Drummers of the revolution
Young conservatives and Poland’s right wing
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
There is an influential group within the Polish right wing that regards itself as the avantgarde of a conservative revolution. Its ideology and rhetoric are reminiscent of the ‘conservative revolutionaries’ in Germany after the First World War. Like them, these Polish right-wingers characterise themselves as pioneers in the fight against liberalism and parliamentary democracy, against western civilisation and its allegedly corruptive influence on the state and national culture. Its goal is to renew the ‘national spirit’, or ‘Volksgeist’, in the traditions of the nobility during the early modern period and romantic messianism. The fact that the ‘conservative revolutionaries’ prepared the ground during the Weimar era for the racial madness of the National Socialists should serve as a warning example to Poland.
(Osteuropa 3-5/2018, pp. 57–76)