The Pursuit of ‘White Security’: Transnational entanglements between West German and American right-wing extremists, 1961-1980

Abstract

The shared pursuit of white security' has been essential to the historical development and transnationalisation of right-wing extremism. After the Second World War, right-wing extremist views of security, threat, and enemy not only justified a quest for 'white racial survival' as the movement's rationale and existence, but fostered transnational bonds, sentiments of solidarity, a shared mission, and acts of violence. The Pursuit of White Security' explains how transnational alliances between West German and American right-wing extremists, through overseas visits to 'World Nationalist' meetings and plans for joint action, helped revive their ideology and movement between 1961 and 1980. Drawing from previously undisclosed extremists' private correspondences, court documents, and secret service reports, The Pursuit of 'White Security traces a German-American right-wing extremist pathway of radicalisation towards terrorism, illuminating that the fantasies of white security fuelling recent right-wing terrorist attacks are anything but new.