Right‐wing extremist violence among adolescents in Germany

Abstract

What are the preconditions for right-wing extremist violence among German youths? For several years, the rate of this violence has been increasing in Germany, and the same can be observed for right-wing extremist orientations characterized by the coming together of ideologies of unequal worth and the acceptance of violence as a mode of action. And although it is emphasized that approval of and willingness to use violence do not automatically lead to actual acts of violence, this article suggests that the existence of these convictions in society helps to legitimize attitudes that become expressed in violence, in particular among youths.This article presents a five-stage process model that portrays the underlying preconditions for acts of right-wing extremist violence, the contexts in which such violence takes place, and the factors that cause it to escalate. This structural model is used to outline central empirical findings of recent German quantitative and especially qualitative studies about right-wing extremist violent offenders. For analytical reasons, the basic elements of the process model (socialization, organization, legitimation, interaction, and escalation) are treated separately. The authors also examine right-wing extremist violence from a disintegrative perspective. Given that intersubjective recognition is an existential human need, right-wing extremist violence is understood as a "productive" way of dealing with individual recognition deficits. On the basis of the integration dimensions of social disintegration theory, three fundamental recognition needs are distinguished. Right-wing extremist violence can best be explained as a consequence of recognition deficits in all three central integration dimensions.

Why is terrorism a man’s business?

“…Such non-ideological motivations are also supported for right-wing extremists 56 58 From a perspective of social disintegration, 59 right-wing violence among young males can best be explained as a consequence of deficits in fundamental recognition needs. It is a sort of projective coping of individual deficits perceived as being caused by others.…”

Explaining youth radicalism as a positioning of the self at opposite extremes

“…Thus, we expect to find that young people facing economic difficulties are more likely to place themselves on the extreme edges of the ideological scales, regardless of their ideology (H1). However, in case there are ideological differences, we hypothesize, building on social disintegration theory, that those young people who have faced economic difficulties are likely to identify with the right (Sitzer and Heitmeyer, 2008), rather than with the left (H2).…”

“…More attention has been paid to youth and the radical right (Miller-Idriss, 2018b), although only a few studies particularly analyse the role of gender and the radical right in the context of young people (Miller-Idriss and Pilkington, 2017;Sitzer and Heitmeyer, 2008). Women are known to give more priority to social welfare, to be more sceptical of the virtues of free enterprises, and to be reluctant to endorse market solutions (Gidengil et al, 2003).…”