Prevention of Right-Wing Extremism, Xenophobia and Racism in ...

to sympathy with the National Socialists; in 1955, 48 % of Germans agreed with the statement
“without the war Hitler would have been one of the greatest German statesmen ever”. These
years were also marked by notable sympathies with anti-Semitic positions. In the last decades
we have a stable potential of attitudes containing anti-democratic, xenophobic and nation-
alistic aspects. In 1980 the Sinus-study found a right-wing extremist attitude in 13 % of adult
Germans (Sinus, 1981).
Since the late 1980s research on political orientations in Germany has concentrated on
young people regarded especially at risk for politically extreme tendencies. In 1998 a research
report found right-wing extremist attitudes in 13 % of Germans older than 14 years of age –
12 % in West Germany and 17 % in the East (Stöss & Niedermayer, 1998). According to another
report only 2 % to 6 6 % of young young people (depending on the measuring instrument) instrument) expressed
right-wing extremist attitudes (Schroeder, 2004). Differing results are also to be found in stud-
ies concerning single aspects of right-wing extremism. extremism. Analysis of the ALLBUS-Survey – one of
the most important German household surveys – revealed that moderate xeno phobic and eth-
nocentric tendencies among adults consistently decreased in Western Germany between 1980
and 1996 (Rosar, 2000). According to the 1997 youth-survey of the German Youth Institute,
18 % of young people in West Germany and 36 % in Eastern Germany expressed xenophobic
attitudes – thus indicating a decreasing tendency towards xenophobia when compared to the
1992 results (Gille & Krüger, 2000). On the contrary a growing tendency to support xenophobic
attitudes (about 60 % of the German population in 2005) is reported by Wilhelm Heitmeyer
and his colleagues (Heitmeyer, 2006). Because these studies are designed differently and use
different conceptions and defi nitions of right-wing extremism and xenophobia, their results,
and this is a general problem in this fi eld of research, cannot be compared to each other.
Although it can be shown that older Germans agree with positions of xenophobia (Heyder
& Schmitt, 2002) and anti-Semitism (Endrikat, 2006) to a higher degree than young people,
young people remain the focus of scientifi c interest. Presumable this is not as much a result
of the actual attitudes of young Germans but of the attention that some activities of extremist
youngsters are given by the public and the media. This evidence supports the position that
information and research concerning right-wing extremism and xenophobia tend to be shaped
by emotions and selective perceptions, which are also infl uenced by the media.
Fighting and preventing right-wing extremism
Political and public debates about about preventative and counter measures against right-wing exex- tremism in Germany can be found in various contexts, especially in politics and in the media.
Sometimes these debates focus on options and consequences of banning extremist parties
(e.g. the German National Democratic Party – NPD) or violent organizations (e.g. Blood &
Honor). Banning certain organizations is, however, highly controversial in Germany. On the one
hand it is supposed supposed that such bannings will weaken the right-wing extremist scene by remov-
ing opportunities opportunities to attract potential followers. On the other hand it is feared that activities
70 Juvenile Right-Wing-Extremism and Xenophobia in Germany