@hightor,
In Germany, already in the 19th century, areas in and around Stuttgart and Dresden were strongholds of vaccination opponents, "anti vaxxers", ... and still are today.
This is where what was then called the
Lebensreform ("life reform movement") gathered.
These are naturopathic currents, esoteric, anthroposophical currents. They are mobilising against modernity, so to speak, which is penetrating the world of life in the form of industrialisation and urbanisation.
And this is being fiercely fought, so to speak, especially with a return to the natural way of life, as they say. And vaccination is of course the prime example.
The tendency towards far-right positions was already evident in the first Lebensreform movement. More than 150 years ago, its protagonists shared the longing for a "holistic existence" in an "organic order". Their romanticised look back was directed at the supposedly natural, harmonious pre-modern era. The current criticism of the state measures against the pandemic is again accompanied by a rejection of modernity.
Quote from the
Wikipedia article "Lebensform"
Quote:Right-wing radicalism
A specific stream based on völkisch Romanticism gradually became part of Nazi ideology by the 1930s, known as blood and soil. As early as 1907, Richard Ungewitter published a pamphlet called Nudity and Culture (which sold 100,000 copies), arguing that the practices he recommended would be "the means by which the German race would regenerate itself and ultimately prevail over its neighbours and the diabolical Jews, who were intent on injecting putrefying agents into the nation's blood and soil".[9]
The extremists promoting rightwing ideology eventually became popular among Nazi Party officials and their supporters, including Heinrich Himmler and Rudolph Höss, who belonged to the right-wing farming organization the Artaman League. When other groups were being banned or disbanded due to political conflict during the 1930s, the extreme nationalist ideology became connected with National Socialism. The German Life Reform League broke apart into political factions during this time. The Nationalist physician Artur Fedor Fuchs began the League for Free Body Culture (FKK), giving public lectures on the healing powers of the sun in the "Nordic sky", which "alone strengthened and healed the warrior nation".[10] Ancient forest living, and habits presumed to have been followed by the ancient tribes of Germany, were beneficial to regenerating the Aryan people, according to Fuchs' philosophy. Hans Sùren, a prominent former military officer, published Man and the Sun (1924), which sold 240,000 copies; by 1941 it was reissued in 68 editions. Sùren promoted the Aryan master race concept of physically strong, militarized men who would be the "salvation" of the German people.[11]
