Johannes von Moltke

A central part of the “metapolitical” agenda of the New Right aims to redefine cultural meanings, values, and identities to advance its socio-political aims. This strategy is neither new nor inherently Right, argues Johannes von Moltke; it is borrowed from the 1960s New Left. But in its recent, right-wing iteration, the emancipatory aspirations of identity politics harden into identitarianism, critique morphs into conspiracy theorizing and Querdenken, and culture is mobilized in the form of “wedge issues.” In this talk, von Moltke illuminates the details and broader patterns of the New Right’s weaponization of culture on both sides of the Atlantic in order to understand the cultural logics of a globally resurgent right-wing politics.

Johannes von Moltke is Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and of Film, Television, and Media, at the University of Michigan. In his Academy project, “The Identitarian Reflex: Critical Theory and the ‘Metapolitics’ of the New Right,” Moltke aims to shed light on how the New Right mobilizes arts and ideas in today’s culture wars, by considering specifically the New Right’s media strategies, its identity politics, and its efforts to shift the very language of public discourse to the right.