Conceptualising Europe from the far right: The mobilisation of intellectual heritage in Germany

Abstract

Against the backdrop of multiple European crises and the end of the ‘liberal consensus’ on European integration, this article explores the increasing politicisation of ‘Europe’ by the populist far right. As a case study, it focuses on how key far-right actors in Germany deploy a term from the country’s intellectual history, namely the notion of the Abendland (‘Occident’), to construct ‘Europe’ and ‘European civilisation’ according to an exclusionary and populist political agenda. Drawing from the toolboxes of conceptual history and ethnography, the interpretive analysis traces the long-term semiotic shifts of the concepts of Abendland and ‘Europe’ in the context of post-war democratisation, European integration and social liberalisation. Applying a rhetorical lens to original empirical material, the article explains how contemporary far-right players strategically ‘redescribe’ the Abendland to mobilise it in the struggle over the meaning of ‘Europe’.