infamous philosopher. From Steve Bannon calling Heidegger “my guy” in an interview with Der Spiegel to Aleksander Dugin’s vision of a fourth political theory, Heidegger has emerged as the central philosopher of a globalising far right.
