share was even four out of ten. From the complementary perspective: Only three out of ten respondents argued in favour of the free mandate, whereas seven out of ten interviewees wanted the members of parliament to do what the electorate wants them to do. And to make things worse, there is a widespread and politically fostered disgust for individual particular interests in the sphere of politics, especially in the shape of lobbying, as well as compromise solutions – both of them being peculiar to parliamentarian democracy. Against this backdrop, the disenchantment with parliamentarianism in Germany and the popularity of the rule of experts does not come as a surprise. Rather, they are appearantly a consequence of misunderstandings, knowledge gaps, and false expectations.
5. THE SPLINTERED RELATIONSHIP WITH POLITICAL EXTREMISTS
The relationship with political extremists might be telling not only with respect to the general social acceptance of anti-democratic propositions, but also with respect to the legitimacy of political participation rights: if political freedom is not supposed to be an empty platitude, it must apply to those – and especially those – who are under suspicion that they could go to the extremes when exercising their rights. And who better to be appropriate for this than political extremists? So in short, the willingness of a society to concede political liberties to extremists (national socialists, racists, communists, religious fanatics) provides information about a society’s level of political liberalness.
Basically, the situation is disillusioning. Polling data create the image of a somewhat prohibitive German mindset. A majority of more than 90 percent is willing to deny extremists their right of assembly – with the prominent exception of communists, anarchists and autonomists and the like, who come off fairly well.
Figure 8: Refusal of Extremists’ Participation Rights (Freedom of Assembly). Sources: ISSP 2004 (V16), 2006 (V8), 2008 (V32).
As to German society’s attitude about extremism, we see something about right wing and religious extremism political scientists call a “cordon sanitaire” – that is the widespread willingness to resolutely distance from extremism. The fact that there is such a cordon sanitaire regarding religious and right wing extremists comes as no surprise – because of the threat to inner security from Islamist terrorism on the one side and the long shadow of national socialism on the other. However, there is barely such a cordon sanitaire regarding left-wing extremists, which caused Wolfgang Rudzio to diagnose an “erosion of the demarcation” (Rudzio, 1988) in German political culture years ago.
What did he mean by that? Immediately after World War II, when the Cold War began to loom, West German political culture was determined by a “cordon sanitaire” against political extremisms of various provenances – be it national-socialist (due to the burden of history), or be it communist (due to the struggle of the two systems). This did not begin to change until the 1970s, when new social movements sprang up like mushrooms and positioned themselves against nuclear energy, against the re-armament of Germany, against the set structures of university etc. In the course of these events that had their media hour of birth in 1968 various social movements of the political left began to band together in order to form a strong force, among them organizations of a democratic kind and movements inspired by Marxism, Trotskyism, Maoism, anarchism and the like.
The alliances of these times have blurred the “cordon sanitaire” between democratic and anti-/semi-democratic organizations of the political left sustainably. That is why the perception of right-and left-wing extremism have diverged gradually ever since. Whereas political ambitions of national socialists, racists, and fascists are widely discredited in German society, the same does not hold true for those of anarchists, left-wing autonomists, and communists.
As to the legitimacy of political rights (the second aspect the charts furnish particular information about), the Germans appear to be easily stretched to their limits. It would not be exaggerated to say that they pursue some kind of “zero-tolerance policy”, characterized by rigour, narrow-mindedness and illiberalism, all of them being signs of a general insecurity in the face of anti-democratic threats. This insecurity in turn sows the seeds for a propensity to treat perceived threats, especially right-wing extremism, with prohibitions.
6. RIGHT-WING EXTREMIST ATTITUDES
The pronounced anti-right-wing attitude the surveys unveil appear to contrast sharply with the media coverage of 2014-2016. The reports and images have created the unmistakable impression of a swing to the right. Thus: Which impression reflects the social reality in a distorted way, which one is a correct mirror image? Is Germany’s political culture characterized by spreading far-right positions or rather by anti-right-wing-extremism? As we will see we have reason to believe that it is the latter.
What the media have covered in the last months – that is the Pegida protests in Dresden and other cities in Germany as well as several anti-asylum protests including violence against refugees – does not find its expression in the opinions and attitudes reported by large-scale surveys, with the “Mitte-Studie” being the most prominent one. Conducted by a research unit in Bielefeld under the direction of Andreas Zick and edited by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the study even recorded the sharpest drop in right-wing extremist attitudes in Germany in 2014. What is more, this trend has continued in 2016 – just when the migrant crisis has reached its climax.
What do they mean by “right-wing extremist attitudes”? The elements of the right-wing syndrome comprised all in all 18 items concerning (1) the approval of a dictatorship, (2) chauvinism, (3) xenophobia, (4) anti-Semitism, (5) social Darwinism as well as (6) the downplaying of National Socialism. Each dimension is represented by three indicators.
Figure 9: Right-Wing Extremist Attitudes. Source: Zick, Küpper, and Krause (2016), p. 139.
If one frequently reads newspapers or watches the TV news, it comes as a surprise that among the six dimensions of right-wing extremism, xenophobic and chauvinist attitudes have recently declined most dramatically. They were recorded with the approval of statements such as “Immigrants come to Germany in order to exploit its welfare state.” or “We should repatriate immigrants when jobs become scarce.” or “Germany is infiltrated with too many foreign influences.”
Nonetheless, the results should be interpreted carefully. In 2014 and 2016 a research group residing in Leipzig arrived at somewhat deviant results – with the identical 18 items. Compared with the data of 2009, they report a drop of right-wing extremism by only 3.3 percentage points (instead of 6.6 percentage points). In addition, according to their study there was even a slight increase in 2016 compared to 2014. It is especially the two dimensions the Bielefeld research group has identified as the most regressive ones the Leipzig group obtains somewhat different evidence for.
| Bielefeld Group | Leipzig Group | |
| Approval of a Dictatorship | 3.6 | 5.0 |
| Chauvinism | 12.5 | 16.7 |
| Xenophobia | 7.7 | 20.4 |
| Anti-Semitism | 2.4 | 4.8 |
| Social Darwinism | 2.0 | 3.4 |
| Downplaying of National Snocialism | 2.0 | 2.1 |
Table 1: Varying Results 2016. Sources: Zick et al. (2016), p. 131; Decker, Kiess, and Brähler (2016), p. 37.
The gaps between both studies point to three facts: 1) Opinions, such as those indicating right-wing extremism, are highly volatile. That is they vary substantially over time. One cannot expect such a syndrome to develop gradually and slowly. Rather, the trend line is – among others – a response to political, social, and economic development. 2) The results we get depend to a considerable degree on the methods we use. Social scientists tend to underestimate the fact that it makes a great difference whether we use face-to-face
