Fourth empire

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The fourth kingdom is a paraphrase for a kingdom that follows a third kingdom .

Use in the time of National Socialism

During the National Socialist era , the term appeared in political jokes . Through them, the National Socialist idea of ​​an eternal rule (which was also reflected in the other self-designation, the Thousand Year Reich ) was mocked. This led to the fact that the designation Third Reich was banned by the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in July 1939.

Use in the present

In today's political discussion, the Fourth Reich is spoken of as a possible renaissance of National Socialism - depending on the political point of view as dystopia or utopia .

Neo-Nazi revisionists like the Holocaust denier and right-wing extremist Horst Mahler use the term “Fourth Reich” to describe their goal of reintroducing National Socialism in Germany by abolishing the Federal Republic.

The British journalist Sefton Delmer used the term in the second part of his 1962 autobiography Black Boomerang (German published in 1963 as Die Deutschen und ich ) to denounce the continuing influence of old Nazis in the West German elite of the 1950s. According to him, Otto John , the first President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution , became the “first victim of the Fourth Reich”, as an Italian colleague put it.

Critics of the global anti-terrorist measures use the term as a synonym for police state or surveillance state in which the population is controlled by means of mass media propaganda . In their song 4. Reich in the early 1980s , the band Slime sang “It's not far to the Fourth Reich” and wanted to provocatively comment on the political situation at the time.

Eurosceptics , especially in Great Britain, use the term to criticize Germany's dominant position in the EU, e.g. B. in relation to the euro crisis . In Germany, the lawyer and legal and political scientist Roland Chr. Hoffmann-Plesch - following the theory of the Oxford political scientist Jan Zielonka - is currently providing a refutation of the “Germany as the fourth Reich” thesis. Accordingly, the term “Fourth Reich” is an ideological battle term that is intended to describe Germany's dominance in Europe, but it is more in line with the process-oriented, concrete greater area of ​​the EU. The EU is similar in its form, structure, action and finality to the medieval empire, which after the Second World War served as the founding myth and legitimation narrative for European unity. The parallels to the Roman-Germanic imperial order could not be overlooked in the early days of the EU: France, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and West Germany, which signed the founding treaties of the European Communities in Rome in 1957, were in the past part of the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne.

Others

  • In 1928, Peter Paul Althaus published a volume of poetry under the name Das Vierte Reich (without reference to the political meanings mentioned above).
  • Alex Jones claims in his report Martial Law that the establishment of the "Fourth Reich" is already in progress globally through targeted repeal and change of laws.
  • The Belgian Stan Lauryssens processed the material for the novel Opmars naar het Vierde Rijk , u. a. with reference to the so-called " Gauleiter-FDP ".
  • In the DC Universe , there is a group of villains who are Fourth Reich ( Fourth Reich calls it).
  • In the novel Metro 2033 by Dmitri Alexejewitsch Gluchowski there is a state in the underground that calls itself the 4th Reich.
  • In the summer of 2009, the American Jim Marrs published the book The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America , which is about building a Fourth Reich.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas: Black Sun : Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and The Politics of Identity , New York University Press, New York 2002; Chapters 4 and 11 contain detailed information on the proposed "Western Empire".
  2. ↑ Jan Rathje: Between conspiracy myths, esotericism and Holocaust denial - the imperial ideology. In: Federal Agency for Civic Education / bpb. October 14, 2015, accessed April 8, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Sefton Delmer: Black Boomerang: An Autobiography , Secker & Warburg, 1962, p. 278. ( reference at Google Books )
  4. ↑ www.kink-records.de
  5. ^ Rise of the Fourth Reich, Daily Mail (Eng.)
  6. ^ Roland Chr. Hoffmann-Plesch: The Fourth Reich - ideological battle term or Germany's role in Europe. On the current debate about the nature of the EU and its process-based, concrete spatial order. In: Eurasisches Magazin , October 2015 edition ( online ); see also J. Zielonka, Europe as Empire. The Nature of the Enlarged European Union , Oxford 2006.
  7. ^ Oswald Malura Foundation , accessed on August 19, 2011
  8. ↑ Stan Lauryssens: opmars naar het Vierde Rijk , Verlag Wetenschappelijke Uitgeverij, Amsterdam 1975. ISBN 9021429039 . No publication in German yet.
  9. ↑ dc.wikia.com: Fourth Reich , accessed August 19, 2011