Populist Protest and Counter-Protest in Germany (original) (raw)

Mainstreaming the Radical Right? The ambiguous populism of the Covid-19 Street Protest in Germany

2022

In Germany, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets to demonstrate against the government's actions on Covid-19 since the spring of 2020. What makes these protests puzzling is their unusual heterogeneous political composition and ambiguous symbolism. This paper argues that protesters used the pandemic (and calls for “freedom” from restrictions) to bridge left- and right-wing movement frames. Importantly, though, the amplification of radical right strands of populist discourse played a central role in this frame bridging. These arguments are supported by a visual discourse analysis using photographs of demonstrators and protest materials (N=212) taken at the Berlin Querdenken demonstration on September 29, 2020. The implications of these findings for the mainstreaming of right-wing politics are discussed.

How Political Parties Respond to Pariah Street Protest: The Case of Anti-Corona Mobilisation in Germany

German Politics, 2022

How do political parties respond to street protest by political outsiders widely considered to be ‘pariahs’ (i.e. radical or extremist actors)? Bridging the literature on responses to ‘populist’ radical right parties with insights from social movement studies, we propose a theoretical model that conceptualises potential party responses to pariah protest. Innovatively, our typology distinguishes between a set of formal and substantive responses to street mobilisation. Empirically, we apply this model by providing the first systematic study of how political parties have responded to the ‘anti-Corona’ protests of Querdenken, contributing to social science research on the politics of the COVID-19 pandemic. Analysing the critical case of Germany, we underline the stark difference between how the populist radical right AfD and all other Bundestag parties respond to anti-Corona mobilisation, showing how political protest may sharpen the polarisation of party politics. Moreover, we highlight the more nuanced but still important differences in responses by established German parties. Theoretically, the article provides an analytical framework valuable in times of increasing street mobilisation by radical and extremist actors. Methodologically, our analysis relies on a systematic media analysis of articles from two major German newspapers. Empirically, it contributes to our understanding of the difficult but crucial relationship between the German protest and party arena during the COVID- 19 pandemic.

Demobilising far-right demonstration campaigns: Coercive counter-mobilisation, state social control, and the demobilisation of the Hess Gedenkmarsch campaign

Social Movement Studies, 2022

Studies of social movements have often focused on mobilisation and campaigning; by comparison, demobilisation has received little attention. This article adds to the body of literature on demobilisation by examining one case of demonstration campaign demobilisation. The ‘Hess Gedenkmarsch’ campaign in Germany, initiated in the late 1980s and demobilised by the mid-1990s, is not only a case of a causal mechanism of demobilisation, but also particularly important within far-right social movement activity: it was the vanguard campaign in a emergent pattern of ‘demonstration politics’ by far-right groups in Germany. The case exhibits a process whereby anti-far-right activists effectively engaged in a sort of kamikaze counter-mobilisation, seeking to shut down far-right events; this, in turn, spurred state authorities to act, imposing coercive measures that demobilised the far-right campaign. This case illustrates a causal mechanism of negative demobilisation that can be observed in other demonstration campaigns, and is particularly relevant to other cases of far-right activism.

From the fringes into mainstream politics: intermediary networks and movement-party coordination of a global anti-immigration campaign in Germany

Far-right extremism has become disruptive in democratic nations as different as Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and the United States. Different countries have experienced protests on similar issues, from climate change, abortion, and immigration, to wearing facemasks during the Covid-19 pandemic. Growing radical and extreme right communities use platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Telegram to spread disinformation, develop conspiracies, and organize protests (Guhl & Davey, 2020; Guhl et al., 2020). Many of these movements have affiliated with political parties, resulting in

Corona protests in Germany: insights into a new movement

Diálogos Institucionais e Políticas de Enfrentamento da Crise, 2021

In August 2020, the German capital of Berlin became the stage for political manifestations organized by regional and relatively unknown groups of individuals with diverse political agendas. The German government and the public observed smaller and bigger agglomerations of up to 40.000 citizens of different backgrounds articulating themselves critically towards the political and legal measures taken by the government to address the crisis caused by COVID-19. The public perception of these newly identified networks and organizations and their diverging political agendas posed questions to traditional understandings of political mobilization. While policy makers, researchers, the media and the general public are often categorizing political groups or movements into specific sections including left, right, center and others, the newly growing so called “anti-corona” or “corona-sceptical” movement in Germany did not allow an easy categorization at first sight. This chapter will give an overview and a first insight into this newly evolving movement, its political agenda and into its mechanisms of political mobilization. It will be shown, how a heterogeneous mixture of middle class citizens, peace movement activists, right wing extremists, antisemitic conspiracy theorists and others joined a common platform strengthened by social media activism and so called alternative media channels.

Mainstreaming the radical right? The ambiguous populism of the Corona Street Protest in

OSF Preprint, 2022

In Germany, thousands of people have taken to the streets against the government's actions on Covid-19 since spring 2020. The protests are startling because of their heterogeneity and the ambiguity of their symbolism. This paper argues that the pandemic created a shared horizon that allowed pre-existing populist discourses to coalesce and thereby bridge pre-pandemic group boundaries. Further, populism gains its mobilizing power from a pronounced political cynicism that facilitates the discursive embedding of right-wing ideologies. The co-presence of extreme and more established positions can contribute to the diffusion of the former among the political middle of society (mainstreaming). These arguments are supported by a visual discourse analysis using photographs of demonstrators and protest materials (N=216) taken at the Berlin »Hygiene« demonstration on September 29, 2020.

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.

'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

Right-wing violence and the public sphere in Germany: the dynamics of discursive opportunities

2002

This paper uses data on collective violence against immigrants from contemporary Germany to explore the link between violence and the public discourse. We argue that media attention for radical right violence, as well as public reactions by third-party actors to radical-right violence may encourage or discourage violent acts in a number of ways. Using a crosssectional and time-series design that analyzes event counts, we find that differential public visibility, resonance, and legitimacy of right-wing violence amplify the rate of some types of violence, while diminishing the rate of other types of violence. Although this study concerns the role of public discourse on rates of anti-foreigner activity in Germany specifically, we argue that substantial benefits might result from extending this type of analysis on the impact of public discourse to collective action and social movements in other settings and time periods.