Why did Heidegger emerge as the central philosopher of the far right?


https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/countering-radical-right/why-did-heidegger-emerge-central-philosopher-far-right/

From Steve Bannon calling Heidegger “my guy” in an interview with Der Spiegel to Aleksander Dugin’s vision of a fourth political theory, Heidegger has emerged as the central philosopher of a globalising far right.

Heidegger’s philosophy epitomizes a “race talk” that was central to Nazism, its populist politics and the legitimisation of Nazi policies on the Jewish question through the claiming to essential cultural differences. Merging race and religion in vague notions of spirit and/or cultural essence resonated with large parts of the educated bourgeoisie and turned crude biological racism into questions of cultural aestheticism that attributed to the German Volk a mission in the leadership of European white superiority.

Through its linking of notions of local identity, heritage and environmentalism to a critique of technological globalisation, popular and populist discourses to claims of intellectual authenticity and by racialising culture and religion, Heidegger’s philosophy offers a rich repertoire for the contemporary far right. It provides the academic ‘sustainment’ to claims for the protection of ‘ordinary white people’, the homeland and a white national culture against global technocratic left-liberal elites as well as a racialised non-white and Muslim ‘Other’.