Church Battles AfD’s Conservative Cultural Revolution

According to Junge Freiheit, Gregor Freiherr von Fürstenberg, a sociologist who serves as Vice President of the International Catholic Mission Society Missio and sits on the Central Committee of German Catholics, laid out this thesis in the theological journal Herder-Korrespondenz. Fürstenberg argues that right-wing intellectuals deliberately adopted the metapolitical concepts of Antonio Gramsci, the co-founder of the Italian Communist Party who died in 1937, to fundamentally transform German political culture over approximately forty years.

Gramsci had concluded after observing failed communist uprisings across Central Europe in the early twentieth century that violent revolution would not succeed in Western societies. Instead, he advocated for a patient, generational approach to overturn bourgeois-capitalist systems by gradually replacing the worldviews, convictions and values embedded in mass consciousness with alternative orientations. This process of building what Gramsci called “cultural hegemony” would take thirty to forty years, he estimated, but would ultimately make political reality follow ideological transformation.

While Gramsci remained largely obscure in Germany until the 1970s when leftist student revolutionaries discovered his work, Fürstenberg notes with evident concern that right-wing intellectuals simultaneously recognized the strategic value of his framework. French philosopher Alain de Benoist proclaimed in 1985 that to permanently secure political majorities, one must first win ideological majorities.

Fürstenberg claims that over subsequent decades, a network of New Right journals, publishers and intellectual circles engaged in what he describes as a systematic transfer of ideas from the left. He specifically names Junge Freiheit, founded in 1986, and the journal Sezession, launched in 2003, as providing platforms to build a counter-public and intellectually polish nationalist ideas. According to his analysis, this intellectual infrastructure prepared the ground for the AfD long before the party’s formal establishment.

The Catholic official argues that this long-term project has now achieved its goal within precisely the timeframe Gramsci outlined. He points to leading AfD figures like Björn Höcke in Thuringia, whom he describes as chief of the ethnic-nationalist wing, as openly acknowledging decisive influence from Gramsci’s theoretical work. Fürstenberg finds it particularly notable that Höcke, inspired by a communist theorist, now advocates for a strategic cultural struggle as preparation for taking power.

In Fürstenberg’s view, the New Right continues working to implement Gramsci’s ideas organizationally by tightly integrating the AfD with its broader ecosystem of think tanks, citizen initiatives, publishers, newspapers and right-oriented social media. He contends this network aims to redefine concepts like homeland, patriotism and freedom of speech to create a broad right-wing counterculture.

The sociologist considers the results of these efforts deeply problematic, asserting that right-populist positions have penetrated far deeper into the mainstream of German society than was the case just a few years ago. His concerns come as the AfD enjoys sustained polling success at both federal and state levels, with regional elections approaching in Saxony-Anhalt.

The article in Junge Freiheit notes that Fürstenberg’s sophisticated critique stands in contrast to cruder approaches from other Catholic officials. Gerhard Feige, Bishop of Magdeburg who has pursued a firmly left-leaning course for decades, recently launched a campaign called “Vote Consciously” that effectively calls on voters to support any party except the AfD in the upcoming state election. Feige justifies this one-sided partisanship by characterizing the AfD as shaped by anti-religious prejudice and appealing only to those guided by gut feelings, fear and anger.

The broader pattern reflects how both major Christian denominations in Germany, facing severe membership decline, have positioned themselves prominently in what they frame as a struggle against the right. Catholic and Protestant church leadership have made opposition to conservative and right-wing political movements a central element of their public engagement, even as critics question whether such partisan interventions exceed the proper role of religious institutions that benefit from mandatory church tax collection.

What makes Fürstenberg’s analysis particularly striking is his apparent recognition that a methodical, intellectually serious long-term strategy has successfully challenged what had been the dominant left-liberal cultural consensus in Germany. His concerns implicitly acknowledge that conservative and right-wing forces have built substantive intellectual infrastructure rather than relying solely on populist emotion, even as he conflates various strands of right-wing thought without distinguishing between mainstream conservatism and more radical positions.

The reference to Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony highlights an ironic dimension to contemporary German politics. A Marxist theorist’s framework for revolutionary transformation, originally designed to advance communism through patient cultural work rather than violent upheaval, has allegedly been adapted by his ideological opponents to shift public discourse in a conservative and nationalist direction. Whether this represents genuine strategic borrowing or merely a coincidental parallel in long-term political organizing remains a matter of interpretation.

With information from Junge Freiheit