From Party to Movement? The German Radical Right

Minkenberg “From Party to Movement?The German Radical Right in Transition” 7
GDR's population. 13 While anything smacking of fascism was rejected in the GDR’s official
public culture, already in the second half of the 1980s, a right-wing extremist youth culture
developed in conscious demarcation from the SED regime. The East German skinheads and neo-
Nazis were interpreted as a part of the growing opposition to the regime, but a closer look reveals
that they primarily criticized the laxness of the regime and the lacking prospects for reunification
(including the Eastern territories) while their activities, especially against foreigners, punks and
other ‘outsiders’ were treated with rather benign neglect by police and authorities -- except for
the brutal raid on ‘red punks’ at a rock concert in the East Berlin Zion church in October 1987. 14
At the same time in West Germany, the “Republikaner” scored their first electoral
successes in the state elections in Bavaria (1986: 3 per cent, plus 0.5 per cent for the NPD) and
Berlin (1989: 7.5 per cent) and in the European parliamentary elections (1989: 7.1 per cent, plus
1.6 per cent for the DVU). While in the East, subcultural milieus were forming but parties and
other organizations of the radical right were suppressed by the regime, West Germany seemd to
catch up with other Western European democracies thought the emergence of a new radical right
party phenomenon.
After unification in 1990, the development of the German radical right underwent a
general fragmentation along with clear-cut differences between old and new Länder and a
consolidation of the spectrum in terms of membership and mobilization potential at three levels
(see table 2). While the total number of adherents of the radical right fluctuates at a rather high
level compared to pre-1989 West Germany (when total membership was around 25,000), the
membership of political parties has significantly declined since its all-time high in 1993 (the year
of the “asylum compromise” of the Bundestag parties CDU/CSU, FDP and SPD). 15 Exact
membership figures for the old and new Länder are not available, but a rough comparison is
possible. In 1992, the “Republikaner” had 20,000 members in the West and only 3,000 in the
13 See Bernd Wittich, “Die dritte Schuld. Antifaschismus, Stalinismus und Rechtsextremismus,” in K.H.
Heinemann and W. Schubarth (eds.), Der antifaschistische Staat entläßt seine Kinder. Jugend und
Rechtsextremismus in Ostdeutschland (Köln 1992), pp. 29-37; see also Michael Minkenberg, “German
Unification and the Continuity of Discontinuities: Cultural Change and the Far Right in East and West”, German
Politics 3, 2 (Aug. 1994), pp. 169-192.
14 See Bernd Wagner, “Rechtsradikalismus in Ostdeutschland,” in: Osteuropa 3 (2002), pp. 305-319.
15 See Michael Minkenberg, “Context and Consequence. The Impact of the New Radical Right on the Political
Process in France and Germany”, German Politics and Society, 16, 3 (Fall 1998), pp. 12f.
S4. EXTREMA DRETA A EUROPA, UNA REALITAT POLIÈDRICA
Sabadell, 5 i 6 de juliol de 2004