The Radical Right In Germany

The Radical Right has represented a major element in German politics and society throughout the history of the united country (i.e. since the 1870s), though the understandable concentration on the Third Reich (1933-45) has tended to distort the wider picture. This book explores the history of the radical right through the full span of Germany's life as a nation, thus putting the Third Reich in its natural context, and also emphasising that the attitudes and policies of the radical right did not begin with Hitler's pursuit of power in the 1920s or end with his death in the ruins of Berlin.

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.

Based on research fieldwork conducted in France and Germany, this study seeks to explain how public actors have taken part in the regulation of the expression of right-wing radicalism. The author compares these two neighbouring countries which have framed the struggle against right-wing radicalism differently. German political and state actors have constructed a public policy responding to political radicalism, whilst in France, the radical right is primarily handled in the political arena. The text evaluates how these two Western European democracies address the paradox of tolerance (i.e. the fact that liberal democracies may restrain rights they value, such as freedom of speech, in order to repress intolerant forces that threaten democracy). This book is core reading for scholars and students interested in the spread of far-right politics in contemporary democracies.

Research on the extreme right is rare, and the extreme right has even more rarely been analysed as a social movement. In this volume, the extreme right is compared in Italy, Germany, and the United States using concepts and methods developed in social movement studies. In particular, the book describes the discourse, action, and organizational structures of the extreme right, and explains these on the basis of the available discursive and political opportunities. Three main empirical methods are used in the research. Firstly, the frame analysis looks at the cognitive mechanisms that are relevant in influencing organizational and individual behaviour. Second, network analysis looks at the (inter-) organizational structural characteristics of right-wing organizations. Finally, protest event analysis allows for an empirical summary of the actions undertaken by right-wing extremists over the last decade. The substantive chapters address the organizational structure of the extreme right, their action repertoires, the framing of protest events, the definition of 'us', the struggle against modernity, old and new forms of racism, opposition to globalization, and populism.

An examination of the relationship between labor relations and public life in the Saar river valley that traces the wider political-ideological changes of the era

"This book comes at a time that could hardly be more important. Miller-Idriss opens up a completely new approach to understanding the processes of violent radicalization through subcultural products...(and) will surely become a standard work in the study of right-wing extremism."--Daniel Koehler, founder and director of the German Institute on Radicalization and De-Radicalization Studies.dies.

This book is the first comprehensive academic study of German right-wing terrorism since the early 1960s available in the English language. It offers a unique in-depth analysis of German violent, extremist right-wing movements, terrorist events, groups, networks and individuals. In addition, the book discusses the so-called ‘National Socialist Underground’ (NSU) terror cell, which was uncovered in late 2011 by the authorities. The NSU had been active for over a decade and had killed at least ten people, as well as executing numerous bombings and bank robberies. With an examination of the group’s support network and the reasons behind the failure of the German authorities, this book sheds light on right-wing terrorist group structures, tactics and target groups in Germany. The book also contains a complete list of all the German right-wing terrorist groups and incidents since the Second World War. Based on the most detailed dataset of right-wing terrorism in Germany, this book offers highly valuable insights into this specific form of political violence and terrorism, which has been widely neglected in international terrorism research.

This book provides a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the five main parties of the extreme right in the Netherlands (Centrumdemocraten, Centrumpartij), Belgium (Vlaams Blok), and Germany (Die Republikaner, Deutsche Volksunion). Using primary research - including internal party documents - it concludes that rather than right-wing and extremist, the core ideology of these parties is xenophobic nationalist, including also a mix of law and order and welfare chauvinism. The author's research and conclusions have broader implications for the study of the extreme-right phenomenon and party ideology in general.