The 2019 European Parliament Elections provided an important case where the far-right Alternative for Germany Party (AfD) performed electorally well. However, we argue that there is a core tension within the AfD’s party strategy. This tension lies at the regional level, with a clear split ideologically within the party between Western and Eastern Germany. We… Continue reading “East v. West? The Internal Battle within the Far Right in Germany”
Why would right-wing terrorists decide not to claim responsibility for their crimes? In Germany, there has been an ongoing public debate as to whether radical-right terrorists take responsibility for their crimes, particularly after the radical-right terrorist group Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund (the National Socialist Underground, NSU) was uncovered. This group did not claim credit for its… Continue reading “Not All Terrorists Want to Claim Responsibility for Attacks”
The political goals of the (German) New Right can largely be summarized by two central concepts: the intellectualization of right-wing extremism through the formulation of an intellectual metapolitics, and the pursuit of a (right-wing) cultural hegemony. Here, metapolitics denotes efforts to take intellectual control of public debates, shaping them on a theoretical meta-level by coining… Continue reading “New Right in Germany: Myth and Reality”
On February 1st 2019 a workshop was organized by the Zentrum für zeithistorische Forschung (ZZF) (Centre for Contemporary History) in Potsdam, with Frank Bösch, Yves Müller, Dominik Rigoll, Sarah Schulz, Julia Kleinschmidt, Christoph Schulze, Anke Hoffstadt, Henrike Voigtländer and Sebastian Bischoff, to name only those present on stage. The purpose of this workshop with approximately… Continue reading “Conference Report: “Right-Wing Extremism as a research object in Contemporary History””
Numerous reports, investigations, and the exposure of a neo-Nazi among their ranks raise concerns about the state of the Canadian Armed Forces. In November 2018, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) announced that it had suspended four soldiers from their duties for running an ‘army-surplus’ website that largely catered to white supremacists by selling clothing, flags,… Continue reading “Is There A Radical Right Racism Problem In The Canadian Armed Forces?”
Donald Trump regularly adopts talking points and conspiracy claims that originate on the farthest fringes of the radical right. For years, the American radical right has insisted that huge numbers of South African whites are being subjected to a racist genocide by their black countrymen. The late neo-Nazi leader William Pierce was already decrying the… Continue reading “The Radical Roots of Trump Talk”
The German terror group “National Socialist Underground“ is unprecedented – radical right terrorism is not A marathon trial in Germany has come to an end. On 11 July 2018, more than five years after the trial had begun, the higher regional court in Munich handed down the sentences against five members and supporters of the… Continue reading “The Under-Discussed Recent History Of The Radical Right Terrorism In Germany”
Back in November 2018, restrictions on reporting on five people convicted of belonging to the banned National Action, a violent radical right movement, were lifted. Among them were Mikko Vehvilainen, a Finnish-born veteran of Afghanistan still serving in the British Army at the time of his arrest, and Alexander Deakin, the unemployed Midlands organiser of… Continue reading “On Cupboards”
The recent trial of Oxfordshire-based neo-Nazi couple Adam Thomas and Claudia Patatas, who were both found guilty of being members of the banned terrorist group National Action, has once again plunged the extreme right into the headlines in Britain. Patatas, 38, and Thomas, 22, have become easy targets for tabloid sensationalism. These are fanatics who… Continue reading “The National Action Trial, Nazi Fetishism, and the Neo-folk Conundrum”
In late August, the east German city of Chemnitz startled observers from all over the world. On 26 August 2018, 35 yr.old German Daniel H. was stabbed to death after a quarrel had escalated at a city festival in Chemnitz (Saxony). Shortly afterwards, the police arrested two asylum seekers from Syria and Iraq as… Continue reading “Scenes of ‘civil war’? Radical right narratives on Chemnitz”