ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the 2011–2012 media debate on right-wing terrorism in Germany against the background of psychoanalytic, as well as media and communication, theory. It argues that in the—absolutely credible—attempt to take on an apt posture, the political media culture in Germany risked losing sight of the actual victims of Nazi terror, as well as of its own role in the events. In general it can be said that it was specifically the articles and clips that focused on the perpetrators and the criminological aspects of neo-Nazi terrorism that were most prone to narrative fetishism, with the tabloid paper Bild producing the majority of incidences. Under the impression of a persisting general unwillingness after WWII to assess their Nazi past, the Mitscherlichs claimed that the Germans had avoided a process of mourning in order to escape their own devaluation in an outbreak of mass-melancholia.
