German Politics and Society

Pegida plays upon the intersectionality of popular discontent in its outrage against cosmopolitan political elites, by using the internet and social media as platforms for a repudiation of traditional parliamentary mechanisms. We may regard this conceit of a virtual polis as a form of antipolitics, expressing impatience with, and contempt for institutional democracy. Far right bloggers exhort followers to violent action across a transnational field of operations as a form of “legitimate” warfare against states they believe to be corrupt. They stage their own identity as a fluid performance of rebellious discontent with government and globalization. Although they invoke an autonomous subjectivity and direct political mandate, they in fact opt for a theatrical simulation of such engagement. The internet and social media allow for the creation of multiple niche markets for reactionary discontent across the lines of age and class. Pegida supporters present a paradox in that they are anti-modern identitarians pining for a mythic Central Europe, regressively protectionist towards the German economy in their demands to close the borders to international trade, exit the Eurozone, and expel refugees, even as they orchestrate a sophisticated event-based, highly modern post-democratic “New Politics 2.0.”

Europe has witnessed the rise of a multigenerational, populist shift to the right, characterized by the unapologetic deployment of extremist symbols, ideologies, and politics, but also by repudiations of right-wing labels associated with racism, xenophobia, and nativist entitlements. The political lexicon of far-right rhetoric derives its considerable persuasive force from mobilizing and normalizing extremist views. This article examines the intricately and translocally woven connections among representative movements, organizations, and media personalities who popularize and disseminate far-right views through social media and their own internet websites. With diatribes about the threat against Russia, the uncontainable and intolerable influx of refugees and asylum seekers, whom they blame for terrorist attacks, deteriorating family values, the loss of national German identity, and the antidemocratic politics of Chancellor Angela Merkel, the cadre of self-credentializing experts and politicians, some in alignment with Pegida, mobilize historical moments and meanings to make connections with a broad spectrum of supporters.

Since its founding in 2014, Pegida has positioned itself as a populist movement striving to limit immigration and to preserve Germany’s cultural heritage. It has also aligned itself with other right-wing European political groups whose exclusionary views are rooted in theories of a civilizational clash between the West and the Islamic world. Pegida’s pushback against immigration also includes appeals to resist globalization and the growth of multiculturalism by embracing what Verena Stolcke has termed “cultural fundamentalism.” This ideology assumes cultural hierarchies and segregates religious and ethnic groups spatially and geographical as a means to maintain cultural uniformity. In doing so, Pegida posits that it is not racist or xenophobic, rather that it seeks solidarity in maintaining Western cultural values. The danger in Pegida’s ideology is that it rejects not only constitutional principles and notions of cultural pluralism, but that it furthers a cultural divide that need not exist and, in fact, embraces an exclusionary nationalism that is not unlike the values that they purport to reject.

The perceived crisis triggered by the current refugee influx highlights the contradiction at the heart of human rights discourse. Modern humanity has been constructed as both European and as universal; the racialized “Other” against whom the “modern human” disturbs this construction by laying claim to human rights from the very heart of Europe. The sexualized violence reported in Cologne on New Year’s Eve fed into racialized fears of refugees and immigrants promoted by groups on the radical right, even as racialized fears returned to mainstream discourses. Critical responses to the racism of the radical right unfortunately also participate in racialized discourses by resorting to “Europe” or “European values.” This analysis suggests the need to consider Europe as a field of power, one in which the contestation over what Europe is or should be results in concrete, racialized disparities in access to social mobility, education, or public agency. A project for racial, gender and economic justice requires the thinking of Europe as an ongoing project of world-making. The call to revisit or reclaim “European” values cannot succeed here. Nor can a response to the new right (or the newly normalized racism of the center) allow the new right to determine the parameters of debates about possibilities for the future.

Islamic organizations in Germany find themselves in a dilemma. On the one hand, they feel the need to take a public stance on the acts of violence committed by Muslim terrorists worldwide. On the other hand, they also feel the need to speak up against the growing Islamophobia in Germany, propagated by movements such as Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident (Pegida). As Islamic organizations in Germany band together, they appear to the German public as a homogeneous group unified by religious and ethnic affiliation, not recognized in their diversity. Hence, the external pressure exerted by German populists and sensationalist media that foment Islamophobia creates the risk of inadvertently reinforcing what one seeks to combat: namely, the stereotype of a monolithic and static entity that Muslims in Germany do not in fact represent. Moreover, the perceived need to speak with one voice might silence necessary debates among the different Islamic associations in Germany.

This article explains the failure of Pegida Austria as a social movement organization by testing three prominent theories of social movement theory: political opportunity structures, ideology, and resource mobilization. The failure of Pegida to play a role in Austrian politics is ascribed to the dominant role the Freedom Party (fpö) already plays in the Austrian parliament, the fpö’s issue dominance on anti-immigration and Islamophobia in public discourse, and the relative scarcity of individuals capable of mass mobilization outside the spectrum of political parties. The analysis is based on a crucial-case study that does a comparative content analysis of the fpö and Pegida platforms to assess the ideology argument. The political opportunity and human resource arguments are analyzed with process tracing. The findings reveal that all three theories jointly help to explain the failure of Pegida Austria.