Anti-Germans and the Nouvelle Droit
May 11 2008
So, it turns out that leading Anti-German publicist Matthias Küntzel is published in the United States by Telos Press, a formerly communist magazine that now orients towards dodgy "New Right" theorists in France like Alain de Benoist and publishes classic reactionary figures like Ernst Jünger:
For those of you who don't live in Germany, the delicious irony of all this is that "Heidegger" is the favorite swear-word used by ADs against their opponents within the left. And yet, here's one of their leading publicists having his book put out by....American Heideggerians!
Telos emerged as a project of people with connections to the New Left in the US, including, most famously, Russell Jacoby and Paul Piccone. They published a lot of marxist stuff, including some of the first English translations of Mario Tronti and Sergio Bologna, but I don't know if the journal can ever have been said to be communist - certainly that was never the self-description of the journal or of most of those involved. And though the journal has gone through phases of being intensely interested in a great many people and movements, from Lukacs and Korsch to the Frankfurt School, Gramsci, phenomenological marxism, and many more through to the later and long lasting interest in Carl Schmitt, one of the few things which it would never have been accurate to call the people at Telos is Heideggerian. Hegel and Husserl were much more significant for the journal than Heidegger, who has less relevance to any period in the journal's now quite long life than maybe thirty writers I could name without a great deal of thought. Though there was a relatively early essay about Marcuse' early efforts to create a Heideggerian marxism. For what it is worth, Telos was my first exposure to a variety of anti-leninist marxisms, including to Left and council communists.
Telos has certainly gone through a remarkable process of political transformation, and has published people I would regard as dodgy right-wingers in the process. For instance, the journal went through a phase of supportive interest in the Northern Leagues in Italy as well as engaging with the French New Right, as you say, but despite this I'm not sure it would be accurate to call them New Right per se in most accepted senses. Though you could probably make a stronger case in that direction, as the willingness to publish and engage with people like de Benoist seems to be on-going. (As is, of course, a willingness to publish people with very different views than the New Rightists.)
During the seventies Telos was one of the very best English-language journals of radical theory in existence, in my opinion, and well worth a look if you can find it. Which is not to suggest that later issues are devoid of interest either.