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.
Notes
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
See also Nils Wegner, ‘PEGIDA—Chronik’, in Sezession, special issue ‘PEGIDA’, 2015, p. 8.
- 6.
Vorländer et al. 2016, 18–20.
- 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.
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.
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.
Compare with Hennig (182): ‘Where once was Dresden, today is a stage’.
- 11.
For internal criticism, see also Hennig (104–05).
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
Verlag Arnshaugk http://www.arnshaugk.de/index.php?v=9&korb=. Accessed 18 January 2016.
References
Bibliography
Altman, A. 2012. Socialist Cowboys. The New Yorker, 12 April. Accessed 20 April 2017. http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/socialist-cowboys
Bar-On, T. 2014. The French New Right: Neither Left nor Right? Journal for the Study of Radicalism 8 (1): 1–44.
Bassin, M. 2015. Lev Gumilev and the European New Right. Nationalities Papers 43 (6): 840–865.
Bitzan, R. 2017. Research on Gender and the Far Right in Germany since 1990: Developments, Findings and Future Prospects. In Gender and Far Right Politics in Europe, ed. M. Köttig, R. Bizan, and A. Petö, 65–78. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Blum, A. 2017. Men in the Battle for the Brains: Construction of Masculinity Within the ‘Identitary Generation’. In Gender and Far Right Politics in Europe, ed. M. Köttig, R. Bizan, and A. Petö, 321–334. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Compact—Magazin für Souveränität., special issue 8:2014: ‘Ami go home: Deutschland muss souverän werden’.
Falk, H. 2014. Det politisk-teologiska komplexet: Fyra kapitel om Carl Schmitts sekularitet. Göteborg: Avhandling framlagda vid Institutionen för litteratur, idéhistoria och religion, Göteborgs universitet.
Friedrich, B. 2016. Die Medien der Neuen Rechten, “Mut zur Wahrheit”. Katapult—Magazin für Kartografik und Sozialwissenschaft, special issue “Europas neue Rechte” 2: 22–24.
Geiges, L., S. Marg, and F. Walter. 2015. Pegida. Die schmutzige Seite der Zivilgesellschaft. Bielefeld: Transcript.
Gensing, P. 2015. HoGeSa—wie Hooligans rechte Brücken schlagen. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 21 January. Accessed 20 April 2017. http://www.bpb.de/politik/extremismus/rechtsextremismus/199362/hogesa-wie-hooligans-rechte-bruecken-schlagen
Hellström, A. 2016. Trust Us: Reproducing the Nation and the Scandinavian Nationalist Populist Parties. New York, NY: Berghahn Books.
Hennig, S. 2015. Pegida—Spaziergänge über den Horizont, Eine Chronik. Neustadt an der Orla: Arnshaugk.
Hofstadter, R. 1964. The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Harper’s Magazine, November, 77–86.
Klemperer, V. 2006 [1947]. The Language of the Third Reich: LTI—Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist’s Notebook. London: Continuum.
Köttig, M. 2017. Gender Stereotypes Constructed by the Media: The Case of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) in Germany. In Gender and Far Right Politics in Europe, ed. M. Köttig, R. Bizan, and A. Petö, 221–234. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lett, J. 1990. Emics and Etics: Notes on the Epistemology of Anthropology. In Emics and Etics: The Insider/Outsider Debate, ed. T.N. Headland, K.L. Pike, and M. Harris, 130–145. Newbury Park and London: Sage.
McGowan, L. 2014. Right-Wing Violence in Germany: Assessing the Objectives, Personalities and Terror Trail of the National Socialist Underground and the State’s Response to It. German Politics 23 (3): 196–212.
Neu, V., and S. Pokorny. 2015. Ist „die Mitte“ (rechts)extremistisch? Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, special issue Rechts in der Mitte? 65 (40): 3–8.
Önnerfors, A. 2016a. Civilsamhällets “smutsiga baksida”? Den tyska PEGIDA-rörelsen utmanar begreppen. Kurage 3 (2016): 6–10.
———. 2016b. The German ‘Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of Europe’ (PEGIDA): A Movement of Right-wing Populist Indignation? CFAPS Newsletter 2016: 9.
———. 2017. Between Breivik and PEGIDA: The Absence of Ideologues and Leaders in the Contemporary European Far-Right. Patterns of Prejudice 51 (2): 159–175.
Orwell, G. 1989 [1949]. 1984. London: Penguin.
Sageman, M. 2008. Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-Frist Century. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Salzborn, S. 2016. Renaissance of the New Right in Germany? A Discussion of New Right Elements in German Right-Wing Extremism Today. German Politics and Society 119 (34): 36–63.
Scharloth, J. 2017. Ist die AfD eine populistische Partei?—Eine Analyse am Beispiel des Landesverbands Rheinland-Pfalz. Aptum 2: 1–13 and a draft version published on Accessed 20 April 2017. http://www.scharloth.com/publikationen/AfD_Scharloth.pdf
Thielemann, N. 2016. Patriotyzm genetyczny, półka kulturowa and Palikotyzacja X-a—blends as catchwords in Polish political discourse. Zeitschrift für Slawistik 61 (1): 74–101.
Thompson, M. 2016. Enough said: What’s Gone Wrong With the Language of Politics? London: The Bodley Head.
Vallely, P. 2015. Are Scientists Easy Prey for Jihadism? The Guardian, 5 December. Accessed 20 April 2017. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/03/scientists-easy-prey-jihadis-terrorists-engineering-mindset
Vorländer, H., M. Herold, and S. Schäller. 2016. PEGIDA: Entwicklung, Zusammensetzung und Deutung einer Empörungsbewegung. Berlin: Springer.
Wegner, N. 2015. PEGIDA—Chronik. Sezession, special issue “PEGIDA”.
Wittgenstein, L. 1953. Philosophische Untersuchungen. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wodak, R. 2015. The Politics of Fear. What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Web-sources
Arnshaugk Verlag. No date. No title. Accessed 28 May 2016. http://www.arnshaugk.de/index.php?v=0&korb=;&autor=Hennig,%20Sebastian
Dresdner Thesen. No date. Dresdner Thesen. Accessed 22 May 2016. http://www.i-finger.de/dresdner-thesen.pdf
Facebook PEGIDA. No date. Not title. Accessed 4 February 2017. https://www.facebook.com/pegidaevdresden
Flurfunk. 2015. ”Pegida—Spaziergänge über den Horizont”. Accessed 4 February 2017. http://www.flurfunk-dresden.de/2015/11/21/pegida-spaziergaenge-ueber-den-horizont/
Focus. 2014. 19-Punkte-Programm: Was will PEGIDA wirklich? Accessed 6 September 2016. http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/woechentliche-demonstrationen-19-punkte-programm-was-will-pegida-wirklich_id_4359150.html
Michael Bittner. 2015. PEGIDA von Innen. Accessed 6 October 2016. http://michaelbittner.info/2015/10/28/pegida-von-innen-die-chronik-spaziergaenge-ueber-den-horizont-von-sebastian-hennig/
Pegidabuch. No title. No date. Accessed 4 February 2017. http://www.pegidabuch.de
Sachsendepesche. 2015. Anders als man erwartet. Accessed 4 February 2017. https://www.sachsen-depesche.de/kultur/anders-als-man-erwartet-sebastian-hennig-und-sein-buch-„pegida-–-spaziergänge-über-den-horizont“.html
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
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
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65566-6_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-65565-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-65566-6
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)