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Over the past twenty-five years, Germany has seen substantial shifts towards more robust and expansive migration and integration policies addressing immigration primarily as a socio-economic resource and an irreversible reality defining contemporary German society. Yet, the idea of Germany as a 'country of immigration' has remained contested and polarizing in electoral politics particularly on the political right: While the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) under Chancellor Merkel's leadership has gradually endorsed immigration as an integral part of its socio-economic modernization agenda, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has embarked on a nativist rejection of all forms of immigration and cultural diversity. Based on a frame analysis, the article argues that the idea of middle-class nation-building through immigration has allowed the Christian Democratic Union to move away from its traditional anti-immigrant stand and integrate related issues into its market-driven political agenda. The key hypothesis is that the Christian Democrats have been able to modernize the party's middle-class nation-building ambition by adopting its basic rationale to the recruitment and integration of immigrants into German society. In contrast, the AfD has embarked on an opposing trajectory as the political advocate for identity-driven, anti-immigrant sentiments and an exclusionary nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Germany is often conceived as the "ideal type" militant democracy, until the emergence of the AfD in 2013, the absence of a successful right-wing populist party made it an exceptional case in Europe. Unlike most former targets of militant democracy, the AfD accepts rules of the liberal democracy. This raises the central question addressed in the article: How does the emergence of a populist right-wing party affect practices of German militant democracy? I argue that AfD opponents have developed an adapted militancy towards the right-wing populist party. Data on initiatives opposing the AfD between 2013 and 2021 show that AfD opponents use a full range of initiatives spanning both tolerant and intolerant modes of engagement. If the proportion of tolerant initiatives is somewhat unexpected, intolerant responses were progressively introduced. With the help of semi-structured interviews conducted with the authors of initiatives opposing the AfD, I argue that four factors help explain the developments of initiatives against the right-wing populist party: the radicalization of the AfD; the militant democratic legacy in Germany; the distribution of power among AfD opponents; and learning dynamics affecting political actors, public authorities, and civil society groups differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since late 2020, protests against government measures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic have swept across Germany. At the forefront of these protests was the Querdenker Movement, a heterogeneous alliance of ordinary citizens, hippies, esotericists, opponents of conventional medicine, Christian fundamentalists, and right-wing extremists bonded by their shared belief in conspiracy myths. This contribution draws upon the theoretical framework of the studies on the authoritarian personality to dissect the nature of this heterogeneous alliance and the democracy-endangering potential of conspiracy myths. We present three key insights based on an analysis of representative public opinion surveys conducted by the Leipzig Authoritarianism Study. First, we demonstrate that susceptibility to conspiracy myths in the public mood occurs in waves that coincide with times of crisis. In this regard, the Covid-19 pandemic is a catalyst of conspiracy myths as it has induced existential and epistemic insecurities amongst many citizens. Second, it is shown that there is an elective affinity between superstition, esotericism, and a conspiracy mentality, which can be cited as one explanation for the heterogeneous alliance during the protests. On the other hand, the nexus between religion and the conspiracy mentality depends on an individual's interpretation of religion. It is literalist fundamentalism that fosters susceptibility to conspiracy myths. Third, we highlight the democracy-endangering consequences of a conspiracy mentality. Its manifestations include resentment and hostility toward minorities, an alienation from democracy, an increased likelihood of voting for right-wing authoritarian parties, and an affinity for violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article deals with the issue of broadly defined borders in political and ideological programmes of selected extreme right organisations in contemporary Germany (AfD, NPD, IBD). The starting point for the textual and content analysis of actual programs of these organizations is the author's reflection on the importance of dichotomy in the broader political view of the extreme right. The author claims that the considerably strong focus of the selected right-wing organisations on the issue of physical or cultural borders does not only derive from the timing of their activism - the so called migration crisis. It is rather pre-defined by the ideological features of the far right in general. The core ideological elements ascribed to the far right as a stream of political thought, such as nationalism or authoritarianism, are based on the dichotomy and influence on the far right perception of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the article is to analyse the determinants of electoral support for the Alternative for Germany, which gained 7.04% of the vote in the 2014 European Parliament elections. AfD is considered a right-wing populist protest party of a primarily Eurosceptic orientation. However, there has been no in-depth analysis of its electoral success based on statistical methods. The territories of former East and West Germany have been selected as unit of analysis, since different patterns of electoral behaviour can be expected to play a role in former Eastern Bloc and Western countries. We analyse voters' political preferences and the question whether the success of the AfD could be better explained with reference to protest voting or issue voting. We conclude that while in West Germany both protest voting and issue voting can explain the success of the AfD, the priority of issue voting over protest voting was pronounced in East Germany, as the immigration issue proved to be a very strong and significant predictor of electoral support for the AfD. Thus, we once again confirm that differences in individual voting behaviour between West and East persist even a quarter century after the unification of Germany. It is thus apparent that the so-called Iron Curtain continues to function as a cleavage in contemporary German politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the year 2017, a new political party entered Germany's parliament called 'Alternative for Germany' or AfD. Mainstream media labels the party far right, radical-right, right wing, national-conservative, populist, etc. Despite this, the AfD has tendencies towards Nazism. Nine books published between 2016 and 2018 examine the stratospheric rise of the AfD, founded in 2013. The review starts with a conservative view that examines 'what the AfD wants.' The next book discusses the 'AfD-Pegida' link. Pegida is the AfD's East-German and mostly Dresden-based street-fighting movement. The third book presents arguments on the AfD from across Germany's political spectrum. This leads to a book written as a 'letter to AfD voters'. The book outlines many inconstancies found in the AfD's party programme and its public announcements. Since the AfD claims to protect the occident, Europe and Germany in particular against hordes of Muslims and the Islamic religion, these issues are discussed in the next book. A quick look at the ideological background of the AfD points to an analysis of the party's relationship with the media. The final two books show how the AfD seeks to conquer Germany's political centre, based on a wealth of empirical data. Overall, the nine books provide one of the first comprehensive examinations of Germany's new radical-right party drawn from recent German language books. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2017 Bundestag election and the breakthrough of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) will likely long be remembered as a pivotal moment in German politics. One of the key questions in the aftermath of this breakthrough is what role the mainstream media played in this party's success. Drawing on online data from the four largest German news outlets, Google-trend searches, and Twitter, we examine the media coverage landscape over the course of the election campaign, focusing on the coverage of the AfD relative to other parties and its key issues of immigration and Euroskepticism. Our results indicate that the AfD did indeed face a favorable media environment, especially in the final month of the campaign. Further analysis, however, suggests that the media was in many ways simply responding to public interest and demand-immigration, especially, was a highly salient issue throughout the campaign, something that was a significant departure from recent elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past three years two new political parties have been established in Germany. Both parties approach recent economic, social and civil issues from the political Right. The Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) can indeed be viewed further to the right than the Alliance for Progress and Renewal (Allianz für Fortschritt und Aufbruch, ALFA), yet each notably exists in spite of Angela Merkel's (Chancellor of Germany) Christian Democratic Union party (CDU). Moreover, each has emerged under the direction of the same political figure. Current political discord within Germany today regarding the European Union as well as migration has empowered the two parties to advance a populist or even nationalist approach to gather strength in German national and state elections. This article addresses the unique reasons for the overall division among the established Centre-Right parties in Bavaria and Eastern Germany. It also attempts to answer the question whether the Centre- Right will make accommodations to the new parties. Otherwise, there is a question as to whether the Alternative for Germany and Alliance for Progress and Renewal will fail since, for personal reasons, they lack any kind of relationship. Along the same line, this article examines the similarities and differences of the two new parties as well as their ability to garner votes for 2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Right-wing extremism in Germany has recently undergone considerable changes with a new right-wing party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) successfully entering several local state parliaments as well as the European Parliament, "Pegida" demonstrations representing a new type of public action in terms of social movements, and the emergence of institutions like the Library of Conservatism and magazine projects like Sezession. This article considers whether such developments could be seen as a renaissance of the "New Right", representing a long-term success in its strategies. Since the 1970s, the strategy of the New Right has been based on promoting a culturally conservative metapolitics in the pursuit of "cultural hegemony", meaning to influence public opinion in the Federal Republic of Germany and shift it to the right-- which at first glance might seem to have succeeded in light of recent events. The developments seen in German far-right extremism, however, have been neither monocausal nor monolithic. Therefore, this article will take a closer look at various aspects of the idea that recent changes in Germany's rightwing extremism might represent a successful implementation of this New Right strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 2009 German federal election, the small parties together captured 43.2 percent of the vote; three small parties boasted a result in the double digits. Four years later, none of the small parties finished above 8.6 percent and only two reentered the Bundestag. Notably, the FDP, one of the original West German parties, dropped out of the federal parliament for the first time. Yet, any talk of catch-all party revival and party system concentration needs qualification. As a group, the small parties received nearly a third of all votes cast-the second highest share in six decades. Those that did not make it into the Bundestag won 15.7 percent, a higher share than in any other federal election. This article examines the positioning of the leading small parties in the 2013 Bundestag election campaign and their respective electoral results; highlights party systemic as well as internal party factors to explain small party performance; reassesses the commonplace classification of small parties by whether there is an established legislative presence or not; and considers the positioning and performance of small parties in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the year 2018, Germany's new radical right-wing party, the AfD, completed its electoral success by entering the two remaining state parliament in which the AfD wasn't represented – Bavaria and Hessen. Hessen is also the state where Hubert Kleinert's (The AfD and its members [Die AfD und ihre Mitglieder], 2018) excellent investigation into AfD members takes place. His empirical work represents a unique insight into ideology and thinking of AfD members. One of the key members of the AfD is Björn Höcke. Björn Höcke is more than just a member. He is the leader of the AfD in his home state of Thuringia and his is the leader of the highly influential radical right wing, Der Flügel. The wing, as it is known, represents the most extremist section of the AfD. It is partly because of the wing that CDU hard man, Friedrich Merz, recently called the AfD, 'openly Nazi [with] antisemitic undertones' (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/afd-are-nazis-angela-merkel-rival-friedrich-merz-g0dvwvdlg). In Sebastian Hennig's (Never twice in the same river [Nie zweimal in denselben Fluss], 2018) interview with Björn Höcke, the völkisch boss talks freely about this political ideas. Finally, the rise of the AfD marks a distinctive move to the right changing Germany's political culture. What all this means is shown in Andreas Peglau's (Shifting Right in the twenty-first Century [Rechtsruck im 21. Jahrhundert], 2018) exquisite book 'Shifting Right in the 21st Century'. The review concludes by arguing that the AfD is not an outright Nazi party. The AfD is a fascistoid party – it carries elements of fascism inside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]