The structures of thought, symbolism and the figure of the enemy in the radical neo-nationalist political thought.
The research analyses intellectual thought structures of the neo-nationalistic political thought paying special attention on its symbolical aspects and enemy figures.
The rationale of the research is the raising popularity of neo-nationalistic political thought all around Europe, which is enforced by the ongoing refugee crisis. This neo-nationalist challenge cannot anymore be treated as a marginal phenomenon. Yet, even if there is a considerably amount of social research done on far-right and neo-nationalist movements, much less critical attention is paid on special intellectual sources and arguments of neo-nationalist political thought. Instead, the movements are often seen representing anti-intellectual and anti-enlightenment popular prejudices or they are imprecisely associated with either fascist or national socialist ideologies.
The research hypothesis is that behind its more popular expressions, there is ongoing intellectual effort to create and promote distinctively intellectual neo-nationalistic political thought, which derives its own thought-patterns and conceptual sources, not so much from fascists or national socialistic thought, but much more strongly and directly from traditions known as 1) German conservative revolution, 2) French integral nationalism or 3) Italian traditionalism. However, these thought-traditions and discourses now reappearing are less studied in academic critical research, than promoted by openly neo-nationalistic political think tanks.
The research aims to produce academic critical study on the thought-patterns represented by the recent neo-nationalistic think tanks and their intellectual sources both in their structural analogies and timely differences. The research material consist of texts and discourses produced by neo-right think tanks and the archive materials on their intellectual sources.
The method follows the guidelines of history of systems of thought paying special attention to the conceptual constructions. Since the conceptualization of the political enemy is central in most neo-nationalist discourses and since they also have a strong tendency to use symbolistic rhetoric and intense metaphors, besides the conceptual analysis, the method will also borrow methodological insights and devices from friend and enemy -theories, symbol theory and metaphrology.
Research and Teaching 