The traditions of the German fraternities also draw on the ethnonationalist and antisemitic ideologies of the 1920s and ’30s. Then as now, fraternities serve as a breeding ground for radical right‐wing parties and think tanks, and for the hole right‐wing apparatus.

The German fraternities are still the élite schools of Germany’s extreme right. Their traditions are unchanged, but how much of this ethnonationalist ideology still remains? We meet the fraternity’s spokesman, Philip Stein, en Halle.

What I want is for peoples and populations to preserve their relative homogeneity; their traditions.

How’s that different from [German Fascism’s] racial theory?

Well, racial theory is based on something very different. Ethnicity doesn’t mean [that] everyone is blond, everyone has beautiful straight teeth or a particular shape of skull. A people is made up of a variety of qualities that have evolved organically over the centuries.

I’m asking about this tradition of racial theory because it also involved this fear of intermingling.

Well, as I’ve explained… kinship and identity, as well as language and religious confession, are some of the things that define a nation. And of course, kinship and identity include some things that have nothing to do with racial theory, but just with forms of expression, with human forms.

Like what?

Well, take a look around. It’s pretty easy for me to see that you’re a German, or European. So it’s pretty clear that certain physical characteristics define a people. Well, at least most of what I would call a people. That’s actually a pretty ordinary fact.

This is a pretty typical example of how neofascists talk: saying one thing only to immediately contradict it. Beware of that.

Oh, and at the risk of stating this obvious: this documentary contains some of the usual liberal oversimplifications, like claiming that the Fascists eliminated individuality (not really) and all dissent (another exaggeration), but hopefully you can spot those flaws on your own. This is otherwise worth watching.