Radical Right Populism in Germany: AfD, Pegida, and the Identitarian Movement
Abstract
This book provides a comprehensive analysis of radical right populism in Germany. It gives an overview of historical developments of the phenomenon and its current appearance. It examines three of the main far-right organizations in Germany: the radical right populist party AfD (Alternative for Germany), Pegida (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamification of the Occident), and the Identitarian Movement. The book investigates the positions of these groups as expressed in programmes, publications, and statements of party leaders and movement activists. It explores their history, ideologies, strategies, and their main activists and representatives, as well as the overlap between the groups. The ideological positions examined include populism, nativism, authoritarianism, volkish nationalism, ethnopluralism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, antifeminism, and Euroscepticism. The analysis shows that these ideological features are sometimes strategically interlinked for effect and used to justify specific political demands such as the stronger regulation of immigration and the exclusion of Muslims. This much-needed volume will be of particular interest to students and researchers of German politics, populism, social movements, party politics, and right-wing extremism.
... What is the performative potential of right-wing populist narratives in the construction/deconstruction of the symbolic structures of the civil sphere and collective identity? What is the uptake of such right-wing populist narratives by German civil society and its actors? 1 The general criteria for selecting actors were the definition of an actor as a right-wing populist (e.g., Brubaker 2018;Wodak 2015;Havertz 2021); the description of such organizations on the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Federal Intelligence Service) website as Rechtsextremistische Verdachtsfälle (rightwing extremist suspected cases; BfV no date); that they were currently active as of February 2022; the legality of an actor within Germany; and the presence of a website. In the case of the AfD, the selected political party had seats in the German Bundestag and had received significant public funding based on the criteria of the "degree of a party's rootedness in society" (Deutscher Bundestag 2020), judged through electoral success and receiving donations from individuals. ...
... The IBD is a Pegida-allied movement, whose street performativity (e.g., Vorländer et al 2018;Havertz 2021) before and during the Covid-19 pandemic was expressed in "protest ritualization" (Schmalenberger 2020). For instance, IBD supporters organized street flash mobs to express anti-government sentiment and participated in Querdenken Demos. ...
This paper considers the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on right-wing populists' constructions of German collective identity. In their "Covid-19 crisis" narratives, German populists attempted to rearrange the discursive and institutional space of the German civil sphere through a symbolic inversion of the heroic signifier and legitimization of violence against perceived enemies. To analyze such discursive dynamics, this paper utilizes multilayered narrative analysis, drawing on the synthesis of civil sphere theory, the anthropological conceptualization of the relationship between mimetic crisis and symbolic substitution of violence and the sociological narrative theory of the sacralization and desacralization of heroism. This analysis structures the investigation of positive and negative symbolic constructions of German collective identity by German right-wing populist narratives. The analysis shows that although German right-wing populists are politically peripheral, their affective, antagonistic and anti-elite narratives contribute to the semantic erosion of the liberal democratic core of the German civil sphere. This in turn reduces the ability of democratic institutions to control violence and leads to the restriction of civil solidarity.
... Franciaország és Németország sem kivétel. A belpolitikai diskurzust mindkét államban ismét beárnyékolják ezek a kérdések (Havertz, 2021). Főleg amiatt, hogy az elmúlt évtizedben a Franciaországhoz fűződő viszony egy kényelmes kártyává vált a német politikában, amely mindig jelen van, újra és újra kijátszható, de nem tartalmaz új, váratlan koncepciókat. ...
A jelen tanulmányban a francia–német együttműködés aktuális fejlődésének néhány mozzanatát igyekszem megvilágítani, különös tekintettel a 2017 óta, azaz Macron elnök és Merkel kancellár időszakában meghirdetett új javaslatokra. A jelenleg formálódó új német kormány ugyanis számos tekintetben már uniós célként határozza meg az aacheni szerződésben foglalt törekvéseket. A két ország viszonyának fejlődését történelmi szempontok alapján többször és mélyrehatóan elemezték. A második világháború befejezése óta, de főleg az elmúlt évtizedekben, a kapcsolataikat mindig a jóakarat, az együttműködés, a kölcsönös megértés és az Európa megújítását célzó kezdeményezés jellemezte. Ezért a viszonyrendszerük és annak az európai politikára gyakorolt hatása a nemzetközi kapcsolatok elméletében is visszhangra talált. A tanulmány igyekszik felvázolni, milyen javaslatokat és milyen motivációk mentén igyekeznek a felek az európai egység érdekében megfogalmazni. Továbbá, hogy mi vezet a föderációs elképzelések erősödése irányába, és miért kerülhet sor a különösen látványos változásra a német gazdaságpolitikai felfogásban, amely a helyreállítási alap létrehozása kapcsán volt tetten érhető. A munka során kiemelten igyekszem bemutatni: a közös fellépés célja mindkét partner pozícióinak a megerősítése, ugyanakkor a közösségen belüli domináns vezető szerep fenntartása.
... The choice of analysing AfD Kompakt can be explained by its direct affiliation 3 to the populist radical right party AfD (e.g., Havertz, 2021;Wodak, 2019) -the single far-right party in the German Bundestag. The content of AfD Kompakt, mostly comprised of political statements of AfDs members, is focused on covering explicitly AfD's political activity and is aimed at popularising and legitimising AfD's political discourses. ...
Even though much has been said about the populist feature of the contemporary radical right and some scholars have focused on the discourses disseminated by independent media outlets committed to a nativist and authoritarian agenda, the hallmark of contemporary radical right, little has been done in terms of the far-right politics of
truth. Contrary to conventional approaches that tend to oppose populist practices to news and scientific knowledge as if the latter were exempt from affective investment, this chapter illuminates how the far right has managed to channel hate towards official institutions and immigrants through discourses that are socially accepted as ‘truth’.
We argue that by producing discriminatory discourses under the guise of truth, far-right media outlets and institutions have managed to legitimise discrimination. Through a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) of news pieces produced by the German AfD Kompakt and the British institution Patriotic Alternative, we explore some of the
‘truths’ produced by these far-right actors, exposing similarities in terms of legitimation strategies and discourses. Albeit different in nature and located in different countries, we observed a convergence in terms of ‘truths’, especially when it comes to the supposed ‘replacement’ of white/western individuals and the alleged refusal of governments in power to serve the interests of the ‘native’ people
... After another murder spree committed by a right-wing xenophobe and popular frustration about years of police inaction, German mainstream media discussed, yet again, the relation between violent racist activists and W. KANSTEINER AND S. BERGER racist parliamentarians and established a tentative equivalency between the two. As a result, government authorities launched an official investigation of the AfD as a first step towards a possible ban of the party (Havertz 2021). Does this decision represent a strategic error because downgrading the AfD from adversary to enemy makes it more difficult for left populists to capture AfD voters and thus puts the real enemy, that is neoliberalism, even further beyond political reach? ...
This book discusses the merits of the theory of agonistic memory in relation to the memory of war. After explaining the theory in detail it provides two case studies, one on war museums in contemporary Europe and one on mass graves exhumations, which both focus on analyzing to what extent these memory sites produce different regimes of memory. Furthermore, the book provides insights into the making of an agonistic exhibition at the Ruhr Museum in Essen, Germany. It also analyses audience reaction to a theatre play scripted and performed by the Spanish theatre company Micomicion that was supposed to put agonism on stage. There is also an analysis of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) designed and delivered on the theory of agonistic memory and its impact on the memory of war. Finally, the book provides a personal review of the history, problems and accomplishments of the theory of agonistic memory by the two editors of the volume.
Stefan Berger is Professor of Social History and Director of the Institute for Social Movements at Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, Germany. He is also executive chair of the Foundation History of the Ruhr and Honorary Professor at Cardiff University, UK. He has published widely on the history of memory, the history of deindustrialization, industrial heritage, the history of social movements and labour movements, the history of historiography, historical theory and the history of nationalism and national identity.
Wulf Kansteiner is Professor of Memory Studies and Historical Theory at Aarhus University, Denmark. His research interests include the methods and theories of memory studies; the role of visual media—TV, film, digital culture—in the formation of cultural memory; post-narrativist historical theory; and Holocaust history, memory, and historiography. His recent publications include ‘Prime Time Nationalism: Patterns of Prejudice in TV Crime Fiction’ in National Stereotyping, Identity, Politics, European Crises (2021) and ‘Media and Technology,” in The Twentieth Century, vol. 6 of A Cultural History of Memory (2020).
... After another murder spree committed by a right-wing xenophobe and popular frustration about years of police inaction, German mainstream media discussed, yet again, the relation between violent racist activists and W. KANSTEINER AND S. BERGER racist parliamentarians and established a tentative equivalency between the two. As a result, government authorities launched an official investigation of the AfD as a first step towards a possible ban of the party (Havertz 2021). Does this decision represent a strategic error because downgrading the AfD from adversary to enemy makes it more difficult for left populists to capture AfD voters and thus puts the real enemy, that is neoliberalism, even further beyond political reach? ...
This chapter presents the exhibition “Krieg. Macht. Sinn. Krieg und Gewalt in der europäischen Erinnerung” that was developed in the context of the UNREST (Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational Europe) project and shown between 12 November 2018 and 10 June 2019 at the Ruhr Museum, Essen. After addressing the broader mnemonic and museal context in which the exhibition is situated, the chapter discusses the theoretical underpinnings and practical implementation of the exhibition. We then look at the visitors’ reactions to the exhibition which included two original video games: Endless Blitz and Umschlagplatz ’43. The chapter concludes with a set of theses on agonism in museums.
... After another murder spree committed by a right-wing xenophobe and popular frustration about years of police inaction, German mainstream media discussed, yet again, the relation between violent racist activists and W. KANSTEINER AND S. BERGER racist parliamentarians and established a tentative equivalency between the two. As a result, government authorities launched an official investigation of the AfD as a first step towards a possible ban of the party (Havertz 2021). Does this decision represent a strategic error because downgrading the AfD from adversary to enemy makes it more difficult for left populists to capture AfD voters and thus puts the real enemy, that is neoliberalism, even further beyond political reach? ...
This chapter represents personal reflections of the two authors offered in a spirit of agonistic debate. The authors believe that the Horizon 2020 project Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational Europe (UNREST) (2016–2019) has yielded important insights into memory theory and memory politics that deserve to be explored in detail. For that purpose, the chapter first contextualizes the concept of agonistic memory within the fields of memory studies and political philosophy, that is, within the interdisciplinary terrain that informed the invention of the concept of agonistic memory in the first place. Subsequently, the authors take a close look at UNREST’s research results. The contextualization and the analysis of the research results serve three goals. They seek to assess the soundness of agonism and agonistic memory as theoretical constructs, determine how agonism fares as an analytical tool in the investigation of existing memory culture, and evaluate how well agonism performs as a practical guideline for the creation of new memory culture.
... Since the 2017 general elections (Hegelich et al. 2017) and the 2018 regional elections in the country, the AfD used social media to spread polarizing messages via memes, images, posts, emojis and sound, designed to stoke people to react. The party has relentlessly posted content on structural problems that attract public concerns -such as unemployment, and crimes committed by migrants (Busvine 2018) -and shares a vast network with connections to other far-right groups like the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamification of the Occident and the Identitarian Movement (Havertz 2021). ...
This book explores how the Internet is connected to the global crisis of liberal democracy. Today, self-promotion is at the heart of many human relationships. The selfie is not just a social media gesture people love to hate. It is also a symbol of social reality in the age of the Internet. Through social media people have new ways of rating and judging themselves and one another, via metrics such as likes, shares, followers and friends. There are new thirsts for authenticity, outlets for verbal aggression, and social problems. Social media culture and neoliberalism dovetail and amplify one another, feeding social estrangement. With neoliberalism, psychosocial wounds are agitated and authoritarianism is provoked. Yet this new sociality also inspires resistance and political mobilisation. Illustrating ideas and trends with examples from news and popular culture, the book outlines and applies theories from Debord, Foucault, Fromm, Goffman, and Giddens, among others. Topics covered include the global history of communication technologies, personal branding, echo chamber effects, alienation and fear of abnormality. Information technologies provide channels for public engagement where extreme ideas reach farther and faster than ever before, and political differences are widened and inflamed. They also provide new opportunities for protest and resistance.
Bu makale, 2000-2011 yılları arasında ortaya çıkmaksızın faaliyet gösteren Nasyonal Sosyalist Yeraltı (NSU) örgütünün işlediği cinayetlerin Alman medyasındaki temsilinden yola çıkarak Alman gündelik ırkçılığı ve ‘aşırı’ olarak nitelendirilen NSU faaliyetleri arasındaki ilişkiyi inceleyecektir. Avrupa’da yükselişe geçen aşırı sağ toplumsal hareketlerin genel özellikleri göz önünde bulundurulduğunda basının göçmen karşıtı gündelik ırkçı söylemi teşvik ettiği ortaya çıkmaktadır. Bu açıdan ‘aşırı’ nitelendirilen söylemler, basının gündelik ırkçılık temsilleriyle ana akımın sınırlarını belirler bir duruma gelmiştir. Buradan yola çıkarak bu makalenin de iddiası, NSU cinayetlerinin Alman medyasında ele alınışlarının 2000’li yıllardan itibaren Alman toplumsal ve siyasal hayatında etkin olmaya başlayan kültürlerin uyuşmazlığına ve göçmenlerin suçla ilişkilendirilmesine dayanan ‘yeni ırkçı’ argümanı gündelik olarak yeniden ürettiği olmuştur. Bu yeniden üretim, konu göçmen karşıtlığı olunca ‘aşırı’ ile ana-akımın sınırlarını muğlaklaştırarak, NSU gibi bir örgüte yıllarca ortaya çıkartılmaksızın hareket imkânı sunmuştur.
This study examines whether opposition against gender and sexual equality is a common denominator between the radical right, political actors, and mainstream media in Germany. The study hypothesizes that socially shared sexist beliefs and gender stereotypes offer access points to public discourse for anti-egalitarian counterpublics, legitimizing their contestations of gender and sexual equality. This hypothesis is tested in a quantitative frame analysis of n = 1102 articles in 18 digital media outlets from diverse anti-egalitarian counterpublics (anti-feminist men’s rights activists, feminists, Christian fundamentalists, radical right, and far-left media) and mainstream media. The study results offer a current overview of the framing of gender and sexual equality in mainstream and counterpublic media in Germany: Discourse on gender equality and LGBTQI rights takes up the most space. The framing of these topics is less controversial than the highly contested discussion of gender roles and reproductive rights. Discourse coalitions between anti-egalitarian counterpublics and established actors become visible in the neosexist and gender-traditional frame, pointing to the relevance of neosexist convictions and gender traditionalism as a common denominator between these actors. Across all frames, a common oppositional strategy is reframing gender and sexual equality issues into threat scenarios to families and society.
Different to all its neighboring countries, in Germany, seemed to be no ground for right-wing populist parties due to two main obstacles. First, because populism in Germany must operate in a historically encumbered environment, the media has developed a fear of contact with it which prevents any unconstrained debate and constantly exposes the right-wing parties to the risk of being linked with National Socialism. And, second, because of the stigmatization that would follow and thereby prevent the parties’ from establishing themselves as a political force. This has changed in the 2010s.KeywordsEuropean exceptionPolitical DisruptionWinning formulaAnti-AfD-coalitionVerfassungsschutz (German intelligence service)
In recent years, far-right actors and movements have become a growing field of scientific research. The specific challenges of this political spectrum have led to a number of inter-disciplinary debates on methodology and ethics. In this context, questions concerning a critical distance in research have played a crucial role since there is a constant risk of an involuntary reproduction and thus amplification of far-right ideology. The article 'The Transnationalization of Ethno-nationalism: The Case of the Identitarian Movement' by Petra Mlejnková (published in Intersections) illustrates these pitfalls. It shows the consequences of a lack of reflexivity when approaching far-right activism. As a result, the author's findings appear rather one-sided when contrasted with critical debates on far-right ideology and current methodological discussions. Moreover, the presentation of the results creates the impression of, at least implicit, empathy towards the 'Identitarian Movement.' This, in turn, shows the risk of scientific research turning unintentionally into a (discursive) ally of the far-right and promoting ideologies of inequality.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been sitting in Germany’s federal parliament since September 2017, having won 12.6 percent of the popular vote. In considering this young party’s recent development, researchers have focussed on its rhetorical strategies (i.e., populism) and its radicalization. Until now, much less attention has been paid to antisemitism within the AfD— also because the party would prefer to keep this out of public debate. By investigating its treatment of antisemitism, Nazism, and the politics of remembrance, it can be shown that the AfD has the features of a far-right party, to a much clearer extent than might be guessed from its media image, particularly inside Germany.
Using the 2017 post-election German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), this article examines the voters for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the 2017 German federal election. We show that AfD voters in 2017 were truly ‘flesh of the same flesh’ of the mainstream German political parties, with the AfD drawing its voters from across the political party spectrum as well as from previous non-voters in 2013. In contrast to previous scholarship, we find that in most respects AfD voters in 2017 did not differ demographically from voters for all other parties, be that in terms of gender, education, employment status, and union membership. Furthermore, we find that AfD voters were not driven by anxiety about their own economic situation: they are no ‘losers of globalisation.’ Instead, AfD voters in 2017 were driven solely by two factors: their attitudes towards immigrants/refugees and anti-establishment sentiment/satisfaction with democracy in Germany.
This article charts the rise of the ‘Alternative for Germany’ (Alternative für Deutschland or AfD) from its inception in late 2012 to its unexpectedly strong performance in the 2017 Federal election. In terms of the ‘inward’ aspect of Euroscepticism, the article considers the impact of the emergence of successively more hardline leaderships in 2015 and 2017, which led to a shift beyond opposition to aspects of the European integration process to a more profound critique of German society and politics. In terms of the ‘outward’ aspect, it assesses the significance of these developments in the wider debates around Euroscepticism and populism. The article concludes that the AfD’s Euroscepticism is now nested within an ideological profile that increasingly conforms to the template of an orthodox European right-wing populist party. It argues that the widely unanticipated level of electoral support for the AfD in the 2017 Federal elections and its status as the main opposition party in the Bundestag is a systemic shock and potential critical juncture in the development of the German party system and the contestation of European integration in the Federal Republic.
This book provides the first systematic and comparative analysis of the German right-wing populist protest movement “PEGIDA”. It offers an in-depth reconstruction of the movement’s historical development, its organisational structure and its programmatic orientation. It depicts the protestors and their motivations, reactions in politics, media and society, and PEGIDA’s European network. The volume presents and compares the results of scientific surveys among PEGIDA-participants and brings them into the context of long-time studies on political culture in Germany, representing a comprehensive study of the emergence of contemporary right-wing populist movements. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics and students focusing on comparative politics, (right-wing) populism, protest movements in western democracies, and political culture in Germany, as well as journalists, political educators and policy makers.
This contribution examines the role that the European Union (EU) issue plays in radical right party agendas. It shows that, despite the fact that radical right parties tend to adopt dissimilar positions on the principle, practice, and future of European integration, they all tend to criticise the EU from a predominantly sovereignty-based perspective justified on ethno-cultural grounds. The EU is portrayed as posing a threat to national sovereignty, its policies dismantling the state and its territory as well as being responsible for the cultural disintegration of Europe and its nation-states. The analysis of EU issue position and salience over time suggests that – despite variations – radical right parties engage in EU issue competition not only by adopting extreme positions but also by increasingly emphasising these positions over time.
Ideology: A Very Brief Introduction is an examination of the major theories of ideology and the ways they have enriched our comprehension of ideology. Ideology is one of the most controversial terms in the political vocabulary. It creates both revulsion and inspiration. This VSI examines the reasons for this reaction and explains why ideologies deserve respect as a major form of political thinking. It explores the changing understandings of ideology as a concept and the arguments of the main ideologies. It draws on a range of disciplines in order to show the potency of ideology as a resource at the disposal of societies.
Right-wing populist movements and related political parties are gaining ground in many EU member states. This unique, interdisciplinary book provides an overall picture of the dynamics and development of these parties across Europe and beyond. Combining theory with in-depth case studies, it offers a comparative analysis of the policies and rhetoric of existing and emerging parties including the British BNP, the Hungarian Jobbik and the Danish Folkeparti.
The case studies qualitatively and quantitatively analyse right-wing populist groups in the following countries: Austria, Germany, Britain, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Hungary, Belgium, Ukraine, Estonia, and Latvia, with one essay exclusively focused on the US.
This timely and socially relevant collection is essential reading for scholars, students and practitioners wanting to understand the recent rise of populist right wing parties at local, countrywide and regional levels.
Right-wing populist movements and related political parties are gaining ground in many EU member states. This unique, interdisciplinary book provides an overall picture of the dynamics and development of these parties across Europe and beyond. Combining theory with in-depth case studies, it offers a comparative analysis of the policies and rhetoric of existing and emerging parties including the British BNP, the Hungarian Jobbik and the Danish Folkeparti.
The case studies qualitatively and quantitatively analyse right-wing populist groups in the following countries: Austria, Germany, Britain, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Hungary, Belgium, Ukraine, Estonia, and Latvia, with one essay exclusively focused on the US.
This timely and socially relevant collection is essential reading for scholars, students and practitioners wanting to understand the recent rise of populist right wing parties at local, countrywide and regional levels.
Freiheit, Gleichheit, Solidarität – die Grundwerte der Aufklärung und Europas sind ihnen verhasst. Gegen die Freiheit des Subjekts stellen sie den Zwang des Kollektivs. Pluralismus ist ihnen ein Graus, sie sehnen sich nach Homogenität und Identität. Der Angriff der Antidemokraten, den wir seit einigen Jahren erleben, erschüttert die Demokratie – oft, weil sie demokratische Mittel einsetzen, um die Demokratie von innen heraus zu zerstören. Was wollen die neurechten Feinde der Demokratie aber genau? Was sind ihre Ziele, ihre Methoden, ihre Verbündeten, ihre Kronzeugen bei ihrer völkischen Rebellion? Samuel Salzborn gibt Antworten auf diese Fragen, analysiert die Strategien der gegenwärtigen Bewegungen und Parteien, und deckt die historischen Kontinuitäten seit der Konservativen Revolution der Weimarer Republik auf – und formuliert Vorschläge, wie wir den Angriff der Antidemokraten abwehren können.
While research in right-wing populism has recently been blossoming, a systematic study of the intersection of right-wing populism and gender is still missing, even though gender issues are ubiquitous in discourses of the radical right ranging from »ethnosexism« against immigrants, to »anti-genderism.« This volume shows that the intersectionality of gender, race and class is constitutional for radical right discourse. From different European perspectives, the contributions investigate the ways in which gender is used as a meta-language, strategic tool and »affective bridge« for ordering and hierarchizing political objectives in the discourse of the diverse actors of the »right-wing complex.«
Kann es eine Islamfeindlichkeit ohne die Religion des Islam geben? Naime Cakir zeigt, dass nicht allein die Terroranschläge des 11. September 2001 für die zunehmenden antiislamischen Vorurteile und Feindbilder in Deutschland verantwortlich sind, sondern auch die Erkenntnis, dass die ehemaligen Gastarbeiter ihren Lebensmittelpunkt auf Dauer in die Bundesrepublik verlegt haben und nun für sich beanspruchen, Objekt von Verantwortung zu sein. Damit waren für die Residenzgesellschaft und für die Einwanderer die etablierten Rollen des Gastgebers und des Gastes irritiert. Die Studie zeichnet nach, wie der Islam zum Gegenstand öffentlicher Anerkennungskonflikte gemacht worden ist, da es einer Neujustierung der Rollen innerhalb des Gesellschaftsgefüges bedurfte, die die Marginalisierung der mittlerweile etablierten Einwanderer weiterhin zu gewährleisten hatte.
Sie spazieren gegen die »Islamisierung des Abendlandes«, skandieren »Wir sind das Volk« und schimpfen auf die »Lügenpresse«: Die Demonstrationen von Pegida bewegten 2014/15 ganz Deutschland. Nicht nur (aber vor allem) in Dresden, wo Pegida ihren Anfang nahm, wurden Zehntausende mobilisiert. Medien und Politik rätselten: Was ist Pegida? Woher kommt die Bewegung? Was macht sie aus und was treibt ihre Aktiven an? Dieses Buch liefert erste Erkenntnisse. Das Göttinger Autorenteam hat Pegida-Demonstrationen beobachtet und Interviews, Gruppendiskussionen sowie eine Onlineumfrage durchgeführt. So konnte ein tiefer Einblick in die Einstellungen und Überzeugungen der Pegida-Anhängerschaft gewonnen werden. Auch die Gegendemonstranten von NoPegida wurden vom Göttinger Institut für Demokratieforschung untersucht: Inwiefern unterscheiden sich die Lager? Entstanden ist eine facettenreiche Studie, die erste Auskünfte gibt über Pegida sowie über die Verfassung der deutschen Gesellschaft im Jahr 2015 insgesamt.
Armin Pfahl-Traughber erörtert die Frage, ob die „Alternative für Deutschland“ (AfD) als rechtsextremistische Partei anzusehen ist. Dabei liefert der Autor zunächst Basisinformationen zur AfD sowie zu seinen Untersuchungskriterien. Danach werden Aussagen von hohen Funktionsträgern im rechtsextremistischen Sinne dargestellt und kommentiert. Dem folgen Betrachtungen dazu, inwieweit es zwischen der AfD und dem neueren und traditionellen Rechtsextremismus politische Zusammenhänge gibt. Und schließlich wird eine differenzierte Erörterung zur Extremismusfrage vorgenommen, gilt die AfD doch als ein sich diesbezüglich noch entwickelndes „Grauzonen“-Phänomen.
Der Inhalt
• Basisinformationen, Definitionen und Untersuchungskriterien
• Aussagen von hohen Funktionsträgern im rechtsextremistischen Sinne
• Kontexte zum neueren und traditionellen Rechtsextremismus
• Einschätzungen hinsichtlich der Extremismusfrage
Die Zielgruppen
• Dozierende und Studierende der Sozialwissenschaften
• Praktikerinnen und Praktiker in Fraktionen, Gewerkschaften, Parteien und Verbänden
• Journalistinnen und Journalisten und Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter der politischen Bildung
Der Autor
Prof. Dr. phil. Armin Pfahl-Traughber, Politikwissenschaftler und Soziologe, arbeitet als hauptamtlich Lehrender an der Hochschule des Bundes für öffentliche Verwaltung in Brühl und als Lehrbeauftragter für Politische Theorie an der Universität Bonn, außerdem gibt er das „Jahrbuch für Extremismus- und Terrorismusforschung“ (JET) heraus.
This chapter works to extend beyond the question of how parties in a specific country position themselves in terms of gender equality and sexuality; building on the existing literature, I will instead present an explanation for both the omnipresence of, and differences concerning gender and sexuality in the politics of PRR parties.
Gender may not be a defining quality of PRR ideology, but it is nonetheless near to the PRR core as it brings together and highlights every element of PRR ideology, tapping into fundamental parts of people’s identity. In this sense, gender is ‘trivotal’ – i.e. a combination of trivial, meaning that it is not at the PRR’s ideological core, and pivotal, meaning a core social relation that is instrumentalized to center and emphasize the PRR ideology.
Moreover, it is precisely the populist element that helps to explain differences in the party family: the PRR appeals to common sense by supporting the general will of those thought to be morally good. This leads to an effective “feel-good” politics entailing an implicit praise for the ‘common man’ and his moral superiority. The positions of the PRR are thereby mere translations of the current common sense, the dominant opinion of ‘the people’. The anti-elitist quality of populist ideology sets this ‘common sense good’ against the intentions of the political elite. If those aims include the advancement of women’s rights or LGBT emancipation so as to actually hurt the entitlements of the common people (e.g. obligate a change in behaviors or additional sensitivities), they can be used to demonstrate how the political elite goes ‘too far’ in protecting the rights of minorities (e.g. LGBT people, feminists).
Until 2017, Germany was an exception to the success of radical right parties in postwar Europe. We provide new evidence for the transformation of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) to a radical right party drawing upon social media data. Further, we demonstrate that the AfD's electorate now matches the radical right template of other countries and that its trajectory mirrors the ideological shift of the party. Using data from the 2013 to 2017 series of German Longitudinal Elections Study (GLES) tracking polls, we employ multilevel modelling to test our argument on support for the AfD. We find the AfD's support now resembles the image of European radical right voters. Specifically, general right-wing views and negative attitudes towards immigration have become the main motivation to vote for the AfD. This, together with the increased salience of immigration and the AfD's new ideological profile, explains the party's rise.
Vom konservativen Gentleman zum rechten Scharfmacher – kann man so den politischen Weg von Alexander Gauland beschreiben, der die Bundesregierung vor sich hertreiben will? Was treibt ihn um? Was für politische Erfahrungen bringt er mit? Was ist dieser Mann für eine Persönlichkeit? Und warum flirtet er so vollkommen schamlos mit den Ultrarechten? Alexander Gauland pflügt die politische Landschaft in Deutschland um, indem er das rechte Lager hinter sich herzieht. Doch der Eindruck, er habe erst als alter Mann den Weg in die Politik gefunden, trügt. Jahrzehntelang war er Diener des Systems, das er heute bekämpft. Erst die Summe seiner Erfahrungen in Politik, Verwaltung und Medien hat die AfD zu einer Bewegungspartei und einer Herausforderung für die Demokratie werden lassen. Was sucht dieser bekennende Konservative und Englandliebhaber am rechten Rand? Und warum will er die CDU zerstören, der er fast 40 Jahre angehört hat? Olaf Sundermeyer bringt Licht in das Vorleben des AfD-Frontmanns und zeigt, wie bewusst und strategisch Gauland den Griff nach der Macht plant.
Die Kritische Diskursanalyse versteht sich als ein Konzept qualitativer Sozialforschung, das insbesondere von den Schriften Michel Foucaults inspiriert ist und Vorschläge enthält, wie sich Diskurse analysieren und interpretieren lassen. Dabei besteht ihr kritisches Potenzial vor allem darin, dass mit ihr besonders gesellschaftlich brisante Themen problematisiert und kritisiert werden können. Denn Kritische Diskursanalyse nimmt die Geschichtlichkeit der Diskurse, ihre Genealogie, in den Blick und berücksichtigt dabei den Umstand, dass die Deutung von Wirklichkeiten stets auf der Folie von Wissen stattfindet, das es zu hinterfragen gilt. Im Beitrag werden das theoretische und das methodische Konzept der Kritischen Diskursanalyse vorgestellt sowie das konkrete Vorgehen anhand einer Analyse des deutschen Fluchtdiskurses von 2015/2016 skizziert.
Rousseau: The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings November 2018
There is a now an extensive body of scholarship, both conceptual and empirical, that uses populism as an ideology. While we have some convergence here, and it is a welcome convergence, the elements that make up that consensus have omitted and elided over the relationship of populism to politics. This chapter argues that we need to re-insert a fuller sense of populism’s relationship to politics into the definition of populism. To do this, I suggest that populism has, at its core, an implicit assertion of what I will term ‘unpolitics’.
And it is the confrontation of this unpolitics with the functioning of representative
politics that makes populism so potent and so provocative to contemporary
representative democracy. First, I offer a literature review to try and back up the case that the element of politics has dropped out of the consideration of populism. The chapter then offers a definition of unpolitics that contrasts it with other related concepts, and then the chapter considers three different implications of unpolitics for populism relating to populism's tropes of conspiracy theories, quasi-religious parallels and war metaphors.
War in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland nicht zuletzt aufgrund der Last der Geschichte einer rechtspopulistischen Partei bisher kein Erfolg beschieden, so schickt sich die AfD nun an, das hiesige Parteiensystem zu einem Sechsparteiensystem zu erweitern. Im September 2017 gelangte sie als drittstärkste Kraft in den Bundestag – trotz aller Zerstrittenheit und mancher Radikalisierungstendenzen. Mehr als jede/r achte WählerIn votierte für sie. Das deutsche Parteiensystem hat damit weithin europäische „Normalität“ angenommen. Die Stärke des hiesigen Populismus fußt auf ökonomisch wie kulturell bedingten Ursachen. In Deutschland dürften die soziokulturellen Faktoren für das Aufkommen der AfD wichtiger sein als die sozioökonomischen. Das für Bürger zentrale Thema Migration, das Wähler mobilisiert, deckt beide Ebenen ab.
“Daigle’s, Neulen’s, and Hofeman’s comparative analysis of the 2017 elections in Germany, Britain, and France puts populism in a broader perspective. The breadth of their public opinion data and the leverage of their comparative design allows them to scrutinize systematically some popular explanations for the rise of right-wing populism. This could hardly be more timely.”
—Christopher Cochrane, Associate Professor, University of Toronto, Canada
“This gem of a book is a high-quality investigation into a pressing phenomenon in economically-advanced democracies: the success of the extreme right in France, Great Britain and Germany.”
—Delia Dumitrescu, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Politics, University of East Anglia, UK
This project offers an in-depth look at the three 2017 elections held in Western Europe: France, Germany, and the UK. With events like Brexit and a general rise in right-wing populism across highly industrialized nations, understanding the underlying causes of increasingly extreme electoral behavior is both valuable and prescient. A highly theoretically-focused and current project, it provides a consistent methodological and analytic approach that uses election study data and primary sources to offer a complete and cogent picture of this complex phenomenon as can only found by examining the attitudes and behaviors of the most powerful of democratic participants: the voters.
Marcus Bensmann, Schwarzbuch AfD: Fakten, Figuren, Hintergründe (Essen: Correctiv Press, 2017).
Stephan Grigat, ed., AfD & FPÖ: Antisemitismus, völkischer Nationalismus und Geschlechterbilder (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2017).
Michael Wildt, Volk, Volksgemeinschaft, AfD (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition Press, 2017).
Gerd Wiegel, Ein aufhaltsamer Aufstieg—Alternativen zu AfD & Co. (Cologne: PapyRossa Press, 2017).
The term PEP (populist extremist parties) appears in Anglo-Saxon literature (Goodwin 2011: 1). The list showed in detail that the difference we have identified between populism and right-wing extremism was not recognised. Populism is the result of a fundamental change in party systems, particularly since the Left was supplanted in the southern European countries and social democracy was in decline. Thus, the term ‘Wutbürger’ (“angry citizens”) could be named “Word of the Year” by the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (Association for German Language). Despite the rise of the Greens, some sections of society felt alienated. Above all, submissive attitudes have fostered a new political authoritarianism (Rathkolb/Ogris 2010: 37). When postmodern democracies began to cut social spending, left-wing groups were hailed as defenders of the status quo and populists, using a term that until then had largely been viewed as close to right-wing extremism.
This article offers comparative findings of the nature of populist Euroscepticism in political parties in contemporary Europe in the face of the Great Recession, migrant crisis, and Brexit. Drawing on case studies included in the Special Issue on France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom, the article presents summary cross-national data on the positions of parties, the relative importance of the crisis, the framing of Euroscepticism, and the impact of Euroscepticism in different country cases. We use this data to conclude that there are important differences between left- and right-wing variants of populist Euroscepticism, and that although there is diversity across the cases, there is an overall picture of resilience against populist Euroscepticism.
This article analyses the ambiguous relation between right-wing populism and neoliberalism in Germany. It concentrates on the connections between and convergence of right-wing populism and ordoliberalism, a specific type of neoliberalism that was developed by the Freiburg School since the late 1920s and which the new right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) explicitly focuses on in its economic programme. In its attempt to analyse the affinity of the AfD to ordoliberalism, this study relies on Michel Foucault’s account of ordoliberalism in his book The Birth of Biopolitics and his concept of governmentality. It was found that the AfD wants to bring ordoliberalism into service of an authoritarian project in Germany and beyond. This economic approach combines neoliberalism with authoritarian forms of government through the governmentalisation of the state. Ordoliberals prescribe a regulatory framework for the economy which is centred on the creation of a competitive order. It is meant to produce and justify social differences. Right-wing populists connect the economic differentiation system provided by ordoliberalism with the differentiation systems of nation, race, religion and culture. Thus, the neoliberal principle of competition is used not only to justify inequality among German citizens but also among European countries.
Multiple crises shook the European Union (EU) during the past decade. First, the economic and financial crises that unfolded since 2008 shook the foundations of the European project and its monetary union. Then, the inflow of migrants and asylum seekers into Europe in 2015 questioned the EU’s ability to jointly respond to common political issues. More recently, Brexit came across as the corollary of a prolonged legitimacy crisis. These crises have not only affected the course of European integration but also provided novel issues for political competition within the EU member states. At the party-political level, populist anti-establishment parties have traditionally listed among the principal interpreters and drivers of criticism towards ‘Europe’. In this article, we empirically address the changing Eurosceptic frames adopted by populist parties during these crises and speculate on the reverberation of these frames in respective party systems. For this purpose, we focus on two cases: Italy and the Netherlands. Both countries present instances of populist parties of different ideological persuasions within traditionally Europhile contexts. At the same time, both countries have been affected to very different extents by the recent crises, allowing us to examine how populist parties have responded to different political opportunities.
'Imagined Communities' examines the creation & function of the 'imagined communities' of nationality & the way these communities were in part created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism & printing & the birth of vernacular languages in early modern Europe.