The revenge of the uncool ones

From the once nationally conservative Springer Verlag, it has become an actor of the international new right. Ulf Poschardt’s pamphlet against »shitty bourgeois« is exemplary of the cultural struggle against the long-time left-liberal dominated education and culture elite. At the same time, precisely those principles on which Springer once based its self-understanding are eroding: liberal democracy, social market economy, transatlantic ties, and a special responsibility towards Israel and the Jews, whose temporary low point is the honoring of the anti-democracy purveyor Peter Thiel. Springer’s late revenge against 68 is thus much more than just a cultural struggle: it marks the transition of part of the bourgeois establishment from defending liberal democracy to dismantling it.

In 1967/68, Springer was not just an opponent of the student movement; he was its founding enemy. »Enteignet Springer«, the blockades of the Bild newspaper after the assassination of Rudi Dutschke, the justified accusation that the paper had contributed to the climate of violence: the publisher became the epitome of the backward-looking. Cultural hegemony migrated to the left in pop culture, art, the university and the feuilleton, and remained there for half a century. Springer remained powerful but uncool. In the high-rise building on today’s Rudi Dutschke Street, this humiliation has never been forgotten.

With the rise of MAGA and a worldwide right-wing populist movement, today offers the opportunity for revenge. Of course, the new right is also about a rollback of social liberalizations since the 1960s, while at the same time pursuing economic »Anything Goes«. But the moment of revenge is unmistakable: it is directed against the cultural elites, their language, their morality, and their way of life. Poschardt’s »Shitbürgertum« exemplifies this. The term refers to the green-academic milieu that, in this reading, determines the codes of respectability. What is attacked is less a politics than a social class and its cultural self-assurance. Revanchism, as it stands in the book.

Ulf Poschardt is an insightful figure in this regard. He began as a knowledgeable author with well-researched books on DJ Culture and Coolness. Today, he opts for loud provocation, explaining the distinction between right-wing hate and a strategy of power for the Left and himself as punk. One could read this as a break; what is more interesting is the continuity. For Poschardt, Coolness was always more of a technique of differentiation than that »cool knowledge« that was rooted in the Spex in progressive politics. It is directed against the mainstream, the conformist. If the conformist is left-green in their worldview, they show the same gesture towards the right. The logic of the demarcation remains; only the opponent changes. The Coolness once codified as politically progressive is thereby reduced to arbitrariness, in which the rocker costume itself becomes the only argument.

At the beginning of the millennium, Springer had already adapted to the changed cultural landscape. Under Döpfner and Kai Diekmann, the house was flashy and lifestyle-oriented, from »We Are Pope« to the music and youth formats in its portfolio. But that was more of a period of adjustment. By 2010, the other direction was evident: Bild was making noise against the »bankrupt Greeks«, and Springer intensified Thilo Sarrazin's racist theses in a publicistic manner to the fullest extent possible.

There is, however, a crucial difference from 1968. Axel Springer was nationally conservative, Christian and paternalistic, but not neoliberal. Bild spoke to the »little man,« not the libertarian entrepreneur type. Market-oriented ideas existed long ago, in the Mont-Pèlerin Society as well as in Ordoliberalism, but they were embedded in the Western post-war consensus. They only became dominant gradually, starting with Thatcher and Reagan.

With the awarding of the Axel Springer Award to Peter Thiel on September 24, 2026, Springer has finally abandoned the democratic post-war consensus. In 2009, Thiel wrote that he no longer believed in the compatibility of freedom and democracy. From this, he developed, accompanied by wild swearing about the Antichrist, a libertarian vision whose goal is to escape the constraints of democratic politics, from Seasteading to private, autonomous communities led by CEO-kings, as propagated by the reactionary blogger Curtis Yarvin, whom Thiel supports. It should be noted that the idea of the Antichrist is one of the oldest anti-Jewish motifs in Christianity. At the same time, Thiel is a co-founder of Palantir, the company whose importance for the »resilience of democracies« Springer promotes in the award justification. In short: A publisher that relies on the defense of Western democracy honors a man whose political vision aims to eliminate it.

Conservative transatlantism once meant allegiance to the West, to liberal democracy, the social market economy, and anti-communism. Today, it has degenerated into allegiance to the Trump camp.

The same applies to a second pillar of the house. After the Shoah, Axel Springer wrote the reconciliation with the Jews into his publishing principles. This was also a counterpoint to right-wing press of the kind of Hugenberg, which in the Weimar Republic had prepared the ground for the NS-hatred, and it is one of the great achievements of the house.

Today, the former border wall has degenerated into a caricature. It is not intended to protect against the AfD with its long list of anti-Semitic offenses, but to defend the Israeli government, in which right-wing extremists like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich hold key positions. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against their leader Benjamin Netanyahu, on charges of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including intentional attacks on the civilian population as a method of warfare. The distinction between Israel’s right to exist and the war crimes alleged against its government, on which any serious solidarity rests, is thereby obscured – while Muslim people are placed under general suspicion.

Anyone who defends democratic values must equally name and combat anti-Semitism, Islamism, and all forms of political violence. But not at the expense of turning contempt into a discursive strategy. Springer is willingly paying this price: Outrage, polarization, and the humiliation of the opponent work better on digital platforms than any nuanced argument. Here, Springer’s creator strategy comes into play: Diminishing demands are replaced by personalities like Poschardt, who mobilize their radicalized following across all digital channels. The house’s actual product is, once again, the dehumanization of the political opponent – as can be observed currently after the Left’s victory in Berlin.

But that’s not the end of the story. Orbán has been voted out, Trump’s seat is shaky, in the UK there are majorities for returning to the EU. And Friedrich Merz, thanks to his antisocial policies and rhetoric, is as unpopular as no chancellor before him. There are first signs of the collapse of the neo-right project. Even Springer will turn away from his new friends once the wind starts to change. The only thing that’s clear is how deep the neo-right, in fact: the shit-bourgeoisie, is getting into trouble this time before it recognizes it for what it is: a moral and intellectual bankruptcy. Time is on our side.