The Nature and Origins of Political Extremism In Germany and Beyond

Every definition of left- and right-wing extremism should in essence have two components: one that describes the necessary preconditions to be regarded as extremist, and another one that classifies it as either left or right. In this chapter I will pursue three goals: first, I separate the concept of political extremism from the two main competing notions in the literature, i.e. populism and radicalism. Secondly, I define political extremism in general. And thirdly, I lay out what defines and characterizes the extreme left and right. In general, there is a broad consensus about what right-wing extremism is, whereas left-wing extremism is much more difficult to define. Furthermore, the concept itself is split into two parts, i.e. Marxism and anarchism, which can overlap but also be mutually exclusive. It is therefore reasonable to contest the use of an overarching term like left-wing extremism. Analytically, we should therefore speak of Marxist extremism or anarchist extremism to enhance the precision of the subject. Similar appeals should be made to the public debate, which often allocates the label “extremist" uncritical and prematurely to various groups.

There is a body of evidence that suggests a common ground between extremists and ideologies from both sides of the political spectrum. As we will see, extremist individuals have a similar social background and they also have the same psychological mindset. Their ideologies have common structural characteristics and they often go against the same enemies. Thus, we should look at political extremism from an integrative perspective. In sum, there are three major drivers of political extremism: individual needs like anomia, (authoritarian) personality traits, deprivation, value orientations, and lack of political support; ideological narratives from radical or extremist actors that highlight discrepancies between present day distress and future utopian ideas and provide frameworks of meaning that help people interpret the world; and group constraints within the individual’s social network like processes of social and structural transformation, political climate, cultural specifics, unemployment, immigration, and inequality.

How we measure political extremism has substantial implications for the availability of data for empirical research. So far, the focus on extremist voting behavior and the left-right self-placement scale has been at least partly the result of a lack of data regarding extremist attitudes. Such scarcity also explains why there is little scholarly agreement on how to measure LWE and RWE on an attitudinal dimension. This chapter introduces a variety of data sets with which I try to tackle such issues. Unfortunately, data availability differs tremendously between left- and right-wing extremist attitudes. Data on right-wing extremist attitudes is available on a somewhat more plentiful basis (though often not freely), whereas data on left-wing extremist attitudes on the other hand is scarce. Comprehensive data sets are not available, since there has been only a handful of thorough investigations in the field just yet. This chapter clarifies the advantages and disadvantages of using a larger number of heterogeneous surveys to study extremist attitudes. The remainder of the chapter describes the research design of the study, that is the operationalization of extremist political attitudes and their predictors, as well as the hypotheses and methods of analysis.

This chapter provides evidence that previous ways of gauging political extremism are inappropriate for assessing actual extremist attitudes for a variety of reasons. Vote choice for a far left or far right party can be subject to social desirability or strategic voting concerns which heavily underestimates the actual share of extremist attitudes within society. It can also become extremely cumbersome to track down changes over time if parties change their program in the medium or long run, as in the case of the Left Party. The left-right self-placement scale on the other hand faces the problem that citizens vary systematically in their understanding of what they consider to be “left” and “right”. The chapter sets out to find a new way to measure LWE and RWE attitudes. In sum, both are captured by a common anti-democratic factor and an ideology-specific factor. For LWE, it subsumes attitudes toward socialism, nationalization, elite criticism, anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, anti-Americanism, and nostalgia for the former East Germany. For RWE, it contains attitudes toward nationalism, social Darwinism, glorification of National Socialism, xenophobia, welfare chauvinism, and anti-globalization.

This chapter looks at how widespread extremist attitudes are in Germany. There are two major implications: First, there is a huge difference between individual far left-wing and far right-wing attitudes and having an actual extremist worldview. Whereas support for some attitudes like socialism, nationalism, or anti-immigrant sentiments is rather high, it is rather low for others like nationalization of important industries, anti-Semitism, and especially anti-democratic attitudes. This makes it even more pressing to consider a multitude of LWE and RWE indicators to capture these phenomena. That said, the share of citizens with an extremist worldview is quite low. Between 1994 and 2017, the proportion of respondents with a pronounced support for LWE fluctuates between one percent in the west and three to seven percent in the east. Similarly, the share of citizens with a substantial degree of RWE support varies between one and three percent in west Germany and two and six percent in east Germany. Secondly, there are strong regional differences when it comes to political extremism in Germany. We see much higher levels of support for LWE and RWE in the east on almost all individual attitudes as well as on a combined index.

On the individual level, LWE and RWE are both strongly predicted by anomic tendencies, the presence of authoritarian personality traits, and a lack of political support. LWE attitudes are also quite strongly and positively influenced by people’s financial security and the perception of belonging to a disadvantaged group in society. Materialist value orientations rather tend to lead toward the creation or adoption of RWE attitudes. Furthermore, the effect of deprivation on RWE attitudes runs almost entirely through one’s satisfaction with democracy, which implies that RWE attitudes are shaped by a more deeply rooted erosion of democratic support. On the contextual level, it is predominately the availability of far left and far right ideologies that either fosters the development of extremist attitudes directly or that amplifies the individual-level effects of deprivation and erosion of democratic support on such attitudes. Thus, if the vote share of far left parties increases, the likelihood of picking up such rhetoric among the population rises as well. The overall level of unemployment had a positive effect on LWE attitudes 20 years ago but no longer today. The share of foreigners negatively affected the development of RWE attitudes. Finally, LWE and RWE attitudes are highly stable.