Miller-Idriss - The extreme gone mainstream: commercialization and far right youth culture in Germany

THE EXTREME GONE MAINSTREAM

THE EXTREME GONE MAINSTREAM

Commercialization and Far Right Youth Culture in Germany

CYNTHIA MILLER-IDRISS

Princeton University Press

Princeton and Oxford

Copyright 2017 by Princeton University Press

Portions of this book derive in part from other publications.

I gratefully acknowledge permission for the adaptation of portions of the following works:

The Extreme Goes Mainstream? Commercialized Right-Wing Extremism in Germany. Perspectives on Europe 42(1): 1521 (2012). Courtesy of the Council for European Studies, Columbia University.

Marketing National Pride: The Commercialization of Right-Wing Extremism in Germany. Pp. 14960 in Sullivan, Gavin, ed. (2014).

Collective Pride and Related Emotions: New Directions in Theory and Practice. Routledge.

Soldier, Sailor, Rebel, Rule-Breaker: Masculinity and the Body in the German Far Right. Gender and Education 29(2): 199215 (2017).

Available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09540253.2016.1274381.

Youth and the Radical Right. Rydgren, Jens, editor. The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

Published by Princeton University Press,

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In the United Kingdom:

Princeton University Press,

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Jacket photograph courtesy of Markus Mandalka

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Miller-Idriss, Cynthia, author.

Title: The extreme gone mainstream : commercialization and far right youth culture in Germany / Cynthia Miller-Idriss.

Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2018] | Series: Princeton studies in cultural sociology | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017016559 | ISBN 9780691170206 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: NationalismGermany. | Right-wing extremistsGermany. | YouthPolitical activityGermany. | Culture and politicsGermany.

Classification: LCC DD76 .M5452 2018 | DDC 306.20943dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017016559

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Sabon Next LT Pro and Trade Gothic LT Std

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my parents,
Lynn and Gary,
my first readers then,
and now.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ORGANIZATIONAL ACRONYMS

ARCHIVAL SOURCES

Antifaschistisches Pressearchiv und Bildungszentrum (apabiz), Berlin

Alphabetical folders under Skinversnde (BRD) and product collections

United States Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Archival sources: Prints & Photographs Division:

LOT 3633 (F), Folder: Nazi-era photographs, 192245

LOT 5212 (F), Folder: Souvenirs decorated with Nazi symbols

LOT 5180 (G), Folder: Kampf unter der Kriegsflagge

LOT 9856 (G), Folder: Kitsch

LOT 2888 (G), Folder: Altreligise Ausdrucksformen des Schwabenlandes, 1938

LOT 7488 (H), Folder: Ordensburg Sonthofen

LOT 8398 (F), Folder: Nazi party facility in Upper Bavaria

LOT 8580 (F), Folder: Sculptured eagles designed for buildings and monuments, 193336.

LOT 2747 (F), Folder: German press photographs, 193544

LOT 3649 (F), Folder: Sudentenland

LOT 4589 (H), box 2 of 4, Folder: Pictoral history of the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, 192033

LOT 2685 (H), Folder: Ortsgr. Urkunden, Piltolengehaenge, Dienstkleidung fuer NSF-Bahnhofsd. Tuerschilder, sonstiges

LOT 2760 (H), Folder: Reichsbauernfuehrer R. W. Darre zur Errinerung an das Harzlager 1936

LOT 3982 (G), Folder: Album of German snapshots, 193540, of Nazi ceremonies and parades

LOT 3111 (H), Folder: Original drawings, designs and artwork for symbols or posters for the Gutenberg Reichsausstellung held in Leipzig in 1940

LOT 5083 (H), Folder: Hitler Youth and League of German Girls album, 193340 (?)

LOT 3640 (F), Folder: German miscellaneous ephemeral material, 191845

Photo album with 60 photographic prints in Folder: Nazi gatherings, activities and celebrations, ca. 1934

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I hate this having to pay such rapt attention to the bullies & thugs.

I hate how they continue to command our attention,

I hate that the greatest revenge seems to be beyond us

to erase, to forget. To obliterate the memory of such evil

Joyce Carol Oates, Hatefugue, New Republic, November 14, 2014

I read Joyce Carol Oatess powerful poem about the Holocaust as I was putting the finishing touches on my book proposal for this monograph, and it plaintively lodged itself in my head, constantly reminding me to attend to it. I read the poem almost daily as I wrote, holding its words close as I analyzed images and pored over interview transcripts. I felt how much she hated the attention paid to bullies & thugs, her desire to erase and forget the Nazis. I thought about these words as I walked to campus, as I prepped for talks, as I folded laundry. Hatefugue kept me close to the bigger meaning of this project while I wrote, challenging me to think harder than I ever had about whether studying far right youth culture also valorizes it; whether it might be best, in the end, as Oates suggests, to erase, to forget.