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Expressions of Radicalization pp 87–119Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Moving the Mainstream: Radicalization of Political Language in the German PEGIDA Movement

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Abstract

Önnerfors explores how, over the last five years, the German political discourse has experienced a move to the right, or Rechtsruck. The way political problems have been framed, Önnerfors argues, represents a radicalization of political language in post-unification Germany. Focusing on PEGIDA or ‘Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West’, the chapter explores how this development has been spearheaded by new actors emerging in the ‘Nouvelle Droit’. Drawing on previous studies, Önnerfors illuminates how PEGIDA has been able to mobilize considerable populist support among fragile middle class segments of the German electorate, exploiting diffuse emotions of uneasiness and indignation. Close reading of a detailed insider account constitutes the analytical core of this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.pegidabuch.de (with a number of links to reviews); https://www.sachsen-depesche.de/kultur/anders-als-man-erwartet-sebastian-hennig-und-sein-buch-„pegida-–-spaziergänge-über-den-horizont“.html; http://www.flurfunk-dresden.de/2015/11/21/pegida-spaziergaenge-ueber-den-horizont/; and for a more critical reading http://michaelbittner.info/2015/10/28/pegida-von-innen-die-chronik-spaziergaenge-ueber-den-horizont-von-sebastian-hennig/; http://www.arnshaugk.de/index.php?v=0&korb=;&autor=Hennig,%20Sebastian; all accessed 6 January 2017. The first print run was 2000 copies. Currently (as of January 2017), the edition is sold out on amazon.de. The book has its own Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/Pegida-Spaziergänge-über-den-Horizont-404550896422490/?hc_ref=SEARCH&fref=nf, visited 6 January 2017.

  2. 2.

    The term ‘paranoid’ is understood as in Hofstadter (1964: 77) who makes clear that he doesn’t use it in a clinical sense for classification of a certain pathological disposition, but ‘because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind’.

  3. 3.

    The two most recent studies are Hans Vorländer, Maik Herold, Steven Schäller, Wer geht zu PEGIDA und warum? Eine empirische Untersuchung von PEGIDA-Demonstranten in Dresden, Schriften zur Verfassungs- und Demokratieforschung 1/2015, Dresden: zvd, 2015 and by the same authors PEGIDA: Entwicklung, Zusammensetzung und Deutung einer Empörungsbewegung, Berlin: Springer, 2016.

  4. 4.

    Hennig (70) interprets the use of the mobile phone as a flashlight as a symbol for the movement moving from virtual to real space: ‘So wie der Austritt aus den virtuellen Netzwerken auf das Straßenpflaster von Dresden , ist auch diese praktische Reduktion des Handtelephons zur Lampe symbolisch aufzufassen’.

  5. 5.

    See also Nils Wegner, ‘PEGIDA—Chronik’, in Sezession, special issue ‘PEGIDA’, 2015, p. 8.

  6. 6.

    Vorländer et al. 2016, 18–20.

  7. 7.

    In my forthcoming article, ‘Between Breivik and PEGIDA: The Absence of Ideologues and Leaders in the Contemporary European Far-Right’, Patterns of Prejudice (Önnerfors, forthcoming 2017) I investigate Bachmann as an anti-leader of PEGIDA.

  8. 8.

    These theses have since been removed from the PEGIDA Facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/pegidaevdresden, accessed 17 January 2016 (almost 200,000 ‘likes’). The PEGIDA Facebook page would also be an illuminating research topic. I have used the reproduction of the theses as given in the German journal Focus, 19 December 2015: http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/woechentliche-demonstrationen-19-punkte-programm-was-will-pegida-wirklich_id_4359150.html. Accessed 17 January 2016. See also http://www.i-finger.de/dresdner-thesen.pdf. Accessed 18 January 2016.

  9. 9.

    I find this interpretation extremely revealing, since Marc Sageman and other researchers of terrorist have come to the conclusion that individuals pursuing engineering or science studies appear to be an easy prey for radicalization. Paul Vallely, ‘Are scientists easy prey for jihadism?’, in The Guardian, 5 December 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/03/scientists-easy-prey-jihadis-terrorists-engineering-mindset, accessed 18 January 2016. Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-Frist Century, Philadelphia: UPP, 2008, where a study of collective biographies of Jihadis points in the same direction.

  10. 10.

    Compare with Hennig (182): ‘Where once was Dresden, today is a stage’.

  11. 11.

    For internal criticism, see also Hennig (104–05).

  12. 12.

    His support for aggressive activism must also be seen in the light of the events that had recently unfolded in Cologne on 26 October 2014. The Network ‘Hooligans against Salafists’ (HoGeSa, inspired by the English Defence League) rioted in the Cologne city centre with many structural similarities to the New Year’s Eve events of 2015/2016 (short of organized sexual attacks and flagrant crimes): exclusively male, highly alcoholized, crowds throwing fireworks and bottles at law enforcement personnel and trashing public property. See Patrick Gensing: ‘HoGeSa—wie Hooligans rechte Brücken schlagen’, http://www.bpb.de/politik/extremismus/rechtsextremismus/199362/hogesa-wie-hooligans-rechte-bruecken-schlagen. Accessed 18 January 2016.

  13. 13.

    Further page references to the slogan ‘Ami go home!’, see Hennig (125, 127, 136, 139, 147, 152, 159, 184). The journal Compact, to which Henning has contributed more than 20 times, devoted an entire issue (8/2014) to the subject ‘Ami go home: Deutschland muss suverän werden’ (‘Germany needs to become sovereign’). The website of Compact also offers translation to Russian and generally demonstrates support of the Putin-regime. Its editor Jürgen Elsässer has been characterized as ‘national bolshevist’, referring to a particular right-wing movement in Russia (and the political philosopher Alexandr Dugin) with clear links to the rest of Europe . See Hennig (94–97) and Mark Bassin, ‘Lev Gumilev and the European New Right’ in Nationalities Papers (2015), 43:6, p. 840–865.

  14. 14.

    Professor Patzelt has also conducted empirical studies of PEGIDA rallies, but simultaneously took part in a number of public discussions and repeatedly proposed the need to listen to PEGIDA. A representative interview demonstrating his appeasing positions was published in the German conservative newspaper Die Welt 22.1.2015, http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article136665559/Pegida-ist-antireligioes-nicht-antiislamisch.html. Accessed 18 January 2016. Patzelt also reviewed Hennig’s book in positive terms, see footnote 1 for a reference.’

  15. 15.

    In the GDR , re-enactments (or ‘Live Action Role Play’) of ‘Wild West’ North American settings were extremely popular, and clubs for ‘Indianists’ were established everywhere: ‘Indians were called ‘victims of US imperialism’, and the destruction of their communities and natural environment was attributed to unchecked American expansion and aggression.’ See the article by Anna Altman, ‘Socialist Cowboys’ in The New Yorker, 12 April 2012 and academic sources quoted therein, http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/socialist-cowboys. Accessed 18 January 2016.

  16. 16.

    Verlag Arnshaugk http://www.arnshaugk.de/index.php?v=9&korb=. Accessed 18 January 2016.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Andreas Önnerfors

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  1. Andreas Önnerfors
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden

    Kristian Steiner

  2. Department of Literature, History of Ideas & Religion, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Andreas Önnerfors

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Önnerfors, A. (2018). Moving the Mainstream: Radicalization of Political Language in the German PEGIDA Movement. In: Steiner, K., Önnerfors, A. (eds) Expressions of Radicalization. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65566-6_4

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