The Right-Wing Network and the Role of Extremist Youth Groupings in Unified Germany

Abstract

What follows is a descriptive analysis of the scope of youth participation in German right-wing extremist activities today. I assess right-wing criminality carried out, for the most part, by groups of young men, and evaluate the youth groupings, associations, and political parties that constitute the wider organizational context for Germany's extreme right. Over the last decade countless waves of surveys conducted among German secondary school students indicate varying degree of identification with extremist issues, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism. As is the case with right-wing voting preferences, such survey data tell us very little about the origin, the significance, and the dynamics of the phenomenon. While my thesis on the subject matter is not grounded in any field study in the strictest sense, I seek to link organizational structures to displays of extremist behavior and determine who participates in which activities at which times. Can we distinguish between different concerns among the diverse groups and organizations that form the right-wing network? What historical developments in the eastern and western states contributed to a post-unification right-wing lifestyle among a visible segment of the population? What is the crimi-nolological nature of right-wing violence? Finally, what are the reactions of state and society and will they be able to come to grips with this phenomenon?