What’s neo about Nazis?
July 3rd, 2009 at 17:06The prefix neo signifies “a new, revived or modified form of some doctrine, belief, practice, language, artistic style or designating those who advocate, adopt or use it.” (OED)
A neo-Nazi is thus someone who supports the revival and modification of Nazism or Nazi ideological principles, or propagates a modified form of Nazism. But did Nazism ever disappear? And how are neo-Nazis different from Nazis?
According to the OED the term neo-Nazi was used as early as 1944, even before the defeat of the Third Reich. “Let us now assume a situation in the not too distant future … when both Britain and the United States are threatened by a Trotskyite Russia…, militarist China-Japan, and neo-Nazi Germany.” (Ely Culbertson, Total Peace, Faber & Faber 1944)
Nazism was imagined to be revived before it had died.
The first neo-Nazis, founders and members of right wing parties dedicated to keeping alive the ideas and doctrines of Nazism — such as SRP (founded in 1949) and NPD (founded 1964) — were ‘old-Nazis’: Thies Christophersen, Fritz Dorls, Otto-Ernst Remer, Gerhard Krüger, Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Friedrich-Georg Thielen, Adolf von Thadden. Although they did not succeed in reinstating Nazi-rule, the old-Nazis passed on national-socialist doctrines and beliefs to the following generations. Contrary to what the prefix neo suggests the old-Nazi and the neo-Nazi are like father and son, mother and daughter, brother and sister, uncle and niece. There is neither a missing link nor a gulf separating the old-Nazi from the neo-Nazi. What we call neo-Nazism is not a revival of National-Socialism but its continuation — from Germany across Europe to America + Australia.
Today’s Nazis would never describe themselves as neo. Why should we?
P.S.: Ely Culbertson whom the OED credits for introducing the term neo-Nazi into English was neither a statesman nor a professor of political theory. He was a world famous bridge player.
Posted: July 3rd, 2009
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