Völkisch movement
The Völkisch movement (German: Völkische Bewegung, English: Folkist movement, also called Völkism) was a German ethnic nationalist movement active from the late 19th century through the dissolution of the German Reich in 1945, with remnants in the Federal Republic of Germany afterwards. Erected on the idea of "blood and soil", inspired by the one-body-metaphor (Volkskörper, "ethnic body"; literally "body of the people"), and by the idea of naturally grown communities in unity, it was characterized by organicism, racialism, populism, agrarianism, romantic nationalism and – as a consequence of a growing exclusive and ethnic connotation – by antisemitism from the 1900s onward.[1][2] Völkisch nationalists generally considered the Jews to be an "alien people" who belonged to a different Volk ("race" or "folk") from the Germans.[3]
"Folkist movement" redirects here. For other uses, see Folkism.
The Völkisch movement was not a homogeneous set of beliefs, but rather a "variegated sub-culture" that rose in opposition to the socio-cultural changes of modernity.[4] The "only denominator common" to all Völkisch theorists was the idea of a national rebirth, inspired by the traditions of the Ancient Germans which had been "reconstructed" on a romantic basis by the adherents of the movement. This rebirth would have been achieved by either "Germanizing" Christianity – an Abrahamic and "Semitic" religion that spread into Europe from the Near East – or by rejecting any Christian heritage that existed in Germany in order to revive pre-Christian Germanic paganism.[5] In a narrow definition, the term is used to designate only groups that consider human beings essentially preformed by blood, or by inherited characteristics.[6]
The Völkischen are often encompassed in a wider Conservative Revolution by scholars, a German national conservative movement that rose in prominence during the Weimar Republic (1918–1933).[7][8] During the period of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis believed in and enforced a definition of the German Volk which excluded Jews, the Romani people, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, and other "foreign elements" living in Germany.[9] Their policies led to these "undesirables" being rounded up and murdered in large numbers, in what became known as The Holocaust.
Translation[edit]
The adjective Völkisch (pronounced [ˈfœlkɪʃ]) is derived from the German word Volk (cognate with the English "folk"), which has overtones of "nation", "race" or "tribe".[10] While Völkisch has no direct English equivalent, it could be loosely translated as "ethno-nationalist", "ethnic-chauvinist", "ethnic-popular",[11] or, closer to its original meaning, as "bio-mystical racialist".[1]
If Völkisch writers used terms like Nordische Rasse ("Nordic race") and Germanentum ("Germanic peoples"), their concept of Volk could, however, also be more flexible, and understood as a Gemeinsame Sprache ("common language"),[12] or as an Ausdruck einer Landschaftsseele ("expression of a landscape's soul"), in the words of geographer Ewald Banse.[13]
The defining idea which the Völkisch movement revolved around was that of a Volkstum, literally the "folkdom" or the "culture of the Volk".[14] Other associated German words include Volksboden (the "Volk's essential substrate"), Volksgeist (the "spirit of the Volk"),[4] Volksgemeinschaft (the "community of the Volk"),[15] as well as Volkstümlich ("folksy" or "traditional")[16] and Volkstümlichkeit (the "popular celebration of the Volkstum").[14]
Definition[edit]
The Völkisch movement was not unified but rather "a cauldron of beliefs, fears and hopes that found expression in various movements and were often articulated in an emotional tone".[17] According to historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Völkisch denoted the "national collectivity inspired by a common creative energy, feelings and sense of individuality. These metaphysical qualities were supposed to define the unique cultural essence of the German people."[18] Journalist Peter Ross Range writes that "Völkisch is very hard to define and almost untranslatable into English. The word has been rendered as popular, populist, people's, racial, racist, ethnic-chauvinist, nationalistic, communitarian (for Germans only), conservative, traditional, Nordic, romantic – and it means, in fact, all of those. The völkisch political ideology ranged from a sense of German superiority to a spiritual resistance to 'the evils of industrialization and the atomization of modern man,' wrote military historian David Jablonsky. But its central component, said Harold J. Gordon, was always racism.[19]
Völkisch thinkers tended to idealize the myth of an "original nation", that still could be found at that time in the rural regions of Germany, a form of "primitive democracy freely subjected to their natural elites."[8] The notion of "people" (Volk) subsequently turned into the idea of a "racial essence",[4] and Völkisch thinkers referred to the term as a birth-giving and quasi-eternal entity—in the same way as they would write on "the Nature"—rather than a sociological category.[20]
The movement combined sentimental patriotic interest in German folklore, local history and a "back-to-the-land" anti-urban populism. "In part this ideology was a revolt against modernity", Nicholls remarked.[21] As they sought to overcome what they felt was the malaise of a scientistic and rationalistic modernity, Völkisch authors imagined a spiritual solution in a Volk's essence perceived as authentic, intuitive, even "primitive", in the sense of an alignment with a primordial and cosmic order.[4]
In Heathenry, the terms "Völkisch," "neo-völkisch," or the anglicisation "folkish," are used both as endonyms and exonyms for groups that believe that the religion is intimately connected to a perceived biological race, which they often describe as "Northern European," or more specific groupings such as "English." These classifications are typically held to be self-evident by folkish Heathens, despite the academic consensus that race is a cultural construct. Folkish groups often use ethnonationalist language and maintain that only members of these racial groupings can legitimately adhere to the religion, holding the pseudoscientific view that "gods and goddesses are encoded in the DNA of the descendants of the ancients."[38][39][40]
In online media, folkish Heathens often express a belief in a threat from racial mixing, which is often blamed on the socio-political establishment, sometimes arguing their racial exclusivity is a result of the threat other ethnic groups pose to white people or due to explicit white supremacist ideologies.[41][38] It has been noted that while the groups typically state an aim to revive Germanic paganism, their views regarding the centrality of race have origins instead in 19th-century thinking.[38] The Odinic Rite states that while prevention of ethnic mixing was not a stance taken by heathens prior to Christianisation, it is needed now to maintain "racial integrity" and prevent "crossed allegiances."[42] The Odinic Rite and the Odinist Fellowship profess an apolitical stance, although academic Ethan Doyle White characterises their ideologies as the "extreme right."[43]
As of 2021, 32 neo-völkisch organizations in the United States are designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, with the largest being the Asatru Folk Assembly.[38][44]
Active groups that are identified by scholars, institutions, or themselves openly include:
Inactive groups that are identified by scholars, institutions, or themselves openly include:
Notes
Bibliography