Populism Country Profile: Germany (POPULISMUS.gr World Map 2017) (original) (raw)
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'The People' and its Antagonistic Other: The Populist Right-wing Movement Pegida in Germany
Marttila, Tomas (Ed.): Discourse, Culture and Organization: Inquiries into Relational Structures of Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan., 2018
Giving the ascent of right-wing populism around Europe the study explores the discursive fabric of the Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West) movement in Germany. Following the work of Ernesto Laclau and the perspective of post-foundational discourse analysis, the study focusses on distinct hegemonic strategies which constitutes the identity of the movement. First, we can observe the equation of the movement with the ‘unfullfilled’ will of the German people and a demand to overcome this ‘unfullfilled reality’. Secondly, the identity and raison d’être of Pegida is based on the antagonistic division of the discursive space and two respective chains of equivalence, constructing the ‘refugee crisis’ as manifold threat to the flourishing of the German people. Keywords Right-wing populism, hegemony, discourse, Laclau
PEGIDA Germany: A movement of right-wing populist indignation?
Provoked by global political events, in autumn 2014 a small group of friends around Dresden, in eastern Germany, connected via Facebook to spark off an initiative that, at its peak, brought around 25,000 people onto the streets each week. Under the banner of PEGIDA, (the acronym of Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes), the movement has continuously mobilised popular disaffection with current political affairs in Germany.
PEGIDA and New Right-Wing Populism in Germany
PEGIDA and New Right-Wing Populism in Germany, 2018
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New Populism in Germany - Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)
2020
Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is reaping more success today in Germany than the other parties in the political sphere. In this present work I intend to approach this new and successful party that arises from the right (its founding members belonged to the CDU) but is considered from the beginning a populist, Eurosceptic and anti-systemic party. I will first define three basic concepts: populism, anti-system parties and Euroscepticism, and then I will immerse myself fully in the historical events that date back to 2010 which led to the formation of AfD. Later I will mention the refugee crisis of 2015 that made this party reach its highest peak in the Bundestag elections in 2017 and finally I will analyze the present of the party, its last designation of presidents and then I inquire about AfD voters in Germany: what are their interests and what moves them to vote for a right-wing party, with a radical and extremist tendency, a phenomenon that has not happened in Germany since World War II. Undoubtedly, for this work there was a lot of research in academic articles, essays, books in paper and electronic versions and mainly in German and other newspapers, that showed from the zero hour the impact that gave AfD in the German society, in Merkel’s government and in the rest of Europe, generating a mixture of insecurity, fears, return to the past and self-criticism of certain sectors of politics, who are wondering until today what wrong decisions have been taken in order to generate this discontent in a certain part of German society, almost 30 years after its re-unification. This society is once again inclined to vote for a party with racist, xenophobic and anti-immigration phrases, whose members (some of them) evoke for a (new) racial cleansing of Germany, want to return to the nation-state borders in Europe, relativize the Holocaust or minimize the Nazi past. AfD is a party that is indifferent to the catastrophes of the past (from both Germany and Europe), is aimed at the "common" German citizen, but from its manipulation from fear (fear towards the immigrant, towards the loss of identity German, towards the future of the nation). Will the German society and its politicians be able to react before it's too late?
There are “Nazis again in parliament” (Associated Press, 2017). So said Green Party co-leaders Cem Özdemir and Katrin Goring-Eckardt as Germany’s Alternativ für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany or AfD) claimed what can only be described as a victory in German parliament. Words that were hardly ever expected to be uttered again in Germany have now made headlines. With the September 24th, 2017 federal election, the AfD capitalized on its recent regional successes and entered Germany’s federal parliament—the first time a far-right party has done so in Germany since 1933. Founded in Dresden in 2013 on the basis of Euroscepticism, the AfD’s platform has since shifted to an emphasis on anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim political discourse. In doing so, the AfD, along with their non-political arm PEGIDA, challenge the status quo of German collective identity articulated and reinforced by the dominant discourse of Germany’s two largest parties, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social-Democrat Party Deutschland (SPD). Not only has the AfD set a precedent for a far-right entry into Germany’s parliament, polling in at over 13% (Stone 2017), it has done so overwhelmingly, having taken its place as the third largest party in Germany in terms of seats held in the Bundestag. The question is: What explains the conditions of possibility for radical right-wing populism to re-emerge, given Germany’s history? In other words, how is it possible, for this position to be articulated? While many scholars offer up economic explanations or talk about how the political opportunity was right, none of those explanations offer up an understanding of how this rhetoric resonates with parts of the German population, despite efforts to completely bury such sentiments. Discourse helps to formulate and map conditions of possibility, and I argue that by mapping the changing discourses in Germany, we can trace how the changes in the conditions of possibility allowed for the success of the AfD and PEGIDA.
The AfD and its Sympathisers: Finally a Right-Wing Populist Movement in Germany?
Is the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) the exponent of a successful right-wing populist movement in Germany? By analysing the positions, the discursive links and the sympathisers of the AfD, this article aims to draw a comprehensive picture of the new party and its environment. The link to populism research offers a conceptual framework for a mixed-method study which focuses on important aspects of the party's history, self-description and position in Germany's public discourse as well as its supporters by analysing two sets of quantitative and qualitative data. We argue that the AfD follows a nuanced and diverse communication strategy and can be regarded as a functional equivalent for a right-wing populist party in a country where right-wing politics are strongly stigmatised.
The AfD and their Sympathizers: Finally a right-wing populist movement in Germany?
2014
Is the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) the exponent of a successful right-wing populist movement in Germany? By analysing the positions, the discursive links and the sympathisers of the AfD, this article aims to draw a comprehensive picture of the new party and its environment. The link to populism research offers a conceptual framework for a mixed-method study which focuses on important aspects of the party's history, self-description and position in Germany's public discourse as well as its supporters by analysing two sets of quantitative and qualitative data. We argue that the AfD follows a nuanced and diverse communication strategy and can be regarded as a functional equivalent for a right-wing populist party in a country where right-wing politics are strongly stigmatised.
Right-wing Populism in Germany and The “Reichsbürger” Movement
Political Reflection Magazine, 2023
More than 150 residences were searched by German police on December 7, 2022, and 25 people were detained in connection with an alleged coup attempt by followers of the "Reichsbürger" movement. This one was one of the greatest anti-terrorism investigations in the Federal Republic of Germany’s history (Falk, 2022). Right-wing Populism Right-wing populism is a political ideology that combines populist rhetoric and policies with right-wing positions on issues such as nationalism, anti-immigration, law and order, and traditional cultural values. It often involves an "us versus them" mentality, portraying the political and economic elites as enemies of the people and champions of the common man. Right-wing populist leaders often advocate for an authoritarian style of governance and emphasize the need to protect the interests of the nation or a specific group of the population. Right-wing populism is not a recent development. Since the end of World War II, revisionist ideologies have gained traction and been embraced by neo-Nazi or right-wing extremist parties like the British National Party (BNP), French National Front/Le Front National, and Austrian Freedom Party (FP). While many of the "new" right-wing discourses bear similarities to older, well-known ideologies (Mammone, 2009), it has been argued that right-wing populism differs from those other trends in that it does not convey a coherent ideology instead proposing a mixed-bag of beliefs, stereotypes, attitudes, and related programs which aim to address and mobilize a range of equally contradictory segments of the electorate.