Radikalkonservatisme og dansk imperialisme:Riget bygget på ny fra grunden

• Published in: Contributions to the History of Concepts
• Main Author: Skov, Christian Egander
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: konservatisme; radikalkonservatisme; nykonservatisme; imperialisme; Grønland; Island; Begrebshistorie; Grunden
• Online Access: https://pure.au.dk/portal/da/publications/radical-conservatism-and-danish-imperialism(9458cf03-f180-476f-8217-f0c6fddc6649).html; https://doi.org/10.3167/choc.2013.080104; http://berghahn.publisher.ingentaconnect.com/content/berghahn/coco/2013/00000008/00000001/art00004

The article explores the concept of empire or rige in the context of a small nation-state with no immediate claim to imperial greatness and with a rooted self-understanding as anything but an empire. It does this by exploring the concept of empire in the far right movement The Young Denmark on the basis of a close reading of their imperialist program in the pamphlet Danmark Udslettes! from 1918. Rige had been a vague term for the larger Danish polity that originated in a pre-national conceptualization of the polity as a realm. The article suggests that rige-as-realm was translated by the radical right into a concept of empire. In the process it dramatically changed its emphasis, reorienting itself towards a "horizon of expectation." It became a politically loaded battle concept which then entailed a critique against the dominant liberal conceptualization of the polity and nation. Rige came to signify the ambition of being a great power, the spiritual elevation of the nation through the transcendence of the decaying liberal modernity. The program addressed the tension between a conservative political attitude and modernity and thus signified a kind of reactionary modernism, which rejected liberal values, while at the same time celebrating technology, industrialization and the process of modernization.