Reactionary modernism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Reactionary modernism" is a term first coined by Jeffrey Herf in his 1984 book, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich, to describe the mixture of "great enthusiasm for modern technology with a rejection of the Enlightenment and the values and institutions of liberal democracy" which was characteristic of the German Conservative Revolutionary movement and Nazism. In turn, this ideology of reactionary modernism was closely linked to the original, positive view of the Sonderweg, which saw Germany as the great Central European power neither of the West nor of the East.
Herf's application of the term to describe fascism has been widely echoed by other scholars. Herf had used the term to denote a trend in intellectual thought during the era, what German novelist Thomas Mann had described as "a highly technological romanticism" during the interwar years. Herf used the term in reference to a wide range of German cultural figures, including Ernst Jünger, Oswald Spengler, Carl Schmitt, and Hans Freyer.
See also
- Dark Enlightenment
- Fascism
- Metamodernism
- Retrofuturism
- Revolt Against the Modern World (Julius Evola)
- Ideology of Ioannis Metaxas
