by Thomas Klikauer and Danny Antonelli
There is considerable madness in Germany’s ordinary right-wing extremism and even more so in right-wing esotericism. For one, there is an outright rejection of modernity and technology.
Worse, this is spiced up with an over-romanticized back to “an unspoiled nature” hallucination promising a turbo return to a reactionary, pure, and simple life uncontaminated by modernity.
Despite their anti-technology and anti-modernity stance, people of the right-wing esoteric persuasion – rather paradoxically – still use online video platforms where, so they believe, right-wing esotericism has a voice. The esoteric voice is broadcast in something they call the digital underground.
In these echo-chambers, right-wing extremists generate a kind of counter-publicity against mainstream and quality media.
Not only because of its stupidity and foolhardiness, but also out of its right-wing belief in authoritarianism, right-wing esotericism rejects mainstream media which it sees as Lügenpresse – the exact same word as used by Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels.
Overall, Germany’s right-wing esotericism prefers to use two online channels for their own lying press: Bewusst.tv and NuoViso.TV – the latter was recently deleted by YouTube. While NuoViso.TV and its 224,000 subscribers are gone, Bewusst.tv continues with:
- esoteric ideology,
- the rejection of vaccinations,
- support for anti-vaxxers,
- the belief in para-science,
- staunch Putinism – the admiration of Russian president Putin,
- condemnation of governmental anti-Covid-19 measures, and
- the propaganda of Germany’s Reichsbürger.
In short, right-wing esotericism offers the entire smorgasbord of falsehoods and far-right demagogy – from standard authoritarianism and populism to secret societies, conspiracy theories, to so-called alternative (read: quack) medicine, to the right-wing esotericism of Germany’s preppers.
Some of the ideology for all that is supplied by US-American right-wing extremist conspiracy dreamer William Cooper (1943-2001) and by British right-wing conspiracy publicist David Icke. Both have been highly influential for German right-wing esotericist Jan Udo Holey.
Virtually the same applies to the Geistheilerin Karin Feistle – a spiritual healer (read: crypto-psychological manipulation). Snake oil saleswoman Feistle says she can communicate with aliens telepathically. She also claims to be versed in borderline scientific, legal-esotericism as well as UFO-logical topics.
Then there is the German right-wing esoteric Traugott Ickeroth, who spreads far-right extremist ideologies in concert with violent, rather menacing, andcoup d’état planning Reichsbürger. Ickeroth also calls for a national awakening. This is esotericism’s version of Hitler-Nazism’s battle cry of Deutschland Erwache – Germany awake!
Not surprisingly, the Neo-Nazi background of Germany’s worst post-war Neo-Nazi killer squad – the National Socialist Underground (NSU) – is called into question. I
nstead of the court-proven reality of the NSU’s Neo-Nazi network and the killing of ten people, right-wing esotericism prefers to believe made-up delusions about mafia gangs, a secret plot by the US intelligence service, and Bosnian mercenaries.
Meanwhile, the phantasm of German right-wing esotericism also extends to the idée fixe that Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler survived and escaped to live in Argentina. This particular psychosis conjures up images of Hitler travelling – unnoticed – to Argentina by Wehrmacht submarine.
In an adjacent delirium, Hitler escaped via a Nazi Reichsflugscheibe – a kind of secret Nazi miracle weapon UFO called Haunebu II. Whatever the means – or better the fantasy – it all happened before the final collapse of Germany at the end of the Second World War – so the esoteric myth goes.
But Hitler is dead. Forensic proof exists. His partner Eva Braun went to her death by chewing on a cyanide capsule. The Almighty Leader then blew his own brains out. Both had been hiding in his Berlin bunker for months to avoid the chaos the Leader had caused.
Esoteric madness even conjures up a hallucination that Hitler might return (like a weirdly perverse type of Jesus) to rescue the world from the evil elite’s plan to get rid of inferior peoples through diseases and epidemics.
Right-wing esotericism calls this the global elite’s plan, though, if you have read and understood anything at all about Nazi ideology, then you would know it was actually Hitler’s plan. This is classic projection—attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another.
So if we analyze the right-wing plan which is being projected, we see that it seeks to enslave the surviving remnants of the post-Covid-19 population and force them into a green-socialist new world order. The Green Party has recently been singled out for direct attack because of their drift into “politics as usual”.
The battle cry that accompanies this German right-wing esoteric belief is:
“Now the elites are getting serious!
Covid-19 is just the beginning!”
This herd of the crackbrained is composed of a dangerous mix of right-wing esoteric enthusiasts, conspiracy fantasy believers, the Reichsbürger, and anti-Semitic haters of Jews and Israel.
Not unconnected to all that is the lunacy of the so-called Wurzelrassenlehre – a kind of race theory that goes back to the racial roots of the Aryan white super-race, the Übermensch.
This version of esoteric root-racism is based on the mythical phantasm of a total of seven human races. These have arisen in a sequence and emerged on different continents. These races are still in the process of being formed. This esoteric Wurzelrasse ideology integrates Nazi racism into something called cosmic evolutionism.
Worse, each of the root-races has seven sub-races – the Untermensch. Much of this is connected to three sources:
- the Nazi-Völkisch mythology of a secret SS underground;
- linked to Wilhelm Landig’s Thule trilogy – today accessible through the hard-core Neo-Nazi platform “stormfront.org”; and,
- to the esoteric Hitlerism of the Chilean Miguel Serrano (1917-2009).
Common to esoteric Hitlerism, Nazi race theory, and adjacent fabrications, is the dream of a blond race. It is made to look plausible by a Nazi-style völkisch-esoteric ideology. This includes a present day Neo-Nazi organization called: Artgemeinschaft – something like a white Aryan species community.
That all of this isn’t just an esoteric hallucination of a handful of madmen was shown by a recent Neo-Nazi murder in Germany. The killing was committed by the Neo-Nazi terrorist Stephan Ernst. Ernst shot a local politician – Walter Lübcke (1953-2019) – on 1 June 2019.
Neo-Nazi Ernst killed the much-admired politician because of Lübcke’s commitment to refugees. Neo-Nazi Stephan Ernst was a member of the aforementioned violent Neo-Nazi organization Artgemeinschaft.
Yet, the delirium of right-wing esotericism continues unabated with the myth of the black sun. The mythology of a black sun plays an important role in the right-wing esoteric community. At times, the black sun is adorned with rings and amulets signifying right-esoteric devotion.
At other times, the black sun is ornamented with a twelve-armed swastika or a twelve-fold SS-style so-called “sig” rune. The image of the black sun serves in right-wing extremist circles as an ancient, prehistoric and, mystical symbol.
The mysticism of right-wing esotericism continues with another fabricated caprice called Neuschwabenland – New Swabia Land. It marks the epitome of a conspiracy theory according to which a huge military SS base was built in Antarctica in the wake of the German expedition with a ship called “Schwabenland” in Nazi Germany in 1938/39.
The conspiracy fantasy imagines that many Nazis fled to New Swabia Land in 1945 – Hitler’s frozen Nazi base. Almost self-evidently, there is a right-wing Telegram channel called Neuschwabenland with 1,200 users.
Some this is also linked to right-wing esoteric UFO-ology that conjures up a conspiracy myth based on the esoteric vision that Hitler’s Aryans actually descended from the galactic planet called Aldebarans. From this planet, Aryans came to earth one thousands years ago and started to reproduce.
This created highly developed and intelligent human beings. But judging by the I.Q. of the average right-wing True Believer, this Aldebaran experiment is a total failure. In fact it sounds very much like the alien scam made up by L. Ron Hubbard, the inventor of Scientology.
This particular right-wing esotericism also believes that the Germans were technically 100 and spiritually 1000 years ahead of all other races – perhaps reminiscent of Hitler’s 1000 year Reich. Eventually, this “new German über race” will take us by the hand to lead us to the cosmic family, like Marshall Applewhite’s Heaven’s Gate cult.
Virtually all of this fits rather neatly into the right-wing insanity that there is a natural (read: racial) order of things based on authoritarian hierarchies of the powerful.
This is what Social Darwinism calls the rule of the strong over the weak. Within such a right-wing bio-racial ideology, nature is seen as synonymous with ethnicity and culture. This provides a stable link between bio-spiritual and right-wing extremist ideologies.
Supporting much of this at the European level, are two of the most influential esoteric demagogues:
- The former football player, British sports reporter, right-wing esoteric; and conspiracy ideologist David Icke; and
- the Dutch conspiracy ideologist Robin de Ruiter.
Dominant – or better domineering – in right-wing esotericism is also the Swiss esoteric demagogue, founder of a right-wing sect called Organischen Christus Generation or Organic Christ Generation (OCG), and conspiratorial madman Ivo Sasek.
Sasek agitates in the context of right-wing esotericism. According to the highly manipulative Sasek – a self-appointed apocalyptic and anti-Semitic Führer – the end times are currently beginning. Is he the new Jim Jones?
Sasek – to be seen on the right-wing esoteric kla.tv and sasek.TV – believes that science and politics are on the verge of collapsing. The collapse is coming and therefore a new epoch is being initiated. He camouflages his own right-wing extremism as “light work” (Lichtarbeit) – a wakeup call to all nations. He broadcasts all of this online.
In neighboring Bavaria, protagonists of right-wing esoteric beliefs also use online platforms for their right-wing networking. It is done for an authoritarian esoteric organization called MEB – Mother Earth Bavaria – founded in 2015. This is the right-wing esotericism of Jo Conrad, Reiner E. Feistle, and Traugott Ickeroth.
Next to the rather common right-wing conspiracy fantasy of The Great Reset, there are many bridges between seemingly apolitical esotericism and Germany’s right-wing extremists. These connections are shaped by so-called alternatives – e.g. nonsensical but (on the surface) still semi-plausible – interpretations of reality. In the USA, this gained notoriety with Conway’s alternative facts.
One such interpretation induces fear about an imminent elimination of cash payment. According to this right-wing conspiracy fantasy, a ban on cash payments is already being planned by the elite in order to end human freedom.
Perhaps one of the shining lowlights of European right-wing extremism is Alexander Dugin – the Russian far-right esotericist. Alexander Dugin, a right-wing mystic, has been called Putin’s Rasputin. Dugin is also one of the main ideologues of something called neo-Eurasianism. A recent attempt to assassinate him killed his daughter instead.
He was co-chairman of the now banned National Bolshevik Party of Russia (NBP). He also demanded that all supporters of the Kiev government in the Ukraine should be killed.
With master demagogue Dugin at the helm when it comes to influencing Putin, right-wing esotericism reveals itself openly as favoring Russia. Its followers make no secret of their admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s chief mythologist.
Dugin’s reading material included esoteric authors such as:
- the fascist and racial theorist Julius Evola (1898-1974);
- the French and neo-right conspiracy theorist Jean Parvulesco (1929-2010);
- the French esoteric and later converted to Islam René Guénon (1886-1951); and
- the English occultist Aleister Crowley (1875-1947).
Unsurprisingly, Dugin’s ideological worldview is deeply anti-Western, anti-democratic, and anti-liberal. This is spiced up by Dugin with a hefty dose of the belief that the white race and Russia are superior.
Much of this resonates with what in the USA is called white supremacy and what the Nazis called the Aryan Volksgemeinschaft.
Meanwhile, Dugin also believes that today’s Germany is a large, political-intellectual gulag – a kind of concentration camp. But this time, the Americans are the camp guards. The German political class plays the role of the KZ-Capo – a privileged and equally brutal concentration camp police. Cunningly, Dugin likes to ask rhetorical questions like:
“Can one accept this in this way or rebel against it?”
Overall, Dugin makes use of right-wing esoteric currents and pursues international networking for his ideology. On the German right-wing extremist website dieunbestechlichen.com, Dugin pays tribute to Donald Trump, who uses many of the tropes proliferated by Dugin and Goebbels.
Much of Dugin’s right-wing esoteric ideology is linked to his mirage of a spirituality linked to neo-Eurasianism. This version of authoritarian spirituality is rooted in the northern part of the earth.
Geographically, it is located in north Eurasia where Dugin’s “natural spirituality” rules. It consists of a so-called “white medicine council” that rejects any mixing of the races – Mischrassen. This is straight-forward Nazi race theory.
Right-wing esotericism has convinced itself that an occult Satanist order is operating secretly in the background. This secret order merely used Nazism and it also used Adolf Hitler for their own purposes in order to brainwash the masses.
Right-wing esotericism also imagines that this secret order is behind today’s democracy which, therefore, is considered by right-wing esotericism to be the most dangerous illusion the mass of people has fallen for. Right-wing esotericism sees democracy – people (demos) and rule (kratos) – not as the rule of the people. Instead, it sees democracy as demon-cracy – the rule of the demon.
Overall, right-wing esotericism is a dangerous mix of occultism, quasi-religious and authoritarian-spiritual esoteric ideologies, and right-wing extremism that reaches deep into Nazi ideology and really does enter the realm of clinical psychosis with psycopathic undertones.
On the surface, right-wing esotericism can appear rather apolitical, nonsensical, and bizarre when, for example, it talks of UFOs, spirituality, occultism, and aliens. Yet, behind all that lurks a neo-fascist, deeply authoritarian, and Nazi-style ideology that rejects modernity, rationality, Enlightenment, and democracy.
Thomas Klikauer is a German-born author of over 900 publications, including a recent book on German Conspiracy Fantasies – out now on Amazon! He lives in Sydney, Australia.
Danny Antonelli grew up in the USA, now lives in Hamburg, Germany and writes radio plays, stories and is a professional lyricist and librettist.
