Extreme Right Activists in Europe: Through the Magnifying Glass (Routledge Studies in Extremism and Democracy)

Extreme Right Activists in Europe

Since the 1980s, one of the main political changes in Western Europe has been the electoral upsurge of extreme right-wing parties such as the French FN, the Flemish Vlaams Blok or the Austrian FPÖ. However, while the electoral support of these movements has been studied extensively, their active members have largely been ignored. Extreme Right Activists in Europe redresses this imbalance by examining ‘extreme right-wing activists’ and asking: ● ● ● ●

Who are they? Why do they join? Why do they stay? How similar or how different are they from one country to another?

Countries examined in this book include Italy, France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. Drawing upon extensive research ( life history interviews, observations, archival studies), and featuring contributions from distinguished and world-renowned social psychologists and political scientists, this book provides the most detailed comparative study yet published of the psychology of extremist right-wing activists. This book is essential reading for students and academics with interests in right-wing extremism, social movements and European politics. The editors, Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer, are leading world scholars respectively on social movements and in the field of the extreme right. Bert Klandermans is Professor of Applied Social Psychology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Vrije University, Amsterdam. Nonna Mayer is Director of Research at CNRS, Centre for the Study of Politics of Science Po, Paris and has published extensively on political behaviour.

Routledge Studies in Extremism and Democracy Series Editors: Roger Eatwell, University of Bath, and Cas Mudde, University of Antwerp This new series encompasses academic studies within the broad fields of ‘extremism’ and ‘democracy’. These topics have traditionally been considered largely in isolation by academics. A key focus of the series, therefore, is the (inter-)relation between extremism and democracy. Works will seek to answer questions such as to what extent ‘extremist’ groups pose a major threat to democratic parties, or how democracy can respond to extremism without undermining its own democratic credentials. The books encompass two strands: Routledge Studies in Extremism and Democracy includes books with an introductory and broad focus which are aimed at students and teachers. These books will be available in hardback and paperback. Titles include: Understanding Terrorism in America From the Klan to al Qaeda Christopher Hewitt Fascism and the Extreme Right Roger Eatwell Racist Extremism in Central and Eastern Europe Edited by Cas Mudde Routledge Research in Extremism and Democracy offers a forum for innovative new research intended for a more specialist readership. These books will be in hardback only. Titles include: 1 Uncivil Society? Contentious politics in post-communist Europe Edited by Petr Kopecky and Cas Mudde 2 Political Parties and Terrorist Groups Leonard Weinberg and Ami Pedahzur 3 Western Democracies and the New Extreme Right Challenge Edited by Roger Eatwell and Cas Mudde 4 Confronting Right Wing Extremism and Terrorism in the USA George Michael 5 Anti-Political Establishment Parties A comparative analysis Amir Abedi 6 American Extremism History, politics and the militia D. J. Mulloy 7 The Scope of Tolerance Studies on the costs of free-expression and freedom of the press Raphael Cohen-Almagor 8 Extreme Right Activists in Europe Through the magnifying glass Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer

Extreme Right Activists in Europe Through the magnifying glass

Edited by Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer

First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2006 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer for selection and editorial matter; individual contributors their contributions All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Extreme right activists in Europe: through the magnifying glass/ edited by Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Radicalism–Europe. 2. Right-wing extremists–Europe. I. Klandermans, Bert. II. Mayer, Nonna. HN380.Z9R3295 2005 324.24⬘03–dc22 2005019929 ISBN 0-203-00439-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0–415–35827–2 (Print Edition) ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–35827–9 (Print Edition)

Contents

List of illustrations Notes on contributors Series editors’ preface Preface

vii ix xi xv

PART I

The environment 1 Right-wing extremism as a social movement

1 3

BERT KLANDERMANS AND NONNA MAYER

2 Links with the past

16

BERT KLANDERMANS AND NONNA MAYER

3 Context, alliances and conflict

28

BERT KLANDERMANS AND NONNA MAYER

4 Political demand and supply

42

BERT KLANDERMANS AND NONNA MAYER

5 Writing life-histories: interviewing extreme right-wing activists

51

TEAM MEMBERS

PART II

The interviewees 6 Italy: the offspring of fascism PATRIZIA MILESI, ANTONIO CHIRUMBOLO AND PATRIZIA CATELLANI

65 67

vi

Contents

7 France: a two-centuries-old galaxy

93

VALÉRIE LAFONT

8 Extreme right-wing activism in the Flemish part of Belgium: manifestation of racism or nationalism?

127

HANS DE WITTE

9 ‘Doing it for Germany’: a study of Die Republikaner and Junge Freiheit

151

LUDGER KLEIN AND BERND SIMON

10 The Netherlands: stigmatized outsiders

172

ANNETTE LINDEN AND BERT KLANDERMANS

11 One root, different branches: identity, injustice and schism

204

PATRIZIA CATELLANI, PATRIZIA MILESI AND ALBERTO CRESCENTINI

12 Identity in German right-wing extremism: levels, functions and processes

224

LUDGER KLEIN AND BERND SIMON

13 Do right- and left-wing extremists have anything in common?

248

ANTONIO CHIRUMBOLO, NONNA MAYER AND HANS DE WITTE

14 Through the magnifying glass: the world of extreme right activists

269

BERT KLANDERMANS AND NONNA MAYER

Appendices Bibliography Index

277 293 307

Illustrations

Figures 11.1 Levels of political identity 12.1 A typography of RWE collective identity: the case of the German Republikaner 13.1 Want of equality, by left–right scale 13.2 Want of solidarity, by left–right scale 13.3 Political interest, by left–right scale 13.4 Talking politics, by left–right scale 13.5 Common political interests, by left–right scale 13.6 Will to change society, by left–right scale

222 227 252 253 253 254 254 255

Tables 1.1 4.1 7.1 9.1 9.2 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6 13.7

Party and voters scores on ten-point left–right scale, 1994 Electoral and organizational strength of RWE parties Joining the FN and the MNR Left–right scale: self-placement with regard to political orientation Factors promoting the accessibility of national frames Scores on authoritarian ethnocentrism scale, by location on a left–right scale Attitudes towards authority and power, by location on a left–right scale Levels of authoritarianism among left- (LWE) and right-wing (RWE) extremists Scores of LWE and RWE, on scales of anti-system and anti-parliamentary attitudes Law and order and need for a strong and powerful leader among LWE and RWE Scores of LWE and RWE, on scales of anti-immigration and racist attitudes Scores of LWE and RWE, on scales of nationalism and cultural pluralism

5 45 94 155 163 251 255 257 258 259 259 260

viii Illustrations 13.8 13.9 13.10 13.11 13.12

Scores of LWE and RWE, on scales of economic attitudes Scores of LWE and RWE, on Social Value Inventory Motives for membership of LWE and RWE Scores of LWE and RWE, on seven attitudinal scales Scores of LWE and RWE, on four value orientations

260 261 263 264 266

Boxes 5.1 5.2

Interview scheme Code book summary

57 60

Contributors

Patrizia Catellani is Full Professor of Social Psychology of Politics at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy. Her research activity has developed in the area of cognitive social psychology, with a special focus on applications to the political and judicial contexts. Her most recent studies consider how counterfactual thinking may affect voting behaviour and involvement in collective action. She is the author of several journal articles and books, and has recently co-edited The Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking (Routledge, 2005). Antonio Chirumbolo is Assistant Professor at the University of Chieti-Pescara and received his PhD in Social Psychology at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, in 2002. His principal research interests concern the relationship between political attitudes, epistemic motivations and personality; authoritarianism, social dominance and prejudice; the need for closure and creativity in small groups; and, individual and organizational consequences of job insecurity. Alberto Crescentini is affiliated to the Department of Work and Organizational Psychology of the Faculty of Economics at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy. His research has developed in the area of applied psychology with a special focus on personnel selection and development of leadership. His most recent studies deal with the generational transmission of power inside medium and small familial enterprises. Bert Klandermans is Professor of Applied Social Psychology and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Vrije University, Amsterdam. He has published widely on mobilization and participation in social movements. He is the author of The Social Psychology of Protest (Blackwell, 1997). He edited various thematic collections on social movements research, most recently Methods of Social Movements Research with Suzanne Staggenborg (University of Minnesota Press, 2002). He is currently involved in studies of social and political participation in South Africa, activism at the extreme right and political participation among migrants. His review chapter, ‘Collective political action’, appeared in the Handbook of Political Psychology (Oxford University Press, 2003). Ludger Klein, PhD, is a social scientist and publicist. He studied psychology and sociology at the University of Bonn and conferred his doctorate on right-wing extremism and collective identity at the University of Kiel. Since 1994 he has been an editor of the German Research Journal New Social Movement

x Contributors (Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen). His focal points are social movements and right-wing extremism. Valérie Lafont was at the time of the research, PhD researcher in CEVIPOF, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. She completed a large-scale study (through interviews and observation) into the milieu of extreme right activists in France. Currently involved in a totally different professional field, she has created Cinquièmes Cordes, specializing in artistic and musical production. Annette Linden holds a Masters degree in social psychology from the Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. She assisted Professor Klandermans in the coordination of the European project ‘Extreme Right-wing Activists’ and worked as a researcher (1995–2000) at the Vrije University, Amsterdam, on the project ‘Activists of the Extreme Right in the Netherlands’. After a three-year stay in Ethiopia where she acted as a consultant to several projects she is now involved in teaching and researching on an intermittent basis. Her PhD thesis ‘The social psychology of becoming, being and staying an activist for the extreme right’ will be submitted mid-2005. Nonna Mayer is Research Director at CEVIPOF, the Centre for Political Research of Sciences Po, Paris, and CNRS. She is in charge of the Political Sociology programme on Politics and Societies of ‘Science Politique, Paris’. She is a specialist in political behavior, particularly that of the extreme right in France. Patrizia Milesi is Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy. Her research activity has developed in the area of cognitive social psychology, focusing on explanation processes as applied to the political and judicial contexts. Her most recent studies deal with counterfactual thinking in the judicial context and on the psychological antecedents of collective action and right-wing ideological orientation. She is the author of journal articles and book chapters on counterfactual thinking and on the appeal of the extreme right in changing socioeconomic contexts. Bernd Simon studied psychology, sociology and philosophy at the University of Münster, Germany, and the University of Kent at Canterbury, England. He was a visiting scholar at several universities in the USA and Australia. His current research is concerned with identity and group processes. He is the author of Identity in Modern Society (Blackwell, 2004). Hans De Witte is Professor of Work Psychology at the Department of Psychology of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KULeuven) in Belgium. He teaches work psychology and is member of the Research Group on Stress, Health and Well Being at his department. His research includes the study of the psychological consequences of work and unemployment, job insecurity, temporary employment, downsizing and work stress, as well as attitudes towards work and the impact of job characteristics on social attitudes (such as working-class cultures and political attitudes). He is involved in national and European research concerning these topics.

Series editors’ preface

For much of the ‘short twentieth century’, history was characterized by the clash of great ideologies, internal violence and major wars. Although most catastrophic events took place outside the Western world, Europe and the USA were not immune from the turmoil. Two world wars and a series of lesser conflicts led to countless horrors and losses. Moreover, for long periods Western democracy – especially in its European form – seemed in danger of eclipse by a series of radical forces, most notably communist and fascist. Yet by the turn of the 1990s, liberal democracy appeared destined to become the universal governmental norm. Dictatorial Soviet communism had collapsed, to be replaced in most successor states by multi-party electoral politics. Chinese communism remained autocratic, but in the economic sphere it was moving rapidly towards greater freedoms and marketization. The main manifestations of fascism had gone down to catastrophic defeat in war. Neo-fascist parties were damned by omnipresent images of brutality and genocide, and exerted little appeal outside a fringe of ageing nostalgics and alienated youths. In the western world, political violence had disappeared, or was of minimal importance in terms of system stability. Where it lingered on as a regularly murderous phenomenon – for instance, in Northern Ireland or Spain – it seemed a hangover from the past – a final flicker of the embers of old nationalist passions. It was easy to conclude that such tribal atavism was doomed in an increasingly interconnected ‘capitalist’ world, characterized by growing democratic norms and forms of multi-level governance that were transcending the antagonism and parochialism of old borders. However, as we move into the new millennium there are growing signs that extremism even in the West is far from dead – that we celebrated prematurely the universal victory of democracy. Perhaps the turn of the twenty-first century was an interregnum, rather than a turning point? In western Europe there has been the rise of ‘extreme right’ and ‘populist’ parties such as Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National, which pose a radical challenge to existing elites – even to the liberal political system. In the USA, the 1995 Oklahoma mass-bombing has not been followed by another major extreme right attack, but there is simmering resentment towards the allegedly over-powerful state among well-armed militias and other groups. More generally across the West, new forms of ‘green politics’, often linked

xii Series editors’ preface by a growing hostility to globalization–Americanization, are taking on more violent forms (the issue of animal rights is also growing in importance in this context). In the former Soviet space, there are clear signs of the revival of ‘communist’ parties, often masquerading as ‘socialists’ or ‘social democrats’, whose allegiance to democracy is (in varying degrees) debatable. In Latin America, there remain notable extremist movements on the left, though these tend not to be communist. This trend may well grow both in response to globalization–Americanization and to the (partly linked) crises of many of these countries, such as Argentina. This in turn increases the threat to democracy from the extreme right, ranging in form from paramilitary groups to agro-military conspiracies. The rise of Islamic Fundamentalism has been an even more notable feature of recent years. This is not simply a facet of Middle Eastern politics, where insurgent opposition in post-2003 war Iraq and elsewhere threatens American dreams of universalizing democracy. It has had an impact within some former Soviet republics, where the old nomenklatura have used the Islamic threat to maintain autocratic rule. In countries such as Indonesia and India, Muslims and other ethnic groups have literally cut each other to pieces. More al-Qaeda bombings of the 2002 Bali type threaten economic ruin to Islamic countries which attract many western tourists. It is also important to note that growing Islamic Fundamentalism has had an impact within some western countries. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and elsewhere in the USA on 11 September 2001 are perhaps the most graphic illustration of this impact. But in democracies generally, the rise of religious and other forms of extremism pose vital questions about the limits of freedom, multiculturalism and tolerance. This is especially the case in ones which have experienced notable Islamic immigration and/or which face the greatest threat of further terrorist attack, many of which have witnessed the growth of domestic Islamophobia. Democracy may have become a near-universal shibboleth in the West, but its exact connotations are being increasingly challenged and debated even in its heartland. As long as the ‘evil empire’ of communism existed, democracy could in an important sense define itself by the ‘Other’ – by what it was not. It did not have overt dictatorial rule, censorship, the gulags and so on. But with the collapse of its great external foe, the spotlight has turned inward (although Islam is in some ways replacing communism as the ‘Other’). Is (western) liberal democracy truly democratic? Can it defend itself against terrorism and new threats without undermining the very nature of democracy? These general opening comments provide the rationale for the Routledge Studies in Extremism and Democracy. In particular, there are three issues which we seek to probe in this series: ● ● ●

Conceptions of democracy and extremism; Forms of the new extremism in both the West and the wider world; How democracies are responding to the new extremism.

Series editors’ preface

xiii

Bert Klandermans’ and Nonna Mayer’s new work in this series addresses aspects of the first two questions within a West European setting, focusing on the neglected issue of activists – the often small band of people who devote considerable time to the ‘cause’, in spite of the fact that they typically receive no financial benefit and are often stigmatized by much of society for their actions. For a long time the study of post-war right-wing extremism, even that done by social scientists, was mainly descriptive and historical. The conceptual and theoretical reference was mostly (explicitly or implicitly) to insights obtained from the study of inter-war fascism, which emerged in a very different political and socio-economic context – including in many countries, the impact of a traumatic world war, major economic dislocation and the threat from a violent left. In the 1990s, under the influence of seminal studies such as Piero Ignazi’s article ‘The silent counter-revolution’ (1992) and Hans-Georg Betz’s book Radical Right Wing Populism in Western Europe (1994), important insights from research on comparative party politics were introduced into the study of contemporary rightwing extremism, which has contributed to a significant improvement of the academic quality of the field. It is our belief that Extreme Right Activists in Europe: through the magnifying glass will become another landmark study. First, it introduces a host of new theoretical insights into the study of the extreme right. In particular, theories from the field of (new) social movements and from the discipline of social psychology are presented and applied in this highly innovative book. It is not the first time that insights from these fields have been applied to the extreme right – particularly within the German-language literature, a lively debate exists on the question whether the extreme right can be considered a social movement, while authors such as Herbert Kitschelt or Hans-Peter Kriesi have applied concepts such as the ‘political opportunity structure’ (POS) to the study of extreme right parties. However, no other study has done it in such a coherent and comprehensive manner. Second, this is the first comprehensive cross-national study of activists of extreme right organizations, including the often-neglected issue of female activists. Coming together during the 1990s, an international team of ten social scientists from three academic disciplines carried out carefully coordinated life history interviews with 157 activists from some 15 extreme right organizations in five different West European countries. The resulting work is a qualitative approach to active members of differing types of extreme right organizations, a marked contrast of focus to the many existing studies which focus exclusively on voting, or potential support, for extreme right parties. Third, the work offers many important insights into the nature of such activists. For example, some contest that they are truly ‘extreme right-wing’, though they generally accept some form of ‘nationalist’ labelling. Arguably even more interesting from a social psychological point of view, many right-wing ‘extremists’ are ‘perfectly normal, socially integrated’ people, motivated by concerns such as injustice rather than by the pathological personality traits which have stereotypically been associated with old forms of the extreme right, especially fascism.

xiv Series editors’ preface Fourth, this study makes both implicit and explicit comparisons between rightwing extremists and other activists, including both left-wing extremists and members of the classic new social movements. Contrary to the views of some, the authors reject the view that there are many similarities between extremists of left and right, holding that the latter are far less concerned with equality, and more concerned with ‘security’ rather than ‘harmony’ values. Obviously, a pioneering study of this magnitude will have weak spots and limitations, as the authors generously admit in their final chapter. For example, more work needs to be done on violent activists; and while the term ‘charisma’ is mentioned frequently, there is little attempt to probe the exact relationship between leadership and activists. Despite all the accomplishments, this is, in the editors’ own words, ‘a first exploration of the rich material collected’. In that respect, the suggestions for future research, and most notably the promise that the dataset of the project will be made available to the academic community, will hopefully lead to many more new insights. As such, we believe that this study will become a benchmark for future studies on right-wing extremist activists. Roger Eatwell and Cas Mudde Bath and Antwerp

Preface

Almost ten years ago our group of social psychologists, sociologists and political scientists met to discuss a study of extreme right activists. We were struck by the fact that so little was known about the people that were behind the upsurge of contemporary right-wing extremism. We conceived of right-wing extremism as a social movement and knew that social movements do not appear out of thin air, but result from the efforts of movement activists to turn mobilization potential into action. To be sure, a lot was known about the supporters of these movements, especially the voters for their parties. But social movement literature taught us that what is true for supporters does not necessarily hold for the organizers. At the same time, we were surprised to see that most literature on right-wing extremism portrayed these movements as irrational and eruptive, ignoring approaches such as ‘resource mobilization’ theory which elaborates on the assumed rationality of movement participation. We could not help but having the impression that it was tempting to define the movements we like as rational, and those we don’t like as irrational. Against this background, we began to argue that the extreme right was no more irrational or rational than any other movement, and that it would be worth the effort to find out what the reasons for extreme right activism could be like. How do people come to believe that the problems they observe in society can be cured by the solutions the extreme right movements offer? Why are they ready to spend so much time and effort as an activist of the extreme right, despite the adverse consequences? These were the questions we tried to answer. We decided to conduct life-history interviews, as we felt that this was needed to reconstruct the ways that had brought people to activism. Between 1997 and 1999, we spent very many hours interviewing activists and officials of extreme right organizations in Belgium, France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands. In previous years the group had met several times to elaborate our approach further and to agree on the details of our research design. We were very much aware of the fact that the key to a successful project laid in the development of a common instrument for doing and then coding the interviews in each of the five countries. However, common instruments require a common theoretical framework. We certainly were prepared to develop such a framework, but coming from five different countries, three different disciplines and standing in different research traditions, it took quite some time and many

xvi

Preface

heated debates to build it. For all its significance – and it is significant – interdisciplinary and comparative research is not always easy. Thanks to the patience and good spirit of the team, we managed and the project became a learning experience for all of us. Although we never regretted our decision to conduct life-history interviews, this turned out to be one of those endeavours about which, thinking back, one wonders whether one would have ever done it, had one known beforehand what it entailed. Conducting and analysing the interviews required much more energy and creativity than we had ever realized. None of us had really figured out what it actually and concretely means to conduct and process dozens of in-depth interviews, in four different languages. While we all occasionally wondered with some desperation if we would ever get through, we eventually found a way of doing it. The result of it is an immensely valuable set of data: 157 fully transcribed interviews in their original language, summaries of each plus exemplary quotations translated into English, contextual information and field notes. This book is an attempt to take advantage of what is there. We are aware that it is impossible to do justice to such rich data in a single publication, and we will certainly go on exploiting this goldmine.1 Moreover, it is our intention to make the interviews eventually available to the academic community for further exploration through a data archive. Apart from scientific curiosity, our study was motivated by our concern about the rapid growth of right-wing extremism, and its meaning. Knowing more about those who are its moving spirit could help defining proper answers to the challenge it represents to modern democracies. Such motivation made our mission a delicate one. As we did not operate undercover, we had no choice but being upfront with our interviewees. At the same time we expected them to be suspicious, for understandable reasons, many of them having been ill-treated by journalists in the past. We were surprised, however, by their readiness to work with us. To be sure, a few were distrustful and refused to be interviewed, but several changed their mind later on after they had heard from their fellow activists that we could be trusted. We are very grateful that they let us intrude into their lives and spend so many hours with us. Without their willingness to share their life-histories with us, this study would have been impossible. Our work has benefited from the support of various institutions and individuals. The Netherlands Foundation for Scientific Research (NWO) made the project possible by granting Bert Klandermans the resources for the basic infrastructure of an international collaborative research project of this kind. Each of our own institutions contributed in different ways by bearing some of the costs of the research, hosting the team when it came together and providing all kinds of logistic support in the various phases of the project. Finally, our students have supported us in various roles – as interviewers, as transcribers, as coders. Although the members of the team did much of the daunting work themselves, the assistance of our students was in many occasions indispensable. The literature on right-wing extremism is full of pictures from afar that tell us about big structures and grand processes but little about people. Looking through

Preface

xvii

the magnifying glass of the stories they told us, we hope that we have brought the people behind the movement to live. Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer Amsterdam and Paris Note 1 Meanwhile in Germany Ludger Klein finished his dissertation based on the German interviews while Annette Linden is about to finish her dissertation based on the Dutch interviews.

Part I

The environment

1

Right-wing extremism as a social movement Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer

Since the 1980s, one of the main political changes in western Europe has been the electoral upsurge of right-wing ‘extremist’ or ‘radical’ parties, such as the French Front National (FN), the Flemish Vlaams Blok (VB), the Austrian FPÖ, or the Italian Alleanza Nazionale (AN) (ex-Movimento Sociale Italiano – MSI). However, while the electoral support for these movements has been studied extensively, their membership, with a few exceptions such as Van Donselaar (1991) in Holland, Orfali (1990), Ivaldi (1994) or Bizeul (2003) in France, Maraffi in Italy (2001), has been ignored, although their capacity to attract and keep followers appears as one of the key conditions of their future development. Who joins the extreme right, and why? How similar, how different are extreme right activists from one country to another? These are the questions our book attempts to answer. Bringing together social psychologists and political scientists from the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy and Germany,1 it draws on a large-scale cross-national research based on some 150 in-depth interviews, conducted between 1995 and 1999 with extreme right activists from each country. Unlike many comparative approaches to the extreme right, this is not just a collection of national monographs. The theoretical and methodological frame, the interview guide and the coding scheme were elaborated collectively after extensive discussions at more than a dozen meetings over a period of six years. Summaries of the interviews were circulated, data analysis problems were debated in common, articles and papers written together. And besides the country chapters, thematic cross-national chapters outline what extreme right activists share in common and what makes them different, from one context to another.

Extreme right activists By activist – from the Latin ‘activus’, Aktivist or Aktiver in German, activist in Dutch, attivista in Italian, but militant in French – we mean individuals who are not only members but active participants in a movement,2 ‘who fight for a collective cause in an enduring way’ (Mouriaux 1983: 54). It implies a deeper commitment (Klandermans 1997) than just casting a ballot for a right-wing extremist (RWE) party and suggests that extreme right activists may not have exactly the same profile and motivations than voters or sympathizers.

4 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer Defining ‘extreme right’ activist was more problematic. The polemic nature of the term weighs on the debate. In the collective memory of Europeans, it automatically evokes the Second World War, Nazism and the extermination of 6 million Jews. Labelling a movement as ‘extreme right’ involves associating it indirectly with fascism and its crimes, discrediting it morally and excluding it from the democratic political game. Unsurprisingly, most movements studied in this book deny such an infamous label. The academic uses of the word are also confusing. In his survey of the literature, Cas Mudde (1996) counted no less than 28 competing definitions of the contemporary extreme right, along 58 different ideological dimensions. Jürgen Falter and Siegfried Schumann (1988), in the line of Adorno et al’s work (1950), define right-wing extremism by the combination of ten ideological features – hyper nationalism, ethnocentrism, anti-communism, antiparliamentarism, anti-pluralism, militarism, law and order thinking, a demand for a strong political leader, anti-Americanism and cultural pessimism (Falter and Schumann 1988; see also Karvonen 1997). Meindert Fennema (1997) selects only one characteristic, xenophobia. As for Piero Ignazi (1997), he combines a spatial definition – parties located at the right end of the left–right continuum – and an ideological criterion – fascism is the key reference (the old extreme right) and/or anti-system, anti-democratic values (the new extreme right).3 But again there is no agreement on the core features of a ‘minimum’ or ‘generic’ fascism or on the definition of anti-system features. Besides, most authors classify these parties a priori, on the base of ideological features attributed without any systematic examination of their platforms, and not taking into account the ‘double language’ – respectable for the outside public and tough for the party members – that they often use. To this quasi-essentialist approach of RWE, taking for granted some immutable ideological features of the extreme right, we prefer a relativist definition such as that of Seymour M. Lipset and Earl Raab in their classic study of right-wing extremism in America. For them extremism is ‘a self serving term’ (1970). It may mean going to the limit, which can often be justified; or it may mean going beyond the limit, which by self-definition is never justified. But the ‘limits’, as defined by the basic institutions of society, have never been static. In terms of specific issues, extremism most simply means going to the poles of the ideological scale. In its more pejorative sense – in the sense in which it is linked to such terms as ‘authoritarianism’ and ‘totalitarianism’ – as an absolute political evil, extremism is not so much a matter of issues as one of procedures. In this sense, extremism means going beyond the limits of the normative procedures which define the democratic political process. Many of these procedural norms are themselves constantly being redefined (Lipset and Raab 1970: 3–4). Consequently, we decided to consider as extreme right the parties located furthest on the right in each country and to rely on the interviews to investigate the ideological stands of their members and their respect for democratic procedures. The Eurobarometer survey conducted just after the European elections of 1994 asked each national sample to classify the parties of their respective countries on a spatial left–right scale in ten positions, ranging between 1 at the extreme left and 10 at the extreme

Right-wing extremism as a social movement 5 right (see Table 1.1).4 The parties located at the extreme right are the Republikaner (REP) in Germany, the FN in France, the MSI/AN in Italy, the VB in Flanders and the Centrumdemocraten (CD) in the Netherlands, with scores ranging between 8.3 and 9.2. These scores clearly rise high above the average scores of the voters on the same scale, which range between 4.9 and 5.4, and also higher than for the other right-wing parties. There is more than one-point difference between the scores of the VB and those of the Flemish nationalist party (VU) or the liberal party (VLD), as between the FN and the Gaullist party (RPR), between the CD and the other liberal or protestant right-wing parties, between the AN and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI). There is as much as two points between AN and the populist Lega Nord, or between the REP and the Christian Democrats. We shall therefore provisionally consider activists who join these parties as extreme right, whether or not they consider these movements as extreme right and whether or not they consider themselves as extreme right. For they have in common that they are perceived and stigmatized as such in their own country. The bulk of the interviews were conducted with members of these five parties and/or their connected networks such as youth or students’ groups. For comparison, we also did some interviews with members of smaller or more radical organizations such as CP ’86, Volks Nationalisten Nederland (VNN), NVU, Nederlands Blok and Voorpost in the Netherlands, an action group, Voorpost and a nationalist student movement, NSV, in Flanders, Movimento Sociale-Fiamma Tricolore (MS-FT) and Fascismo e Libertà in Italy, editors of the weekly magazine Junge Freiheit ( JF) in

Table 1.1 Party and voters scores on ten-point left–right scale, 1994 Country

ERW party

ERW party score

Closest right-wing party score

Voters’ score

Germany

Republikaner

9.20

5.32

France

FN

9.05

Italy

AN

8.65

Flanders

VB

8.57

Netherlands

CD

8.28

7.03 CDU/CSU 7.97/7.04 RPR, UDF 7.53/6.56 FI, Lega Nord 7.60/7.58/7.51 VLD, VU, CVP 7.00/ 7.01/7.02 SGP, VVD, GPV

Source: European Elections Study, June 1994. Notes CDU-CSU: Christian Democrats. RPR: Rassemblement Pour la République. UDF: Union pour la Démocratie Française. VLD: Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten. VU: Volksunie. CVP: Christelijke Volkspartij. VVD: Liberal party. SGP, GPV: Protestant Conservative parties.

4.92 5.38 5.22 5.36

6 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer Germany and Action Française (AF) in France. But we were mostly interested in members of RWE organized parties, that have made the choice of taking part in the electoral competition and abiding by the rules of representative democracy, leaving aside the violent terrorist groups or skinheads as well as the New Right circles who prefer cultural warfare to the political arena.

Traditional approaches to right-wing extremism Early studies of RWE largely took a psychoanalytic turn and insisted on the irrational dimension of extremism. Examples are Wilhelm Reich’s study on the mass psychology of fascism, the surveys conducted before the Second World War by the Institute for Social Sciences of Frankfurt on the authoritarianism of the working class, the work of Harold Lasswell or Erich Fromm on the psychology of Hitlerism. But the most famous of these studies until now is The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno et al. 1954), which sees the origin of extremism in the individual’s personality. A syndrome of authoritarian attitudes, formed during childhood by dominating parents, is supposed to predispose people to political extremism.5 Reacting against this psychoanalytical approach, other authors defined RWE as a way of thinking, a rigid ‘cognitive style’. According to them, it reduces the complexity of real life to simple choices, it boils down politics to a Manichaean struggle between the forces of good and the forces of evil and it sees plots everywhere (Billig 1979). The theory of conspiracy gives to the person ‘who knows’ a global key of explanation and a feeling of superiority towards the ‘naïve’ who let themselves be manipulated. According to this approach RWE should be particularly attractive for people with low income and little education. This is shown by the early work of Christie and Jahoda (1954) on the link between low education and authoritarianism, as well as by the classical study of Selznick and Sternberg (1969) on ‘simplism’ and its relation with prejudice. A third approach focuses on economic and social change and its destabilizing consequences. From Geiger to Lipset, Nazism has often been presented as a reaction of despair coming from the independent middle classes, crushed between big capital on the one side and the working-class movement on the other. Today, in the transition from industrial to post-industrial society, manual blue collars are the ‘losers of modernization’ and the first to respond to the calls of extremist parties (Minkenberg 2001). Lastly, Hannah Arendt’s work on the origins of totalitarism or William Kornhauser’s work on mass society, made scholars assume that the breakdown of elementary solidarity, the mechanisms of social exclusion and ‘disaffiliation’ that isolates individuals, would predispose them to be mobilized by extremist movements. If one combines these different models, which indistinctly apply to extremist voting and extremist activism, four basic features – authoritarianism, lack of education, economic insecurity and social isolation – supposedly help turn someone into a RWE. We shall of course look into the psychological and socio-economic profile of our interviewees to check if this is so, but we propose a different approach. We consider RWE organizations as part of a social movement, obeying

Right-wing extremism as a social movement 7 the same dynamics as any other social movement. And we assume that participation in RWE organizations is as equally rational as in any other movement or organization.

Right-wing extremism as a social movement Although most of the activists studied here were actively involved in political parties, they were also in the wake of a larger mobilization which goes beyond the process of ordinary politics and takes the form of a social movement in the classical sense defined by Sidney Tarrow (1998: 3): ‘collective challenges by people with common purposes and solidarity in sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities.’ Taking into consideration the purposive, collective and dynamic aspects of participation in social movements departs from the traditional approaches of RWE and has several consequences, the most obvious being that we look at RWE as movement activists, at organizations of the extreme right as movement organizations and at today’s right-wing extremism as a cycle in a longer trajectory. Social movement literature abandoned personality psychology as an explanatory framework for movement activism a long time ago, and turned to conceptualizations of the interaction of people with their environment for a better understanding. This is what we will do as well. We will try to understand the motivation of someone who becomes an extreme right-wing activist and describe the environment in which such motivation emerges. By ‘environment’, we mean both movement organizations and the wider societal context. RWE organizations may be more or less attractive to a person and the wider social environment may be more or less hostile to the extreme right-wing movement and its participants. Similarly, social movement literature has abandoned theories that pictured movement participation as irrational. Scholars began to emphasize the instrumental character of movement participation: no longer was it depicted as behaviour out of resentment by marginal and isolated individuals, or as aggressive reaction to frustration, but as politics by other means. It was especially the resource mobilization approach, as illustrated by the work of such pioneers as Oberschall (1973) and McCarthy and Zald (1976) and the ‘political process’ approaches (Tilly 1978; McAdam 1982) that took the assumed rationality of movement participants as their point of departure. Therefore, we assume that choosing to join an RWE movement, as any other movement, has a rationality of its own, that activists have reasons to do so. And we took it as our challenge to discover what these reasons are. Motives to participate The answers that have been given to the question of why a social movement appeals to an individual can be boiled down to three fundamental motives. People may want to change the world they live in, they may want to be part of a group, or they may want to give meaning to their world and express their views. Together, these three motives account for most demands for collective political action in a

8 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer society. Social movements may supply the opportunity to fulfil these demands, and the better they do the more movement participation turns into a satisfying experience. We will refer in brief to these three types of transactions as instrumentality, identity and ideology. Instrumentality refers to movement participation as an attempt to influence the social and political environment; identity refers to movement participation as an expression of identification with a group; ideology refers to movement participation as a search for meaning and an expression of one’s views. Different theories are associated with these three aspects (see Tarrow 1998 and Klandermans 1997 for overviews). Instrumentality is related to resource mobilization and political process theories of social movements and, at the psychological level, to rational choice theory and expectancy-value theories. Identity is related to sociological approaches to group relations and collective identity formation and with the social–psychological social identity theory. Ideology is related to approaches in social movement literature that focus on culture, meaning, narratives, moral reasoning and emotion and in psychology to self-verification theory and theories of social cognition and emotions. These are not mutually exclusive motives, or competing views on social movement participation, although some authors in the debate sometimes take that position. We do agree, however, with those who argue that approaches that neglect any of those three motives are fundamentally flawed. To be sure, individual participants may participate because of a single motive, but all three are needed to understand why people take part in collective political action. In the interviews with right-wing activists that form the empirical basis of our book, we went to great lengths to explore with them to what extent each of these motives had played a role in their specific situation. Instrumentality implies that people may choose to participate in a social movement because they believe that they can change their social and political environment. The instrumentality paradigm holds that their behaviour is controlled by the perceived costs and benefits of participation. It is taken for granted that they are aggrieved, but it is not so much the grievances per se, but the belief that the situation can be changed at affordable cost that make them participate. They have the resources and perceive the opportunities to make an impact. This is not to say that movement participation is completely explained by the collective incentives related to goal achievement (Olson 1965). Participation is also accompanied by socalled ‘selective incentives’ – that is, incentives that only participants encounter. They can be material incentives such as a career in the movement, a job, benefiting from the movement’s networks and the like (Gaxie 1977). Brustein’s innovative study (1996) of mass membership in the Nazi party before 1933 brilliantly demonstrates that political affiliation was largely based on perceived economic self-interest: It was not because they were evil that Germans flocked to the Nazi party before 1933, nor did they perceive the NSDAP as representing evil. Rather, many Germans calculated that of the competing Weimar parties, the Nazis offered them the best prospects for a better life. In particular, in the midst of

Right-wing extremism as a social movement 9 the Great Depression, the Nazi Party alone crafted economic programs that in the perception of many Germans could redress their grievances or provide the means to greater social mobility. (Brustein 1996: 180) Identity is the second motive. Instrumentality – that is, movement participation to achieve some external goal (social or political change) – is not the only reason to participate, certainly not among ‘militants’. After all, many of the external goals are reached only in the long run, if at all. Similarly, costs often outweigh benefits. Apparently, there is more to being a movement ‘militant’ than perceived costs and benefits. Indeed, there is also the awareness of belonging to a valued group. Friedman and McAdam (1992) refer to this as ‘identity motives’. Identity will feature in various chapters in this book. In social psychology it refers to the value attached to group membership, in the social movement literature it refers to the ‘shared definitions of a group that derive from members’ common interests and solidarity’ (Taylor and Whittier 1992). Identity has two aspects: it defines an ingroup with which people identify and out-groups from which they distance themselves. In social movement literature identity defines a ‘we’ that is a definition of the group or collectivity treated unjustly and a ‘they’ that is a definition of some institution or authority that is responsible for the injustice. All these elements can be encountered in the search for identity as a motive to become a ‘militant’. People engage with a social movement because a group they identify with is treated unfairly and because social movement activity is seen as a means to improve the group’s situation. At the same time, they derive a positive social identity from their movement participation; they feel committed to the movement, to the people in the movement or to the movement leader. For instance, Birgitta Orfali’s early work on activists of the French Front National suggests that they had the feeling that they had found a new family, they said it made them feel better to join, they were no longer alone, other people were thinking like them, they felt no longer marginalized but recognized, finding their balance at last: ‘It is feeling good for sure. I live in agreement with myself. That’s something very important, it hadn’t happened to me in a long time’ (Orfali 1990: 129). Ideology is the third motivation, related to the search for meaning in which some people engage or the desire people feel to express their views. Social movements play a significant role in the diffusion of ideas and values (Rochon 1988). In the hands of movement leaders, new ideas become ‘ideological frames’ (Rochon 1988: 31). Social movement organizations, then, are carriers of meaning, which through processes such as ‘consensus mobilization’ (Klandermans 1984) or ‘framing’ (Snow et al. 1986), seek to propagate their definition of the situation to the public at large. In the social movement literature such definitions of the situation have been labelled ‘collective action frames’ (Gamson 1992; Klandermans 1997). We may assume that people who join a movement come to share some part of the movement’s action frame and that this gives meaning to their world. At the same time, people might be puzzled by some aspects of reality and try to understand what is going on. They may look for others with similar experiences and the movement

10 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer may provide an environment to exchange experiences and to tell their stories. On the other hand, social movements provide people with the opportunity to act on their beliefs. Even if such acts are not extremely effective in terms of the social or political change they bring about they do help people to maintain their dignity and integrity by acting on their principles and values, or by expressing their indignation or anger. Recently, the idea that people might participate in movements to express their views has received attention from movement scholars who were unhappy with the overly structural approach of the resource mobilization and political process theories. These scholars put an emphasis on such aspects as the creative and cultural aspects of social movements, narratives, emotions and moral indignation (Goodwin et al. 2000). People are angry, develop feelings of moral indignation about some state of affairs or some government decision, and they want to make that known. Organizations and context Individuals thus wish to realize a mixture of motives through movement participation. As indicated, the better social movement organizations are in providing the opportunity to do so, the more satisfying an experience movement participation appears to be. Attention to characteristics of the organizations of the extreme right is therefore relevant for a better understanding of individual participation. Apparently, movement participation is not only a matter of demand – that is, of the presence of people who are motivated to participate – but also of supply – that is, the presence of attractive opportunities to participate. The attractiveness of opportunities to participate is obviously related to characteristics of the organization. In order to understand why some people join the RWE movement and others do not, and why in some countries people flock to these organizations while in others they stay away, it is essential to study the characteristics of the organizations and of their informal networks: the internal resources-leadership, money, structures – they have at their disposal, the popular support they enjoy, the incentives they can provide and the strategies they elaborate to increase and sustain participation. All these are crucial characteristics in the recruitment of activists, because they tell the novice how strong a movement he is going to be part of. In addition, one must take into account the external resources these organizations can find in their environment. Movement organizations do not exist in a vacuum and how supportive or hostile their environment is makes a huge difference to their chances of success. Their influence depends on the links they have with other movements, challengers, allies or opponents in the ‘multiorganizational field’ and on the ‘political opportunities’ opened for them at a given moment: the strength or weakness of the state, changes in the electoral rules, the party system, political alignments, repression and facilitation, etc. We assume that in our five countries the type and structure of RWE organizations and the political and social context provide different opportunities for RWE activism: that some environments will facilitate participation more than others. We will systematically explore these differences.

Right-wing extremism as a social movement 11 Continuity Social movements have a continued existence over time, with cycles of growth and decline. Movement organizations are not conjured out of air; they do not build only on an ideological heritage but also on a structural one. Ideologies have their structural carriers – groups and organizations that identify with the ideology or are identified with it. Moreover, present movements have often had their predecessors. For example, the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s had its predecessor in the suffrage movement at the end of the nineteenth century, and the peace movement of the 1980s has had several waves of mobilization as its forerunners following the Second World War. One of the questions we have sought to answer in our study concerned the predecessors of today’s RWE movement. This brought us inevitably to the question of the links to pre-war Nazism and fascism. Many authors have assumed a direct connection (cf. Scheepers et al. 1993), but others, such as Kitschelt and McGann (1995) or Betz (1994) have asserted the novelty of contemporary RWE. Yet we lack a systematic exploration of the links existing between today’s RWE movements and those of the 1930s. One can, of course, look for similar ideas or values, but it is equally important to investigate whether the organizations that are involved in the supply of extreme right ideas and values are structurally linked to those which were propagating these ideas in the past. Perhaps one of the reasons why systematic research is lacking is that the literature on right-wing extremism did not specify any mechanism that could be the vehicle of such continuity. In this regard the social movement approach and especially Verta Taylor’s notion of ‘abeyance structures’ (1989) can be helpful. Taylor uses Mizruchi’s (1983) ideas about ‘abeyance organizations’ which develop when a society provides marginal or dissident groups with insufficient space. She suggests that committed activists become isolated if a movement loses support. They, then, establish alternative structures which make it possible to continue to cherish the old ideals. A movement in abeyance consists of groups of activists who have found a niche for themselves and who thus maintain activist networks and a collective identity. These abeyance structures, according to Taylor, promote the continuance of the movement and are important in later periods of mobilization. Although Taylor’s study is one of the few on the subject, there is every reason to assume that similar abeyance structures exist in other social movements. For example, Everts and Walraven (1984) point to what they called ‘prophetic minorities of the Dutch peace movement’ – that is, small groups of true believers who helped the movement through years of inactivity, and Kleidman (1993) demonstrates that the American peace movement never disappeared completely between subsequent mobilizations. In his dissertation Van Donselaar (1991) describes the extreme rightist organizations that existed in the Netherlands between 1950 and 1990. Although he is reluctant to characterize these organizations as fascist organizations, his study demonstrates that the organizations he investigated do indeed link pre-war and post-war right-wing extremism. De Witte (1996) and Swyngedouw (1998) report similar linkages between the VB and pre-war and post-war Nazi organizations, as do Winkler and Schumann (1998) for Germany.

12 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer However, pre-war Nazism and fascism were not the only predecessors of today’s RWE. In France, for instance, the oppositional structures that emerged during the war of independence in Algeria are also relevant. Moreover, France has a rich extreme right ideological and political tradition from which the current extreme right can borrow. In Belgium, on the other hand, Flemish nationalism nurtured ideological frames and organizational structures that appeared to be instrumental for the development of the RWE in Belgium, especially in Flanders (De Witte and Klandermans 2000). It are all these different roots that we will explore, in order to get a better understanding of the RWE movements of today. In the previous pages we have outlined the many differences that might exist between the five countries of our study. In the chapters to come we will explore these differences. As we shall see, large differences exist between the five countries in the environment of extreme right activism. The variation is large enough to make for fairly different political and social contexts, which can be seen as external circumstances that influence participation and make it easy or difficult to join a RWE movement. Basically, we argue that being an extreme right activist has a significantly different meaning in each of the five countries. This is not to say that RWE activism in the five countries is unique and not comparable. On the contrary, it is precisely the contextual differences that make the comparison worth the effort. We propose to explore the following dimensions: ●

●

●

●

The historical roots of right-wing extremism We shall look into the past of each country. Did contemporary RWE movements have predecessors? To what extent could they build upon similar abeyance structures? What are the continuities and the discontinuities? The political context We shall describe how easy or difficult it is for the extreme right to enter the political arena at the national and local level and discuss the legal arrangements that foster or constrain its development. The multi-organizational field We shall identify who are the allies and the opponents of RWE movements in the political arena and in society as a whole. How do other parties react, are there any competing parties, is there a strong countermovement? The political demand and supply How receptive is the public in each country to the ideas of the extreme right? What is the potential reservoir of RWE organizations in the five countries? On the other hand, what do the organizations offer? We shall compare the organizations and parties of the extreme right in our five countries – their resources, their leadership, their constituencies and their capacity to exploit their internal and external resources.

Together, these four dimensions define to a large extent the social and political environment of RWE. They are indispensable elements in understanding the social and political psychology of this type of activism. Part I of the book (Chapters 1–5) describes this environment, the links with the past (Chapter 2), the political

Right-wing extremism as a social movement 13 context and the multi-organizational field (Chapter 3) and the demand and supply of RWE (Chapter 4) in each country, as well as the methods we have used for this study (Chapter 5). Part II of the book (Chapters 6–14) deals with the stories told by the interviewees. We will try to reveal the dynamics that translate these environmental characteristics into the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviour exhibited in the interviews. We have organized Part II of the book by country, but in a specific way. Rather than repeating the same story-line for each country over and again or alternatively making thematic comparisons that lose sight of the extreme right in a specific country, we decided to focus each chapter on what is most specific about the extreme right movements in each national setting. The characteristic chosen as the focal point of these chapters is present in the other countries as well, but we use the country where it is most prominent to elaborate and illustrate. In addition, each chapter specifies the various ways to activism taken by the interviewees. Chapter 6 thus shows how the extreme right in Italy is firmly rooted in its fascist history. It is the only one of our five case where there is no tendency whatsoever among the activists to deny or even hide these roots. On the contrary, they are proud of them and feel that themselves, their parents and grandparents have been unfairly discriminated against because of their involvement in the fascist movement. Continuity is the key word in this chapter. It shows how a fascist identity builds up since childhood and through family socialization, is strengthened in fights with the left wing, at school or university, or in public episodes of anti-MSI violence and how psychological and relational benefits derived from the activists’ commitment counterbalance the stigmatization they suffer from. Chapter 7 uses the French case to demonstrate that the extreme right is not cut from the same cloth. In fact, the FN is a coalition of heterogeneous groups and currents, the roots of which in some cases date back to the French Revolution. Indeed, the French extreme right has the longest and most diversified tradition to build on. The strength of the FN comes from its successful attempt to bring and hold together these different families and revive the French extreme right that had been in abeyance. In Chapter 8, discussing Belgian extreme right activism, we show how Flemish nationalism motivates the activist much more than xenophobia or antisystem sentiment. The majority of the Belgian activists comes from a Flemish nationalist milieu – another story of continuity. But, unlike Italy, there was no sign of pride taken in the fascist history of the Flemish nationalist movement. The Belgian case also illustrates clearly the difference between the motives of extreme right activists and those of voters, who are more motivated by ethnocentrism and anti-system sentiments. Nationalism is also the core motivation of the German activists, not in opposition to some other region within the nation, as in Belgium, but as a collective identity that must be defended against the undermining influence of alien elements. We found this kind of nationalism in all countries, but most prominently in Germany (Chapter 9). If extreme right activists encountered measures of stigmatization everywhere, in no country was it to the extent Dutch activists experienced it. Chapter 10 focuses on stigmatization and the way activists cope with it. Using the stories of the Dutch interviewees it also shows how dealing

14 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer with stigmatization depends on the previous trajectory that led to activism. Chapter 11 takes us back to Italy. This chapter concentrates on the schism within the extreme right after the MSI turned at the double Congress of Fiuggi (25–29 January 1995) into the AN (see Chapter 2 in this volume). Internal conflicts and schisms are common practice within extreme organizations of the right and of the left. The battle is usually about ideological purity. As we had interviewed members of the three Italian organizations that claimed to be the real heirs of the MSI, the Italian data provided an excellent opportunity to explore schismatic processes and their consequences for the people involved. Chapter 12 concentrates on collective identity. Using the German interviews as a starting point it discusses RWE identity as an instance of a politicized collective identity. It proposes a topography of such an identity; it describes the way this identity builds itself up in in-group/ out-group relations; it shows the functions it serves (belongingness, distinctiveness, respect, understanding and agency) and the processes that foster these identity functions (self-stereotyping, conformity, prejudice and discrimination). Chapter 13 differs from the previous chapters in that it uses independent survey data to look for possible similarities between left-wing extremists and right-wing extremists, comparing attitudes and values of samples of extreme left and extreme right activists in Belgium, France and Italy. As one might expect, both appear politicized and radical, but the similarities stop there. Right-wing extremists are authoritarian, ethnocentric, socially conservative, economically liberal, with a clear anti-democratic streak. Left-wing extremists are anti-authoritarian, antiethnocentric, libertarian and interventionist, and attached to basic democratic principles. Finally, Chapter 14 summarizes the results of the study, outlining the similarities and dissimilarities between activists in each country, the major factors that explain them, and develops a general typology of RWE today, with some speculations about its future.

Notes 1 ‘The ‘Right-wing extremists’ project was initiated by Bert Klandermans in 1994 and funded by the department of psychology of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, Project (NWO). The members of the project are: Bert Klandermans and Annette Linden in the Netherlands, Nonna Mayer and Valérie Lafont in France, Bernd Simon and Ludger Klein in Germany, Hans De Witte and Kaat Bilsen in Belgium, Patricia Catellani, Patricia Milesi, Antonio Chirumbolo and Alberto Crescentini in Italy. There was initially a Spanish team, Fernando Reinares and Rosario Jabardo (Faculta de Ciencias politicas y sociologia, Dipartimento de Sociologia, Madrid), who finally withdrew from the project. 2 Interestingly in English the word militancy (from the Latin miles, soldier) refers to more radical forms of activism. In France, in spite of its religious (L’Eglise Militante) and military connotations, it gradually came to mean active and lasting participation in no matter what organization. Exactly the same applies to the situation in Flanders (Belgium): activists are normally called ‘militants’, too. 3 Ignazi draws on Roger Griffin’s work on The Nature of Fascism (1991) and on Zeev Sternhell’s Naissance de l’Idéologie Fasciste (1989), defining fascism as a revolutionary ideology, the core of which would be a populist and ‘palingenetic’ ultranationalism, promoting the destruction of the world and the creation of a ‘new’ man.

Right-wing extremism as a social movement 15 4 European Election Study 1994, a post-electoral survey conducted mid-June in the countries of the European Union with probability samples of 1,000 eligible voters (2,000 in Germany: half in Eastern Germany and half in western Germany) ( June 1994). We thank Hermann Schmitt for making the data available from the Zentral Archive in Cologne. 5 For a new look at the authoritarian personality see Altemeyer (1996) and Stone et al. (1993).

2

Links with the past Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer

In each of the five countries studied,1 RWE organizations are linked to a different history and a different ideological tradition. Yet, inevitably, Nazism and fascism cast their shades into the present. One way or another, today’s right-wing extremism is forced to cope with that past, either by embracing it or by distancing itself from it. For each country it is therefore necessary to recall what happened during the Second World War – and just after, and what is the degree of continuity between pre- and post-war RWE.

Italy: from fascism to post-fascism? Italy offers the most perfect example of continuity (Caciagli 1988; Simon 1992; Ignazi 1998). Under the leadership of Mussolini, the Duce, it took sides with Hitler. In 1943 the Allies landed in Southern Italy and an armistice was signed. After a short passage in prison, Mussolini reigned between 1943 and 1945 in the puppet Republic of Salò in Northern Italy, protected by the Nazis. After the capitulation of Italy and Mussolini’s execution, the return to democracy slowly began. The period immediate after 1945 was one of violent settling of scores between fascists and the Resistance, especially in Northern Italy. Small groups such as the Fasci di Azione Rivoluzionaria, dissolved in 1951, organized spectacular actions (waving a fascist flag in the centre of Rome, writing pro-Mussolini slogans on the Dome square in Milan) and terrorists attacks. The Republic was proclaimed in 1946, and a Constitution voted in 1947. But the purge which had started in the administration with the Liberation committees was stopped abruptly by the Amnesty Law of 1946,2 first because the Allies and the conservative parties were afraid of the growing hegemony of the communist party, second because the Communist party itself, led by Togliatti, chose the route of compromise with former ‘petty fascists’. Besides, although the new Republic banned fascism, and the Scelba Law of 1952 forbade the ‘reconstitution of the fascist party’, fascism was perceived as a lesser evil than Nazism, lacking its racist and genocidal dimension. All this allowed for a quick rebirth of right-wing extremisms. Although not explicitly fascist, the Uomo Qualunque (common man) movement mobilized middle-class voters nostalgic for the Italian grandeur, in a vibrant crusade against communists, the Resistance and the purges, attracting 5.3 per cent

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of the votes in the first post-war elections of 1946. Then in December 1946 the MSI was founded, in direct line from the fascist Republic of Salò. With Giorgio Almirante at its head, the party’s explicit aim was to regenerate the fascist ideal. It was designed as a mass organization with branches, top-down decision making and kin networks such as unions, sports organizations, youth organizations and so on. No attempts were made to hide the links with the past. On the contrary, unlike similar organizations elsewhere in Europe, the MSI openly presented itself as fascist, heir of an heroic movement. It took pride in its fascist ideologues and philosophers, such as Giovanni Gentile or Julius Evola and in the cult of the Duce, supporting its common fight at the side of Hitler (Ignazi 1994a, 1994b). After a modest start in the parliamentary elections of 1948 (1 per cent of the valid votes, six elected representatives in Parliament), the MSI became a permanent feature in the political landscape, with scores oscillating around an average of 5 per cent of the valid votes, with a peak at 8.7 in 1972, and sending between 25 and 50 deputies and between 10 and 20 senators to the Parliament, essentially from southern and central Italy (Sicily, Campania, Pouilles and Latium). In a way, the MSI was a paradoxical phenomenon: a fascist party in the context of the new Italian post-war anti-fascist democracy. Certainly in the beginning the party had a dubious legitimacy, which made its militants feel like exiles in their own country, ‘the polo escluso’ (see Ignazi 1989). While most parties kept the MSI at a distance, the party tried to gain legitimacy in the electoral arena by seeking collaboration with other parties, first the Democrazia Cristiana (DC), at the beginning of the 1970s, then the monarchist party, with which it merged in 1972, changing its name to MSI-DN (Destra Nazionale). Almirante skilfully played the card of anticommunism to extend the influence of the party among moderate voters and appear as an ‘order party’. But between 1976 and 1979, in a context of rising violence, as the national revolutionary fringes of the party were involved in terrorist attacks, the MSI-DN was excluded from the coalition of the ‘constitutional arc’ of parties and became increasingly isolated. By the end of the 1980s, however, the context changed again. It saw the decrease of terrorism, the image of fascism became less negative, reinterpreted in the light of the works of historians such as those of Renzo de Felice. The departure of Giorgio Almirante permitted a change of leadership. The new secretary, Gianfranco Fini, appointed in July 1991 (after a brief tenure in 1987–90), presented the party as a right-wing, conservative, national force. But, above all, there were two external factors that disrupted the party system and opened a political space for the extreme right: the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and the transformation of the Communist party into the new PDS, on the one side, and the end of the First Republic, with the dissolution of the DC, on the other (Chiarini 2001a). The revelations about the corruption of traditional parties and the operation Mani pulite, by contrast, made the MSI appear as ‘clean’, as was the case with Berlusconi’s new party, Forza Italia (FI). The support offered by Berlusconi for the municipal elections of 1993 definitely pulled the MSI out of its electoral ghetto. Its candidates made spectacular local scores – 46.9 per cent for Gianfranco Fini in Rome and 44.4 per cent for Alessandra Mussolini in Naples – and conquered nineteen town halls. Next the MSI made an electoral agreement

18 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer with FI, adopting the name AN-MSI. This appeared to be an enormous electoral success; the party’s scores rose to 13.4 per cent of the valid votes, winning 107 deputies and gaining seven Ministries in the Berlusconi government. For the first time in Europe since the Second World War, an extreme right-wing party was in office. Only then, at the double Congress of Fiuggi (25–29 January 1995) – which saw the dissolution of the old MSI and the creation of AN – did the movement start to make some public distance from its fascist roots, rejecting anti-Semitism and the racial laws of 1938 and claiming an acceptance of democracy. Ever since its foundation, the party had been divided between the conservatives, who wanted to integrate in the political system, and the revolutionaries, who opposed the political system. The transition from the MSI into the AN meant the victory of the former. The other factions turned away disappointed and left the party under the lead of Pino Rauti, ex-leader of the radical movement Ordine Nuovo, born from a previous split from the MSI in the 1950s, and former secretary-general of the MSI. They established a new party MS-FT (1996), which presented itself as the new heir of the fascist tradition in Italian politics. Yet this is not to say that the fascist heritage in the new ‘post-fascist’ AN faded altogether. At least at the beginning, Fini had a double standard of communication, one for inside the party, stressing continuity with fascism, one for outside the party, stressing change (Ignazi 1994a). Especially among party officials, the political culture of fascism remains important and reveals nostalgia for the past and uneasiness towards democracy (Ignazi and Ysmal 1992; Ignazi 1994a: 1025; Baldini and Vignati 1996; Dézé 2001). Asked to list personalities representing a model for young generations, AN militants, interviewed in 1996–7, most often mentioned Mussolini, Julius Caesar and Giorgio Almirante (Areni et al. 2000) and claimed to be regular readers of the works of Mussolini, Evola and Gentile, like the AN militants interviewed at the congress of Verona in 1998 (Chiarini 2001a), very much in line with what was shown by a previous study by Ignazi among the party’s youth movement in 1991 (Ignazi 1994a). AN’s official newspapers, as well as its website, show the same fascist impregnation.

France: the double legacy of the extreme right If pre-war fascism is the cradle of Italian RWE, the French RWE comes from even further back into the past, from two distinctive traditions (Winock 1993; Milza 1997). The first was born in the aftermath of the 1789 Revolution. Monarchist, catholic and reactionary, it rejected the spirit of 1789 and the philosophy of Enlightenment. In the 1880s, the Dreyfus affair and the nationalist league, the Action Française (AF), rejuvenated the reactionary right. The ideas of AF’s founder – Charles Maurras – have always had a significant influence in the extreme right milieu. The second tradition, nationalist, anti-Semitic and populist, labelled the ‘revolutionary’ right by Zeev Sternhell (1978) appeared at the turn of the nineteenth century. It was embodied in the anti-parliamentary movement led by General Boulanger, in the nationalist Leagues of the 1930s such as the veterans’ movement the Croix de Feu. Amid this agitation some authentic fascist organizations

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emerged such as the Francist movement, the Parti Populaire Français (PPF) and the Rassemblement National Populaire (RNP). The Second World War brought the collapse of the Third Republic and the investiture of Marechal Pétain. It also meant an opening into the alleys of power for the extreme right, a ‘divine surprise’ as Maurras called it. France was cut in two. In Southern France, the authoritarian Vichy regime rehabilitated the notions of ‘Travail, Famille, Patrie’ (work, family, country) in its project of ‘national revolution’, while in the Northern zone occupied by the Germans, collaborating fascists dominated. When the Germans occupied the Southern zone in 1942, the conservative Vichy regime turned to fascism. After the war a hard time began for the French extreme right, totally discredited as it was by its collaboration with the German occupation (on the post-war period see Petitfils 1983). The purges were brutal: some 10,000 executions without trial, then legal purges with 126,000 arrests, 40,000 ‘national indignity’ sentences (loss of civil rights), some 40,000 sentences to prison or hard labour, and some 7,000 death sentences (Becker 1988: 18). But they did not last long, in the name of national reconciliation and reconstruction. The first attempt of the extreme right to return to the electoral scene was in the 1950s. It supported the Poujadist movement, an anti-taxes revolt of small shopkeepers and peasants which experienced a brief spell of glory in the parliamentary election of 1956, attracting 11.6 per cent of the votes. But it was quickly swept away by the Algerian crisis and the return to power of General de Gaulle. The de-colonization process briefly remobilized the extreme right for the defence of a ‘French Algeria’, but only 5.2 per cent of the electorate voted ‘No’ in the referendum of 8 April 1962 on the Evian agreements preparing Algeria’s independence. In 1965, the candidate of the ‘national right’ Tixier-Vignancour, attracted fewer than 10 per cent of the votes in the first round of the presidential election, while all the RWE movements put together hardly attracted 100,000 votes in the 1967 parliamentary elections. The Front National (FN) was founded on 5 October 1972 by activists of the nationalist movement Ordre Nouveau, inspired by the MSI’s electoral successes in Italy. The movement brought together those nostalgic for the Vichy government, former Poujadists, anti-Gaullists and neo-fascists. Some even came from the collaborationist parties such as the PPF or the RNP or had served in the Waffen SS or in the LVF (Legion of French volunteers against Bolshevism). The majority, however, discovered activism at the time of the Algerian war in the numerous nationalist organizations fighting, sometimes violently and illegally, against the independence of Algeria (Europe Action, Jeune Nation, OAS), or a little later in the student anti-communist movement at the end of the 1960s (Occident, 1964–8). Jean-Marie Le Pen was chosen as president of the new movement. A man of action, involved in the Poujadist movement and in the pro-French Algeria mobilizations, yet fairly politically respectable, he had the ideal profile to unify such a disparate group. The first ten years were a total failure and the FN’s electoral results were close to zero. Just when observers concluded that the French extreme right was definitely dead (Petitfils 1983), the party experienced its first successes in a couple of byelections. In the town of Dreux on 4 September 1983 the party scored 16.7 per cent

20 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer of the votes in the first round while in the second round a joint list UDF–RPR–FN won the elections with over 55 per cent. The alliance of Dreux gave the FN longdesired political legitimacy and marked the beginning of its electoral success story. The 1984 European elections confirmed a national audience for Le Pen, whose list attracted 2 million voters (11.2 per cent). In the 1988 presidential election they gained 4.5 million (14.6 per cent). By then, the party had absorbed practically all the families of the extreme right, from the Catholic fundamentalists to the revolutionary solidarists and even members of the Nouvelle Droite, the only exception being small radical or neo-Nazi groups. In 1997, for the first time the party’s level of support in a parliamentary election matched its level in presidential elections, repeated in the 1998 regional elections. It seemed stabilized at the level of 15 per cent when the electoral dynamic was broken at the end of the same year by the rivalry between Le Pen and his deputy president, Bruno Mégret. At the root of this rivalry lay a basic disagreement on the strategy of the party. Mégret was in favour of a tactical alliance with the mainstream right and integration into the political establishment, while Le Pen favoured an anti-system, ‘revolutionary’ line. The schism split the party in two, one part led by Mégret becoming the Mouvement National Républicain (MNR) and the other the historical FN led by Le Pen, bringing the extreme right’s electoral level back to where it had started in 1984: MNR and FN together attracted 9 per cent of the votes in the 1999 European elections (on the split, see Darmon and Rosso 1999; Dély 1999). But Le Pen quickly recovered, coming second in the first round of the 2002 presidential election, with a record score of 16.9 per cent, definitively crushing his rival Mégret who attracted only 2.3 per cent of the valid votes. For three decades, the FN managed what had never been accomplished before, to unite the two families of the French extreme right in the same movement around its nationalist, xenophobic and authoritarian programme. It thus benefited from practically all the abeyance structures left behind by every RWE mobilization since the Second World War and enlarged its electoral constituency, bringing together the right-wing petty bourgeois vote and the ‘neither left nor right’ working-class protest vote (Mayer 1998, 2002).

Flanders: the Flemish nationalism matrix In order to understand the background of the extreme right in Flanders, a brief sketch of the history of Flemish nationalism is needed (for a summary, see Vos 1994). Belgian independence in 1830 led to the emergence of the Flemish Movement which at that time was essentially a linguistic movement and sought to achieve official recognition of the Dutch language. After the First World War, cultural nationalism took the form of a political movement and evolved in the extreme right direction. During the Second World War the Verbond van Dietse Nationaal-Solidaristen (Verdinaso) and the Flemish national party, the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (VNV – Flemish National Union) collaborated with the German occupation; many of its members fought with the Germans against the communists in Russia. This largely discredited both the Flemish Movement and Flemish

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nationalism and soon after 1945 the radical form of Flemish nationalism largely vanished from the political scene with the imprisonment of its leadership because of their collaboration, while memories of collaboration paralysed Flemish-oriented initiatives for many years (Lagrou 2000). Radical extreme right-wing Flemish nationalism did not, however, disappear completely. It ‘laid in abeyance’ for several decades on the fringes of the Flemish Movement and eventually moved back to centre stage. Immediately after 1945 small extreme right groups were formed. Many of those groups became part of the Volksunie (VU) which was established in 1954, forming the right wing of the party. Karel Dillen, the later founder of the Vlaams Blok (VB) played a central role in all these attempts to organize which marked the beginning of the resurrection of the extreme right in Flanders (De Witte 1996; Swyngedouw 1998). In 1970 he left the VU because he felt that the right wing of the party had too little influence. The many links with Catholicism made Flemish nationalism less vulnerable and facilitated its political resurrection. At the same time, the tolerance of the VU towards collaboration (as witnessed by the inclusion of former collaborators in the party’s leadership and the party’s efforts to gain amnesty for those who had collaborated) also contributed to the continuation of the fascist tradition within Flemish nationalism (Vos 1994: 149). Moreover, radical nationalists actively tried to rehabilitate Flemish nationalism and rewrite its history without its dark side. Collaboration was redefined as part of the Flemish struggle for independence and the prosecution of collaborators denounced as repression (De Witte and Klandermans 2000). In this way the radical movement took slowly but surely root again in Flemish society. Soon after the Second World War youth associations were founded for the children of sentenced collaborators. Various anti-repression journals were founded, such as ‘Rommelpot’ and ‘t Pallieterke’. In 1951 the Verbond van Vlaamse OudOostfrontstrijders (Association of Flemish Eastern Front Veterans) was founded, an organization of individuals who had fought with the Germans against communist Russia. This association initially sought to alleviate the material needs of collaborators, but eventually took charge of their political and ideological rehabilitation. During the 1960s and 1970s a network developed which brought together various militant organizations, such as the fascist militia, Vlaamse Militanten Orde (Flemish Militant Order – VMO), the intellectual organization Were Di, the action group Voorpost (Front Post) and the Flemish National Youth Association (VNJ). Karel Dillen was a central figure in all those organizations (De Witte 1996; Swyngedouw 1998). Noticeable here is the concentration of this group of militants in the city and region of Antwerp, which had long been an important historical base of support for radical Flemish nationalism (Vos 1994: 129-30). These associations formed the structural framework from which, in time, the party VB was to grow. The party thus did not emerge from a vacuum, but built on an existing network of individuals who were active on the radical fringe of the Flemish Movement. The militants were available, and they had already been active in the political struggle. They were also ideologically well trained, which facilitated the development of a coherent party. Gijsels demonstrated that a

22 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer majority of VB representatives elected in 1991 had previously been active in organizations such as the VMO, Voorpost or Were Di (Gijsels 1992: 243-73). Their recruitment made it possible to extend the party structures further. They built a party organization that was highly centralized, and tightly led. In the 1990s this party developed into a significant political power in Flanders. The actual establishment of the VB took place in 1978, as a merger of two nationalist parties that had been formed in Antwerp and Brussels, respectively, by radical members of the VU who had left the party in disagreement with its policy. It is because of this solid organizational base that it could develop its electoral influence, in Flanders and Brussels, by shifting its campaigns from the issue of Flemish separatism to the issue of immigration, attracting slightly more than 12 per cent of the votes in the 1995 parliamentary elections and over 15 per cent in the 1999 European elections. In the parliamentary elections of 2003 the VB even succeeded in getting some 18 per cent of the Flemish vote. Its success story contrasts sharply with its Walloon counterpart. Precisely because it did not benefit from such abeyance structures, and because the de-nazification process was more thorough there, the Belgian Front National never managed its electoral take-off (De Witte and Verbeeck 1998).

The Netherlands: the logic of splinter parties In the Netherlands extreme right-wing organizations have never succeeded in linking their efforts to those of a wider social or political movement (De Witte and Klandermans 2000). Lucardie (1998) distinguished three currents in the Dutch extreme right: the traditional right rooted in protestant fundamentalism; the old right which is neo-fascist and national socialist and the new right which is ethnocentric and nationalistic. We will leave aside protestant fundamentalism as it never aligned with the two other currents. Fascism and Nazism have always been marginal in Dutch society. In the 1930s the National Socialist Movement (NSB) was generally rejected by most citizens and came close to being outlawed. Because of its collaboration with the Germans during the war, the party and its ideology became completely taboo, in the post-war era any reference to Nazism or fascism was and still is enough for an organization or group to be banned. Nevertheless, attempts to re-establish fascist organizations could be observed a few years after the war (see Van Donselaar 1991; Husbands 1992; Lucardie 1998; Mudde and Van Holsteyn 2000). Initially, none of these initiatives was successful. The first attempt to establish a party (the ‘National European Social Movement’ formed by the ‘Association of Former Political Delinquents’) failed, in 1955, the party was banned. From then on, kindred ‘neutral’ parties become the home of politically oriented people with fascist sympathies: first, the Boerenpartij (Farmers’ Party) and, later on, the parties within the so-called Centrumstroming (Centre current). As it is illegal in the Netherlands for a political organization to be openly fascist or Nazi, conflicts between radicals and moderates about the image that is shown ‘front stage’ and the ideas that are nurtured ‘back stage’ continue to plague these parties (Van Donselaar 1991). These parties frequently attract people with extremist sympathies who ‘spoil the identity’ of the party. Conflicts between the more

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radical members, who tend to move the party into fascist or Nazi directions, and the more moderate members who want to establish a respectable extreme rightwing party, lead time and again to schisms and fragmentation. One of those groups is the Centrumpartij (CP), the originator of the Centrumstroming. In 1979–80 the CP splintered off as a moderate breakaway party from the Nederlandse Volks-Unie (Netherlands People’s Union – NVU). The NVU was openly racist and national-socialist and had clear links to previous, sometimes prewar, fascist and racist organizations in the Netherlands (Van Donselaar, 1991). So obvious were these features that by the end of the 1970s the party came very close to being outlawed. Despite its effort to distance itself from the NVU and its ideology, the Centrumstroming never fully succeeded in dissociating itself from these racist and fascist roots. Radical and moderate currents continued to fight within the party. The 20-year history of the Centrumstroming reads as a ongoing chain of internal conflicts, splits and fights over policy and leadership of the party. As a result of one of those fights between moderates and radicals, in 1984 moderates splintered off and established the Centrumdemocraten (CD), which meant the wreck of the CP. But the party surfaced again as CP’86. Initially, CP’86 was not very successful, but with the influx of more radical members of the former youth organizations of the NVU, it gained some momentum. However, in 1995 the Amsterdam court sentenced the party for being a criminal organization engaged in propagating racial discrimination and hatred. Once again, moderate members left the party and founded a new structure. More successful were the ‘centre democrats’ (CD). The party grew in terms of both membership and electorate. No less than 78 seats were acquired in city council elections in 1994 and three seats in Parliament after the national elections the same year. Soon, however, the party became a victim of its own success. As it had to fill an unexpected number of seats, it was less selective than required in appointing its representatives: many turned out to be failures, some others to be engaged in criminal behaviour. Moreover, undercover journalists began to publish articles that were extremely harmful to the party, as it turned out to be much less civilized ‘back stage’ than it pretended to be ‘front stage’. Once again the party dissolved in internal conflicts, but this time also because of the personality of the leader of the party, Hans Janmaat. Although Janmaat tried to organize his party on the model of its Flemish counterpart, he lacked the charisma needed to do so in an effective and convincing way. He was unable to prevent conflicts and to pacify the party. On the contrary, he himself became a source of conflict as he increasingly seemed to run the party as a family enterprise. All these scandals and conflicts turned the 1998 elections into an outright disaster (0.6 per cent of the votes). The party lost its seats in Parliament and all but two of the 78 seats in the city councils. The Dutch extreme right has not yet recovered from this blow. The short-lived success of the populist leader Pim Fortuyn in 2002 came, inter alia, from the fact that the xenophobic and anti-government dimension of his platform was not corrupted by any connection of the movement or its leader with Nazism. Yet, some prominent members of the extreme right openly supported Fortuyn’s party, which did not really work to his advantage.

24 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer

Germany: a cyclical trajectory In Germany the memory of the Holocaust, the horror and the sense of collective guilt it generated, have left a durable trauma which makes the return of right-wing radicalism and nationalism difficult. After the collapse of the Third Reich (1945), the Allies implemented a de-nazification policy which culminated in the Nuremberg trials (1945–6). Even more radical was the repression in the Soviet zone of occupation, which went beyond the leaders and hit middle-level executives. Some 30,000 Germans were prosecuted, 500 condemned to death, 180,000 interned in camps and 200,000 Nazis disbarred from administration, the courts and industry (Eckert and Winkler 1995: 71–2). The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) erected strict constitutional and legal barriers to prevent the resurrection of national socialism, with the possibility of banning parties representing a threat to democracy. Yet from the very beginning, immediately after Germany’s capitulation, attempts were undertaken to re-establish extreme right organizations. They thrived on the presence of refugees and displaced people, on economic hard times, resentment and on the limitations of the de-nazification policies, leaving in office ‘petty’ Nazis. They also profited from the heated debate arising in the 1980s around the specificity of Nazism (the Historikerstreit) and the revisionist tendencies of historians such as Ernst Nolte, who attempted to tone down the responsibilities of the Nazis by comparing their crimes to those of Stalin. But as soon as these organizations appeared too obviously national-socialist in their orientation or too clearly a continuation of previous nationalist-socialist organizations, they were outlawed. No large-scale movement could develop as in Flanders, France or Italy. Germany’s extreme right showed more similarities with the Netherlands: marginal organizations that existed for a short spell then fell apart, merged with other organizations, started new ones that fell apart again (Van Donselaar 1995; Minkenberg 1998). Many of these organizations had clear links with their national-socialist predecessors, defending the same ideas and recruiting individuals who had been actively involved in the national-socialist state and its institutions, it goes beyond the scope of this short historical overview to give an exhaustive enumeration of them. Interestingly, the German extreme right took a cyclical trajectory, with three successive waves of growing then declining RWE organizations (see Zimmermann and Saalfeld 1993). We will restrict ourselves to the parties that were central in the course of these cycles (Van Donselaar 1995; Winkler and Schumann 1998; Loch 2001). The first wave took place shortly after the war between 1948 and 1952. The core organizations were the Sozialistische Reichspartei (Socialist State Party–SRP) and the Deutsche Gemeinschaft (German Community–DG) The SRP originated from the Deutsche Reichspartei (German State Party–DRP) which was founded in 1946. In the first elections for the national parliament in 1949 the DRP gained five seats. Altogether, parties to the extreme right got 10.5 per cent of the votes. In that same year the neo-Nazi wing of the party broke away and reorganized itself into the SRP. Otto Ernst Rehmer, a well known Nazi activist at the time and still today, was

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the second-in-command of the new party. The party featured successfully in regional elections, and this in combination with the all-too-obvious resemblance to the NSDAP (the former national-socialist party) resulted in 1952 in the prohibition of the party. The DRP came close to a similar fate because it was associated with anti-Semitic vandalism, but it slid into insignificance before legal action could be taken. The DG was founded in 1949 and was relatively successful in regional elections in 1950 but faded too. In the first five years after 1945 numerous small right-wing parties were established. Most of them disappeared either because they were absorbed by the conservative Christian Democratic Party (CDU/CSU), or because they failed to pass the increasingly higher threshold requested to be represented in Parliament. The second wave was between 1966 and 1969. This time it was the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschland (National Democratic Party Germany–NPD) that came forward. Founded in 1964 by Adolph von Tadden as a mass party for rightwing voters, the party was able to enter Parliament in no less than seven federal states between 1966 and 1968. For some time it looked as if the party was going to meet the 5 per cent threshold in the national elections. At the same time it also was involved in anti-Semitic attacks and vandalism, coming very close to an official ban under the Act to protect the Constitution; in fact, the Berlin branch of the NPD dissolved itself in anticipation of the sentence. In the 1969 national elections the party almost met the threshold, with 4.3 per cent of the votes, the best result it ever achieved. From then on the party declined, attracting less than 1 per cent of the votes and experiencing all kinds of splits and breakdowns. The third wave was in the 1980s and 1990s. Two organizations dominated the scene and indeed competed for the extreme right vote. The Deutsche Volksunion (German People’s Union–DVU) was founded in 1971 by a wealthy extreme right editor Gerhard Frey. Unlike the NPD or the DVU the Republikaner (Republicans– REP) was not founded in the extreme right milieu but by two leading politicians from the CSU (Christian Social Union, Bavaria), Ekkehard Voigt and Franz Handlos, in 1983. However the most prominent and charismatic figure of the party was Franz Schönhuber, who was its chairman between 1985 and 1994. A volunteer in the Waffen SS at the age of nineteen, he was first close to the Social Democrats (SPD) then joined the CSU and was popular in a well-known Bavarian talk show. The party presented itself as a moderate alternative between the CDU and the more extreme right. Its electoral breakthrough occurred in 1989, when it entered the Berlin Parliament with 7.5 per cent of the votes. It attracted 7.1 per cent in the European elections the same year, going up to 14.6 per cent in Bavaria and 8.7 per cent in Baden Württemberg. Since the reunification in 1990 it has been declining. The two parties have been in existence for a longer period than most organizations of the extreme right but never succeeded in entering the national Parliament. They never really took off, except for episodic and short-lived local successes (in the 1996 state election in Baden Württemberg the REP attracted 9.1 per cent of the votes and in the 1998 state election in Saxony-Anhalt the DVU 12.8 per cent). In 1994, to every one’s surprise, Franz Schönhuber and Gerhard Frey announced that they were planning to collaborate more closely in the future. This alliance

26 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer with a far more radical group created such an uproar in the ranks of the REP that by the end of the year Schönhuber had been toppled and replaced by Rolf Schlierer, a far less charismatic leader. This precipitated the REP’s decline. One should add that more than in any other country in our study, the German extreme right has been associated with racial violence. In the years 1959–60 there was an epidemic of anti-Semitic vandalism, which not only discredited the extreme right but also marked the beginning of a much stricter surveillance of organizations of the extreme right under the Act to protect the Constitution. The 1990s witnessed a new explosive growth of violence against immigrants and refugees, from several hundred incidents at the beginning of the decade to more than 2,000 a few years later (Van Donselaar 1995), including dramatic incidents such as the attacks on asylum seekers’ homes and individual aliens by groups of extreme right youth that in a few cases resulted in deaths of people, as in the murders in Mölln and Solingen (1992–3). The increasing violence further marginalized and criminalized the extreme right in Germany (Van Donselaar 1995; Koopmans 1996a, 1996b). In all five countries there is historical continuity, and RWE laid in abeyance for some time after the Second World War. But the structures that hosted the extreme right and shaped its trajectory in the various countries are quite different. Links with the past appear to be an ambivalent asset. On the one side, abeyance structures provided contemporary RWE with connections with previous movements, with a reservoir of experienced activists, with ready-made action repertoires and with ideological interpretation frames to lean on. On the other hand, links with Nazism and fascism are essentially de-legitimizing. RWE movements are better off when they can rely on a more diversified set of abeyance structures, as was the case in Flanders, because of the pre-existing nationalist movement, or in France, with its two-centuries-old tradition of a reactionary and revolutionary right. Italy is yet another case. AN is the direct heir of fascism and built on the existing networks ever since the War. But fascism was perceived as a lesser evil than Nazism, especially in the South where its traditional strongholds are.3 In Northern Italy a two-year-long and bloody civil war (1943–5), in which partisans fought the fascist Republic of Salò, strongly rooted anti-fascism in the region. In the South, fascism had a better image, associated with public works and social integration, as compared to the former aristocracy. There was no civil war and the ‘liberation war’ ended two years earlier than in the North. Moreover, AN now offers the image of a democratic ‘post-fascist’ right party and has marginalized the nostalgic of the old MSI, gathered around Pino Rauti and his MS-FT movement.4 Psychologically speaking, these are significant differences. The history of a group is an important element of its members’ social identity. A heroic past is something to be proud of and to identify with, but a dark history makes one feel ashamed and guilty (Doosje et al. 1998; Lagrou 2000; Klandermans et al. forthcoming). In France, Italy and Flanders the extreme right has a history that can be framed independently from German Nazism. If in all three countries it did collaborate with the Germans, it has more to refer to and take pride in. But in

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Germany and the Netherlands such a possibility did not exist: there, the extreme right has nothing but a dark side.

Notes 1 The comments and contributions of each country team were particularly helpful for the writing of this chapter. 2 It seems that around 90 per cent of the civil servants stayed in place (Simon 1992: 72–3). 3 With the exception, in the North, of Trieste and Bolzano. 4 In his expert judgement survey of 2000, asking to give a score to Western European parties on a ten-point left–right scale, Marcel Lubbers finds a score of 8.1 for AN, comparing with 9.7 for MS-FT, 7.6 for the Lega Nord and 6.7 for Forza Italia (Lubbers 2001: 28-30). At the same time the French FN gets 9.5, the VB 9.3, the REP 8.7, the DVU 9.4 and the CD 8.9.

3

Context, alliances and conflict Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer

Political and legal arrangements may facilitate or repress the development of social movements (Tilly 1978; Kriesi et al. 1995). And the other organizations that form their ‘multi-organizational field’ can be allies or opponents (Curtis and Zurcher 1973). The five societies studied here offer RWE different opportunities and constraints, some general, others specifically designed to fight against it and restrict its access to the political arena.

Electoral rules Electoral systems can be more or less open to newcomers in politics and hospitable to small parties. These rules are not specifically aimed at stopping the extreme right, but they make it more or less difficult for it to gain political influence, and more or less attractive for potential militants to engage within the movement. All five countries have legislations that formulate the criteria parties and candidates have to meet to run for elections. They have been implemented to discourage frivolous and non-serious attempts. Usually, collecting a minimum number of signatures is required for registration as candidate. Especially if a party’s legitimacy is doubtful, this requirement may be a serious barrier. Voting for a party in the secrecy of the voting booth is something other than supporting it publicly with one’s signature. The more dubious a party’s reputation, the more people may fear the possible consequences of such a gesture. For instance in France 500 signatures of elected representatives are necessary to run in the presidential race. In 1981 Le Pen could not get them and in 2002 he almost failed to. In addition sometimes, as in the Netherlands, a certain amount of money has to be deposited.1 Most countries have set up rules to refund political parties for their campaign expenses, but a minimum percentage of the votes will be needed for a refund. In Germany, for instance, campaign costs are subsidized if the party reaches 0.5 per cent of the votes. As it has important financial consequences, meeting that criterion has become a goal in itself. In all countries parties receive some kind of financial support once they have entered Parliament. France was rather late to set up a legislation on funding (Laws of March 1988 and January 1990). It defines the maximum amount that can be spent and refunds the candidates part of their expenses in proportion to their electoral share. For instance, in

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the 1995 presidential election, with a score around 15 per cent of the valid votes, Jean-Marie Le Pen received 5.4 million euros. Another limitation is provided by the electoral system. Majority systems are more restrictive than proportional representation rules, which provide an easier access to the parliament, regional or local councils even with a relatively small number of votes. Different systems of districts or thresholds can also limit the entrance to the political arena. Ruled by the proportional representation system, European elections are in all five countries favourable to small RWE parties, as long as they reach the electoral quorum. As for national elections, proportional representation is the rule in Belgium and the Netherlands, and was in Italy until the electoral reform of 1993, which combined majority rule and proportional rule for elections to the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies and introduced a 4 per cent electoral threshold to limit the access of small parties to the Chamber of Deputies. In France at the time of our study proportional representation was applied only in regional elections, with a 5 per cent threshold.2 The norm was a two-ballot majority system (presidential, parliamentary, cantonal elections) or a mix of proportional and majority rule (municipal elections). In the presidential race, for instance, an absolute majority of the valid votes is needed to be elected in the first round. If not, a second round is held between the two candidates who come first. The parliamentary election requirements are even stricter. The candidate is elected if he or she attracts an absolute majority of the valid votes and at least a quarter of the registered voters, and candidates can run in the second round only if they gained at least 12.5 per cent of the valid votes in the first round. These conditions make it extremely difficult for small parties to get elected representatives unless they form a coalition with the larger parties in the second round, by ‘selling’ their constituencies to other candidates. However, as most parties refuse to collaborate with the extreme right – exceptional occasions aside, such as the byelection in Dreux in 1983, which facilitated the electoral take-off of the FN, or the 1998 regional elections when the moderate right needed the support of the FN councilors to win several regional presidencies – little opportunity is left. Only on very few occasions has the FN succeeded on its own. Conversely, when in the 1986 parliamentary elections a proportional representation system was established, the FN gained 35 seats with 9.5 per cent of the votes, while with exactly the same amount of votes in the 1988 parliamentary elections, when the two-ballot majority rule system was reinstalled, it got only one. At the local level the party has been more successful. At the time of our study, the FN had 275 regional councilors (1998 regional elections), and four mayors in the towns of Toulon, Marignane, Orange (1995 municipal elections) and Vitrolles (1997 by-election). In Germany thus far the electoral threshold established in 1953 (5 per cent of the votes on all the federal territory, or three direct mandates) has kept the extreme right out of the federal Parliament, the Bundestag, though in regional and local elections it has occasionally been more successful. In addition to the 5 per cent threshold, the German system of first and second votes3 works to the disadvantage of parties that are not able to generate candidates in all the electoral districts, especially parties with dubious legitimacy such as the parties of the extreme right.

30 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer So in France the electoral system limits the national representation of the extreme right, despite the high proportion of votes it attracts. Only at the regional and local level has the FN been able to secure more influence. The German system keeps the extreme right out of power too, but basically because the extreme right parties remain small and below the electoral threshold. Parties of the size of the FN, the AN or the VB would have easily made it into the German Bundestag. In the Netherlands, even minor parties can enter the representative bodies at the various levels of government. For some time the extreme right was represented in the national Parliament and in regional and local councils. But the parties remained too small and their representatives too weak to exert any influence. Belgium and Italy are the only two countries where RWE movements are well represented in the national political arena and in a position to have influence.

Political opportunities Gaining access to the political arena is all the more difficult if the established political parties bar the way. But if their position is eroding, it can open an opportunity for newcomers. This happened briefly in Germany for the REP in 1989, before the fall of the Wall and reunification deprived them of their central issue. It also happened in Flanders and Italy, where the party system had been seriously delegitimized by political scandals and poor government. In Italy the traditional parties collapsed completely, creating a space for new ones to emerge (such as FI and AN, or older ones to expand (such as the Lega Nord ). In Belgium the government crisis was perhaps less dramatic, but in the 1990s some serious cases of corruption and governmental failure such as in the ‘Dutroux affair’,4 certainly increased political cynicism and thus the mobilization potential of the VB. In the Netherlands, in Germany and in France, the political crisis did not take on such proportions. But an opportunity can also open for new parties if the feeling prevails that there is no real political alternative open, that there is a convergence between moderate left and moderate right parties (Kitschelt and McGann 1995). The success of Le Pen’s list in the 1984 European elections can partly be explained by the choice of a moderate right-wing candidate, Simone Veil, to lead the UDF– RPR list, opening a political space for the radical right Also the French ‘cohabitation’ system, between a left-wing president and a right-wing prime minister (1986–8, 1993–5) then between a right-wing president and a left-wing prime minister (1997–2002), has blurred the left–right cleavage and allowed the FN to position itself as the only alternative to the corrupt ‘gang of four’ comprising the Socialists, the Communists, the UDF and the RPR.

Legal rights and prohibitions In each country various constitutional and legal arrangements facilitate or restrict the development of RWE organizations, and although they have a lot in common there are also significant differences.5 The five constitutions guarantee freedom of speech, association, gathering and demonstration. These rights create the space for

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citizens to propagate their ideas, to establish organizations and political parties and to stage meetings and demonstrations. This is not to say that there are no limits imposed. The same constitutions and more specific laws define boundaries that may not be trespassed. Most of these regulations are ideologically neutral in that they protect and constrain citizens from both the left and the right. Some, however, are specifically designed to fight phenomena tightly associated with RWE, such as racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and discrimination against aliens. As for freedom of speech, all five countries have anti-racist laws that sanction various forms of racism and prohibit discrimination and incitement to hatred and racial violence. All European Community (EC) states signed the UN Convention on the elimination of racial discrimination (1965) and adopted laws to implement the treaty on their territory. But the laws are not equally clear-cut to begin with, and countries differ in the extent to which they apply the law. At the time of our field work, Belgium was at the lowest end of the scale. It was late to implement the obligations implied by the treaty (in 1981 while most countries did it in the early 1970s), it adopted a relatively weak law with a vague description of what was prohibited that made it difficult actually to prosecute people.6 And the state was not very active in applying the legal frame to punish offenders. As a consequence, much could be said in Belgium and, indeed, much was said, without running the risk of being prosecuted.7 For example, a leader of the Flemish Militant Organization (VMO) could glorify Hitler without being sanctioned and Mein Kampf is freely sold in the country’s bookshops. Attempts to bring the VB to court for racist appeals or statements were not very successful. Every time the VB was accused it claimed its right to reply, which according to Belgian law the media have to grant, thus getting free publicity. In Italy the Constitution (section XII) forbids the reconstitution of the Fascist party and more generally of all parties rejecting fundamental freedoms and rights. According to the Scelba Law (1952) there is reconstitution of the Fascist party when a group or movement of at least five people defends anti-democratic goals (such as suppression of freedom, derogation of democracy and of the Resistance, racist propaganda, etc.). Public demonstrations, meetings, publications of such a kind are sanctioned and the Home Office can dissolve the incriminated movement. In 1993 the Mancino Law extended the prohibitions of the Scelba Law to all forms of racial, ethnic and religious discrimination, with new sanctions (prohibition on attending sports events, suspension of driving licences and passports, obligation to take part in socially useful activities, etc.). Yet these laws are difficult to enforce and very seldom used. There has, for instance, been a heated debate on the possibility of banning a new extreme right-wing party, Forza Nuova, and no decision has been made as yet. In Germany, the Netherlands and France anti-racist laws are not only stronger but also more frequently applied. Racist appeals, incitement to discriminate or engage in racial violence, negationism and revisionism (that is, denial of the genocide conducted by the Germans during the Second World War) can be sentenced in all three countries and cases have been brought. More court cases took place in Germany, fewer in the Netherlands. In all countries, however, prosecution of

32 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer racist propaganda was a complicated matter, as RWE were very inventive in finding slogans that were obvious in their intentions without being ‘racist’ in the legal sense: ‘Vote CD, you know why’ in the case of the Dutch extreme right, and ‘Keep Germany pure’ in the case of the Republikaner (REP) in Germany. Yet, in all five countries the very presence of a legal framework that potentially could be used against RWE did put restrictions upon such parties and organizations and made them more careful in their public statements, even in Belgium. Freedom of association is an unalienable constitutional right in Belgium. It is impossible to outlaw and dissolve parties or organizations. The only exception to this rule is organizations that have military objectives such as militias. A law that most European governments adopted in the 1930s to control the militant Nazi groups in their countries makes it possible to outlaw such organizations in Belgium. Indeed, in 1983 this law was used to outlaw the Vlaamse Militanten Orde (VMO), one of the most militant right-wing organizations in the country. Other than that, the only possibility in Belgium, before the 1999 Law, was to prosecute individual members of the organization. Organizations that collaborated with the Germans during the Second World War were thus not disbanded as in other countries and continued to exist. However, they often were disorganized by the loss of their main leaders. Germany is the only country that has the constitutional possibility to monitor (Verfassungschutzbehörde), outlaw and dissolve political parties that do not meet with basic democratic principles (Article 21). Germany, France and the Netherlands have the opportunity to outlaw organizations that propagate racism, discrimination or racial violence. In Germany, this opportunity is frequently used: between 1950 and 1995 some 30 organizations were forbidden. In the Netherlands, the law was used on only a few occasions, France occupied an intermediate position (20 organizations outlawed in that period) (Van Donselaar 1995). But perhaps more important than actual legal action taken against extreme right parties and organizations is the threat such legislation represents if organizations trespass beyond some defined threshold, obliging them to be more careful and look more closely at the behaviour of their members. As far as freedom of gathering and demonstration is concerned, all countries in our study have the possibility to ban public meetings or demonstrations if a disturbance of public order is expected. This holds for all demonstrations, whatever the political leaning of the organizers. In Belgium, France and the Netherlands, expected disturbance of public order is a sufficient reason to ban a demonstration. The cause people are defending does not matter: left-wing or rightwing demonstrations can be banned if public order is threatened. In Germany, demonstrations can also be forbidden if criminal acts are expected. This makes it possible to ban demonstrations of the extreme right even if there is no risk to public order, as long as crimes against anti-racist laws are expected. On the whole, the legislation with regard to demonstrations is very similar in the five countries; the application of the law is less consistent. In Belgium, France and Germany, the allegation that public order is endangered has to be carefully checked. In Belgium, a demonstration of the extreme right is rarely banned. In Germany, this instrument has been used more frequently since the violent racists

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attacks in Mölln and Solingen. In France, frequent use of the possibility to ban demonstrations is made during electoral campaigns or after racist or anti-Semitic actions attributed to the extreme right, such as the desecration of a graveyard in the Jewish cemetery of Carpentras in 1990 (see Mayer 1992a, 1995). Finally, in the Netherlands almost every demonstration of the extreme right is considered an unacceptable risk for public order and therefore banned. Only recently has the official policy somewhat softened, making the Netherlands more comparable to the other countries. In addition to these limitations of constitutional rights states have, of course, the possibility to prosecute individuals for violations of the law, be it by acts of revisionism, racist appeals, violence, physical attacks or even murder with a racial motivation. In all five countries such legal actions have been taken against individuals. Citizens linked to RWE parties or organizations who engaged in violations of the law have been brought to court for criminal behaviour. In Belgium and France, people who are sentenced on charges of racism and the like may also lose their right to vote and stand for elections. In France, the anti-racist Law of 1990 (the Gayssot Law) completed the 1972 legislation (the Pleven Law), reinforcing the power of courts, creating a new infraction of ‘revisionism’ and imposing heavier sanctions. Moreover, in Germany people who engage in anticonstitutional acts – be it left or right – may lose their job if they are employed as a civil servant (Berufsverbot). Comparing the five countries at the time of our interviews, Germany and the Netherlands had the harshest legal restrictions on propaganda, organizations and demonstrations of the extreme right and Belgium the least. France occupied an intermediate position, with a strong legislation but less frequently applied (Van Donselaar 1995). On the whole, in terms of facilitation and repression, Italy and Belgium provide the most permissive political and legal environment for RWE, Germany the most repressive. France and the Netherlands are in between. In the Netherlands, it is easier to enter the national political arena, but in France legal action is less frequently taken, which has an impact on RWE activism. Following Tarrow (1998), we can describe political opportunities and constraints as factors that foster or impair chances of success of a social movement. Favourable opportunities make it more likely for a movement organization to be successful, be it in terms of goal achievement or mobilization. Strict legislation which is actually enacted, on the other hand, may create legitimacy problems for a movement if persons and organizations that are associated with that movement are continuously involved in court cases. This is more likely to happen in Germany and the Netherlands than in Italy and Belgium, whereas France occupies an intermediary position. In Germany and France, the electoral system makes it more difficult for the extreme right to exert influence than in Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands. However, political influence does not depend only on the type of electoral and legal system. Equally important is what kind of relationship the extreme right has with other organizations and political parties.

34 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer

Alliances and conflicts Movement organizations do not exist in a vacuum. They are embedded in a society that can be friendly or hostile, and as a specific configuration of institutions and organizations some of which are potential allies, some of which are opponents and some of which are indifferent. Together these institutions and organizations and their mutual links form what is called the ‘multi-organizational field’ of a social movement (Curtis and Zurcher 1973; Klandermans 1997). It can be more or less supportive, depending on the proportion of the organizations that support or oppose the movement organization. What is the multi-organizational field of RWE movements like in our five countries, who are their friends and who are their foes? The dilemma that moderate political parties are confronted with is that the ideas propagated by RWE parties find more support in society than the size of their constituencies would suggest. Indeed, although RWE supporters beat all records on scales of racism and xenophobia, there are actually many more xenophobes and racist people not voting for RWE parties (see Chapter 4). As a consequence, parties, particularly on the right, can be tempted to draw from the same reservoir and to form alliances with the extreme right. On the other hand, because RWE movements are associated with fascism, there is a general agreement among mainstream parties to keep them at a distance and refuse electoral, parliamentary and governmental collaboration. This so-called strategy of the ‘cordon sanitaire’ first originated in Flanders against the VB (De Witte 1996, 1998). It was implemented in each of the five polities studied, thus isolating RWE parties and placing them in the situation of political outsiders.8 However, as we shall see, the traditional right occasionally forsakes its principles. Sometimes it cannot resist the temptation to embrace issues of the extreme right, thus legitimizing them (Van Donselaar 1995; Koopmans 1996b). Less frequent have been actual alliances with the extreme right, although collaboration has occurred here and there. The RWE parties we studied face another dilemma: how to deal with organizations even further to the right, more extreme, more radical, more violent, sometimes openly neo-Nazi. At the same time that they need their support, attract some of their members, use them as militia in demonstrations and meetings, they want to keep their distance from such organizations. Too close an embrace could easily be the kiss of death, especially in countries where neo-Nazism is strictly outlawed (Kitschelt and McGann 1995). This dilemma can usually be solved by maintaining such alliances ‘back stage’, and presenting a more civilized posture ‘front stage’ (Van Donselaar 1995; Camus 1998). But in each of our five countries, the relations the RWE parties we studied developed with both the moderate right and the more radical extreme right parties followed different patterns. In the first years after its formation, the Italian MSI developed a tactic of concealed and sometimes open agreement with the forces of the centre and the right (Caciagli 1988). Making alliances alternatively with the monarchists, the liberals or the Christian Democrats, it was able to take part in the government of many cities, while in the streets it waged war with the communists. But in 1960 this strategy collapsed and the MSI became almost completely isolated (Dézé 2001).

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None of the major Italian parties wanted any relationship with the neo-fascist party. Ignazi refers to the party’s position in the Italian political landscape as the ‘excluded pole’ (il polo escluso) (Ignazi 1989, 1994a). It is only in the 1990s that the party was integrated, profiting from the collapse of the Italian political system. As the MSI had been isolated from the political establishment it could not be blamed for the political breakdown, and the new party to the right, Berlusconi’s FI, seized the opportunity and offered its support. The alliance with FI (1994) ended MSI’s isolation and pulled it from its political ghetto into office. In the years that followed, the party left its ideological ballast behind, changing its name to Alleanza Nazionale (AN) and, under the leadership of Gianfranco Fini, turning from a marginalized anachronism into a modern populist party. In its post-war period the MSI did not have any real competitors, except for those groups that splintered from it out of disagreement with the party’s policy, such as Ordine Nuovo, Avanguardia Nazionale and MSI-Rinnovamento. Now AN is in competition with the other components of the ‘Pole of Freedom’, right-wing parties such as the populist Lega Nord and Berlusconi’s FI. Those nostalgic for an authentic fascism followed Pino Rauti and the movement he created, MS-Fiamma Tricoloure, are now utterly marginalized. In France, the FN itself is an amalgam of various currents of the extreme right. Some groups opted to stay outside, such as the Nouvelle Droite (although individually several of its members joined the FN), and some more radical groups such as the Oeuvre Française, Nouvelle Résistance, or the monarchists of the Restauration Nationale (Gautier 2002). These groups can be counted on the supportive side of the FN’s multi-organizational field (for a detailed analysis of this support, see Camus 2001). For a long time the FN occupied a completely isolated position in the political arena. Until the 1980s, it was just too marginal for the established political parties to bother with. During its ‘crossing of the desert’, as we saw, the FN was sometimes not even able to collect the 500 signatures required for its leader to be a candidate in the 1981 presidential election. This fact in itself illustrates the political boycott of the FN by the mainstream parties which Le Pen used to label as ‘the gang of four’ (socialist PS, communist PCF, Gaullist RPR and centre-right UDF). The situation changed when in 1983, in a local by-election, the FN, led by its secretary general Jean-Pierre Stirbois reached 16.7 per cent in the first round. In order to defeat the left in the second round, a joint UDF–RPR–FN list was formed which won the election with more than 55 per cent of the votes. The alliance with the moderate right, widely debated in the media, provided the FN with the political legitimacy and visibility it had longed for. In the following years the possibility of forging alliances depended on the relative positions of the left and right in the political arena. Officially, since 1990, the RPR doctrine was not to compromise with RWE. Locally there were exceptions, especially in the South East. When the moderate right was strong enough to defeat the left on its own, alliance was not needed. When it was not strong enough the temptation of an agreement with the extreme right reappeared, as in the regional elections of 1998 where the right alone, in four regions, could not win the presidency. Conversely, there have been a few short-lived alliances of the left and the moderate right in a ‘republican front’

36 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer to prevent candidates of the extreme right from being elected – inter alia in the 1995 local elections in Dreux, the FN’s ‘laboratory’, and Mulhouse. To some extent, the isolated position of the FN is caused by its own policy which is not only anti-communist and anti-socialist but altogether anti-established parties. Le Pen continues to denounce the ‘gang of four’ and many of the party’s militants take an anti-system line, accepting no alliance with the moderate right (Ignazi and Ysmal 1992). Towards the end of 1998 the tension between two opposing strategies within the party resulted in an open conflict, leading to the split of December 1998–January 1999. Bruno Mégret, the deputy general, favoured integration in the political system on the basis of alliances with the other right-wing parties, while Le Pen refused any form of political compromise. A very similar contradiction, at one moment or another, has divided all the RWE parties that choose to respect the rules of representative democracy, especially when they are successful, such as the FPÖ or AN (see the analysis by Dézé 2001). In Flanders, since the VB’s first breakthrough in 1989, all the political parties have agreed to form a cordon sanitaire isolating the RWE party. Nevertheless, there have been exceptions. A request to get the same list number9 in every electoral district requires the signatures of five members from each of the houses of Parliament. Having the same list number makes is easier to campaign, and is believed to be an asset for a party. On two occasions, in 1985 and in 1987, the VB managed to collect the signatures from politicians from other parties to the right. This stirred some uneasy feelings, but these were the only two examples of overt collaboration between the VB and the other parties that Van Donselaar (1995) was able to track down. This is not to say that the parties are always unanimous in their strategy towards the VB. In 1988 the PVV and the VU refused to join the other parties in an appeal to the electorate to refrain from a racist vote. In the run-up to the European election in 1989 all parties signed an agreement to not collaborate with the VB, but when the VB gained a seat only the Socialist Party and the Green Party stuck to their promises. However, some events that emphasized the racist, violent and undemocratic character of the VB repaired the cordon sanitaire and made all the parties firmer in their commitment than ever before. One such event was the publication of the VB brochure ‘Immigration: The Solution’, which was openly racist and discriminatory; another was the violent interruption of a concert of a famous folksinger by prominent VB members. On the whole, however, the political parties have been able to maintain the cordon sanitaire around the VB at the national and the local level. Although they joined the boycott of the VB, the parties of the traditional right compete with it for the conservative and racist vote. Indeed, more people with RWE ideas vote for these parties – the Christian democrats (CVP), the liberals (PVV) or the nationalists (VU) – than for the VB (De Witte 1996).10 In other words, the political sector of the extreme right’s multi-organizational field consists of competitors (the traditional right-wing parties) and opponents or enemies (the socialist party (SP) and the Greens), but no potential allies. In the Netherlands, the extreme right is even more stigmatized. No single party will collaborate with it, at the national, regional or local level. Initially, in most

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representative bodies including the national Parliament, everybody except the chair left the meeting room when a representative of the extreme right spoke. Later, the tactic of ignoring the extreme right was replaced by systematic response to and rebuttal of its arguments. In the political arena the party has always been isolated and its direct political impact has been nil. In the meantime, the parties at the extreme right continued to suffer from conflicts and schisms. In the last few years before the extreme right collapsed, the Centre Democrats (CD) competed with the Centre Party (CP ’86) for the extreme right vote. This is not to say that the extreme right had no influence whatsoever in the Netherlands. Indirectly, it has persuaded political parties to adopt policies on foreigners and asylum seekers that they were not prepared to defend in the past. Even the social democrats became tougher on the issue over the years. The most striking example has been the position on foreigners taken by the foreman of the Conservative Party, Bolkestein. He has always argued that these issues are real ones and should not be left to the extreme right, but many a right-winger felt that Bolkestein was saying what they were not allowed to say. Indeed, they felt that he was trying to attract RWE votes. On the other hand, it was also argued that his tactic had given the extreme right an undeserved legitimacy. In Germany, the picture is fragmented, one of the reasons being that the extreme right is represented at different levels, in the European Parliament (EP), in some of the German states and in city councils. At each of those levels alliances can be forged or rejected. Initially, the boundaries between extreme right and moderate right were not so sharp. Representatives from the CDU/CSU shifted to the extreme right and the other way round. Indeed, the three founders of the REP were former CDU/CSU politicians who had quit the party. Obviously, the CDU/ CSU and the extreme right parties are fishing in the same pond for voters and the rise of parties of the extreme right always implied a loss of voters by the CDU/ CSU and their reintegration into the CDU/CSU again when the extreme right declined. In an interesting study of the ebb and flow of the German extreme right as related to the asylum seekers issue, Koopmans (1996b) demonstrated how in the early 1990s the extreme right and racist groups could emerge from their political ghetto when the main political parties were completely divided, both internally and among each other, on changing the constitutional right to political asylum. However, as soon as the asylum debate was settled and the constitution changed in 1992, the mobilization of the extreme right, robbed of its key issue, faded. This example demonstrates how established parties can weaken or strengthen the extreme right by the way in which they take sides on anti-immigrant issues. Although the official policy of the moderate right has always been one of straightforward rejection of any collaboration with the extreme right, in practice it was not always easy, as shown by the hot debates within the CDU/CSU about the relationship with the REP (Van Donselaar 1995). But after it was judged by the Constitutional Court in 1992 that the REP was an anti-constitutional party, there was no room left for compromise. The boundary was clear and none of the democratic parties, including the CDU/CSU, would ever consider passing that line. Since then the cordon sanitaire around the parties of the extreme right – the DVU

38 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer and the REP – has strengthened (Van Donselaar 1995). The German extreme right is restricted to coalitions within itself and indeed it has attempted to form such coalitions. As we saw, Schönhuber approached the DVU in 1994, but this generated such outrage within the REP that he was forced to resign. In 1995 the first of a series of meetings gathering all the families of the extreme right took place, trying to unify to meet the challenge of the European and national elections. In 1997 a party was even formed (Vereinigte Rechte – Unified Right) but it got nowhere in the elections.

The anti-RWE movements In all five countries countermovements have also developed, specifically dedicated to the fight against RWE ideas and organizations.11 Adopting the definition of Clarence Lo (1982: 118), we simply define a countermovement ‘as a movement mobilized against another social movement’. Common features of countermovements are polarization, dependency, Manichaeism and mimesis (Mayer 1995b). By ‘polarization’ we mean that most countermovements will be directed against the target movement and vice versa, aimed at neutralizing, confronting or discrediting its corresponding countermovement by all possible means. This polarization can involve a mutual dependency, mobilization and success on the one side needing to be triggered by success and mobilization on the other, each movement paradoxically thriving on the good health of its opponent. ‘Manichaeism’ is the process of ‘us–them’ dynamics, which may lead to a situation where the opposition is seen as the devil’s incarnation. ‘Mimesis’ is the tendency to adopt elements of the other side’s program. Although countermovements developed everywhere they are not equally strong or militant in each country. Anti-fascist and anti-racist organizations are the most common. In general they are embedded in radical leftist networks, although more moderate organizations exist as well. The typical strategy of these countermovements is to collect information on rightwing extremism and to make it available to the public, to stage counterdemonstrations and to attack the extreme right individually and collectively. The counterdemonstrations tend to turn meetings and demonstrations of the extreme right into a continuous risk to public order, which frequently makes the authorities decide to ban meetings and demonstrations altogether. In Italy, the left, and more specifically the communists, were the traditional enemies of the MSI for more than 30 years (Caciagli 1988; Dézé 2001). The Piazza Fontana bombing in December 1969 was the starting point of a spiral of left and right extremist violence and a ‘strategy of tension’ that destabilized the Italian democracy (Tarrow 1989; Simon 1992). But in the early 1990s terrorism came under control, the political system collapsed and the historical antagonisms declined. The MSI gave birth to AN and the PCI changed into PDS. Compared to the four other countries, there was only a modest anti-fascist movement in Italy at the time that we were conducting our interviews. The few organizations that existed were found in the Northern part of the country (Milan, Trieste, Verona, Brescia). Their primary strategy was counterdemonstrations and providing

Context, alliances and conflict

39

information on RWE, racism and xenophobia via the Internet. An active network, for instance, is A Sinistra, a coordination of several anti-fascist movements. Some of them are linked to extreme left-wing parties such as Rifondazione Communista, others go back to the Resistance and the Action Party. A much stronger countermovement existed in France (Cevipof 1995; Mayer 1995b). Since the 1930s anti-fascism has been deeply rooted in the extreme left and communist left in France, serving as the main abeyance structure for the antifascist movement. Every time the extreme right grew, the anti-fascist movement sprang up again, structured by ad hoc networks such as the Section Carrément AntiLePen (SCALP) and SOS Racisme, which appeared in 1984, and the Manifesto against the FN or Ras l’Front created in 1990 after the desecration of the Jewish cemetery of Carpentras, attributed to the extreme right. The main tactic of the French countermovement was what the socialist deputy, founder of the Manifesto against the FN, called ‘democratic harassment’: tracking information about the party activities, its platform, its leaders’ links with the past, their allies and systematic counterdemonstrations, disrupting FN’s meetings, congresses and celebrations so that on more than one occasion they could not take place, banned by the authorities to guarantee public order. The strategy of the countermovement, waging a moral crusade against each and everybody who was in one way or another involved in the FN, was not unquestioned, however. Some authors have argued that the countermovement actually had unwanted effects, such as publicizing the FN and making it look as a victim (Taguieff 1995; Taguieff and Tribalat 1998), but on the whole they contributed to its isolation and de-legitimization. In Flanders, an extended network of anti-fascist groups and organizations existed throughout the country.12 The movement consisted of both moderate and militant organizations. The semi-governmental Centre of Equal Opportunities and ‘Fight Against Racism’, that coordinated initiatives by countermovement organizations and served as the focal point of the movement, was important. Other grass roots organizations were Hand in Hand, Objectief, and Charta ’91. In addition, there were smaller but more radical groups. On the whole the larger organizations employed a moderate strategy of collecting and disseminating information, and staging counterdemonstrations. More radical action was staged as well, occasionally extreme right activists or politicians were threatened or a stone was thrown through a window, but overall the countermovement in Flanders was moderate. The changes in the Racism Law in 1999 made it possible for organizations to file complaints about racism, an opportunity gratefully seized by countermovement organizations to bring extreme right organizations to court. The Dutch countermovement originated from the anarchistic movement in the country’s big cities, which became increasingly violent in the 1980s. Every meeting or demonstration of the extreme right was countered by a demonstration of the anti-fascist movement, as a consequence very few extreme right meetings actually took place as the authorities usually chose to ban them as too large a risk to the disturbance of public order. The dramatic climax was the siege by the anti-fascist movement of a hotel in Kedichem in 1986 where the CP and CD were meeting. Deliberately or by accident the hotel was set on fire, and people were wounded in

40 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer the fighting and panic that resulted. The events in Kedichem prompted a reorientation of the movement. Two currents developed: a research-oriented faction, the ‘Fascist Research Collective’ (FOK) which publishes a report every year about fascist groups and organizations and their activities, and an actionoriented faction with groups, such as Kafka, that stages counterdemonstrations, monitors individual members of extreme right groups and organizations and stages other forms of direct action. The German anti-fascist movement was undoubtedly the most radical of the five, although there is a difference between the main part of the movement which aggregates opponents of the extreme right from the established parties, labour unions, student associations, etc. and the more radical movement ‘Autonomous Antifa’. Actually, the radical wing of the countermovement is also under the surveillance of the constitutional authorities. In 1999, it ranked highest for leftwing violence against people and objects. As in the Netherlands, the German antifascist movement is embedded in the youth subculture which originated from the squatters’ movement in the cities. Almost every large city in Germany has such a militant subculture; one of their activities concerned collecting and distributing information about the extreme right – both individual and organizational. It is believed that their database is more detailed, accurate and up-to-date than that of the constitutional authorities. In the past they have attacked both individuals and organizations on the extreme right. Individual attacks ranged from the relatively moderate (warning people that their neighbour is a fascist) to the more aggressive (threatening them by letter or phone) or even the violent (physical attacks on people’s belongings or lives). Such attacks certainly scared people. At the same time the extreme right was attacked collectively, in its offices, meetings and demonstrations. Counterdemonstrations became common practice after the rightwing violence against asylum seekers in the early 1990s. Since then, meetings and demonstrations of the extreme right have become virtually impossible because of counterdemonstrations that usually end in violent confrontations with the police. These violent tactics aroused serious debates inside the movement, some people wondering whether there was a difference between violence from the extreme right and violence from the extreme left. Yet, there is general agreement that the Autonomous Antifa plays an important role in the fight against right-wing extremism. If, leaving the past aside, we concentrate on the time when we conducted our interviews, Italy in those days seemed to be the only country where the multiorganizational field was not predominantly hostile, at least towards the new ‘postfascist’ party born from the double Congress of Fiuggi. In the remaining four countries, organizations of the extreme right were certainly not treated in a friendly manner. Under those circumstances, the chances were high that anyone joining such movements or already a member would be stigmatized. The recent large-scale comparative study on anti RWE cordon sanitaire strategies and their efficiency in seven countries, over a period of ten years (1989–99) definitively corroborates our analysis (Van der Brug and Van Spanje 2004). Expert judgements

Context, alliances and conflict

41

show clearly that, of our five countries, the Netherlands (Centrumdemocraten) and Germany (Republikaner) come first in the perceived strictness of the cordon sanitaire, measured on a ten-point scale, with a score of 9.4 (the same level is found only in Wallonia, or the Belgian Front National ). Then comes Flanders (VB), with a score of 8.6. France is in third position (FN), with a score of 7.5. And last of all comes Italy (AN), with a score of 1.9, even below the Lega Nord (2.3). But the fascist party MS-Fiamma Tricolore gets a score of 7.1. Italy is indeed the most favourable context for present or ex-RWE movements and Germany and the Netherlands the harshest.

Notes 1 Parties will lose their deposit if they fail to reach a specified proportion of the votes. 2 The rule was changed just before the 2004 regional elections, mixing proportional representation and majority rule, instituting two rounds and fixing higher thresholds (10 per cent of the valid votes are necessary in order to run in the second round if no list gets the absolute majority in the first round). 3 Each voter has two votes. The first one (half of the seats) allows for the direct election of one deputy per constituency, on a simple majority rule. The second vote decides, on regional lists, the number of seats attributed to each party (a proportional rule, with a 5 per cent threshold). 4 Marc Dutroux kidnapped and murdered four young girls in 1996. 5 For France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands we draw heavily on Van Donselaar’s (1995) comparative study of governmental responses to right-wing extremism. Also see, just before our study started, the report on ‘Legal Instruments to Combat Racism and Xenophobia’, Commission of the EC, Luxembourg, Office for Official Publications of the EC (1993). 6 In 1999 a new law was adopted which makes it possible to prosecute organizations and not only individuals for racism. Unlike previous legislation the new law makes it possible for organizations to file a complaint. This possibility was immediately exploited by the Centre for Equal Opportunities and an organization called ‘Fight against Racism’ (see the section on countermovements) to bring some organizations associated with the VB to court. 7 Things seem to be changing, though, for the Court of Appeal of Gand has sentenced three associations close to the VB for discrimination and racism and the idea of depriving the VB of its public funding is becoming popular (Le Monde 24 April 2004). 8 For a detailed and comparative analysis of the impact of such a strategy, see Van der Brug and Van Spanje (2004). 9 In elections, parties are listed in a specific order on the ballot form – party no. 1, party no. 2 and so on. This party number is also used in the campaign. Obviously, it is easier to have the same number in each electoral district as it makes it possible to use the same number throughout the country. 10 RWE ideas are measured by a scale including indicators of biological racism (supremacy of the white race), desire for a strong leader, etc. 11 This section is largely based on information given by the country teams and via the Internet. 12 For a recent development of the countermovement, see www.namurantifasciste.be.

4

Political demand and supply Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer

The strength of a social movement is determined by demand and supply factors (Klandermans 1997, 2003; De Witte and Klandermans 2000; Klandermans and Mayer 2001; Loch 2001). ‘Demand factors’ relate to the interest existing in a given society about what the movement stands for: ● ●

Does it address a problem people worry about? Is there a need for a movement on these issues?

Usually, the people who participate in a movement are only a small proportion of those who care about the issue, but this is not necessarily a sign of weakness. Indeed, for a movement to be viable, a large reservoir of sympathizers is needed to nourish its activists. They form its mobilization potential (Klandermans 1997: 23). ‘Supply factors’, on the other hand, relate to the resources of the movement and its capacity to turn potential candidates for mobilization into participants: ● ● ● ● ●

Is it strong? Is it likely to achieve its goals at affordable costs? Does it have charismatic leaders? Is it an organization people can identify with? Does it stage activities that are appealing to people?

Political demand: RWE mobilization potential If the nature of the New Right movements that have recently developed in western Europe is controversial, most authors agree that the failure of mainstream parties to address issues such as immigration and law and order has opened a political space and generated a demand for more restrictive and authoritarian policies, fuelled by economic recession, globalization, European integration and the crisis of the welfare state (Betz 1994; Kitschelt and McGann 1995). Among the motives underlying extreme right-wing support in Europe, two seem to be central: antiimmigrant and anti-system attitudes. Gilles Ivaldi for instance, in a detailed analysis of Eurobarometer data, has shown that xenophobia and dissatisfaction with the way democracy functions are the core characteristics of REP voters in Germany,

Political demand and supply

43

FN voters in France and VB voters in Flanders (Ivaldi 2001; see also Gabriel 1996; Küchler 1996; Minkenberg 1998; De Witte and Klandermans 2000; Lubbers 2001; Mayer 2002). Similar studies in the Netherlands for the 1995 elections show that for CD voters hostility to immigrants comes first and, to a lesser extent, antipolitics sentiments (De Witte and Scheepers 1996). Only AN voters stand apart. If they are more xenophobic and anti-system than the average, on neither of these dimensions do they appear different from the mainstream right-wing voters that support Forza Italia (FI), the party of Silvio Berlusconi. Actually, the most xenophobic and anti-system of all were the Lega Nord voters.1 This confirms the progressive normalization of Fini’s movement, which is no more confined to the traditional issues of the extreme right and appears gradually to be becoming viewed as a ‘generalist’ party, to the point when one may ask if its voters can still be considered as RWE. Conversely, one might assume that those who stayed faithful to the old fascist creed, in movements such as MS-Fiamma Tricoloure or Fascismo e Libertà, should conform more to the traditional RWE picture. According to the leading motivations of their supporters, one can assume the potential of development for RWE parties will be stronger in countries with a high level of anti-immigrant and anti-politics attitudes. There again the Eurobarometer studies offer a set of relatively comparable data allowing us to follow the global trends of public opinion and to rank order the five countries on these two issues over a tenyear period. Attitudes towards immigrants and foreigners are not static (Gabriel 1996; Küchler 1996; Ivaldi 2001). The 1988 Eurobarometer study on xenophobia and racism showed a clear division between countries of emigration – such as Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain – which ranked lower than average whatever the question and the countries of immigration – such as Belgium, France and Germany – which ranked higher. The noticeable exception was the Netherlands, always among the most tolerant countries. Then during the 1990s, with the increase in refugees and asylum seekers, and the transformation of emigration countries into immigration countries, there was a general surge of xenophobia in Europe, the Southern countries catching up with the North (Mayer 1996). But the ranking of our five countries by level of xenophobia remained remarkably stable during the period when we conducted our interviews. Belgium clearly ranked first, France and Germany occupied the second and third position with very little difference between the two and the Netherlands and Italy were at the lower end of the scale, at a clear distance from the others and increasingly closer to each other. The very high level of negative attitudes towards immigrants and foreigners in the Belgian population, contrasted with the high level of tolerance found in the Netherlands, is acknowledged by many other studies, based on detailed analysis of Eurobarometer data or from other sources such as the European Values Study (data on all EU countries, De Witte and Klandermans 2000; see also Dekker and van Praag 1990). The differences are impressive, whatever the measure used. In 1989, on a xenophobia scale combining ten items about ethnic minorities, the highest proportion of agreement was found among Belgian respondents (56 per cent) and the lowest (30 per cent) in the Netherlands (Dekker and van Praag 1990). In 1997,

44 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer a question asked to the interviewees position themselves on a ten-point scale ranging from ‘not at all racist’ to ‘very racist’. Belgians came first, 55 per cent of the sample scoring between six and ten, compared with 48 per cent of the French, 34 per cent of the Germans, 31 per cent of the Dutch and 30 per cent of the Italians (Eurobarometer 1997: 47.1, average proportion 33 per cent). Whatever the reasons for these differences, of our five cases, at the time of our interviews, Belgian citizens were potentially the most receptive to the xenophobic appeals of extreme right-wing parties and Italian and Dutch citizens the least. As far as anti-system attitudes are concerned, measured here by dissatisfaction with the way democracy functions and low trust in Parliament, a different picture emerged (Gabriel 1996; Küchler 1996; Ivaldi 2001). In 1988, as in 1992, Italy ranked highest, Belgium and France shared the second position and Germany and the Netherlands occupied the lowest end of the scale. But in 1997 Belgium came first, the proportion of respondents ‘very satisfied’ with the way democracy functioned in their country dropping to 19 per cent, compared with 25 for Italy, 43 for France, 61 for Germany and 77 per cent for the Netherlands. Overall the figures matched with the political developments in Italy and Belgium. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Italy was in the middle of a large-scale political crisis and the same can be said of Belgium by the end of the 1990s. The 1997 Eurobarometer data also provide a more specific indicator of anti-elite attitudes than mere satisfaction with the way democracy functions. On a scale of seven items evaluating the perception of government, corruption, powerlessness and distance from the elites,2 Belgium again came first with a record 63 per cent negative opinions (score six– seven on the scale). But Germany came next with 54 per cent, then France and Italy at the same level (41 and 40 per cent, respectively), and Netherlands last with only 18, while the average score in the European Union was 43 per cent. There again, the highest potential of discontent with the political system was found among the Belgian population and the lowest in the Netherlands. So at the time when our interviews were conducted, a substantial reservoir of support for radical right-wing parties’ platforms existed everywhere. Even in the lowest-ranking country, we still found around one-fifth of the population sympathizing with a xenophobic or anti-system standpoint. However, significant differences appeared from one country to another. Taking our two indicators into account, the strongest demand for a RWE movement was in Belgium. France and Germany ranked lower than Belgium but with still considerable proportions of the population supporting extreme right-wing ideas, especially anti-immigrant positions. Italians stood apart, combining a low level of xenophobia and a high discontent with the way democracy functioned, while the Dutch ranked low on both dimensions.

Political supply: RWE movements’ resources If there is a demand for RWE issues, how effective are these movements in satisfying it and in mobilizing the potential present in their environment? Do the existing organizations offer viable perspectives for those who are interested or are

Political demand and supply

45

they just too marginal to be taken seriously? We will compare our five movements on a number of dimensions that all relate to movement strength – the proportion of the popular vote they get in elections, the size of their membership, the scope of the movement, the quality of the leadership and the strength of their organizations – focusing on the situation in the years that we conducted our interviews. Electoral strength To assess the strength of a movement, it is essential to know how many voters these movements are able to mobilize. From one country to another, their electoral and political weight and therefore their visibility and attractiveness is very different (see Table 4.1). There is a clear-cut cleavage between the German and Dutch RWE parties, on the one side, and the three other parties, on the other. Added together, extreme right-wing parties in these countries attracted at the most around 2 per cent of the votes in the two first countries. The CD had not yet recovered from its fatal blow in the 1996 elections when it attracted only 0.6 per cent of the votes. The Republikaner in Germany failed to retain even their marginal position among the German electorate. The DVU did slightly better but was on the decline as well, even though locally it got good results here and there. For the VB, the FN and the AN, the prospects were far more encouraging. The scores of the French FN at the time of the interviews were stabilizing at the level of 15 per cent, first in the presidential elections (1988), then in the parliamentary Table 4.1 Electoral and organizational strength of RWE parties, selected years

Creation Take-off National elections

Italy

France a

Flanders

Netherlands

Germany

MSI 1946 AN 1994 1994: 13.5 1996: 15.7

FN 1972 1984 P 1995: 15.0 L 1997: 14.9

VB 1977 1991 1995: 12.5 1999: 15.4

CD 1984 1994 1994: 2.9 1998: 0.6

REP 1983 1989 1994: 1.9 1998: 1.8

10.5 5.7

12.6 15.1

1.0 0.5

3.9 0.7

42,000d

10,000 e

2,000 f

1,250

2,690

170

36,000g (REP 16,000) 590 (REP 260)

European elections: 1994 12.5 1999 10.3 Membership: Absolute numberb 100,000 c Proportionate to country’s electorateh 2,080

Notes a P: presidential elections, L: parliamentary elections. For the 1999 European elections it is the score of Le Pen; Mégret drew 3.3 per cent. b Around the time of our study. c Merkl and Weinberg (1996). d Before the 1999 split. e Swyngedouw (1998). f Lucardie (1998). g Winkler and Schumann (1998). h Registered citizens.

46 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer elections (1997) and finally in the regional elections (1998). In Italy, the AN’s score climbed to 13.5 per cent of the votes in the 1994 parliamentary elections and then 15.7 in the 1996 elections, contrasting heavily with the 1.7 per cent of the MS-FT, while the VB was above 12 per cent in the 1995 parliamentary elections and over 15 per cent in the 1999 European elections. At the local level, results were even more impressive, the FN in the South of France, the VB in a city like Antwerp and the AN in Southern Italy getting nearly 30 per cent of the votes. Such scores – around one-seventh of the votes – give these three RWE parties an unprecedented electoral influence. Gaining votes means gaining elected representatives, and thus access to power and influence, in town councils, regional councils and national parliaments. In spite of its high scores, though, because of the French electoral system (see Chapter 3), the FN in practice never had more than one deputy elected to the National Assembly, while the VB, with less impressive scores than the FN, had around ten and the AN more than 90 deputies and some 50 senators. But the FN has importance at the local level, in regional and town councils, especially in the South East (Viard 1996). The more elected representatives RWE parties get, the more respectable they become, and the more benefits in terms of political career and responsibilities they can give to their members. Eventually, electoral dynamics can lead to office. AN was the first RWE party to be associated with mainstream politics since 1945, thanks to its alliance with FI. Some years ago the Austrian FPÖ achieved a similar position. But none of the other movements studied here was able to offer such a position of power to its constituency. Party strength In between elections, membership is essential to assure the endurance of the movement, and to carry out the everyday tasks that make the party visible and survive, such as distributing the party’s press and leaflets, putting up posters, attending meetings, taking part in demonstrations. Here again we observe a clearcut cleavage between Germany and the Netherlands, on the one side, and the FN, AN and VB, on the other. In Holland, for instance, extreme right-wing parties and organizations have never counted more than a couple of thousand members. The REP never succeeded in establishing the party throughout the whole country and if they rallied up to 25,000 members in 1989, they could not keep them. But the AN inherited from the MSI a strong hierarchical organization with branches throughout the country and both the FN and the VB succeeded over the years in building a very effective apparatus, strictly hierarchical and centrally organized with a strong leadership. All three parties are embedded in a network of related structures (youth organizations, women’s organizations, training institutes, professional organizations, newspapers and magazines, etc.) associated with the extreme right that extend its influence in society. Over the years they have become movements of a much broader scope than mere political parties. Indeed, they began to see themselves as promoters of change rather than as electoral machinery in a narrow sense, creating their specific subculture and countersociety (Mudde and Van

Political demand and supply

47

Holsteyn 2000). All this was not true, or true only to a much lesser extent, of the parties in the Netherlands. In Germany, the situation was more complex because of the myriad of marginal groups and small presses and publishers that come and go. Yet, Winkler and Schumann (1998) observe that on the whole the extreme right in Germany is very weakly organized; even the more successful parties such as the DVU and the REP are modest organizations that consistently have difficulty in surviving and binding their membership to the organization. The French FN, on the eve of its split, had 42,000 registered party members. It had established its formation centres, its summer schools and its practical ‘Guide for the activist’ explaining all the know-how of militancy. It multiplied networks and satellite organizations, spreading the influence of the party among youth, women, farmers and, more recently, the retired and the unemployed. It was present on the social scene, creating its own unions (they were finally considered illegal) among transport workers, police forces, prison guards, school teachers and social housing tenants and participated systematically in trade and craft elections (chambers of commerce, professional bodies, etc.). The FN was visible in the public space, with its marches, its demonstrations, its celebrations (Fête des Bleu– Blanc–Rouge, 1 May march in honour of Joan of Arc). It had imposed itself in the political marketplace as a political brand with an identity, an acronym – FN – a logo borrowed from the Italian MSI (the tricolour flame), clearly identifiable posters3 and a counterculture (Birenbaum 1992). All these elements are likely to attract and socialize activists, allowing them to identify with the party. The Flemish VB developed in a similar way. It had 834 members in 1979, more than 10,000 in 1996,4 one-third of whom were concentrated in the city of Antwerp, not counting its many parallel networks, especially its youth movement (Delwit et al. 1998: 78). The ex-MSI, the oldest established, was even more impressive, claiming on the eve of its refoundation in 1994 to have 230,000 registered members in 8,412 sections, 20,000 members and 40,000 sympathizers in its founding clubs of the AN, 30,000 members in its Youth Front and 4,000 in its University AN Front (Le Monde 31 January 1995). In 1997, membership was estimated at nearly half a million (Camus 2001). Thus in terms of estimated membership,5 AN was the largest organization. Yet as a ratio of the country’s electorate (see Table 4.1), the VB’s rank and file was the largest. The membership of the FN stood between that of the AN and that of the VB. Proportionately to the electorate, it was the smallest of the three, yet it was not negligible in a country such as France where party membership was never very extended. Leadership Leadership is another essential asset, both internal and external, for these parties. Gianfranco Fini in Italy, Filip Dewinter or Frank Van Hecke in Belgium, JeanMarie Le Pen in France, with very different styles, have an authority inside the movement and a charisma that draw sympathizers and voters to them. They are the incarnation of the movement, offering a means of identification that small, unstable splinter organizations torn by internal rivalry and with no recognized

48 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer leadership, as in the Netherlands and Germany, cannot provide. A proof of the importance of such an asset is the present evolution of the French extreme right after the 1998 split. In the Marignane congress of January 1999 Bruno Mégret created a dissident movement with the support of two-thirds of the former party members. He was the organization man, the one who had transformed the FN into an efficient party machine. But he lacked the charisma of the historical leader Le Pen. In the 1999 European elections, Mégret’s party attracted 3 per cent of the votes, Le Pen’s 6 per cent. And in the first round of the 2002 presidential elections, Le Pen came in second position, with 16.9 per cent of the votes, while Mégret only got 2.6 per cent (Mayer 2002). On the other hand, the meteoric appearance of Pim Fortuyn in the Dutch political arena showed that a charismatic leader could indeed turn a potential demand for right-wing politics into actual support, even in the Netherlands. After his death his party collapsed, dropping from 26 seats in the May 2002 parliamentary elections to only 8 in the January 2003 elections. Charisma alone is not enough, a party structure is needed to survive the leader. Yet, leadership is an essential asset, especially among RWE for whom authority and discipline is a basic value.

Becoming a right-wing activist When all aspects are taken into account, RWE appeared stronger and more effective in Italy, France, and Flanders, and therefore much more attractive to potential supporters than in the two other countries. In the Netherlands, although the demand for an extreme right movement was relatively low, it was large enough for a viable movement to develop, had the supply been more attractive. But the CD were weak, and operating in an outspokenly hostile environment. On the top of fairly restrictive legislation, the multi-organizational field of the extreme right was not very supportive. In addition, there was hardly anything respectable in the past or in the present of the Dutch extreme right to identify with. The only positive element was the easy access to the political arena, but the movement was too weak to seize that opportunity. In Germany, the context of extreme right activism was even bleaker. There seemed to be a stronger anti-immigrant feeling than in the Netherlands; in that respect, the objective of the Republikaner to create a political option to the right of the CDU/CSU made sense. But RWE in Germany were so much burdened by the past, and the political and legal opportunities were so limited that it was hardly possible to turn the potential demand into a viable option. Existing RWE organizations were weak, lacking the influence and opportunities to enter the political arena. Moreover, the multi-organizational field was extremely hostile: there were some real personal risks involved in becoming a right-wing activist. In France, there was a clear demand for a RWE movement and a strong supply. The French extreme right also had a long history people could identify with. But the political opportunities to turn organizational strength into political influence were limited, and there were legal restrictions and an unsupportive multi-organizational field. However, the FN could turn this into an advantage by defining itself in opposition to the political establishment and the mainstream

Political demand and supply

49

parties, ‘the gang of four’. Such a configuration helped creating a politicized collective identity, uniting the militants against the rest of the world (Simon and Klandermans 2001; see also Bizeul 2003). In Flanders, the situation was even more favourable. As in France people could take pride in the past of the extreme right because of its link with Flemish nationalism, but more importantly there was both a strong demand and a strong supply, without much legal restriction. In recent years legislation has become stricter, but it was not yet in place when we conducted our interviews. On the top of that, entering the political arena was easy; the only difficulty was the cordon sanitaire strategy of the other political parties and countermovements that kept the extreme right in an isolated position, though again, as in France, this could sometimes be turned into an advantage. Indeed, the VB made use of the movement–countermovement dynamic by developing into an antisystem party and creating an oppositional identity among its members. The most friendly environment existed in Italy. AN offered an attractive supply as a party with political influence and faced very little opposition or restrictions. In fact, it had some powerful allies that made it even more influential. Nor was there much societal opposition, expressing itself in the absence of a strong countermovement. However the presence of RWE potential and of movement organizations of the extreme right that offer opportunities to participate, sources of identification and ideas and values are not sufficient explanations for right-wing activism. The question remains as to how the two are brought together. Mobilization is the process that brings demand and supply together and turns potentiality into actuality – that is, makes people join the movement and become activists (Klandermans 1997, 2003). The process of mobilization may be initiated by the individual or a movement organization, the point is that an individual who is prepared to take action learns about the opportunities to participate. The process of mobilization can be a matter of biographical continuity (Roth 2003), or conversion (Teske 1997). Biographical continuity refers to the situation where movement membership and participation are the logical consequence of the preceding political socialization, while conversion accounts for those situations where movement membership and participation imply a break with the past. Be it continuity or conversion, we hold that critical events often play a crucial role in the process of mobilization. Such events may include an encounter with someone who already belongs to the movement, or some media event (listening to a TV or radio programme, reading a newspaper article, a magazine or a book), or being confronted with some dramatic situation which involves the movement directly or indirectly. Critical events are hard to predict. Obviously, many people who encounter these same events will never join a movement; it is the potentiality as it was developed before that gives the event its impact on a specific life-course. This is not to say that the convergence of potentiality and supply in the event is completely accidental. Indeed, potential participants may have been seeking direction and signs that tell them what to do and where to go and that may actually have brought them to the event. We have therefore chosen to conduct life-history interviews as a device to reconstruct the socialization processes and life-experiences that create potentialities and turn them into actual commitment to an RWE movement. Obviously, a

50 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer life-history interview generates a social reconstruction of the interviewee’s lifecourse: inevitably, it consists of facts and fiction. It is the world according to the interviewee, including his justifications and rationalizations of the choices he made. Even continuity and conversion are to large extent reconstructions by the interviewee who frames his life-history as continuous or discontinuous. This does not make the interviews any less true. On the contrary, what the world looks like according to these right-wing extremists and why in that world their activism is a meaningful thing for them, is precisely what we try to understand through our interviews: to what extent being a militant satisfies the individual’s desire to change the world, to belong to some social group and to give meaning to his life. We shall try to understand how such motives developed during a person’s lifecourse, which critical events decided him to join, and to what extent the same or other motives function to maintain commitment to the organization.

Notes 1 The proportion of the constituencies that adopted xenophobic and anti-system attitudes according to Ivaldi (2001) were considerably above the countries’ average on both dimensions in Belgium, France and Germany (think there are too many immigrants: VB 78 per cent v. 55 per cent on average, REP 91 per cent v. 51 per cent, FN 84 per cent v. 44 per cent. Not at all satisfied with the way democracy functions: VB 59 per cent v. 38 per cent, REP 41 per cent v. 17 per cent; FN 40 per cent v. 20 per cent). Compared to those differences those for AN were small (xenophobia: 45 per cent v. 39 per cent on average, anti-system: 37 per cent v. 26 per cent), while Lega Nord voters were consistently above average (Ivaldi 2001: 58–60). 2 ‘The people who run the country are more concerned with themselves than the good of the country/Corruption among politicians is increasing/The way government and public bodies work is getting worse/I have little control over what is happening in the world around me/Public services look less and less after the interests of people like me/The rich get richer and the poor get poorer/There is nothing one can do to change things in our society’ (Eurobarometer: 47.1 1997). 3 See Alexandre Dézé’s dissertation in political science with interesting experiments showing how people recognize the FN posters even when one hides their identification (Dézé 1998). 4 The figure on the VB is taken from Swyngedouw (1998) who adds that it is probably an overestimation. De Witte and Scheepers (1998) mention a figure of 7,000 in 1992. The real figure is presumably somewhere in between these two, which does not alter the relative position of the VB. 5 One should always be cautious with party membership figures. As a rule, parties do not give information or give figures that seem a gross overestimation.

5

Writing life-histories Interviewing extreme right-wing activists Team members

How and why our activists entered an extreme right movement is the leading question of this study. We chose to answer it through life-history interviews. This choice has both theoretical and methodological implications: ●

●

Theoretically, because the employment of life-history interviews implies that one seeks to understand individual choices – in our case, the choice to become and stay active in a movement labelled as ‘extreme right’ – as steps in personal trajectories (Blee and Taylor 2002). The reasons for this involvement in the extreme right are sought in the individual’s past. The interviewer and the interviewee travel back into time to the point where the interviewee first encountered the extreme right movement and reconstruct the trajectory from then to present activism. Methodologically, because a life-history interview is necessarily a qualitative form of data collection that requires specific analytical tools (Rubin and Rubin 1995).

This chapter explains in detail which tools we used: how we collected our data, how we selected our interviewees and how the interviews were structured and analysed. It ends with some afterthoughts about life-history interviews as a manner of collecting information about extreme right activists.

Sampling extreme right activists As already indicated, the objective of our study was to interview militants rather than mere supporters of extreme right organizations. It was agreed that in each country we would aim for people at different levels in the movement, with an emphasis on the lower echelons in the organizations rather than the leaders. We assumed that the leaders have so often been interviewed and confronted with the question of how they became involved in right-wing extremism that their stories would be too much determined by public relations strategies. As for the selection of the organizations, we chose, as already explained, a list of organizations for each country that were indisputably perceived as extreme right rather than developing an a priori definition (see Chapter 1). Members of any of these organizations

52 Team members qualified as interviewees. We also agreed that we would try to interview activists from both political parties and other types of organizations. We also decided to restrict ourselves to those organizations that, as far as we could see, stayed within the rules of the law. In each country the extreme right encompasses organizations that are on the fringe of criminal organizations, or at least in the twilight zone between legal and illegal activities. These organizations were not included. Finally, we attempted to diversify our interviews in terms of gender, age, region and other background variables. In fact, we deliberately oversampled female activists. In her book on women in the Ku Klux Klan, Kathy Blee (2002) observed that research on right-wing extremism tends to focus on men. As we did not want to make the same mistake we made sure that we had enough women among our interviewees to be able to shed some light on their specific position in the extreme right. In each country the study was introduced as a study on political engagement initiated by the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. The interviewers could show the interviewee an official letter on the university’s stationery signed by Professor Klandermans in his capacity as the project leader. It was emphasized that we would treat the information provided in the interviews in an anonymous way, although many interviewees did not really mind. This was achieved by giving all our interviewees pseudonyms and revealing only their gender, age and membership organization. Within this framework the actual sampling strategies differed in the five countries, although a mixture of snowball sampling and approaching potential interviewees at meeting places was used everywhere. Indeed, options such as sampling from membership lists were not feasible, as lists did not exist or were not made available to us. In this section we will briefly describe the samples in the five countries (see Appendix 1, p. 277, for more details). Flanders In Flanders, activists from three organizations were approached: Vlaams Blok (Flemish Bloc–VB), Voorpost (Vanguard–VP), and the Nationalistische Studentenvereniging (Nationalistic Student Association–NSV). The VB is Flanders’ successful extreme right-wing political party; VP is an extreme right action group, while the NSV is an extreme right student organization. In each of the three organizations some initial contacts were instrumental in referring the interviewer to other potential interviewees. Eventually through snowballing, we were able to interview 28 activists (7 female and 21 male) in Flanders – 11 from the VB (2 female and 9 male), 9 from VP (2 female and 7 male) and 8 from the NSV (3 female and 5 male). The interviewees came from different regions where the organizations were active: Limburg, Antwerp and Louvain for the VB, Antwerp and East Flanders for the VP and the two Flemish universities towns (Louvain and Ghent) for the NSV: 8 of the Belgian interviewees had been involved for more than 12 years in their organization; 10 between 5 and 11 years and 10 for 4 years or less. Some activists occupied high-level positions in the organization and some low-level ones, but the vast majority held positions at an intermediate level. They were between 18 and 59

Writing life-histories 53 years old (on average, 33.8 years, members of the student association included, and 38.4 without the students). If one leaves out the members of the student association – who were all enrolled at the university – most interviewees had finished secondary schooling; 6 activists had a higher education. Except for 2 retirees and the students, all interviewees were employed, mostly in white-collar jobs. The Netherlands In the Netherlands, we interviewed 36 activists: 31 men and 5 women. They were actively involved in one or more of the parties or organizations that composed the Dutch extreme right of those days: 17 in the Centrum Democraten (Centre Democrats–CD), 11 in the Centrum Partij ’86 (Centre Party–CP ’86) and later some of those 11 in the VolksNationalisten Nederland (People’s Nationalists Netherlands– VNN); 3 of our interviewees participated in the Nederlands Blok (Netherlands Block–NB), 2 in the Nederlandse Volksunie (Netherland’s People’s Union–NVU) and 3 in Voorpost Nederland (Vanguard Netherlands–VPN). The CD, CP ’86, VNN, NB and NVU were all political parties; VPN was a meeting point of right-wing extremists, but unlike its Flemish counterpart it functioned more as a ‘think tank’ than as an action group. Some of the people approached were people known by us from websites of the movement or the anti-extreme right countermovements. They were approached directly by phone, others we reached through snowballing. A few activists who initially refused to be interviewed agreed at a later stage, after hearing about our study from others in the movement. Most of the interviewees came from the country’s large cities, but a few were from urban areas. In the Netherlands, one-third of the interviewees had been actively involved in the movement for more than 12 years, one-third between 5 and 11 years, and onethird 4 years or less. Some interviewees held positions within the party or organization – such as chairmen, deputy chairmen or board members of the party, or chairmen or deputy chairmen of a local branch or the youth wing of the party. Others occupied positions in the political arena. The average age of our interviewees was 42.7 years – the youngest was 17 and the oldest 72. Half had a loweror higher-level professional training, 10 activists had some college or high school degree, 6 of whom continued some kind of university education; 4 activists had little more than primary education. More than half of the interviewees (20) had no paid job: 6 were retired, 14 were unemployed. The remaining 12 activists had a company of their own or were working for some employer, often in occupations that required little training, such as a taxi driver. Germany In Germany, it was more difficult than in the other countries to get access to the movement. Some organizations refused to collaborate such as the Deutsche Volksunion (German People’s Union–DV) and the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschland (National Democratic Party–NDP) both political parties, others we omitted because of the potential unlawfulness of the organization or its members such as

54 Team members the Jungen Nationaldemokraten (Young National Democrats–JN). Eventually, some activists of the Republikaner (REP), an extreme right political party, agreed to collaborate. When the first few interviews were successfully conducted others agreed to be interviewed – some of whom were reached through a snowballing technique while others were approached at a national meeting of the party. Eventually we interviewed 20 Republikaner (6 female and 14 male). In order to go beyond the REP, the editorial team of Junge Freiheit (Young Freedom – JF, an extreme right magazine) was approached; 4 (male) agreed to be interviewed. That brought the German sample to 24 (6 female and 18 male). The interviewees came from different regions of the country (6 from Nordrhein Westfalen, 7 from Berlin, 3 from Baden-Württemberg, 4 from Bayern, and 1 from Rheinland-Pfalz). Most German interviewees (15) had been affiliated for a period between 5 and 11 years to the REP; 4 for more than 12 years and 4 less than 5 years. In terms of their position in the organization, many in the German sample were party officials: 13 occupied high-level positions, 10 intermediate positions and only 1 interviewee occupied a lower-level position in the party. Their age ranged from 22 to 78 years, with an average age of 43.8; 8 of the German activists had a university degree, 2 had studied at the university but never finished, while 2 were planning to study at the university in the future. The remaining 12 had achieved some kind of secondary schooling. Only 1 interviewee was unemployed; 2 were retired, 2 were students and 1 was a housewife. The 18 other activists occupied a variety of whitecollar jobs. Italy In Italy, we interviewed 33 activists: (8 female and 25 male). These interviewees were actively involved in one of the three political parties that form the offspring of the Movimento Sociale Italiano (National Social Movement–MSI), the former fascist party; 11 activists (4 female and 7 male) belonged to the Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance–AN); 11 (3 female and 8 male) to the Movimento Sociale-Fiamma Tricolore (Social Movement of the Three Coloured Flame–MS-FT); 11 (1 female and 10 male) to the Movimento Fascismo e Libertà (Movement for Fascism and Freedom– MFL). Members of these organizations were contacted by phone; 8 of the 11 interviewees, in each organization, were from the north of Italy (mostly Milan), the remaining 3 from the south. A large proportion of the 33 Italian activists (18) had been involved in the extreme right movement for more than 12 years, sometimes for up to more than 50 years; 7 Italians had been active in the extreme right for a period between 5 and 11 years and 8 for less than 5 years. Their position in the party ranked from high-level positions to intermediate and low-level ones. Their age ranged from 19 to 69 years old. The average age was 42.4: 12 had studied at university, 3 of them never finished; 4 had little more than primary education, the remaining 19 went through secondary education. A few were still high school or university students, 3 interviewees were retired, only 1 unemployed. The others were working in a variety of positions, but only 2 or 3 in what one could consider as blue-collar positions.

Writing life-histories 55 France In France, we conducted 36 interviews (11 female and 25 male), all of which with members of the FN. We made sure, however, to recruit interviewees from the various currents that constitute the FN (royalists, Catholics, New Right, traditional right). The interviewees were approached at party events, local party organizations and through snowballing. The French sample consisted predominantly of very active members of the FN, to a lesser extent of party officials. The interviewees came from the North and the South East of the country – two regions where the FN is strong – and also from Paris. Over one-third of the interviewees had been actively involved in extreme right politics for more than 12 years, mostly within the FN, although some had a personal history in the extreme right that went way beyond the FN’s history. A similar number had been active in the extreme right field between 5 and 11 years, again mostly within the FN, and 9 for less than 5 years. The age of the French activists ranged from 17 to 75. The average age was 38.5 years. The vast majority (25) had higher education, 9 interviewees had secondary education and no more than 2 only primary education; 8 of the interviewees were students, 3 were unemployed and 6 retired. All but 3 of those who were employed held white-collar positions. Movement v. party A first observation one can make is that the vast majority of our interviewees were actively involved in a political party. In Italy and France this was the case for all interviewees, while in the Netherlands and Germany this held for all but a few. Belgium is the only country that deviated from this pattern. In other words, activism as discussed with our interviewees was predominantly political, partisan activism. This is not necessarily a problem as the parties included in our study obviously are part of the larger extreme right movement sector, and there appears to be a clear overlap between the political parties and other movement organizations. On the one hand, parties are coalitions of currents that exist within the extreme right in a country; on the other, those who were interviewed were usually involved in other extreme right associations (youth movements, students’ organizations, cultural associations), and had voted without exception for the extreme right in recent elections. Nonetheless, the majority of our interviewees told us stories about their involvement in a political party. The quality of our sample How representative of extreme right activists are our samples in each country of our study? This is a qualitative study. The samples are based neither on random sampling nor on quota sampling methods. They try to encompass in each country the most contrasted types of extreme right activists. They are like a magnifying glass: that means that one should be cautious not to generalize beyond the possible. Yet, we believe that in combination our interviews provide a reliable picture of

56 Team members RWEs, certainly as far as those actively involved in political parties are concerned. Indeed, the differences between the country samples are not completely random and do reflect some of the known characteristics of the extreme right in the five countries. It is obviously no accident that in Italy so many of our interviewees have been involved for more than 12 years in the extreme right, nor is it by chance that in the Netherlands so many occupy marginal positions in society. We believe also that it is not mere coincidence that there are so few blue-collar workers among our activists. On the one hand, activism in general is a role taken more often by individuals with more social and cultural resources. On the other hand, extreme right organizations seem to be mostly middle-class white-collar movements, as shown, for instance, by the studies of party membership and Congress delegates of the FN in France (Ysmal 1991; Ivaldi 1994). Such significant characteristics of our samples combine with further characteristics such as gender, age, duration of membership, position in the movement, education and employment. Altogether this makes us feel confident about the quality of our samples and their capacity to provide us with a valid and reliable picture of extreme right-wing activism in our five countries in the 1990s.

The interviews Life-history interviews are like travels through time. On the basis of an interview scheme the interviewee is asked to go back in the past. In the course of the interview the interviewer and the interviewee try to reconstruct a specific part of the interviewee’s life. As our study concerned the interviewee’s career in a given movement of the extreme right, the interview started with the question of when and how the interviewee became involved in this movement. Subsequently, it moved on to questions about what it is like to be actively involved in this field and whether the interviewee had ever considered quitting activism. Two important additional sections of the interview concerned social and political beliefs and attitudes, and what it meant to the interviewee personally to be involved in such an organization (see Box 5.1). In addition to the historical timeframe, the interview scheme is based on the theoretical notions elaborated in Chapters 1–4. The first question aims at distinguishing between continuity and conversion as entrance trajectories and the role of agents of socialization, critical events and processes of mobilization in those contexts. The second question aims at mapping the instrumentality component of the interviewee’s motivation to participate. It concerns the costs and benefits of participation. The questions about social and political beliefs and attitudes are meant to tap the ideology component of the motivation to participate. In addition to questions which aimed directly at tapping political views, this section of the interview encompassed projective tests based on four photographs shown to the interviewee: a flag of the European Union, troops of the United Nations, a war cemetery with one Star of David amid hundreds of white crosses and hundreds of Muslims praying in the streets of Marseille. This was meant as an unobtrusive way to elicit ideological standpoints that interviewees might otherwise be reluctant to voice,

Box 5.1 Interview scheme

1. Becoming a member: Introductory question (IQ): You’re a member of X, could you tell me how you became a member of this organization? Follow up questions (FQ): Could you tell me a bit more about the first contact you had with this organization? When did you first became interested in politics and how did that happen? Could you tell me when you first got involved in the ER movement? 2. Being a member: IQ: Could you tell me what are your activities in this organization? FQ: Are you satisfied with your role in the organization? Could you tell me about the people you spend time with in the organization? 3. Staying a member: IQ: What would you say are the advantages and disadvantages of being a member of this organization? FQ: Do you have the feeling that your membership has changed something in your life for better or worse? Could you tell me whether you have ever considered leaving? 4. Ideology: IQ: Could you tell me about the ideas and goals of your organization? FQ: What do you think about the political situation in your country? If something could be changed in this country in the future what would you most like to be changed? Here are some photographs about issues that are currently discussed in the press. Could you tell me what they call to your mind? 1. 2. 3. 4.

EU flag Graveyard with Star of David Muslims praying in the street Troops marching

5. Identity: IQ: We have been speaking now a long time about your membership in X and many other issues. Could you tell me what it means to you personally to be a member of this organization? FQ: What is the effect of your membership on how you see yourself as an individual? 6. Demographics.

58 Team members particularly those that were anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim. The final question about the meaning of someone’s activism relates to the identity component of the motivation to participate. The basic structure of the interviews was determined by the lead questions in Box 5.1. The interviewers used a set of additional questions and probes for each key question in order to follow up on the answers (see Appendix 2, p. 286). The interviewers were free to chose the order of the questions depending on the interaction as it evolved as long as all the aspects mentioned in the scheme were treated. Towards the end of the interview the interviewees were asked to answer a set of biographical queries about their age, education, profession, position in the organization, duration of their membership, etc. Most interviews were conducted by the junior members of our team.1 All the interviewers took part in interview training sessions. After the first few interviews had been conducted the team convened to discuss their experiences. On the basis of this discussion the interview scheme was finalized. In the course of the interview period the junior members of the team met to discuss progress and experiences. In addition, they exchanged experiences via email. The majority of the interviews were conducted in 1997 and 1998. Some interviews were conducted in 1999, as were some follow-up interviews. We gave the interviewee the choice of location for the interview. Some interviews were in the interviewee’s home, some were in public places such as restaurants or bars and some were in the office space of the organization. All interviews were audio taped, but only with the interviewee’s consent, which none refused to give. The interviews lasted from 1 hour to many hours, but the modal interview was approximately 3 hours. All interviewers made notes before and after the interviews. In preparation for an interview, interviewers tried to deepen their understanding of the organization in which the interviewee participated and, if possible, of the role of the interviewee in the organization. Much was done to gain the interviewees’ confidence, sometimes by making several appointments. Many of these people have had negative experiences with interviews and journalists and were initially very distrustful. On the whole, however, we believe that we succeeded in establishing the rapport needed for reliable and valid interviews. This was evidenced by the many positive remarks our interviewers received from their interviewees. Many of them enjoyed the interview: indeed, for many this was the first time that someone had taken the time and effort to listen to their story, and take it seriously.

Processing the data Data processing took place in several steps. First, all 157 interviews were fully transcribed in their original language. Second, on the basis of our interview scheme and theoretical notions we had developed a tentative coding scheme. This coding scheme was tested on the first five interviews; the experiences with the coding were then evaluated and used to improve the scheme. In fact, the junior members of the team spent some days together working on the coding of some of the interviews. As part of this step a limited number of interviews were co-rated by

Writing life-histories 59 a second coder. Comparison of coded interviews was used to sharpen the coding scheme. Third, on the basis of the key questions in the coding scheme the interviews were summarized and exemplary quotes were selected for each interview. The summaries and exemplary quotations were then translated into English. Fourth, the actual coding and analysing of the full interviews was undertaken by the individual country teams on the basis of the interviews in their original language.2 Transcription The spoken text was fully transcribed. In a second step, matters such as intermittent communication to a child, a spouse or a waiter, or reinforcing utterances by the interviewer such as ‘hm’ or ‘yes’ were omitted, as were fillers used by the interviewee such as ‘you know’ or ‘ehm’ unless they are clearly functional. Transcribed text was entered in the computer to make it ready for processing. Code book Box 5.2. presents a summary of the code book we developed (see Appendix 3 for the complete code book as it was used in the actual coding). The coding scheme was developed around five sections: processes of socialization, critical events, entry of the organization, maintenance of commitment and exit. Each section consists of several code families. The elaboration of the code families is based on the theoretical concepts developed in Part I of this book. The entry on ‘Socialization’ is meant to distil from the interview what social environment the activists grew up in, focusing on political socialization: ● ● ● ●

●

Where did the interviewees grow up? How was their relationship with their parents and the rest of their family? What experiences were important in their youth? What cues are there in the course of their lives that relate to their being active in a right-wing extremist movement today? Which agents of socialization influenced them and what values were transferred by them?

This part of the coding is meant to map the ‘demand side’ of activism and distinguish between different pathways to involvement: ●

● ●

●

●

How did the readiness to become actively involved in right-wing extremism develop? Did activists grow up in extreme right milieus? Were they interested in right-wing politics early on or did they turn to the extreme right at a later point in their life? Is there any evidence of ‘abeyance structures’ that link today’s extreme right to the extreme right from the past? What made our interviewees become interested in extreme right activism – grievances, search for identity, ideological resonance?

Box 5.2 Code book summary The code book is divided into five sections. Each section consists of code families. A code family is represented by one or more key questions (Q). Code families are divided into groups of codes. Codes may be illustrated through examples. The coder must assess in each interview whether a code is present or absent. Some specific issues – yet of importance – may have been forgotten: the coder may in that case make a comment and add these specificities to the code book. 1. Processes of socialization: 1.1 Interpersonal relations Q: In what way did interpersonal relations in the following domains of the interviewee’s social life contribute to his or her current activism? (family, school, army, university, work) 1.2 Political and ideological socialization Q: What is the content of socialization and through which agencies are values transmitted? 1.3 Social–psychological explanations Q: What explanations does an interviewee give for becoming an activist of an RWE party? 2. Critical events: Q: What events played an important role in becoming an RWE activist according to the interviewee? 3. Entry into the organization: Q: How did an interviewee get in contact with RWE movements or organizations for the first time? 4. Maintenance of commitment: 4.1 Structural integration Q: How much time is spent as an activist? Q: In what type of activities is the interviewee involved? Q: What is the position of the interviewee in the organization? 4.2 Psychological meaning 4.2.1 Instrumentality Q: What are the costs and benefits of activism? 4.2.2 Identity Q: How does the interviewee define himself in terms of social categories and groups he belongs to? Q: What does it mean to be active within the group as an activist? 4.2.3 Ideology Q: What norms and values the interviewee hold? 5. Exit: Q: Did the interviewee ever consider quitting activism?

Writing life-histories 61 The entries on ‘Critical Events’ and ‘Entry of the Organization’ describe the process of mobilization. ● ● ●

●

How was action preparedness translated into activism? Did critical events serve as turning point in someone’s life? Was it the individual who approached the organization or the organization that approached the individual? What was the role of (friendship) networks?

The entry on ‘Maintenance of Commitment’ deals with actual activism: how does the interviewee become structurally integrated in the organization and what is the psychological meaning of activism to him? Structural integration concerns such matters as time spent, type of activities, position within the organization and social integration in the organization. Psychological meaning concerns the question of whether activism is a gratifying experience: ● ●

Does the ‘supply’ of activism satisfy the ‘demand’? Is the instrumental, identity and ideological motivation of activism being served?

In this part of the coding answers must be given to such questions as: ● ● ● ● ● ●

What does it mean to the interviewees to be active? What do they get out of it? What are the costs and benefits of activism? Does it give a sense of fulfilment? Why does it make sense to be active? Does it give meaning to the world?

The entry on ‘Exit’ concerns the question of whether the interviewees have ever considered quitting. It tries to assess what costs and benefits in the eyes of the interviewees are associated with disengagement. Note that some interviewees quit after we had interviewed them, and we were able to re-interview some of these people that had abandoned activism. Summarizing and coding The coding of the interviews was in all countries done by the members of the team who also conducted the interviews. Before the actual coding was undertaken the interviews were read once again and summarized on the basis of the key questions in the coding scheme. For each interview we also selected exemplary quotations for each key question. Summarizing the interviews was an important step in mastering the content of the interviews for the eventual coding.3 Everybody got some training in the use of Atlas.ti software to analyse written text (Miles and Huberman 1984; Muhr 1997), but it was decided to leave it at the

62 Team members discretion of the country teams whether or not to use the software, as long as they employed the agreed-upon coding scheme. Eventually, different strategies were employed to code the interviews in the various countries.

Some afterthoughts At the time when we designed our study we felt that the best way to find an answer to our research questions would be to conduct life-history interviews. We believed that activists of the extreme right are as rational or irrational as any movement activist and wanted to understand the reasoning behind their activism. What does a world look like in which right-wing extremism is meaningful and how does someone come to see the world that way? As we thought that personal experiences played an important role in that respect (Andrews 1991; Teske 1997; Blee 2002) life-histories appeared to us a significant source of information. In the life of every activist there is a point in time where he or she makes the transition from nonactive to active. Such transitions seldom take place overnight, although conversions sometimes give that impression. The final step to enter activism usually comes at the end of longer trajectories. It was these trajectories that we were interested in. Whether it was a conversion or a continuous track, we wanted to reconstruct it and understand its dynamics. Such a reconstruction is difficult to undertake within the framework of a structured questionnaire. Both the interviewer and the interviewee need the freedom to elaborate on the story to be told. Life-history interviews are therefore necessarily in-depth interviews. It is difficult to imagine how one could otherwise explore someone’s past. Events that took place a long time ago must be recollected, matters that are sensitive to the interviewee must be dealt with, and complicated stories must be told. We put a lot of effort into establishing the rapport needed for such interviews and we believe that in most cases we succeeded. This is not to say that we took everything the interviewees told us for real. In fact, we put quite a lot of time and energy in acquiring independent information about the interviewees, the organizations, the events and the people they were talking about. We scrutinized websites, written material from the organization, documentation available through the countermovements4 and other sources. Moreover, frequently our interviewees themselves unknowingly provided validation of the stories told by others. In this way, we were basically able to check most of the factual information given by the interviewees. Their interpretation of those facts, of course, remains idiosyncratic. One must be careful to not take the reconstruction that results from the interview as the real story. It remains a reconstruction (Blee and Taylor 2002), but this is exactly what we were interested in. When we approached people to gain their cooperation, we were often treated with suspicion, for understandable reasons. The extreme right has been portrayed in the media in a very negative way. Their organizations have been infiltrated by undercover journalists who have filled newspapers with stories about the life ‘back stage’ that the people try to cover up at ‘front stage’. In our efforts to counter these

Writing life-histories 63 suspicions we were, however, careful to not make the opposite mistake and suggest that we were sympathetic to their objectives. In our team we spent quite some time on the ethics of getting along with a movement and activists we did not sympathize with. Every cookbook on in-depth interviewing tells you that you have got to establish a relationship with your interviewees to be able to do good interviews. But how does one establish a relationship with people to whom one doesn’t feel akin? The usual recipe – show understanding and appreciate their viewpoints – was not what we wanted. We certainly did not want to give the impression that we agreed with what they were saying. Interestingly, our method – the life-history interview – worked to our advantage. We basically wanted our interviewees to tell us about their past and what it meant to them to be actively involved in their organization. There was no need for them to defend themselves, as we were genuinely interested in their views and why these views had motivated them to become an extreme right activist. Evidence of our ability to establish rapport came from the interviewees themselves, who began to call us back to give additional information or to invite us to meetings, social events, gatherings, lectures and the like. Such invitations we often accepted as we felt that it would help us to deepen our understanding of their activism. In France and the Netherlands, such enduring relations could be fruitfully exploited to return to some of the interviewees for a second round of interviews after significant changes in the movement had occurred (the split within the FN and the devastating elections in the Netherlands), for example. We had expected that it would be difficult to persuade people to be interviewed, and indeed in Germany it appeared hard to get access to organizations we wanted to include in our study, but on the whole the activists were quite cooperative, especially after the first suspicions had evaporated. Indeed, on quite a few occasions these were people who wanted to talk, who had a message to convey. Once they figured that in fact the interviews would remain confidential and did not appear in a newspaper, they became even more willing – sometimes even anxious – to be interviewed. It certainly helped not to include the more violent groups in our study; in fact, our interviewees were basically ‘normal’ people, socially integrated, connected in one way or another to mainstream groups and ideas.

Notes 1 The interviews in the Netherlands were conducted by Annette Linden; the interviews in Germany by Ludger Klein, those in Italy by Patrizia Milesi, Alberto Crescentini and Antonello Chirumbolo; and those in France by Valérie Lafont. In Flanders, Hans de Witte conducted the interviews with Voorpost, while some of his students conducted the remaining interviews: Kaat Bilsen (VB) and Alexander Vander Stichele, Marjan Vertommen, Bart Jansen and Patrick Fransen (NSV). 2 Even if translation of the fully transcribed interviews had been feasible, it would in all likelihood have produced flawed translations as many of the subtle meanings of colloquial language would have been lost in translation. Moreover, understanding the meaning may require an indigene anyway, as many unobtrusive cues given in the interview are understandable only by someone who is part of the society.

64 Team members 3 As an important side-product the summaries and exemplary quotations were translated into English and made available to all members of the team. Together with the fully transcribed interviews they form the data file of our study. 4 The documentation available through the countermovement in some countries appears to be amazingly detailed and reliable.

Part II

The interviewees

6

Italy The offspring of fascism Patrizia Milesi, Antonio Chirumbolo and Patrizia Catellani

Ideas are still the same as . . . they are of course a continuation of Mussolini’s fascism, of course transferred to the year 2000. The values . . . the principles still remain unchanged. (Osvaldo, MFL: 39)

After the Second World War, the Italian Republic was founded on a crucial antifascist principle: only the forces that had participated to the ‘liberation war’ against the fascist regime were given full and legitimate right to join the country’s political life. This notwithstanding, extreme right-wing militancy has maintained a clear link with fascism, mainly thanks to the Movimento Sociale Italiano party (Italian Social Movement – MSI). MSI, founded by a group of fascist veterans, kept up fascist ideals and political views for some 50 years, despite political ostracism. In 1995, the MSI party was officially dissolved and three new extreme right-wing parties were founded: Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance – AN), Movimento Sociale-Fiamma Tricolore (Social Movement-Three-Colour Flame – MS-FT) and Movimento Fascismo e Libertà (Fascism and Freedom Movement – MFL). In the present chapter, we will analyse interviews given by activists of these three parties (for details about sample characteristics, interview procedure and analysis see Chapter 5, this volume), focusing our attention on how the issue of fascism was dealt with in activists’ accounts of their political involvement. Given the stigmatization of fascism in Italy since the Second World War, membership in parties that, more or less overtly, present themselves as the offspring of fascism is likely to foster a situation of psychological conflict. On the one hand, stating one’s own and one’s party’s continuity with fascism may be a way of stressing one’s existential consistency, which is a basic human need (Tajfel 1969, among others). On the other hand, stating continuity with fascism implies being exposed to stigmatization and discrimination, and this is a threat to the positive evaluation of oneself everybody aims at (Tajfel 1969, among others). Adopting a psycho-social perspective, we will analyse our interviews with the aim of detecting how Italian extreme right-wing activists cope with this potential conflict. The chapter begins with a short description of the historical context in which interviewees began and maintained their militancy, a section that may be of

68 Patrizia Milesi, Antonio Chirumbolo and Patrizia Catellani especial interest to readers who are not familiar with the history of extreme rightwing parties in Italy. We then focus our attention on the interviews themselves, and specifically on how activists recall their entrance into an extreme right-wing party and how they describe their stay in it. It is suggested that continuity with fascism and stigmatization because of fascism emerge as crucial issues in all phases of Italian extreme right-wing activists’ life. Moreover, the various strategies people adopt in order to cope with stigmatized political membership are highlighted, expanding and enlarging on what shown by past quantitative research on how people react to membership in stigmatized groups (Branscombe et al. 1999; Schmitt and Branscombe 2002; Schmitt et al. 2003).

A historical reminder From fascism to the MSI During the Second World War, Italy and the Anglo-American forces signed an armistice on 8 September 1943. The Italian army dissolved and the king fled abroad: the fascist government left Rome and settled in Northern Italy. This last phase of the fascist regime is called the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (Italian Social Republic – RSI), because of the fascist republican ideals it meant to pursue, or Repubblica di Salò (Salò Republic), after the small town of Salò on Lake Garda, which the fascist government chose as its capital after leaving Rome. In southern Italy, the war was over. In northern Italy, on the contrary, supporters of RSI fought on against the Italian Resistance (the so-called partisans, mainly communists or left-wing but also Catholics) and Anglo-American troops; meanwhile, the German troops slowly withdrew from Northern Italy but not without a bloody fight against the Allies and the repression of many Italian civilians. 8 September 1943 has thus become one of the most crucial dates in Italian history of the twentieth century (Pavone 1994). For supporters of fascism, joining RSI after 8 September 1943 has been represented as sharing the war of spirit and value against opportunism and cowardice, as well as the sacrifice of an elite of warriors (Germinario 1999). For the anti-fascist side, 8 September has meant the end of the dictatorship and the beginning of the fight for freedom. The Second World War ended officially on 25 April 1945 when AngloAmerican troops entered Milan. After the war, many RSI veterans gathered in revolutionary groups which kept alive connections among former fascists. So in 1946 it was possible for them to found the neo-fascist party MSI. Strong continuity with fascism was the most important aggregating factor within MSI until 1995: although the party contained many different currents, all of them shared positive attitudes and feelings towards the fascist era – or, at least, towards some periods of it – along with the refusal to accept the defeat suffered on 25 April 1945. In 1991, MSI national secretary Gianfranco Fini claimed that the party’s ideological definition was not a matter of debate, since its worldview was clear: when MSI members reflected upon the link that kept them together, all of them could say that they were ‘fascist, the heirs of fascism, the post-fascists, or the fascism of 2000’

Italy: the offspring of fascism 69 (quoted in De Cesare 1995). So from 1946 until 1995 MSI maintained a worldview that looked back to fascism. As hinted above, only political parties that professed anti-fascism were really allowed to take part into Italian political life. Consequently, MSI lived for almost 50 years in a situation of political and social ostracism. Such a condition became constitutive of the party identity, which presented itself as a alternative political force to the established system. From MSI to AN At the beginning of the 1990s a set of events occurred which were perceived as factors of radical change in the national and international political landscape. The collapse of the Soviet Bloc, symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall, was interpreted as the start of a new era where ideological divisions would no longer be so acute. In Italy, the Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party – PSI) transformed itself into a new left-wing party, the Partito Democratico della Sinistra (Left-Wing Democratic Party – PDS). In the same years, the so-called Prima Repubblica (First Republic) collapsed under charges of corruption: a pool of Milan judges, called Giudici di Mani Pulite (‘clean-hands judges’) discovered a deeply rooted system of corruption in the funding of political parties (the so-called Tangentopoli – ‘bribe city’) and brought to trial many key politicians of major Italian parties, namely the Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democrats – DC), Partito Socialista Italiano (Italian Socialist Party – PSI) and Partito Liberale Italiano (Italian Liberal Party – PLI). The charges and trials that followed caused a profound crisis and loss of political credibility as well as of electoral consensus for the parties involved, along with the complete dissolution of the main conservative party, the DC. Since MSI had not taken part in the country’s political life during the First Republic it was uninvolved in the widespread system of corruption. Consequently, it could present itself as the spotless opponent to the disgraceful and corrupt system that had ruined the First Republic. Moral de-legitimization of the First Republic’s main parties resulted in legitimization of MSI, thanks to a process that has been effectively defined as ‘passive integration’ (Chiarini 2001a). The original reason for the ostracism of MSI disappeared as the First Republic, based on anti-fascist principles, had collapsed. The transformation of the former communist party PCI into a new left-wing party and the dissolution of long-standing anti-fascist parties (DC, PLI, PSI) enabled MSI to enter the Italian political scene at the same level as other parties (Ignazi 1998). However, MSI had to cope with an identity problem. A radical transformation of the party was required to get rid of its embarrassing fascist heritage. The transformation took place under the leadership of Gianfranco Fini in a double Congress, which was held in the small town of Fiuggi, near Rome: the MSI party was dissolved (25–27 January 1995), and a new party, AN, was founded (28–29 January 1995). The media broadly covered the foundation of AN, they gave extensive space to public statements made by Fini about fascism and anti-fascism – for example that anti-fascism should be considered as a crucial historical moment

70 Patrizia Milesi, Antonio Chirumbolo and Patrizia Catellani in the defence of democracy. The event was presented to public opinion as a crucial turning point: the new party was breaking away from the fascist heritage of MSI and could now enter political competition without being ashamed of, or feeling responsible for, the past. With the aim of transforming AN into a party that could be easily accepted by public opinion and other political parties, a rapid change in the party’s image was made. In fact, most MSI members flew into AN. The ‘new’ party absorbed almost all MSI’s structures, symbols and resources. AN offered the public a face that differed from the traditional fascist face of former MSI, while hiding its stillexisting fascist body (Ignazi 1998). An in-depth analysis of what fascism had been and of what MSI had represented for almost 50 years was actually lacking at the Fiuggi congress: the core of the new party neither abandoned the old party identity nor did it search for a new one (Harmel and Janda 1994). The birth of AN might thus be seen as the outcome of an instrumental transformation of MSI mainly for electoral reasons, and carried out on the wave of a newly favourable historical situation. The Fiuggi turning point was a clever political and cultural move: on the one hand, it enabled most militants of the former MSI to recognize themselves in the new party, on the other it allowed for a sense of continuity thanks to Fini’s personal charisma. Researches carried out in 1996–8 showed that AN activists interviewed during those years still mentioned Mussolini, and key figures of fascist culture such as philosophers Giovanni Gentile and Julius Evola, as their favoured authors (Ignazi: 1998; Areni et al. 2000; Chiarini 2001a). In those years both AN’s official newspaper and its website listed as key authors some of the most significant writers and philosophers of the Italian and European extreme right (e.g. De Maistre, Drieu La Rochelle, Junger, Malaparte, Marinetti, Nietzsche, Pareto, Prezzolini, Schmitt, Sorel, Spengler). So when the interviews analysed in the present chapter were collected, AN had begun to present itself as a respectable alternative for conservative voters but at the same time, inside the party, keeping alive strong links with fascism and its values. MS-FT and MFL As a consequence of the Fiuggi Congress, some currents inside MSI reached such a high level of conflict with the party’s main current, represented by Fini, that schism appeared inevitable. Pino Rauti, along with a group of supporters, left the party and founded MS-FT; Giorgio Pisanò founded MFL. Rauti was the leader of the ‘spiritualist current’ of MSI, the so-called left-wing side. Since the end of the civil war he had often been involved in Italian neo-fascist subversive plots and had established relations with international subversive movements, such as the Organization Armée Contre le Communisme International. Rauti and his followers considered Fini’s move at Fiuggi a betrayal of core fascist values, and it was precisely with the aim of keeping them alive that they left the party and founded MS-FT. Pisanò was the most important representative of the MSI current nostalgic for

Italy: the offspring of fascism 71 RSI. In 1991 he founded MFL as a nostalgic movement within MSI. Like Rauti, Pisanò considered the Fiuggi congress a betrayal of fascism and soon after it he left the party, along with most members of his group. The aim of the new party was to study how Mussolini’s political thought could be applied to contemporary society. The party’s clear fascist origins are patent in its symbol: after many law suits MFL has finally been allowed to compete in general elections showing fascist ensigna: the fascist fasces on a black background along with a sentence by Benito Mussolini encouraging Italians to keep fascism alive even after his death. Recent developments That was the historical panorama when interviewees were contacted for the present research. However, for the sake of historical completeness, a glance at what happened afterwards may be in order here. The most relevant changes have occurred within AN, while MS-FT and MFL have not changed so much. AN has become a government party and Fini has begun to be considered as a possible government leader after Silvio Berlusconi, who is currently in office. Fini and AN members in the government have worked towards an increasing integration of the party into the Italian political system and have accordingly modified some of the party’s most significant political positions. With regard to immigration, for example, the party’s leaders have kept away from overt xenophobia (Chiarini 2001b). In 2000, when Haider obtained his electoral success in Austria, Fini kept his distance from his anti-European and overtly xenophobe attitudes (Chiarini 2001b). In October 2003, AN deputies put forward a proposal in Parliament to grant the right to vote to immigrants, even if under defined conditions. In November 2003, Fini made a further step towards AN’s integration. During an official visit to Israel, he stated that fascist racial laws, along with the fascist regime that had promulgated them, were abominable and that the RSI had been shameful. He accepted 25 April 1945 as the founding date for Italian democracy, put aside Mussolini as a statesman and even proposed abandoning the flame as a symbol of the party. One may ask to what extent these official positions have been actually shared by the party as a whole as well as by the grass-roots. This cannot be taken for granted. With regard to immigration, for example, at the 1998 national congress held in Verona AN leaders expressed their willingness to promote the peaceful coexistence of immigrants with Italian people. AN militants interviewed at the same congress, however, said that they felt threatened by the rate of immigrants who became criminals (56.5 per cent of interviewees) and considered immigration dangerous for Italian national identity (68.4 per cent) (Chiarini 2001b). Fini’s statements about fascism were not unanimously approved within the party; Alessandra Mussolini, a granddaughter of Benito Mussolini, left AN and founded a new party called Libertà d’Azione (Freedom of Action). Other AN deputies, even if they did not leave AN, strongly protested against Fini and stated their loyalty to the former MSI, true right-wing values and even fascist ideals. Francesco Storace, a prominent politician within AN, created a new faction within the party in order to

72 Patrizia Milesi, Antonio Chirumbolo and Patrizia Catellani say ‘something really right-wing’. While Fini claimed that his statements and AN positions were nothing but a logical and necessary development of the Fiuggi Congress, AN representatives speaking at local congresses often felt the need to soften the clear-cut break with the past announced by the leader. The party did not split, however. MS-FT is still a minor extreme right-wing party. Perhaps its position became even more marginal after the 2001 general elections (13 May), which excluded parties gaining less than 4 per cent of the vote from the possibility of having a representative in Parliament. After Fini’s recent statements about fascism, MS-FT is likely to state once again that its position is closer to fascism than AN. MFL suffered from the death of its founder Giorgio Pisanò which occurred in 1997: the party, already very small, declined further. However, it is still active under the leadership of Giuseppe Martorana.

Becoming post-fascist activists in an anti-fascist society As we have seen, for more than 50 years the Italian socio-political context has been one of ostracism towards fascism and its supporters. Nevertheless, most of our interviewees, when describing how they had got involved in politics, made frequent reference to fascism, both as the ideology they wanted to follow in joining the party and as the reason why they suffered discrimination from the very beginning of their political involvement. This was true both for older interviewees, who had directly experienced the fascist era, and for younger interviewees, whose knowledge of fascism was only indirect, acquired through different sources. Fascism as a positive heritage Many of our interviewees started their political activity within the MSI and they claimed that they had joined that party precisely because it defended the fascist worldview. This is consistent with Orfali’s (2002) finding that in 1990 and 1994 MSI activists still preferred the label of ‘fascists’ as a self-description rather than ‘right-wing extremists’. For example, when Salvatore recalls the reason why he and other MSI supporters joined the party, he says: We young MSI supporters had taken that side not simply because it was a right-wing party, rather because we had assimilated the fascist idea, the first one, the original idea of fascism, the San Sepolcro [that is, the very first period of fascism], the fascist movement and the last fascism, the fascism of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana. (Salvatore, MFL, male, 42) Although after the Second World War the Italian socio-political context was mainly anti-fascist, in some areas of Italy, especially southern Italy, continuity with fascism was still perceived and constructed as positive. In this regard, the case of a small town situated on the Sila mountains in Calabria was exemplary: the MSI

Italy: the offspring of fascism 73 party had a strong tradition there and it got such a large electoral consensus that it held the municipality during the 1967–72 period, which was almost an exception in Italy during those years. It was not that difficult for Salvatore, who lived there, to join the party: You know, here at [XXX] . . . with regard to MSI . . . fascism has had an historic tradition. In this town, during the war many people, many villagers took this side . . . and afterwards, after the armistice, they took the side of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana. Here there is an MSI tradition, a very strong post-fascist tradition . . . it was only natural that there was an influence of a certain kind. (Salvatore, MFL, male, 42) Extreme right-wing parties encountered greater favour in southern Italy than in northern Italy because, as said above, in southern Italy the ‘liberation war’ ended two years earlier than in northern Italy (Ignazi 1994). In northern Italy, a two-yearlong bloody civil war (1943–5) opposed Resistance partisans to the last fascist government in Salò, and after the war any link with fascism was likely to evoke ghosts of dictatorship and violence; in southern Italy, however, there was no civil war and consequently no such strong anti-fascist tradition. Thus only RWE who lived in southern Italy could be said to be partly supported in their political choices by their social context. On the other hand, our analysis highlighted the fact that most interviewees, in both northern and southern Italy, could find some kind of social support inside their own families. Many interviewees reconstructed commitment to fascist values and to membership in extreme right-wing parties as a heritage they had received from their parents, or from their families at large. The case of Vittorio is exemplary. His father was a true fascist and after the war he was captured by US troops; his mother founded the post-fascist Movimento Italiano Femminile (Women Italian Movement), whose aim was to look for fascists who had been arrested or who were missing after the war. Accordingly, Vittorio reconstructs his decision to get involved in active politics within the ranks of the MSI party as a natural consequence of his coming from a fascist family: In 1945 I was about thirteen, so I experienced, for example, even the civil war: I mean, I saw it, I absorbed it, I breathed it. . . . I, being the son of a fascist . . . I absorbed it through my family; I breathed this political atmosphere of great and tragic events. So it was only natural for me, as a young boy, immediately to get involved in politics, you know, the usual route: enrolment in juvenile organizations, enrolment in the party, activism, militancy, it all came naturally to me. (Vittorio, MS-FT, male, 65) Commitment to fascist values was transmitted to interviewees thanks to the positive image of fascism their families conveyed when they talked about that

74 Patrizia Milesi, Antonio Chirumbolo and Patrizia Catellani period, not only families whose members were overt supporters of fascism but also families who were just conservative or generically right-wing-oriented. Interviewees’ parents often depicted fascist society as safe and well-ordered, and compared it with today’s immoral and chaotic society. Interviewees often stated that, thanks to their families, they acquired an unbiased vision of what had happened during that period. They thought that they were in a position to see not only the bad side of fascism but also the good one, beyond any partial rhetoric, and to give a clear judgement of historical events that were still a matter of debate. This emerges quite significantly in the following excerpt from the interview with Vincenzo: My grandfather went to Africa as a volunteer when he was 16, and let’s say that he had always been enthusiastic about the fascist adventure . . . even though he was not partisan at all, namely in the Latin meaning of that word [that is, partial], not in its worst meaning [that is, supporter of the Italian Resistance against Nazi-Fascism after 1943]. For instance he criticized many things and when he spoke about the war, he said that . . . any war was terrible for him, and you could not expect anything good coming from war, but . . . what he considered . . . what had been good, he made me know it, he told me about it. (Vincenzo, AN, male, 29) Accordingly, from a psycho-social point of view, political continuity with fascism easily transformed itself into an issue of existential consistency: for our interviewees, keeping faithful to fascist values meant keeping faithful to the teachings and values transmitted by their own parents. Only a few interviewees came from families that professed communist or leftist values. In these cases, the need of being consistent with their own personal ‘roots’ was so strong that those interviewees re-interpreted their parents’ political positions as left-wing at their face value, but right-wing in their true substance. As a result, those interviewees stated that, at the level of core values such as human and civil responsibility, they were consistent with their left-wing parents. In the following excerpt, Stefania is speaking about her left-wing father: He is on the right-wing side, in fact, and I’m always telling him [she laughs]. In my opinion, he is not a leftist . . . because anyway my father is not one of those people who let go, I mean my father has taught us . . . these are things I have learnt at home . . . I mean, a sense of responsibility, respect for those who are older than you, a sense of duty when doing things, trying to keep your head always on your shoulders . . . At home they have taught me that your freedom ends where others’ freedom begins. (Stefania, AN, female, 25) So, most interviewees developed a feeling of belonging to an ideological position whose distinctive feature was a positive interpretation of fascism, first of all in their

Italy: the offspring of fascism 75 families. However, interviewees were not just passive receivers of ready-made positive images of fascism; rather, they carried out their own positive reconstruction of fascism, as is well described in Davide’s words: When you enter, since right-wing culture is very composite, you are not given a sacred text, you are not given a Bible, that can make you know how to be a perfect right-wing guy. There are really many books you can read; you can approach right-wing culture through many different experiences . . . construction of a strong identity is a long personal process, very long and complex, that keeps developing, and that cannot be reduced to a couple of books. (Davide, AN, male, 21) Almost all interviewees stressed that authors and philosophers of both the Italian and the European Right had exerted a profound influence upon them: among others, Gentile, Sorel, de Maistre, Nietzsche, Spengler, Drieu La Rochelle, Celine, Junger. One of the most frequently mentioned authors was philosopher Julius Evola (1898-1974). Evola played an important role during the fascist regime: his thought, which exalted the origins and the myths of the Indo-European people, was used to justify the racist policy of fascism. After the war, Evola’s thought nourished extremist groups within MSI, such as Rauti’s fringe, and it also inspired black terrorism (Milza 2003). With regard to interviewees’ sense of self as individuals and as party members, the more positive the image of fascism was, the more ‘justified’ a political continuity with it turned out to be. With the aim of establishing positive continuity with fascism, Italian interviewees employed a range of discursive strategies (see also Chiarini 2001a). First, they stressed that fascism did claim a wide consensus among the Italian people. They overlooked the fact that the fascist ‘quiet’ and ‘well-ordered’ society was the outcome of oppression and the elimination of dissidents, and they attributed the political choices of the fascist regime to ‘the spirit of the age’ or to specific factors related to that particular historical context. For example, Mario presented fascism as follows: Fascism, except for the war period that . . . one had to side with the Germans or against them, anyway, . . . fascism was a period of development for all Italy . . . Fascism . . . apart from its last phase, which they said it was terrible . . . I would not say that it was so terrible . . . fascism at least fought to the bitter end, fascism lost the war . . . but they did not behave like criminals, as many people say they did, neither with Italian people nor with foreigners. (Mario, MFL, male, 40) In the second place, interviewees often focused their attention on specific historical periods of the Second World War, in particular on events that happened in Italy after 8 September 1943. As hinted above, they constructed them as episodes of a civil war rather than of a war of liberation against a dictatorship. Accordingly, most interviewees attributed an exemplary meaning to RSI events:

76 Patrizia Milesi, Antonio Chirumbolo and Patrizia Catellani above all, they praised the ideal motivations of its soldiers, who kept fighting heroically even in the face of imminent defeat, and who died to defend spiritual values against Marxist materialism and American wild capitalism. With this regard, for example, Riccardo says: I have great admiration for that period [that is, the RSI period] because it was a clear-cut choice where man revealed himself, he revealed his character . . . I think the Repubblica Sociale was an act of love toward one’s motherland, it was also the choice of men who realized that the fight, the war was lost, and despite all this they took that side. It is impossible that a million men chose that side without any profound ideal, which made it possible for them to join that side rather than the other, when Americans were clearly winning throughout Europe, and I am really committed to that period also at a cultural level. (Riccardo, AN, male, 54) Interviewees also argued that from a human point of view all the people who were killed during the war deserved pity. They should thus be allowed to celebrate the fascists who died during the last two years of the war in the same way as other political forces celebrate those who died fighting fascism. With this regard, Mario recalls an event he was involved in some months before the interview: We commemorated 46 guys, men of the Tenth MAS [that is, a very famous fascist special corps], they were killed exactly seven days after the war was over . . . they had been persuaded to surrender, they surrendered as soldiers, and left-wing partisans atrociously killed them . . . those pseudo-partisans, they were nothing else but murderers who killed 46 people, among whom two boys, 17 and 18 years old, who had done nothing else but their duty, namely defending their country. (Mario, MFL, male, 40) Finally, when interviewees recognized that fascism was a totalitarian regime, they argued that fascism should be left to the judgement of historians. In these cases, some interviewees also presented fascism together with communism, so that condemnation of fascism turned out to be the condemnation of all totalitarianisms, rather than the condemnation of fascism per se.

Fascism as discrimination Analysis of interviews highlighted that one of the most powerful factors that drove interviewees to active politics was the perception that they and/or their close relatives had suffered discrimination because they supported fascism and its worldview. Most interviewees could tell a story about how they or their families were persecuted by ‘the other side’: this was true both of interviewees who had witnessed the Second World War and interviewees who had not because they were born after the end of the war.

Italy: the offspring of fascism 77 Interviewees who were in their childhood or adolescence during the Second World War easily remembered how Resistance partisans imprisoned or persecuted their relatives. For example, Vittorio was born in 1932 and both his parents were fascists. When asked whether there were any crucial events that drove him to political militancy, he answers: Actually, I was already convinced, consciously or unconsciously I do not know . . . because it was a natural passage. My father was arrested; my father went to a concentration camp [that is, a US prisoners’ camp]; my father was the first person to be made a prisoner in the province of [XXX], so . . . it was this. (Vittorio, MS-FT, male, 65) Riccardo was born at the end of the war, in 1945. He could not personally remember any precise war-related event; however, when invited to reconstruct how he became a member of the party, he states: When I was a boy, a friend of mine . . . told me that English soldiers arrested my father . . . He told me that English soldiers arrested my father because he had been linked to fascism. That was the spark that made me . . . At the beginning, it was an emotional action. (Riccardo, AN, male, 54) In many cases, interviewees’ families were persecuted because of their fascist ideology even some years after the end of the war. They were hindered in their career, excluded from social life and sometimes even physically injured and forced to move from their home town. Younger interviewees also reported episodes of discrimination because of their political ideas, which happened mainly during their adolescence or early adulthood, at high school or at university. Many of these interviewees said that extreme left-wing students had assaulted them verbally or physically, exclusively because they supported fascist ideals. In fact, those episodes did not discourage interviewees from professing fascist views. Rather, they fostered the interviewees’ decision to get involved in active politics and to join extreme right-wing parties. Interviewees’ personal involvement in fights against extreme left-wing students because of their defence of fascist views actually favoured the development of interviewees’ image of themselves as extreme right-wing activists (Drury and Reicher 2000). In this light, Davide’s account of how he decided to go to the MSI party local office for the first time is exemplary: Well, I approached MSI juvenile movement, which was called Fronte della Gioventù [Youth Front], in December 1992, substantially as a consequence of an event I was involved in . . . I was assaulted just in front of my high school, the Leonardo Da Vinci scientific lyceum, by a group of extreme left-wing students attending the Faculty of Political Science at the university of

78 Patrizia Milesi, Antonio Chirumbolo and Patrizia Catellani Milan. . . . When I came here [that is, the party local office in Milan] and said: ‘Look, I’m that guy who was beaten in front of the Leonardo School last month’, they were very surprised and answered: ‘Yeah, we didn’t know we had any supporters there, and we were wondering who the hell they were. So here you are. Great.’ (Davide, AN, male, 21) Episodes of discrimination thus took place in different historical and social contexts, but especially immediately after the end of the Second World War and during the season of the students’ protest movements in the 1960s and early 1970s. However, the basic features that interviewees associated with their ‘persecutors’, whether Resistance partisans or extreme left-wing supporters, were the same: people who easily employed violence, who assaulted their victims in a cowardly fashion and who were the first ones to trample on the values of justice that they pretended to defend. For example, Stefania represents extreme left-wing supporters as follows: At high school . . . during the students’ gatherings, I saw those left-wing guys who used to applaud to democracy and freedom of speech, and all that follows . . . [they] forbade some people to speak, just because they disagreed with them. They put them in a corner and forbade them to speak and to express their ideas because they contrasted with what they wanted to do . . . at that moment. That was surely the turning point, when I chose one side rather than the other one. (Stefania, AN, female, 25) A common consequence was that for many interviewees, at the very beginning of militancy, psychological identification with the Right meant ‘being against’ rather than ‘belonging to’. When Stefania recalls the beginning of her militancy, she says: Even if I did not have a precise political position, I was against something, but I did not know yet which side I was on . . . I mean, I was against but I was not on any side . . . and then some particular turning points . . . I happened to meet a friend of mine . . . and I saw that my values and my ideas were with that political side, that is the right-wing side . . . at the time it was MSI, and then I wanted to meet other people with the same ideas as mine, who tried to . . . let’s say . . . to spread the gospel . . . and so to build something as we meant. (Stefania, AN, female, 25) Development of a more precise political identification was often described in terms of reaction to unfair attacks. Feelings of anger and resentment were the first factors that drove interviewees to active politics, while full ideological adhesion came only some time later. This clearly emerges in both Riccardo’s words, who

Italy: the offspring of fascism 79 had his father imprisoned after the Second World War, and in Davide’s, who was assaulted by left-wing activists: In the beginning, militancy in the Right was simply an emotional fact, linked to my father’s events, I want to be sincere . . . It was an emotional fact, linked to my family situation, because my father came from that world, he had fought in three wars, and he had had nothing in exchange for it but troubles . . . so it was an emotional fact, emotional and sentimental at the same time . . . the strong link I had with my father . . . afterwards, I tried to get more information, because fights were becoming more of a political kind . . . we often fought at a cultural level. (Riccardo, AN, male, 54) It was simply a reaction. At the time I already liked the Right, but I had not joined the MSI juvenile movement yet. After that aggression, it was an instinctive reaction along with an increasing cultural and ideological adhesion, I went to via Mancini [that is, the street where the party local office is located in Milan]. (Davide, AN, male, 21) Most interviewees joined an organized political party during their adolescence because they wished to fight adversaries who conspired against them or their close relatives. Perceived discrimination also played a similar role for the interviewees who joined the party in their adulthood. For example, Mauro, a psychiatrist who joined the party in his 40s, stated that he got involved in active politics because he wanted to get some protection in his professional environment, which at that time was entirely dominated by left-wing views: My choice derived from . . . practical reasons . . . I wanted to have an experience inside a party. It was around the 1980s, when there was a certain political pressure, also inside the institution where I worked, in the specific branch of psychiatry where I worked . . . there was, so to speak, an exasperated politicization, at every level . . . so joining the Movimento Sociale Italiano party meant to get stronger protection in an area that was strongly biased towards the Left . . . With regard to psychiatry, mental health institutions . . . the way of treating mental diseases was completely dominated by the Left and by radical movements, and so there was the necessity to protect . . . to defend a certain point of view about these issues. (Mauro, AN, male, 54) The psychological relevance of perceived discrimination in driving interviewees to extreme right-wing militancy was probably enhanced by contextual factors, namely the historical periods at which most interviewees got into politics: these were, once again, either the violent battles between Resistance partisans and RSI supporters during the last years of the Second World War, or the political

80 Patrizia Milesi, Antonio Chirumbolo and Patrizia Catellani fighting during the 1960s and the 1970s, when several public demonstrations and disorders occurred in Italian schools and universities, and supporters of one side or the other were sometimes killed (Milza 2003). The impossibility not to take sides in such a context emerges in Riccardo’s account: During the 1970s, there was no dialogue, you got to fight systematically because ideology was very strong . . . both on our side and on the other side. So there was no possibility of any mediation. (Riccardo, AN, male, 54) In short, most interviewees described their initial involvement in extreme rightwing parties as characterized on the one hand by the need to demonstrate continuity with fascism and its positive values, and on the other by discrimination because of overt expression of fascist ideology. In their accounts, interviewees often highlighted that their involvement in extreme right-wing ideology was not simply a political one; it was a more encompassing involvement, touching all spheres of their life. Interviewees felt that defending fascist ideology was an ethical and existential mission, a duty they had towards their families and others significant to them, such as fascist supporters killed during the war or in post-war fighting. In order to fulfil that duty, they decided to join an extreme right-wing party. When asked whether there were any political events that were especially important in convincing her to join the MSI party, Gabriella answers as follows: All political events that have happened [that is, since the end of the war until the Fiuggi Congress] have convinced me more and more that we must resist and try to spread MSI ideas, which are the same ideas as those of fascism. Obviously we do not mean fascism as dictatorship. Rather we mean the fascism of socialization, the fascism I agreed with. I still think that I am on the right side. (Gabriella, MS-FT, female, 37) Similarly, Tullio states: I became a member of MS-FT . . . because MS-FT was the last train for an area to . . . be seized . . . and it was the last moment, I believe, historically, when a certain world could find an answer. (Tullio, MS-FT, male, 32) The special meaning ascribed to political involvement in the extreme Right gave interviewees’ first entrance in an extreme right-wing party special psychological relevance. Interviewees often described their first entrance in the party local office as a landmark in their life: going to the party local office for the first time was a thrilling experience because it meant going to a place that was socially forbidden and often represented as a dangerous and frightening place.

Italy: the offspring of fascism 81

Managing post-fascist identity in an anti-fascist society Not only did interviewees report specific episodes of discrimination when they reconstructed their initial involvement in the party. They also often referred to discrimination also when they spoke about their staying in the party, devoting much space to speculation and argument about it. Our analysis of this section of the interviews was focused on how right-wing extremists described their experience of being discriminated against and on how they coped with such an experience. Experiencing discrimination Interviewees constantly attributed the stigmatization of fascism, and the related disadvantages they suffered from it, to the prejudice that more powerful groups in society demonstrated against their group. When illustrating such prejudice, they often mentioned the ‘rhetoric of Resistance’: a left-wing strategy that permeated almost every aspect of Italian social and political life, from school programmes to parliamentary debates. In this regard, for example, Vittorio says: In this country, there is a big misunderstanding or, better still, not a misunderstanding but rather a wound that has not healed yet, the wound of the civil war, so that reference to fascism and anti-fascism still works . . . as, for instance, the 25th of April [the end of the war in Italy] and then the Resistance by left-wing partisans and all that bla bla bla . . . The others [that is, the supporters of fascism], on their side, since they have not got any recognition of the reasons of the losers . . . they withdraw, and I myself withdraw. However, it is still the same perspective: for better or for worse, this story of the civil war still works, it has still an effect on today’s political life. (Vittorio, MS-FT, male, 65) Interviewees described a host of both material and social disadvantages they had experienced, because of prejudice towards extreme right-wing parties. With regard to material disadvantages, practically all interviewees said that there was nothing to gain from supporting their party. Rather, there was a lot to lose, and they made a long list of material costs they had paid for their political membership: injuries suffered from public disorder; time lost for study, leisure or other social activities; low grades at high school and/or at university; difficulties in finding a job. Interviewees of the two minor parties (MS-FT and MFL) also stressed that they had often to pay money to finance their party. No interviewee mentioned any single material benefit. So, according to all interviewees, while engaging in active politics in parties other than their own was likely to bring about easy political careers along with generous flows of money and powerful positions in public offices, engaging in active politics in extreme right-wing parties had never provided any material gain. With regard to social disadvantages, interviewees described a wide range of

82 Patrizia Milesi, Antonio Chirumbolo and Patrizia Catellani social costs they had paid for their militancy. Some disadvantages stemmed from membership in a party that required total commitment: active politics was presented as an encompassing activity, at the expense of other potentially significant activities. Because of the little time interviewees devoted to social activities other than militancy, they lost out on important social relations. In this regard, Susanna and Carlo clearly state that active politics has absolute priority as compared to any other affective commitment or social activity: They are two competing passions, because . . . when I fall in love with a person, I am obviously all taken by him, but afterwards I come back to militancy with the same intensity, and if he is not able to live it in the same way, he is a rival, he is a rival, because he takes away time [to militancy], he takes away thoughts, because he takes away too much. (Susanna, MS-FT, female, 35) When you are a political militant, everything revolves around militancy. So in one way or another, even when you are not doing politics, you are still thinking about politics . . . even when you are outside it, you still think of the problems that there may be inside, so it is an activity . . . you are involved in a global way, and time for other things is really very little. (Carlo, AN, male, 19) Other costs were closely related to interviewees’ membership in a group that was politically stigmatized. Almost all interviewees recalled that MSI had actually been kept out of Italian social and political life for the whole of its existence. For example, when asked to think about advantages and disadvantages of membership in that party, Bartolomeo answers: No advantages . . . No advantages . . . [Rather] disadvantages . . . disadvantages could be many. For example, being discriminated against at school . . . when one said that he supported MSI, he was discriminated against. In the 1960s, admitting to having right-wing views was bad enough, but if right-wing meant fascist, it was even worse . . . there were slogans like ‘fascist berets go to hell’, killing fascists was not considered a crime . . . because the State allowed it . . . the State did not intervene . . . and it did not punish. (Bartolomeo, MS-FT, male, 51) As a matter of fact, for many Italian extreme right-wing activists such a condition of social isolation and political stigmatization improved after the AN was founded. AN interviewees admitted that propaganda activities and recruitment of new members were much easier in AN than they had been in MSI; furthermore, in some municipalities the party could also exert real political power since it had got some seats on city councils. However, AN interviewees declared that they still encountered some difficulties because the burden of their previous membership in

Italy: the offspring of fascism 83 an ‘embarrassing’ party was often held against them, and they were required to show that they had really changed. Coping with discrimination Generally speaking, a feeling of exclusion is unfavourable for psychological adjustment because human beings have a basic need for inclusion and attachment (Maslow 1970; Rosenberg 1979; Baumeister and Leary 1995; Brewer 1997; Williams and Sommer 1997). Furthermore, ‘finding one’s place’ in the social world is necessary to subjectively experience one’s existence as meaningful (Simon 1999). Many researches have observed that perceived exclusion is likely to have negative effects such as decreased self-esteem and lowered perceived control (Leary et al. 1995, among others; Williams et al. 1998). So why and how continue to be involved in such a ‘particular’ political group? While most memberships investigated in past research on stigmatized groups are ascribed memberships (e.g. ethnic memberships, Branscombe et al. 1999; gender memberships, Schmitt et al. 2002), the political memberships investigated in this chapter are a case of chosen memberships. Therefore, the ‘why issue’ becomes especially relevant. According to Italian right-wing extremists’ autobiographical accounts, militancy in extreme right-wing parties, even if inevitably linked to social and political stigmatization, was not a psychologically painful experience. Even if interviewees listed a number of costs they had paid for their membership, these costs were not so much of a psychological kind. It is hence conceivable that our interviewees adopted some effective strategies to cope with perceived discrimination. One of the interviewees, Bartolomeo, says: In that negative situation we found greater strength to react . . . So, I would say, there were no advantages surely . . . disadvantages, one may surely say, which however we . . . I, following the example of other people older than me, have been able to transform positively. (Bartolomeo, MS-FT, male, 51) So far, empirical evidence regarding strategies that can effectively protect the psychological well-being of stigmatized group members’ has been limited. So, this issue is still open to investigation. Our qualitative analysis of interviews with Italian right-wing extremists suggests that these activists did employ a number of strategies that seemed to be useful in lessening the negative consequences of perceived discrimination. These strategies are presented in more detail below. Social creativity Members of disadvantaged groups may engage in intergroup comparisons on novel or unorthodox dimensions in order to find positive distinctiveness for the ingroup, namely the possibility of defining their own group as better in comparison to others. This strategy has been defined as social creativity (Tajfel and Turner

84 Patrizia Milesi, Antonio Chirumbolo and Patrizia Catellani 1986), and Italian RWE employed it especially by stressing their ethical superiority as compared to non-activists or activists of other non-right-wing parties. As RWE, they may have had material or social disadvantages, but these were compensated by an ethical advantage, the feeling that one’s political action was driven by values and not by less noble material interests, such as power or success. Many interviewees constructed positive distinctiveness for the in-group, comparing themselves, who were engaged in active politics, to non-active people along an ethical-existential dimension. For example, Carlo says: When you see guys of your age who do nothing but going to discos, or things like that, and their only aim is to get a pass, a free entrance to a disco, and when you realize that thanks to politics you have not . . . you have not spent your youth in that way, well . . . anyway . . . you give a positive answer . . . You feel rewarded because you feel different from others . . . the very fact of being different from the crowd of disco people of my age . . . you can say: well, I want to give my life a different meaning . . . and I feel I have done something constructive in my youth. (Carlo, AN, male, 19) Involvement in active politics thus had a great psychological advantage – that is, the perception of being engaged in something valuable in itself: You [the interviewer] were reflecting upon the reasons why one stays in a party . . . I think that in times like ours, despite disaffection toward politics, there is still a civic duty, which is to take care . . . of what is good for society. (Saverio, AN, male, 49) Interviewees also compared themselves with activists of other political parties, who were more likely to do active politics in order to pursue material gains. They argued that extreme right-wing activists could not be accused of being affected by personal interest in doing politics, precisely because they paid all the material and social costs described above. More importantly, in a world where money and power seemed to be the most powerful forces, the feeling that they were motivated by higher non-material values, the feeling that they were members of political groups that were not willing to accept corruption and the very perception that they were not motivated by any monetary gain provided interviewees with an ethical dimension along which they construed in-group positive distinctiveness. Perceived consistency with their own values also provided interviewees with a sense of high morality and pride in integrity, which in turn gave them a positive self-image: It is the consistency of keeping faithful to one’s ideas . . . to one’s ideals, values. To me, this cannot be exchanged or bargained with any material benefit, it is only a spiritual advantage. (Vittorio, MS-FT, male, 65)

Italy: the offspring of fascism 85 However, AN interviewees and MS-FT and MFL interviewees compared their own parties with different out-groups: AN interviewees compared their current party with parties of the so-called ‘First Republic’, while MS-FT and MFL interviewees compared their current party with AN itself (for further details about differences between major and minor extreme right-wing parties, see Chapter 11 in this volume). For example, Davide, currently a member of AN, recalls shared perceptions of ethical integrity of the in-group (at that time, the MSI party) as compared to the First Republic’s corrupt parties: Those were the years of Tangentopoli, so the image of MSI as the only party that turned out to be clean, after 50 years of corrupted government and party cliques . . . of course, it exerted a very strong influence . . . on the one side, there was the ruling class, corrupted and prosecuted . . . and on the other side, there were us: we, the pure ones, who opposed party cliques. (Davide, AN, male, 21) Gabriella, now an MS-FT member, emphasizes MS-FT members’ loyalty to the movement and purity of political inspiration, and compares them to AN activists: They [AN activists] go on well with their 11 per cent [that is, AN electoral share when the interview was given], with all their comforts, they never have problems with paying phone bills . . . with electric light bills, with Xerox copy machines which we can’t afford to repair. I swear none of these high people will ever come here and work, living such a hell of a life, under these conditions. Many young guys who are now in AN hope to find a job through it: it has become the new DC. (Gabriella, MS-FT, female, 37) Although social creativity strategy was employed by activists of all three extreme right-wing parties considered here, it was somewhat more enhanced in activists of the two minor extreme right-wing parties, who presented consistency with their own values as the first and sometimes the unique advantage of militancy (see also Abrams 1994 and Chapter 11 in this volume). Construction of in-group positive distinctiveness along an ethical dimension is quite a peculiar way of employing the social creativity strategy. Usually, the social creativity strategy concerns a dimension whose positive psychological valence is context-dependent. For example, in an organizational context in which technological equipment determines status differentiation between groups, social atmosphere may be a dimension along which the low-status group construes ingroup positive distinctiveness, but in a different context it could well be the reverse. Instead, the positive valence of acting in accordance with one’s own values is not context-dependent, because it is highly psychologically rewarding in itself. Values require to be fulfiled and consequently their accomplishment and observance become a moral duty for the people who embrace them (Gecas 2000). Furthermore, in political groups values are likely to have a social scope. Thus for

86 Patrizia Milesi, Antonio Chirumbolo and Patrizia Catellani our interviewees maintaining active involvement in an extreme right-wing party also meant fulfilling an historical and political duty. This is quite evident from Bartolomeo’s words: It is a bit like a mission, so to speak . . . because whenever you say: now the fire is burning . . . then you realize that the torch has become a match . . . then you have to preserve it, protecting it from any wind, otherwise it goes out . . . and now we have become witnesses to a past ideal, from being small protagonists in the country’s politics . . . we are trying to make the torch brighter . . . to relight the flame. (Bartolomeo, MS-FT, male, 51) Therefore, when interviewees talked about the advantages and disadvantages of their militancy in an extreme right-wing party, they dialectically linked material and social disadvantages with the psychological rewards derived from feeling consistent with their core values: From a strictly practical point of view, there are only disadvantages, because obviously belonging to a group that is actively persecuted, and I wish to stress ‘actively persecuted’, because it defends some values which do not allow some people to pursue their business . . . undoubtedly this creates some disadvantages. I will make this point clear: the feeling of being followed, I mean ‘spied upon’, and consequently [the feeling] of having to be cautious . . . it is difficult to say that this is an advantage . . . On the other hand, if you speak about how satisfied you are when you shave in the morning and looking at yourself in the mirror you don’t despise yourself, well . . . there you feel completely satisfied. (Fabrizio, MFL, male, 40) Social competition Another strategy that may attenuate perceived discrimination is social competition, when members of the disadvantaged group engage in direct intergroup conflict with the advantaged groups. Usually social competition strategy aims at improving in-group status. However, this aim was not clearly stated by Italian RWE. They explicitly stressed their wish to shape society according to their party values, while they did not explicitly say that a pre-condition to pursuing that aim would be that their party got a more powerful position in society. Many interviewees stated that they had started and kept doing active politics because they thought that politics was an effective means to influence social reality: History goes the way we want . . . the way men want it to go . . . we can try to make history go a certain direction. (Fernando, MS-FT, male, 48)

Italy: the offspring of fascism 87 [When I entered MSI, I had the feeling] of being a person who could put . . . a brick to build a big house . . . I felt that everybody who joined this party had this possibility, to do something in order to change things . . . it is a feeling I still have. (Wanda, AN, female, 30) This result is consistent with previous research showing how involvement in collective action can bring about a sense of control over the social system for the group as a whole (Andrews 1991; Kelly and Breinlinger 1996; Klandermans 1997). It is also consistent with Kelly and Breinlinger’s (1996) observation that activists often refer to a sense of themselves as ‘doers’ and ‘action-oriented’ persons. Therefore, while recognizing that the in-group is a target of prejudice may hinder perceptions of personal control, in-group identification is likely to provide an alternative basis for a sense of control, that is collective efficacy (Bandura 1997). Our analysis highlighted some differences between activists of the major party and activists of the two minor parties as regards discursive construction of social competition. AN interviewees focused on the possibility of changing society from the inside, taking part in the country’s political government. This may be due to the status of potential government party that AN was acquiring when our interviews were collected. AN interviewees tried to combine the anti-system attitude that was typical of MSI with the new position of AN: Our organization aims at creating a modern right-wing party, which can look ahead the future, without those features . . . which can guide the country along with other parties . . . in a logic of alternation, in a two-party system . . . something which is late to come in this country. (Mauro, AN, male, 54) Alleanza Nazionale aims at becoming a party for all Italian people . . . beyond all the divisions that may have happened in history, and that have been handed down to history . . . anyway, history is a task for historians. (Saverio, AN, male, 49) AN interviewees sometimes spoke about revolution, but it seemed to be more a metaphor than a real political project meant to change the existing democratic system: This aim can be pursued only if we change people’s heads . . . because, anyway, reaching power and governing the country for four, five years and settling the country’s economy, yes, it must be done, but it is not sufficient because a real revolution can be carried out only by changing people’s heads, that is by making people aware that they are a revolutionary subject, that they have a national and historic identity. (Carlo, AN, male, 19)

88 Patrizia Milesi, Antonio Chirumbolo and Patrizia Catellani On the contrary, MS-FT and MFL interviewees spoke of a radical change in society that was impossible to carry out without being inside the government, a view which is consistent with the minority status of these parties. The outcome of that wished revolutionary process should be a fascist organization of society. Actually, most MS-FT and MFL interviewees stated their support for corporatism, and some of them did not conceal that this would imply the end of representative democracy: Professional, cultural and social categories, thanks to an elective representation, make laws in Parliament . . . these categories become the backbone of the country . . . and so it comes down to the destruction of this political class . . . which will be substituted by a real representation of the people. (Ugo, MFL, male, 35) The old democratic system is falling down and it is necessary to replace it . . . with a new system which is able to mirror society’s complexity . . . we need systems of representation that are able to reflect . . . the variety of categories of our society. This is the secret. Do we want to call it corporativism? Well, let’s call it corporativism. (Vittorio, MS-FT, male, 65) Social support and feeling of belonging As explicitly stated by many interviewees, social support from other party members played a significant role in attenuating perceived discrimination. Political militancy provided RWE with many occasions to get in touch with other people and to make new friends. Interviewees spent a considerable amount of time in keeping in touch with other extreme right-wing activists: they said that they were often involved in a thick network of informal meetings and phone calls with other party activists or sympathizers. If this is typical of involvement in any group, support deriving from a large social network may assume a particular meaning when the in-group is a stigmatized political party. For our interviewees, social support from other in-group members meant that they could share their political ideas, exchange their worldview and eventually develop their political thought with other people without embarrassment, rather with the confidence of being understood. This fostered deep involvement and commitment towards other party activists. All interviewees said that the other members of their party were ‘special’ friends for them. For example, when Davide speaks about his friends within the party, he says: I belong to quite a large group of young people who have begun doing politics with me or some time after me. They are my community, they are the people with whom I share a route we’ve been travelling on for four, five years; in short, people one knows well . . . They are friends, and even more than

Italy: the offspring of fascism 89 friends . . . because we have shared not only going out for a drink, or being school friends exchanging confidences and secrets. They are people with whom you share your faith and meaningful life experiences, so they are more than friends. (Davide, AN, male, 21) Similarly, Nicolò attributes to the friendship and human links that arise among party activists the sense of an almost religious union: We are friends because of a communion of ideals . . . I would give my life for them . . . we are friends like Jesus and the apostles . . . if I talk to one of them, I am sure he is sincere, because we share the same values . . . the same ideals. (Nicolò, MS-FT, male, 69) The strength and psychological importance of social support from other party activists often emerged by contrast when interviewees were invited to reflect upon the eventuality of their leaving militancy. When asked what consequences would follow if he left the party, Carlo answers: I would surely lose those human relations . . . I’ve seen some guys leaving the party . . . anyway they lost those human relations, not because they were told: ‘You have left, we will not think of you as a friend anymore.’ Rather, because it is all focused on politics. When one says . . . one leaves . . . s/he also leaves behind a certain frame of mind and cannot really understand what the others do any longer . . . because the relation that used to link you to the others has been broken. (Carlo, AN, male, 19) Social support and feeling of belonging are basic human needs that, according to interviewees, seem to be effectively satisfied by political militancy. Actually, many interviewees referred to the party as a ‘strong reference point’, a ‘second family’, a ‘human community’ and a ‘safe harbour’. For people belonging to stigmatized parties, social support and feeling of belonging may become even more relevant, because they may help people to overcome a situation of social isolation. An indication of this peculiar relevance may be found in the vivid metaphors interviewees employed to describe their political involvement as well as their commitment to other party members. They employed almost no word dealing with reason and logic; rather, they commonly used words dealing with emotions, faith and love. A good example is offered by the words Susanna uses to describe what party membership means to her: Falling in love . . . it is really like falling in love, it is a heart choice . . . I find they are my people . . . they may have vices . . . virtues, whatever you want. Still, they are my people: that’s how I feel about it. (Susanna, MS-FT, female, 35)

90 Patrizia Milesi, Antonio Chirumbolo and Patrizia Catellani As we have seen, our analysis of interviewees showed different ways through which right-wing extremists managed to cope with their stigmatized political membership. A common denominator of the various processes described above was a strong identification with the group. We might actually say that the stronger is the perceived discrimination, the higher the in-group identification turns out to be. Many interviewees admitted that the very feeling of being persecuted had played a decisive role in keeping their group together. Some of them even went so far as to regret past times when political ostracism against their party had been stronger than now. In this regard, Davide’s words sound particularly meaningful: The [juvenile] movement is not as central any more as it was until 10 years ago, when it had to physically defend the party local offices . . . There were objective difficulties in doing active politics, so that it was normal to hang together . . . Now [that is, after the foundation of AN], the concept of militancy is not any more the same as some years ago, when political commitment was very demanding . . . While some years ago this office swarmed with young people every afternoon, now this is not the case any more. (Davide, AN, male, 21) This result corroborates the view that perceived discrimination may also yield positive effects (Schmitt and Branscombe 2002), and it offers indirect evidence that the psycho-social processes Italian interviewees enacted to cope with their stigmatized political membership worked very effectively. Thanks to the psycho-social coping processes described above, interviewees construed the costs of militancy as mainly material, and its benefits as par excellence non-material. Such a discursive construction was functional to their maintenance of militancy, even when serious obstacles showed up and no immediate reward was present. As far as interviewees kept doing active politics, it was vital for them to interpret their situation in that way, and conversely as far as they kept giving such an interpretation they were very unlikely to quit. Consistently, a selfenhancement bias (Taylor and Brown 1988) could be easily detected in interviewees’ reconstruction of militancy: the image of extreme right-wing activists that resulted from interviewees’ accounts of militancy is the image of noble activists, absolutely disinterested, who fought solely in the name of their ideals and who fiercely resisted difficulties and obstacles of any type: [Being a militant] means to be a fighter, a fighter standing among the ruins of this society . . . to be someone who does not want to bow his head, who does not want to give in to the dominant system . . . not wanting to bow one’s head . . . being a man standing up among the ruins . . . it is something highly rewarding for me because I think that until there will be somebody who will not bend his head . . . who will not conform to the dominant culture and system, there will be the possibility for future generations to overcome this situation. Furthermore, all big systems . . . all big empires sooner or later, they are due to collapse . . . Let us think about the Roman Empire. Also the present

Italy: the offspring of fascism 91 system . . . in my opinion, it has cracked . . . it has cracked seriously . . . I think it will not live for long, I hope it will not live for long. (Salvatore, MFL, male, 42)

Discussion and conclusion Our analysis of interviews to Italian extreme right-wing activists has focused on the issue of fascism. We have shown how interviewees represent fascism as a positive heritage, on the one hand, and how they deal with the negative stigma fascism has in contemporary society, on the other. Most interviewees represent fascism as a bloc of core values handed down by significant predecessors, and present militancy in extreme right-wing parties as a way of keeping faithful to values taught by their ‘fathers’. Interviewees carry out their own positive reconstruction of fascism employing various discursive strategies: focusing just on some periods of it, mainly the initial and the final ones; representing dictatorship and its political and social oppression as a means to preserve security and stability in society; justifying fascist policies as a consequence of historical and contextual factors; exalting supporters of fascism who were killed during the war. Although represented as positive, the fascist heritage is also represented as the reason of frequent episodes of discrimination, suffered by interviewees themselves or by their relatives. Interviewees’ initial involvement in politics is often described as a reaction to unfair discrimination enacted by dominant groups at a given historical moment, whether partisans at the end of the Second World War or activists of left-wing movements in the 1960s and 1970s. Perceived discrimination thus plays a very important role in fostering interviewees’ initial involvement in extreme right-wing parties (see Lalonde and Cameron 1994; Klandermans 1997; see also chapter 11 in this volume). Once activists’ membership in an extreme right-wing party is consolidated, discrimination continues to be described as a constant feature of this ‘belongingness’, and the material and social disadvantages suffered because of it are listed. Despite these evident disadvantages, activity within the party goes on. In activists’ accounts, perceived discrimination in fact seems to encourage, instead of hinder, activists’ identification with the group discriminated against. Previous psycho-social research has shown that threats to the in-group generally encourage group identification (Turner et al. 1984) and that perception of prejudicial derogation towards the in-group is positively correlated with in-group identification (Gurin and Townsend 1986; Crosby et al. 1989; Cozzarelli and Karafa 1998, among others). It has been consistently suggested that enhanced psychological identification with one’s group, favoured by discrimination, may attenuate the negative effects of discrimination itself (Branscombe et al. 1999; Schmitt and Branscombe 2002; Leonardelli and Tormala 2003; Schmitt et al. 2003). The results of our qualitative analysis of interviews with right-wing extremists enlarge upon and add to what has been shown by previous, mainly quantitative, research in this area, by highlighting a number of strategies people use to cope with

92 Patrizia Milesi, Antonio Chirumbolo and Patrizia Catellani perceived discrimination so as to transform a stigmatized political membership into a rewarding psychological experience. First, by adopting a social creativity strategy extreme right-wing activists stress their ethical superiority as compared to other people whose actions are not driven by noble values but by material values such as power and success. Second, they engage in social competition with other groups in order to shape society according to their own values. Finally, they enhance the social support they get from other party activists and emphasize their feeling of belonging to the in-group. In conclusion, positive continuity with fascism and perceived discrimination because of it were both constitutive for the development and maintenance of identification with Italian extreme right-wing parties. While continuity with fascism and related processes of positive reinterpretation provided interviewees with ideological as well as existential consistency, perceived discrimination and related coping processes fostered group compactness and increased in-group identification.

7

France A two-centuries-old galaxy Valérie Lafont

What makes the French Front National (FN) different from the other parties studied in this book is that it is the upshot of a very old tradition, going back to the 1789 Revolution. Over such a length of time the French extreme right has gradually absorbed contrasting ideological currents and this makes the FN more diverse and heterogeneous than its counterparts. But it is also, in a way, the key to the FN’s electoral and organizational dynamic, offering it a larger potential reservoir of recruitment. Drawing from in-depth interviews conducted at length with 36 FN activists, we shall show first how successive generations of activists have rallied the party since the 1970s, at different points in time, and been stirred by different political events. As we outline their diversity, pointing out generational, social and ideological divisions, we shall reveal the mechanisms at work, and thus the reasons why these different waves of activists are bound together in the same party, with a focus on the processes of political socialization, intergenerational transmission and also the part played specifically by the party’s structures and cultural strategies.

What sets them apart: tracing FN genealogy from far right political groups to newcomers In terms of political and ideological culture, the militant diversity of the FN is exceptional. This can be explained by the relatively lengthy development of the party, still ongoing, but also by the fact that its recruits come from very diverse groups: some were already in existence when the FN was founded in 1972 and others were born out of its success. Table 7.1 below reveals the diverse origins of FN members through their representatives attending the 19901 and 19972 FN congress, and the MNR’s founding congress in 1999. The years in which people joined the FN mirror the party’s stages of development. A significant proportion of senior party members, although rather fewer in the case of the MNR,3 joined the FN in its founding year, 1972: it would seem that the FN sprang from activist networks involved in nationalist and far right movements before the FN came into being. More than 60 per cent of senior party members interviewed in 1990 said that they had joined the nationalist movement before 1972! It follows that fewer than 40 per cent would have joined at the point they acquired their FN membership card. Among dyed-in-the-wool nationalists, an

94 Valérie Lafont Table 7.1 Joining the FN and the MNR, per cent a Membership of FN’s representatives, 1990 1972 1973–83 1984 1985–86 1987 After 1987

8.0 21.5 22.4 23.6 9.8 14.9

b Membership of MNR’s representatives, 1997, 1999 1972 1973–83 1984 1985–87 1988–89 1990–98

5.0 16 15 21 16 27

c Joining the extreme right family, FN’s representatives, 1990 Before 1945 Between 1946 and 1957 Between 1958 and 1962 Between 1963 and 1969 Between 1970 and 1973 Between 1974 and 1980 After 1981

22.0 11.9 12.4 7.7 7.2 12.2 26.6

Note Responses to the question: ‘When did you first join the nationalist movement?’ from Sofres survey data presented in endnote 1; ‘nationalist movement’ being understood as a reference to both family and tradition, as represented by various far right parties or political trends existing pre-FN.

appreciable number claimed to have belonged to the ‘family’ before Armistice Day in 1945: so the FN draws on representatives of the traditional French far right, one and the same as fought against the Popular Front, was close to Maurras, Action Française (AF) and Colonel de la Rocque or Vichy. Another contingent say that they joined the ‘family’ between 1946 and 1957, an era of anti-communist mobilization and Poujadist stirrings; a third group would have rallied to it between 1958 and 1962 at the time of the riots in Algeria and the war of independence there; and lastly, a fourth group between 1963 and 1969, a period marked by the May 1968 revolution and action by the Occident and the Ordre Nouveau movements. As the FN’s electoral base evolved, along with its first electoral successes – the 1983 Dreux local elections, the 1984 European elections, the 1986 general election and finally the 1988 and 1995 presidential elections – younger militants, coming from the classical right wing, or newcomers to politics altogether,4 arrived on the scene and swelled the ranks of the established, older nationalists who had been active from way before the FN was founded. Between 1986 and 1988, the FN recruited members such as Bruno Mégret from the RPR and the PR. In the middle of the

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1990s, people started being recruited from a wider range of backgrounds, and from newer, more popular and less entrenched extreme right electorates. No other party is as diverse and assimilating as the FN: formed from successive waves of sedimentation, it seems to bring together activists from diametrically opposed, and sometimes conflicting, ideological backgrounds and membership, and bundles together the entire French spectrum of likely candidates for the far right – from the pre-FN far right tradition to the conservative and liberal right of the independents and the induction of new individuals with absolutely no political experience. Our field research provides a close-up view of the militant diversity that characterizes the FN.

The pre-war traditional extreme right The pre-war, traditional extreme right is represented within the FN by quite elderly activists, as described by Zeev Sternhell (1989), nostalgic for the revolutionary right and for the radical right of the 1930s, and also by the Catholic monarchists. These militants are not founder members of the FN, having joined it when the first electoral successes gave the party better visibility, and offered new ways forward. Revolutionary and radical right wingers The oldest interviewee was born in 1920, and so represents the oldest generation of militants, a group that became ‘socialized’ politically during the 1930s – an era of effervescent fervour for the radical right. These militants were fired up by a form of extremism that had disappeared from politics after the war, was extremely diverse, non-democratic and deeply rooted in the French values of the Ancien Régime. Nostalgically they reminisced about ‘another’ right, more radical than the one that remained after 1939–45 and, above all, based on traditionalist political and moral values that had lost respectability following the Occupation. For these older militants, the pre-war period was characterized by the diversity of right-wing political ideas, and most importantly by the strength of very radical groups inscribed in history, from the counterrevolution to the anti-Semitic leagues and to Maurrassism: My grandfather was a member of Action Française. . . . He had Maurras’ ‘L’enquête sur la monarchie’ [he shows the book]. It was a whole concept that has completely gone now . . . I was eleven; we were sitting round the family table and I used to listen to them talking about it . . . Once I was invited to an extreme right meeting held by a nationalist party . . . There were about 50 of us, people my age who were speaking . . . Some other people there, about 80 years old, and so slightly older than me and who had lived at the time when the right-wing, the real right, was well-established, recounted the whole story as told by Zeev Sternhell.5 And there were young people in the room who were dumbfounded by the richness and abundance of ideas, and they were

96 Valérie Lafont also slightly disappointed to discover they didn’t know anything . . . They drank in these people’s words, these people who had lived all this. The right of Drumont, etc. Drumont’s ‘La France Juive’, Charles Maurras, Léon Daudet, all that . . . Look at this: this is my grandfather’s [right-wing] library [a cupboard with seven shelves in it!]: Henri Dupont6 1853-1931. And nowadays all this is not well known, and even though it is rightfully part of our history, it’s regarded in a very biased way! (Hubert, FN, male, 78) Pilot groups for these militants were the Camelots du Roy, shock royalists and activists and AF, Maurrassian and already embarking on a course of ideological action; Colonel de la Rocque’s Les Croix de Feu was another spearhead group, an important point of reference because its ideology was easily fostered by young activists from a more popular background. The old militants vindicated the right’s vitality, which manifested itself in a kind of freedom of expression – and, in particular, freedom of the press – tolerating even the most vicious and outspoken contributions to the political debate without censure of aggressivity of standpoint nor of political incorrectness. That this space of legitimacy vanished in the wake of the political stands and actions these groups took reflected the balance of power at the time of the Liberation and, in the eyes of the radical extreme right, the order of values had in this way been unfairly and simplistically reversed: this justified their joining the FN as the only protesting right-wing party. I was born in 1920. I started studying in 1937–1938, and the German occupation began in 1940, so I had lived there two years before the Occupation: two years of freedom. At that time there were right- and left-wing students, and a wide range of opinions [. . . after German occupation] there was nothing left at that point. We were really drained and morale was low. I noticed just after the war . . . something that gradually took hold of us, a section of French public opinion that had been discredited literally the day after the Liberation, the slight right-wing extremist tendency, Maurrassian anger, etc., discrediting it was of course totally wrong: there were as many Resistance fighters on the Right as there were on the Left. And ever since the Liberation, French politics have remained destabilized. The right-wing is demonized. Where is it, in fact? The true right-wing is aligned for the most part with the FN. And it is countered by this other right-wing, how can I put it? The whole political community, the Gang of Four as JMLP7 would say . . . There’s no doubt that it is the victors who have made history. The French right-wing does not exist anymore; it has disappeared. (Hubert, FN, male, 78) For these militants, the war, collaboration and membership of the Vichy government were events punctuating the development of a rift that was to reduce their framework of political reference to turmoil: the demarcation between the left and

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the right – and specifically between themselves, as alleged or true collaborators, and everyone else. The FN brought victims of this inversion of values together: some who considered themselves custodians of the highest values, notably because of their elevated social standing, found themselves in a compromised position. The validity of this political split may to a large extent have bypassed individual militants of this epoch, while being passed down through generations, and remaining very much alive for younger militants: My maternal grandfather was head of the Treasury . . . He was very brilliant [...] and had quite a lot of responsibility within the Vichy government . . . which meant I knew a fair bit about the system of the, what do you call them? the Resistance, because Resistance fighters didn’t actually exist. The Resistance only started around 6 June 1944, and my uncle was murdered after 6 June. Some members of the Resistance movement came and took him from his chateau, tied him up with barbed wire and left him in the forest where he was found two weeks later: that was the Resistance movement . . . I don’t like this kind of Resistance . . . and there are all these people who want to try and tell us we were collaborators, etc. while we were in fact just decent people wanting the best for our country . . . We were trying to save France, and they thought we had collaborated with the enemy, but the facts speak for themselves: we supported the government, we saved thousands of French people, and saved quite a lot of Jews you know, because we saved French people whether Jewish or not . . . The Resistance were real thugs. (Philippe, FN, male, 22) These were children or grandchildren of former traditionalists, loyalist aristocrats and Vichy supporters. They were socialized within the legacy of the counterrevolutionary far right, a legacy they often defend even more radically than their parents. Living and fighting in another world, they were ruled by an order that went out with the Revolution: their political affiliation is an old family story, seen as ‘natural’ and inescapable, dating from way before the FN, and quite independent of its existence. I come from an aristocratic family, so of course I have to try and live up to the family honour, which is quite hard sometimes . . . At least I belonged to a family that had not just stood by doing nothing, being submissive . . . It all began with Henry IV: my ancestors were descended from Henry IV . . . and were subsequently counsellors for a long line of kings . . . So my family has played an important role in France’s development for a long time. We ran into trouble, of course, during the French Revolution which is why we went to live in New York for a time, and then once returned and living under Louis XVIII and Charles X, we were again advisors to the King. Under Louis Philippe we refused to take the oath to serve a traitor . . . and since then my family acquired a solicitor’s practice . . . But we still participate actively in French

98 Valérie Lafont politics . . . It was the FN who approached me rather than the other way round . . . [My grandfather] was called back in by Pétain . . . My father is a tradeunion activist, he is president of the farmland owner’s union, and owners are seldom left-wingers . . . of course he was a pro-Tixier-Vignancour militant, and carried out missions for the OAS . . . and he was also politically active during the war as he was 15 during World War II . . . Everyone in my family belongs to the FN, both my close and distant relatives . . . Politics crops up in conversation almost all day long at home: when watching the news, reading the Figaro, we comment on events, and we keep this up at table of course because that’s the time we are all together. Politics is an everyday thing; for us, an ongoing family activity. (Philippe, FN, male, 22) Their membership of the FN, like that of their parents who perhaps supported the Vichy government, Tixier-Vignancour and then the OAS, is justified by the opportunities it yields for gaining access to power, for debate and to proselytize, but remains without any major influence on their political culture. For these militants, the contemporary world is dead. The path they followed reinforces the notion of heterogeneity of the FN, rooted as this was in a conglomeration of far right strands, and symbolizes the nature of the right-wing radical opposition characteristic of the FN. Monarchist and Catholic right wing Among this family of the radical, elitist and inegalitarian far right, the monarchists, Catholic traditionalists, represent within the FN a very singular branch, who believe in a fundamental order based on adherence to the Catholic religion, and on a social hierarchy inherited through family genealogy: [My grandparents] put a bit of a catholic slant on history for me . . . so any political ideals I could adhere to come out of Catholicism . . . Nowadays, if you say you’re Catholic, . . . people reject you because it’s not fashionable . . . Just because the Catholic faith is followed by a minority doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. It will always be truth, it is timeless and that’s just the way it is! . . . So, there are two camps. One lot who follow the fashion, instigated by Satan, and one lot who follow history, nature, tradition. (Philippe, FN, male, 22) These militants believe political and national belonging to be inseparable from religious faith. Religion dictates order, class and hierarchy for mankind. The inversion of values we have already commented on in the political arena has, then, a parallel in religion: not only did the Catholic fundaments disappear from legitimate political values, but the Church also underwent progressive reform until it finally split away. The political opposition of these militants, symbolized by their commitment to the FN, runs in this way parallel to religious opposition, translating

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into their following Archbishop Lefebvre’s schismatic church that insisted on continuing to observe rites dating from before the Vatican Council II: There is a thought police watching over us. It is a widespread phenomenon, and in religion, it’s the same thing . . . With the council, the universal Roman Catholic Church [he stresses the word ‘universal’], universal religious message, was turned into a globalist church while in fact Christianity was Roman apostolic Catholicism [he stresses ‘globalist’ and ‘Roman’], with the Latin mass, etc., and then one day the council just chucked it all out, and anybody protesting was just excommunicated. Just look at the Lord Archbishop Lefebvre. I don’t know if it was some kind of plot, but there is a totalitarianism about it, where everything is internationalist, Masonic; . . . I’m for Archbishop Lefebvre! . . . Vatican II . . . it’s a total mess within the Church, and illogical . . . The Church has been massacred . . . they’ve emptied out the churches, and the one they’ve blamed is Archbishop Lefebvre, who has been just thrown out! . . . And to think that before the war the Church was a force for social cohesion, as the saying goes: ‘Forever French and Catholic’, and other things like Jules Ferry’s public schools, that taught patriotism. The Catholic Church was a driving force for national cohesion even if there were some antagonisms. These days, the Church falls for exclusion, racism, etc. Just reread some of the few parish newsletters that exist: it’s pathetic. World hunger, it’s the CCFD – the Catholic Committee Against Hunger and for Development – who subsidized Communist Vietnam, etc. . . . Everything is sewn up, and blocked. (Hubert, FN, male, 78) This traditionalist view of society, profoundly shaped by class structure, upholds a natural type of order, where everyone inherits their place and an immutable role in society. They also inherit a set of rights and duties, as dictated by the social order, and deemed to be essential to the perpetuity of the community. Membership of right- or left-wing political groups is one of these attributes: When you were 16, would you say your parents were more right-wing or leftwing? Well, that’s not really the point! We weren’t communists, and we weren’t socialists either. We weren’t political but we certainly voted for the right! That’s for sure, we voted for the right, we were for the Church, and for all that is classically French! (Hubert, FN, male, 78) The anti-communist right Anti-communist ideology is for the FN another root in the past. The fear of socialism and communism that unites militants of all ages within the FN is nourished by specific historical events, and practically one per generation: the

100 Valérie Lafont Popular Front in 1936, the invasion of Hungary in 1956, May 1968 and finally François Mitterrand’s victory in the elections of 1981: [From Ancien Régime to today] it’s one huge continuum. [My grandfather] fought as a Catholic to preserve an ideal in a world corrupted by the Popular Front, and it wasn’t easy at all . . . And now, conditions are even worse because, well, we’re not at war, but the corruption is worse than it was in 1940 . . .: in 1940 we could still hang on to people who had remained faithful to what they were before 1936. But now, who could we hang on to? No one. Everybody has been lulled by the ideas of 1936 and those of 1968, everybody. (Philippe, FN, male, 22) Anti-communism is at the origin of a very deeply felt opposition that can find expression only through an authoritarian right-wing: Is there a party you would never vote for? Yes: the socialists and the communists! Definitely not . . . never, I’d never vote for socialism, nor for communism. Socialism is the straw that breaks the camel’s back, that’s for sure. As a social system, it’s an aberration, oh no! I would never vote for socialism – that would go completely against tradition! . . . You have to be against individualism, and against selfishness, but socialism is immoral! Besides, there’s a pope who condemned socialism not just because it’s atheistic, but also as a social system. It’s synonymous with poverty and waste – man has to earn his living by the sweat on his brow, and effort must be rewarded, etc . . . Of course I’m right-wing! But not the imitation Right of Chirac, or Giscard’s festering middle-class right-wing. (Hubert, FN, male, 78) These antagonisms can in themselves explain how individuals may take the first steps towards political commitment: As a young man of 16, and from a farming and de Gaullist family, I’ve always been deeply committed to the right-wing, and so, anti-left-wing and above all, anti-communist. I was 17 when I saw the events of May 1968, and in a way, I was rather revolted by it all, and took a stand against it, which I suppose is normal, just reacting against something. At the time, the ‘against something’ for us was to be standard bearers for the convictions of General De Gaulle: proud to be French. That’s it, . . . France first . . . You made a commitment against something? Against the Communist Party, against anarchy, against the shit-mongers, against the person who said ‘it is forbidden to forbid’ because that goes against being part of society . . . [1968] was the point I became conscious, when everybody was saying ‘the Reds are here’, well I’m anti-Red. That’s all. (Jean-Pierre, FN, male, 46)

France: a two-centuries-old galaxy 101 These feelings override all other contentions, and narrow the political field to just the communism–far right conflict: above all in a situation where the FN is the foremost right-wing counter-presence to the left: [I committed myself] in response to this kind of nauseating and demagogic socialism . . . Q: In 1947? So you had already got into politics by then? A: Well! That’s going a bit far, as I went into politics only because I was asked to! I was a doctor, and had a busy practice and because there was a communist town council that they wanted to throw out, they were enlisting people who were likely to win votes, and as I had some influence, well, I got mixed up in it all, that’s how it happened! . . . I was Mayor from 1971 to 1977. So, at that time, well the communists really went all out to win . . . and in 1977, the town council that had only been Communist during the Liberation, and that was more right-wing afterwards, swung to the communists! (Hubert, FN, male, 78) The French Algerian networks In contrast to the traditional far right affiliations described above, the political, collaborative and friendly networks set up in Algeria and during repatriation in France contributed directly towards the FN’s foundation. The common experience of expatriates and then the repatriated was the basis for a thriving community of friends and neighbours bound by social and political experience. After the Algerian war, they met up again, networks were created, and a spawning ground for the FN’s later recruitment and development was formed: I was expelled to Paris . . . at the beginning of 1962 . . . Once in Paris, well, we had contacts with people who took us in, people who were for French Algeria . . . they looked after us and helped us a lot . . . I managed to get back to work in the SNCF8 with their help. [After that] we had to start from scratch again, even though compared with some I was quite fortunate because I had a flat . . . I had been helped by the networks . . . Q: And after that, you went back to being an activist? A: First, we worked with associations . . . within the SNCF to try and meet up with, and organize those living in Paris and in the suburbs . . . There was the biggest [association] which was financed by De Gaulle, and there was the one created by General Jouhaud, of which I was a member, then there were the generals, and ‘X’, who was involved in the lawsuit with Tixier-Vignancour, Frédéric Dupont, and some other personalities . . . We tried to help those of us who were really destitute, and collected clothes for them . . . There were so many people living in poverty and we had lots of friends from the city . . . and so we built up a support network. It was like being a minority group in a foreign country, because although we were in France, we were even more badly treated than foreigners . . .

102 Valérie Lafont Q: And after that, how did you come across Tixier-Vignancour? A: Well, word got round that he was organizing his first meeting . . . Of course, friends of mine were in his entourage, and as they needed me, they phoned me . . . After that, you know, things went quiet for a while – I kept campaigning with ‘X’ and then we were invited, for instance, to funerals of mutual friends when they died, and my friends and myself often met famous soldiers – Algerian War veterans – at these funerals, and that’s how it began. ( Jacques, FN, male, 65) Over and above the tangible formation of networks, experiences of life as an ‘expatriate’, and then of the Algerian war, seem to have strongly influenced the political representations made by individual FN members. This experience is a significant critical event, and provides a foundation for political awareness in the same way that the Second World War had been significant for others.

Politics as a violent phenomenon An aberrant social climate, characterized by numerous conflicts and social inequality, had engraved violence and tension in the daily lives of FN militants. For those who were formerly in Algeria, politics is an intrinsically violent phenomenon, even in peacetime. The brutality around them as they took their first steps in politics seems to be inscribed forevermore in their political representations: The thing that really affected us deeply was living in a pretty hostile environment, in my head the events that stick go quite far back – to 46 or even 45, and the Sétif rebellion. There had been demonstrations in Algiers . . . I was already 5 or 6 . . . and I remember having heard rumblings, and shouting in the street . . . Q: So in Algiers . . . there was a kind of fear pervading your family life? A: . . . We never imagined we could be uprooted from Algiers . . . we weren’t exactly frightened . . . A few days after Independence, my mother chased after an Arab who had spat at her . . . Yes, even though there were people demonstrating and waving FLN flags . . . My father was no coward either, and when we heard firing – I think it was 24 December 1956 – as a terrorist car drove down the street, Casbah Street it was, a residential street. They were shooting, and my father went and got his hunting rifle, and ran down into the street . . . Actually, this brings to my mind the little Spanish girl who was just passing on her way home, and who got a bullet in her head. Part of her brain fell on the wall of the café, and on the window, a gendarme came out of the chemist, revolver in his hand, and the butcher came out too, with his revolver in his hand, and it was him who shot this guy, Pioww! Down he went. There we are. Between you and me, my father took his rifle, he was 65 and went right to the other end of Algiers . . . Maybe it’s that, in fact, I really liked my father . . . He went on a bit about the war, but he looked at it aesthetically

France: a two-centuries-old galaxy 103 more than anything else . . . it wasn’t because he liked violence . . . Jesus spits out the half-hearted. (Michel, FN, male,58) This justifies civilian violence, the use of torture, and loyalty to the cause: You told me your father had supported the OAS . . . He was part of the DPU – the Urban Protection Unit that was led by Colonel Godard, I think. So the work consisted of surveillance, a kind of neighbourhood protection scheme, all of Algiers was controlled like that in fact. It helped prevent attacks . . . and was totally justified because the other side were ruthless, it’s exactly the same technique as is used today by the [Groep Islamique Armé ] (GIA) . . . because . . . most of Algeria’s Muslim population were not in favour of independence . . . Terrorism at that time consisted of planting a bomb in a bar, where it was grandfathers, women and children got killed. It was a revolutionaries’ war, and to really imprint the message in people’s minds, they had to really hit home by targeting children as well . . . So we really had to put a stop to that, and that’s where the torture problem appears. It’s pretty nasty, but when you know that the guy could talk, well . . . but it’s a horrid thing to do, and it’s like the Gestapo . . . but where killing children is involved, moral considerations have to be put to one side. So my father was involved at that level. (Michel, FN, male, 58) As though scarred by the diet of hostility, these militants uphold a pessimistic kind of activism, acting out of duty while knowing that in fact they will never be able to change anything in the sphere of social relationships, which for them remain inherently harrowing and destructive: Uprisings may be fully justified . . . So, all that, is the reason why I want to prevent our society from plunging too much into chaos . . . you have to spend a bit of time acting and believing at the time that things are changing before you discover that actually, you don’t change anything. At least I’ve met people who are incredibly brave . . ., many went so far as to lay down their life. One acts because it’s good to follow someone who is right. (Michel, FN, male, 58)

Nostalgia as founder of a common myth This pessimism is fuelled by nostalgia in the end, and militanticy becomes the means to vindicate memories of an unjustly destroyed paradise, and to keep the common links of socialization alive: My world was the world of the ‘pieds-noirs’: I lived in a town that was one of the most beautiful in the Mediterranean Basin, and I would never exchange

104 Valérie Lafont Algiers for Paris . . . So, I’m rootless, even today, I live in Toulon but I don’t feel at home, I’ll never feel at home . . . It was another life there, not comparable to life in Black Africa because people there are often wealthy . . . but the pieds-noirs were really a small community of people, and brought together at random . . . It was a friendly community, and provided links with different people, like when we were ill, and people came to see us . . . When the Arabs had parties or family gatherings, they brought us cakes. When it was my brother’s communion or mine, our Arab neighbours were invited, so it was another way of life and, well, there was sun and sea . . . Life was full of light . . . When I arrived in Paris, I decided to look for circles that might still be in a good state . . . But well, it was over, it didn’t mean anything anymore. (Michel, FN, male, 58) Militanticy was unleashed for many individuals by the Algerian war. This was an unprecedented political experience, lived in all its savagery and unfairness, and also a unique communal life-experience, and clear group boundaries were formed as a result. These delimiters were multi-faceted: cultural, national and political, setting supporters of independence apart in their radical opposition to the rest of society. FN militants were still quite young when the Algerian war broke out, and yet the clashes of this period remained relevant in their eyes. Like children of collaborators, they carried their fight forward until the present time as if nothing had changed. This de-synchronization with present-day values fuels pessimism and nostalgia, which in turn justify activism. As is generally true for many other branches of activism, FN membership finds its meaning in the struggle ‘against’, in being ‘outcasts’, and the losers in the story. It is in this way that these militants were able to unite with others, adhering to conservatives, independents and small shopkeepers, Tixier-Vignancour, or the CNI, right through the whole range of affiliations until they arrived at the FN. The independent right wing As they mobilized little by little following Jean-Pierre Stirbois’ victory in Dreux in 1983, the FN absorbed a fringe of far right militants who had inherited a nonGaullist kind of right-wing politics embodied by the CNI, the champion of independents and small shopkeepers. After the Algerian networks, this circle is the best-assimilated group within the FN, finding in the party their preferred stronghanded and charismatic style of being political: Le Pen, like Poujade, is a powerful orator. Within the FN they pursued their anti-establishment course, remaining on the sidelines and with a very partial agenda geared to defending the group interests rather than stepping onto the universal political platform – Pierre Poujade’s Union de défense de commerçants et artisans (UDCA) and Frédéric Dupont’s CNI questioned membership of the world of retailers, craftsmen and independents, while Gérard Nicoud’s organization, which opposed the supermarket phenomenon, in the end never became a political movement.

France: a two-centuries-old galaxy 105 How I gradually became militant? . . . [in a very determined, jerky voice] I’ve always fought and I’ll fight to the bitter end, to be part of the FN, they’re gogetters! They’re not vegetables. I was in business, I was with Poujade, and with the UDCA, in 1952 and 1953. Then it was Nicoud! I joined the Chamber of Commerce with Gérard Nicoud and then Le Pen! Typical career path for people who are on the fringes of society! On the fringes! But on the right fringe! On the right side! Meaning? Well, people who are fed up with this government, officialdom, etc. These are people who want to fight, to restore order! Order! Today we just let anything go! Just look at Chirac: . . . he doesn’t say anything, nothing happens! . . . Le Pen, on the other hand, . . . he’s a really powerful orator, he carries you along! And Poujade was the same, Nicoud slightly less so, but they are people who attract you. They’re alive! The RPR bores you to death! . . . These are people, when you see their programme in the newspapers, or hear them speak, you can’t help thinking: ‘I like this guy!’ And then you follow! . . . Poujade it all fell apart . . . 55 representatives were removed from office! They weren’t politically correct. Le Pen is not politically correct, and Poujade wasn’t either . . . So when you find ideas you like, you follow them! That’s how you catapult into being an activist! . . . so we went [to a meeting] to have a look, and were totally convinced! They are powerful orators, you know, and there was a whole load of shopkeepers there. And then systematically, on the way out it was ‘join the movement!’ and so then we joined! . . . A lot of people had followed the same path as mine, you know, people of my age! So they supported Poujade, then Nicoud and then Le Pen. So you see, they were always fringe right-wingers! . . . What does fringe right-wing person mean? Well people who aren’t part of the RPR or UDF, who don’t belong to structured parties, and who are always slightly, not extreme right, but to the right of today’s feeble right that leads us today. The soft right, Yuk! It’s true, isn’t it? (Marcel, FN (defection), male, 70) Le Pen’s charisma neutralized the virulence of his posturing as he urged militants to become even more radical. Some went so far as to seek the replacement of democracy, even if only temporarily, by regimes inspired by former far right idols such as Colonel de la Rocque, or by regimes in neighbouring European countries: Q: And your ideal system, how would it work? A: You know, I really can’t tell you! I’m talking about dictatorship. A strong government. You know, our country is a democracy and in democracy there are chambers, well. Because there have been other systems in the past, like in Portugal, Salazar, etc. that weren’t bad at all! They were small dictatorships, but quite harmless. Of course people think straightaway of Hitler or Stalin, but there are countries led by strong governments without atrocities being perpetrated as they were in Germany or Russia! So I believe it could exist! . . .

106 Valérie Lafont Members of Parliament are a waste of time! Anyway, it’s an idea de la Rocque and the Croix de Feu before the war stood up for! . . . An anti-regime replaced by an anti-parliamentary something! Because it’s all useless! (Marcel, FN, male, 70) The radicalization of the Gaullists From 1986 onwards, militants and sympathizers of the Gaullist right regrouped, disappointed by overmoderate RPR or PR party lines or by the lack of leadership charisma in the wake of General de Gaulle. The path these activists followed is different from that of the independents: many came directly from the RPR, and some had already had a first, and real, Gaullist commitment: I became aware of my political leanings when I was 16. I was at secondary school, and I rebelled against a certain kind of society I didn’t like, not as an anarchist, etc. but rather out of respect for certain values. And that’s when I joined the UJP9 where I was leader until I was 24. We were young Gaullists . . . And I also joined the CDR10 set up by Monsieur Malraux during the events of ’68 . . . An anticommunist right-wing movement . . . And then I became a member of the UDR,11 a Gaullist movement again. When the UDR expired, I joined the recently formed RPR in 1974. As leader, I was cordially invited to the Nice Congress to elect the stupid idiot Chirac. And in 1988, I decided to join the national movement led by JMLP, and so I have been a member of the FN ever since. ( Jean-Pierre, FN, male, 46) These activists represent a relatively authoritarian traditionalist right wing, notable for its singularly strong patriotism and characterized by a commitment on the part of members’ parents to the resistance. They are right-wing ‘family’, but without any ties to the extreme right wing: and some of their values, moreover, are quite contrary to those of the far right. The values upheld by the Resistance, for example, were diametrically opposed to those of Vichy supporters. Their commitment to the FN is based upon a will to radicalize traditional right-wing values, shore up the social order and moral standards, combat liberalism and decadence and reshape the country’s ideals into pure nationalism: I was Gaullist because my father was Gaullist. Our family milieu meant, simply, that we were Gaullists . . . There weren’t ever any socialists or communists at home . . . At the time, we called centrists Holy Joes. France was divided into two opposing groups: those for de Gaulle, and those against him. When the Wehrmacht invaded France when [my father] was 19, he faced up his responsibilities and instead of entering the STO, he enlisted in the Resistance, not in 1942 but in 1940 . . . My father is 78 now, and he’s a member of the FN like many former Gaullists because they find the same ideals in the National Movement.

France: a two-centuries-old galaxy 107 Q: And what exactly are these ideals? A: French first, proud to be French, respect for our ancestors, those who died for us to be free, for France to be free, well before De Gaulle, and for the creation of the Frankish people by the coronation of Clovis, for our national identity – we have a culture, a language; we have our customs. We must respect them: we aren’t Anglo-Saxon, we aren’t Germanic. ( Jean-Pierre, FN, male, 46) However, joining the FN requires breaking through a barrier and the casting aside of a prohibition – one that was rather unpalatable, in fact, to right-wing extremists, and which went against the commitment to socialization upheld by these militants: Already in 1986 I wasn’t sure whether to buy my RPR stamp again or not . . . I couldn’t feel General De Gaulle’s values anymore in the people who lead the RPR, I felt sort of abandoned . . . There were rumours of corruption and political skullduggery . . . and then, well, I crossed the Rubicon and became a member of the FN. At the time, there were only two of us in A., but now there are loads more (laughter). Q: You crossed the Rubicon . . .? A: Yep. Q: And this, your expression implies, that it was hard to take the plunge? A: Well, I’d say it was, because the FN at the time was lead by different people from today. It was for many people a complete unknown as a movement, it was Pétainism, it was still the far right of that era representing maybe 2.75 or 1.75 per cent of the French population, their nostalgia, whereas now it’s a very different story. ( Jean-Pierre, FN, male, 46) The radicalization of these militants is assured by the sheer force of Le Pen’s polemic, with the most stubbornly entrenched of obstacles being swept away by his charisma: I was brought up in a family that was quite Gaullist, and so early on, the FN wasn’t really in my mind at all . . . My younger sister and my brother-in-law had already been militant for some time . . . [but] that made me feel ill at ease whenever racism was mentioned . . . I started wondering about the Vichy regime, and whether it was good or bad, and this bothered me because I had a brother who was deported, and my father was arrested three times by the Gestapo, so he really did nearly lose his life, because he belonged to a network of resistance fighters, so for me it was all rather close to the bone, these things . . . Being young, I was very affected by it . . . [I had] a sort of apprehension, but my husband said ‘no, don’t be silly!’, . . . and then one day I went to one of JMLP’s meetings and there all my prejudices fell away when I heard him speak, I realized just how total was the dis-information handed out by the

108 Valérie Lafont media, and at that moment I was enthralled by his speech, by his approach, and his human qualities . . . He’s a man you can really talk to, who listens to you . . . He had this aura about him, and such magnetism! He really drew the crowds, and the ease with which he talked for an hour and a half like that, without a glance at any written speech, I found that extraordinary. I know he was originally a lawyer, but even so, not everyone could do it, and there is something that just radiates from him, such presence, [and] I didn’t feel he was racist, nor fascist, and there we are, I was completely carried away at that moment, [and] I give myself totally to the cause. (Yvonne, FN, female, 60) The new generation: the unaffiliated In parallel with advances on the electoral front, FN numbers grew to 42,000 at the time of the 1999 split. Gains in the local polls had won the party several seats and the party was so increasingly becoming attractive to far right-wing militants and still found it necessary to attract new militants and party members. The popularization of the electorate meant that the party was gaining ground in the realms of ordinariness, and so in turn it became easier for individuals hitherto unknown to the far right to rally to the FN, and this too resulted in a certain diversification of the party ranks. While the entire spectrum of the far right was concentrated around a hard core of founder members, these same networks served as the springboard for recruitment of new categories of militants, younger individuals, who for the most part had no experience of politics. These militants were the product of popular milieux, and were more sensitive to social questions, and equivalent to the ‘ninistes’ electors described by Nonna Mayer (2002). Highly enthusiastic, these new militants make up the larger part of the FN’s activist forces. They are of crucial importance because, in contrast to the progeny of other extreme right-wing militant groups, their commitment to, and integration within the FN are total: these are the ‘pure’ group members, with an uncompromising allegiance to the party.

A left-wing cultural trend The shifting of the FN electorate to a more popular membership at the end of the 1980s threw up a lot of questions about how permeable frontiers between left and right were: were not new FN electors hailing from circles that traditionally voted left – for example, workers or those with unsecured employment, more accurately communists as far as some of the older left-wing voters were concerned? Or, more simply, wasn’t their proximity only a reflection of the closeness of current themes of electoral interest, since the FN was recruiting different individuals from the same milieux? Our study appears to confirm the second hypothesis. We didn’t meet any militants in this popular category with any real left-wing political experience prior to joining the FN. Some may have been socialized at an early age

France: a two-centuries-old galaxy 109 in this atmosphere, but when it came to choosing a party for the first time, they always, or nearly always, chose the FN directly. While they felt closely aligned with the communist party as regards the social values being defended, and specifically as regards members’ total commitment to militant communism, they completely rejected the political standpoint of the Communist party: Until the age of about 14 or 15 I had left-wing opinions, and I even hung out a bit with the people in the JC12 and I could have at any minute taken the step of joining them. But something held me back . . . I think maybe it was that they had supported the USSR for over 70 years . . . Social justice, love of the Earth, love of tradition, they defended that too . . . It is [my grand-parents] who gave me this mixture of all that . . . but there was this irrational voice inside me which said ‘No! Don’t do it!’ (Marc, FN, male, 28) The closeness between the left and the FN can be traced to these militants’ social origins, to the comparable position the Communist party occupied within the surrounding milieux at the time of their political awakening and above all to the importance attributed to social preoccupations, an emphasis that was to be ‘taken up’ by the FN. But they clearly are not left-wing militants: they are very definitely a thing apart. Moreover, individuals who are already committed to something would not necessarily be attracted to the FN, which appeals rather to those in search of an attachment, some form of identification, without any real political reference if it is not some hitherto uncharted social preoccupations. The FN in this way provides a structure in much the same way as the army, the family, a company or another organization: At the age of 14 or 15, when I was trying to find myself, I had a sudden urge to pursue a career in the armed forces. I had read a book . . . that extolled the values of comradeship, honour, fidelity, the spirit of sacrifice and devotion and all that, and when you’re 15 or 16 these are words that are engraved a bit in your heart . . . And then I realized, finally, that I was living in a high rise flat, I had a few problems, and some problems of identity in particular, . . . the Front at that time was starting to get a voice, and it seemed at first the most militaristic of the parties . . . There was this need for social justice . . . and then there was the concern about identity, so I approached them . . . If I had not switched over to this camp, in the milieu where I was I would perhaps have even been capable of dabbling in a bit of small-time delinquency . . . I think that it happened at just the right time, because at 14 or 15 you are trying to find yourself, and find an identity and they caught me just at the right time in fact: ‘caught’ in inverted commas that is, because in fact it was me that knocked on the door! . . . With the communists after that it was hard, that’s politics for you, it forces you to choose which camp you’re in. (Marc, FN, male, 28)

110 Valérie Lafont Lack of any real political roots: the neither–nor syndrome Among this new group of ‘ninist’ militants, some have no political experience whatsoever. It is as though their world was apolitical: before joining the FN, they were not surrounded by relatives interested in politics, nor even who talked politics, they were not even registered on the list of electors, and started voting only once they had joined the FN: Q: Did you talk about politics at home before you joined the FN? A: Ouffffff! No, but when it was on the TV, we used to say what we thought, but no, no, we weren’t terribly interested, . . . we talked about the family, but not about politics . . . it wasn’t really relevant to us you see. We just weren’t involved . . . I didn’t ever really know what my mother’s views were, in fact I don’t even know now, we don’t talk about it . . . myself, I’ve voted, I think it was for the government elections. For the 1997 election, because I have moved house quite a lot, and so I never got to vote, like before I joined the Front, I never got involved in politics, I wasn’t ever registered. I arrived a bit too late to vote in the local elections, so my first election must have been the legislatives. (Blanche, FNJ, female, 22) Enrolment within the FN sometimes came about through the intermediary of a friend or spouse, or in a haze of jollity during some festive occasion organized by the party: a rally, get-together, dinner, etc. In this case it is the commitment that opened the door to the politics, rather than the other way round: It’s O. really who has pushed me to militate . . . I hadn’t much of a clue about politics, I was 17 . . . O. took me one day to an [Front National de la Jeunesse] (FNJ) meeting, and I was introduced to it like that . . . They had an evening do every Friday, so once or twice we went and joined them . . . I started with O., as he was an activist, I said, well I’m not just staying at home on my own, and so, well I started being active as well, and there you are . . . I said I would stick with it, and I was the first girl who did! (Blanche, FNJ, female, 22) Alignment with left-wing culture plus a piecemeal political socialization led, once the party had reworked the ideology, to a renunciation of left- and right-wing political categories, and of any assertion that might refer back to these: a simplistic way of resolving the political contradictions endemic in the myriad recruitment of the FN: [on presentation of the left/right scale] I put myself right outside that scale! Q: Why? A: What does Right mean, and what does Left mean? Right and Left, is that an ideological separation, no rather, is the distinction between them based on

France: a two-centuries-old galaxy 111 economic criteria, the outcome of utopian ideas? I say this because I saw in an article I read that these two ideologies that were socialism and liberalism grew out of an uprooted nineteenth century utopia, because that’s it you see, I don’t feel like a socialist, and I don’t felt like a liberal . . . Am I left-wing, or am I right-wing? I have no idea. What is the Right? What’s certain is that if the Right . . . represents certain values like attachment to the homeland, and things like that, in that case of course I’m right-wing! Myself, I can’t see any difference between Right and Left, my position is off the political chessboard. For me the extreme right is Madelin the ultra-liberal, and the extreme left is the most orthodox kind of economic communism . . . So, in that sense, if one were placed on an economic playing field, I would put myself right at the centre. (Gaëtan, FN, male, 28) To conclude our horizon scan of FN ‘people’ we perhaps ought to mention the New Right. This trend does not really constitute a well-defined group as such, but during conferences or lectures numerous militants share this concept as a crossed thought: its influence can be felt on the ideological plane, and in particular with regard to the induction of new arrivals in the party.

Internal divisions and party splits Splits in the party largely mirror the successive waves of enrolment we have described above. In particular, the arrival of new members hailing from circles outside the traditional extreme right wing heralds an important shift for the party. These new recruits are vital to the FN, as they bolster its combat capability so it can keep pace with progress on the electoral front; however, their political profile is sometimes diametrically opposed to that of the older ‘traditional’ militants, and so gives rise to splits at several levels on the social and political plane, and also in the rapport that militants have with the party itself. The class cleavage: working class and gentry The social standpoints of new militants arriving from the popular and cultivated echelons of society were radically different, and sometimes well-nigh incompatible. Blue-collar workers or employees with limited educational resources gleaned from family, school, or past membership of other political groups clearly had a totally different perspective to activists coming from the traditional far right, from bourgeois or aristocratic families and so educated to a higher level, but also socialized within a tightly structured familial and political frame of reference. Class divisions are concealed within religious divisions also: and here resides a major conflict between the various militant camps, some being Catholic but denying the schism, other Catholics standing by tradition, the latter manifesting the more popular or militant affiliation peculiar to the New Right, both alien and resistant to the first two forms of allegiance. Of all the peripheral and religious symptoms of

112 Valérie Lafont this sociological contention, the issue of abortion stands apart as the most sensitive. But more than this, it is the social hierarchy ratified by the laws of religion, so ‘superior’ and so incontestable, that is unpalatable and difficult for others to accept: We don’t all have the same obligations here on earth. Our Lord will expect far less of someone who comes from a poor background, and whose parents are not Catholic . . . than of someone who is Catholic . . . and whose ancestors were all Catholic, going right back as far as Jesus Christ himself. (Philippe, FN, male, 22) This viewpoint reveals a decidedly elitist and inegalitarian vision of social relationships. The task of taking on the notion of equality head on, as decency requires, is clearly a difficult one for the ‘ignorant’ and vulgar ‘little people’ within the FN: The popularity issue is a tough one: it’s not that I am elitist, but I prefer to discuss with people who are well-grounded, people with a reasonably solid political standpoint, and who have political allegiance: to talk to people in the FN just because they don’t like Arabs, that’s a bit more binary . . . And there are loads of people . . . you can feel immediately that they aren’t from the same social class . . . I try to notch up the debate a bit because it starts to get to me, that type of reasoning, and they don’t follow, . . . they aren’t interested. They are quite different to me. (Philippe, FN, male, 22) On the part of militants from popular circles, the problem is exactly the opposite: they would reproach those quoted above for their dislike of the less welloff. [On presentation of the Right/Left scale] There, like that, put a cross there. Q: And why is it just there, the national right wing? A: Because the right’s values are identified with personalities, to the people with money . . . I don’t have any ties to those people even if they are my friends, I don’t spit on them, but me, I am, I’d say, part of the national right because I believe, how can I put it, in intellectuals but also in down-to-earth people as well. And I prefer humble folk to intellectuals. ( Jacques, FN, male, 65) Social diversity puts education, ideological conviction and political practice into direct contradiction. Clearly the relative complexity of social and political resources enjoyed by the ‘bourgeois’ should give them the advantage in the quest for power but this is by no means a certainty: in a kind of democratic way the FN is organized internally according to procedures that are paradoxically contradictory to the values of the traditional far right:

France: a two-centuries-old galaxy 113 I have always received a lot, and must give a lot . . . My life is difficult because if I don’t succeed in my daily life I will be totally rejected. In my family, if you are seen to be corrupted by the real world . . . it just won’t do! they will say to me ‘. . . he’s not good enough for this family, he’s bringing shame on us’ . . . I think about that a lot, and whether I can do something about it. (Philippe, FN, male, 22) The ‘petits’ may be compromised within the party by the ideological ascendancy of ‘educated’ militants: they make up for it through hard work on the land, so scorned by the ‘intellectuals’. The lack of any ‘hereditary’ religious status felt by the more popular militants sometimes led them to join alternative cultural and religious associations, more or less directly linked to the activities of the FN, such as the paganist group Terre et Peuple. In this way links were forged between the New Right and the young ‘socialist’ militants of the FN: here could be found the missing cultural and ideological resources on which the militant personality could be constructed, giving them the confidence to stand up to their more fortunate compeers. Ideological divisions The split on economic policy The class struggle is present on another front: that of the role of the State vis-à-vis the market economy: while some party members are radical liberals, anti-fiscalists who deplore State intervention, others support the idea of social solidarity, assistance for the vulnerable and maximum State mediation to safeguard the principle of egalitarianism: The Reverend Blanchard ran an interesting ‘soup kitchen’-project, I worked with him this winter, helping him. And this kind of social side I find in the FN, we don’t do enough yet, or rather, even though there has been a good deal of progress over time, especially in the themes that we put forward and include in our manifesto, I feel we could do more! . . . As soon as we get interested in people, people become interested in us. We are often seen as being a party with a millionaire at its head, a cold-hearted bourgeois party, as though only the Left can be generous, but that’s not true! We were also brought up in families with problems, we knew hardship, and well, we’ve managed to get through, and we are militant so that things will change . . . the dividing lines are not there historically, it will be rather between those in the Front who would defend a certain liberalism, a certain manner of seeing the economy, and then us, who are rather, in inverted commas, NR,13 I mean, socialist. (Marc, FN, MNR, male, 28) The liberal view of the economy is from another era for these young people, an outmoded and rather hackneyed kind of social phenomenon and the province of

114 Valérie Lafont older activists. They have slowly but surely shifted the borders so that they become national ones, thereby transposing the question of economic liberalism into the stand against globalization. This last issue actually represents a kind of cultural universalism, and serves as semantic alibi for the purpose of mobilizing the troops and minimizing the importance of divergences in viewpoint on the subject of the economy: I joined at a moment when I wasn’t always in agreement with what was being said, and particularly in the area of economics, and specifically when the Front defended at that time ‘Reaganian’ liberalism. The turning point for me came with the Gulf war, when we left all those pro-American and Atlanticist issues behind, and when we could finally put our finger on the real enemy: that is, free-exchange, economic globalism, as soon as we identified the cultural fight as well, as soon as we started to put forward social issues and even identity issues that were even a bit more radical. (Marc, FN, male, 28) Divisions as to how the nation is represented Divisions visibly prevail in the question of national representation: strictly limited to France, of course, for the most traditionalist militants and far right veterans, but extending over the whole of ‘white’ Europe for others, with pagan and militant members of Europe peopling a series of small kingdoms – paradoxically rather in the style of Charles Maurras – or regions; the latter group naturally condemn the older FN militants’ narrow-mindedness. Forms ascribed to the nation vary from the ‘nation state’ homeland to the ‘blood-tie’ homeland, the State made up purely of heart, flesh and blood. And these variations are the outcome of each individual’s political experiences: Within the Front, there are the people who are rather Jacobin, too much so for my taste, even anti-European, and there are some who see Germany just over the blue line of the Vosges mountains, and for them Germans are still the Boss! I’m not like that. I think that the Europe of tomorrow should be one enormous empire, with 800 million people, and going from Dublin to Vladivostok, and from Malaga to Reykjavik, and it wouldn’t either be made up of the homelands as they are today, but rather on the little family, tribal kingdoms . . . I find the Front a bit too feeble on this issue. It’s only the first step for me. (Marc, FN, male, 28) The split about frontiers and nationalism is very strong between older and younger generations. The fight of Algerian people for their independence from France is for some young activists to be respected as a good cause, the kind of ‘flame’ they are looking for right now:

France: a two-centuries-old galaxy 115 A big event in my view is the Algerian war . . . Now, it doesn’t mean much any more. Personally, I feel closer to an FLN soldier than to a Pied-noir in the OAS! And the nationalist generation, that which led to the formation of the FN in fact! . . . Now, we would be massively on the other side, against them, that’s interesting, that . . . there are constant debates and we discuss it all with the last generation . . . The Algerian war wasn’t a split within the Nationalist movement at the time, but now it is an issue which we can say distanced us, and that of the Gulf war, brought us closer together. (Marc, FN, male, 28) Divisions in the sphere of action The ‘purists’ and the ‘opportunists’ Finally, because militants all have different individual trajectories and varieties of past political experience, they do not all assimilate within the FN in the same way. Some we could call ‘careerists’ coming from more classical right-wing parties from 1986 onwards with a view to winning seats in Parliament, or simply see their membership as a means to an end – namely power. Others – for example, senior AF militants – see the party as the vehicle for making themselves heard in the outside world – in the full knowledge, moreover, that this voice will contradict the official FN party line. These members exploit an instrumental and partisan loyalty to the party, while their fundamental allegiance remains outside the FN; their political commitment is therefore very largely independent of the FN’s continuity. Other members, FN founders and young recruits making their first-ever political commitment have a more essentialist relationship to the party, which is their very reason for existence. Heavily dependent therefore on the party’s success, they will sacrifice everything for it. Their diffidence when it comes to taking a position as regards left and right, the ‘ninism’ of the populist militants, is indeed in a certain way the visible manifestation of their undivided commitment to the FN: Really good friends, who followed me when I joined the FN, there aren’t many. . . . It was frowned on! If I joined the RPR, there would be hundreds that would join me! But the FN, there’s a selection process! . . . The people who are trying to make a career in politics, that’s it, they try to find, like we had in the party, people who no longer had any drive, who were in the FN in 1986, who were elected, and then who dropped us aftRWEards. That happens quite often! And so because at that time the FN said, well OK then, let these careerists come in, they were given positions in the party, and as soon as they’re in, they don’t care too much any more about the party! So that’s a bit galling! ( Jacques, FN, male, 65) Radical ideology, traditionalist Catholic elitism and even the vulgarity of JMLP make these careerists’ very presence in the FN a paradox. But their commitment is

116 Valérie Lafont possible only because its value is purely secondary, in that it holds the key to grasping power. These militants’ political commitment is by no means restricted to their commitment to the FN, as this represents only one means among others in the crusade for the traditionalist revolution. For the youngest among them, their apprenticeship in politics and ideology is generally achieved in small groups more directly linked to the traditional far right, such as AF. They maintain a welldefined political identity within the FN, and one which is relatively impermeable to outside influences. In contrast to other militants whose personal history is strongly associated with that of the party, they had a large degree of autonomy visà-vis the party, and sometimes even from their identification with the right wing, from which they could dissociate themselves without losing their roots: Automatically you have to fit into the system. So the system dictates that I have to be wholeheartedly on the right, while I, myself, would like to take myself out of the system. Sticking to the ideal all the time. But there again, in practice you are in the system of the moment, the democratic system and so one finds oneself positioned completely on the right. (Philippe, FN, male, 22) The heterogeneous scale of activism Conflicts also occur in militants’ different views of what constitute appropriate means and objectives of political action. Younger members would like to see a more forceful type of action, even to the extent of hoping for revolution, and older members, are inclined to tread rather too carefully and to moderate the pace of action: That we are now getting to close on 5 million voters in the movement is miraculous, but then we may be less aware of that . . . but our elders, who had been active in the past in small groups, or even who have been Front members since 1972, and who used to work in the party offices by candle-light because there wasn’t enough money to pay for electric light, for them, it’s grandiose! So for us, obviously, we are a bit more impatient than they are, yet, it may be because we’re young, we are hot-headed, and we’re inexperienced, we want things to move forward fast, and things to get done more quickly . . . we want to make more space perhaps for young people, and to let them have their say. More youngsters in the party offices and also more young people on the central committee would be a good thing. (Marc, FN, male, 28) On the ‘moderate’ side, this goes as far as some members challenging the extremist and interventionist character of other militants: I am not an extremist. Q: What do you really mean?

France: a two-centuries-old galaxy 117 A: Well, I mean not extremist in the way that the media would say we all were extremist. Q: And for you, what do you feel when people talk about that? A: Well of course it makes you feel bad, because being extreme, that’s really extreme, extreme, extreme, no, I think there are still limits, limits can always be pushed a bit more until a certain point is reached. I’m not a skinhead, or a facho, I’m French and proud to be so. Q: And what exactly makes the term extremist pejorative? A: Well, there’s the term extreme to begin with: extreme means being anti. There is an extreme left, but we don’t talk about the Communist party as being the extreme left, yet it’s much more extreme than some left-wing parties. There is the centre . . ., then there are Gaullists, the few of them that are left, next you’ve got the French, and then you’ve got all the others, who themselves are extremists, that’s the MPPR, the European Communist Movement, who are really right-wing extremists. Q: And what do you think of them? A: They are crap. Q: Why? A: Because they’re fascists. Q: Do those people frighten you? A: Well they harm the movement because the media ascribe them to us, while we do the opposite. We don’t want them within our movement . . . They are the down-and-outs of politics. ( Jean-Pierre, FN, male, 46)

So what holds it all together? Having described the dazzling political and social diversity among the FN’s activists, the question that naturally arises is how it all hangs together – or, more precisely, how such diverse attitudes based on completely outmoded political cultures can unite voters and activists under the banner of such a steadfast party, marching stridently on from one success to another. One hypothesis is that the reason for success, and what makes it possible, is the way the FN operates as a collection of small individual units, each with its own social function, rather than as a political community bound by a homogeneous world view. Party strategy: cultivate marginal identities Pull together to restore history The theme of the vanishing diversity of the right – or, rather, of one part of the traditional right as discussed above, revealed as a kind of negative stigmatization applied to a political category – is a recurring mechanism, capable of inspiring militants of all ages to action: they collectively feel this negative sentiment of being pariahs, of being excluded from the political arena and are in search of a more

118 Valérie Lafont resolute, more authoritarian, right wing. On this point, the oldest militants empathize with the youngest, elitists with populists. There is a link across the generations and between the militant groups, built upon the impression of a generalized lie about history and politics, whether this is the view of the Ancien Régime, of the Occupation and the Resistance, of the war in Algeria and the contemporary skirmishes of Le Pen (including his fights with law and order, the ‘story of the detail’, the vision ‘peddled’ by the media). This feeling of exclusion and injustice is the cement that binds these militant groups together despite their social and political incompatibilities: the shared stigmata are the common ground and the means to identifying with one another. The cement is in fact skilfully wielded to this end by the FN party machine. The lie about history, and about society’s problems today, is what unites them all under the label of pariahs, anti-heroes, or even ‘knights’. Nurtured within the party, this theme fuels stigmatization, and encourages the proliferation of myths that it is each and everyone’s duty to defend. FN militants can in this way identify with crusaders whose task it is to defend the memory of forgotten martyrs, to reestablish for all future generations a social order that has all but disintegrated and to be the sacrificial lambs of contemporary politics. The FN, aiming for the simplest possible formula, reserves prime position for a very obvious narrative: first and foremost come oral transmission, innate recall rather than historical archives, reminders about marginality and counterculture: [With regard to Vichy and the war] we were always told at home [that what was recorded in books] was false . . . but it’s little by little that the distance was created [when you see the difference between what journalists say about events I’ve been present at, and the reality]. I have come to give more importance to what I see – perhaps this was subjective, but a lot less subjective than the things you read in newspaper columns or in books. Little by little, I got my distance, it’s not just because it’s written in a book that it’s true . . . But narration of events seems a lot nicer to me, more real, and more true. (Philippe, FN, male, 22) The call to the FN also comes about through willpower, and a duty to subscribe to a story that was illegitimate, buried from memory, but above all embodied by man. Militants vindicate the heritage of these men, and assign themselves the task of defending them: Q: How, in fact, did you become militant as you say, bit by bit? A: Basically it was loyalty to friends . . . I am not a dogmatist so what inspired me especially was this loyalty to my friends, given their standing in history and who gave themselves for values which might be considered to be a bit out of date, in a way, but who also managed to hold their own, taking into account what we had to allow for in the developments in Algeria. Then most of all it’s in a spirit of justice, because it seems to me there is a disparity between what we hand out to some and then what we take away from others . . . If I had to

France: a two-centuries-old galaxy 119 give up everything [silence], I don’t believe I could go on . . . That’s what I would lose then; . . . loyalty to dead beings, and even when what I give, it’s not much in comparison with what they gave . . . My mission is to give them that . . . Many of the Jeune Nation died . . . So in the name of everyone, in that respect, I feel a bit responsible all the same. (Michel, FN, male, 58) Joining the FN for some was, apart from enrolling, quite simply a process of learning a story and, for those who felt a bit lost and abandoned, a way of inculcating memories they hadn’t had, and maybe felt the lack of. The FN provided in this way a means to linking up with others, and within one single ‘family’: The Marseillaise is the national hymn for France, and at school they don’t even teach you it, no it’s true, at the end of the day you don’t know anything, they talk to us about everything except for our roots . . . At that time, my history lessons were always, but always! about the same thing: Nazism, Hitler, while in history, there are some fantastic things we could have learnt . . . Sometimes that really annoys me, and I find that we should learn about our roots more. It’s something they don’t teach us. La Marseillaise – myself, I learnt that with Le Pen, because I didn’t know it! It was him, I have to say, who taught it to me. And now my younger brother knows it, because I taught it to him: otherwise, he wouldn’t have learnt it at school. (Blanche, FNJ, female, 22) Mobilization happens when there is identification of a common stigmatization: the stigmatization wielded against JMLP, when his requests for rally premises are refused, for example, echoes the stigmatization implemented against the ‘true right’ or ‘true Catholicism’: The first thing that really threw me, was once when I was in the RPR, and Chirac refused to let Le Pen use a public hall. About 15 or 20 years ago, JMLP was to be a town councilor for a commune in Paris, and like any other representative he had the right to make himself available to the public at set times in the Mairie. And Chirac refused to let him. I was really disappointed then in Chiracism, and the RPR. (Hubert, FN, male, 78) Rally all right-wing marginals In this melting-pot, militants, whatever their rapport with the party, instrumental or essentialist, realize that their interests are best served by regrouping in the only party that has, in comparison to other parties, a divergent political standpoint: The FN, it’s no secret, is a little bit of an ideological hotchpotch. First of all, for me it is not a party but a movement, the basis for our doctrine is to bring

120 Valérie Lafont together everyone whatever their past political, religious, or cultural leanings were etc., and so we are all there to rally around a common ideal, the homeland, whether great or small . . . It’s obvious as well that for the moment we are a minority movement, and it is in the interests of everyone to work intelligently together, and put differences of opinion to one side, and in fact there are far more things that unite us than that divide us! Then, conversely to what that chap Ariane Chebel-d’Appolonia14 said in his thesis, which I have to say was really quite interesting, . . . it’s not hatred, or loathing of the immigrant or the Jew that unites us! No it’s something else, we are more for something than against something I believe. (Marc, FN, male, 28) But more generally speaking, the FN is a pole of attraction and a centrifuge for the whole of the French radical and extreme right: it provides a unique opportunity for expression in the contemporary political arena of ideas formed and germinated elsewhere. The senior party members who rallied to the FN from the middle of the 1980s were seeking access to political expression, and to power, rather than trying to find a homogeneous and integral ideological representation, and this could explain why some followed Bruno Mégret in 1999 when the party split: It’s a movement, not a party . . . that brings people together, a rallying, the FN is . . . We come from different places, different social milieus, and have different ideologies, and the same goes for religion and culture . . . So obviously, some are more attracted to a particular party personality or leader, . . . like in a family, one child might prefer their mother to their father . . . I see myself more with my friend Bruno Mégret than with Jean-Marie Le Pen, for example . . . because he comes from the same family as me, he was in the RPR before. ( Jean-Pierre, FN, male, 46) Overall, the FN crystallizes all political tendencies, just as they are engraved in history, but in a way that enables every militant socialized even before the party came into being to recognize himself or herself: Basically, I discovered in the FN what every Frenchman felt before the war of 1940: patriotism, national preference, none of this shambles, not the disorder there is today, not a moral order, but there are things which have to be respected, not laxism mind you, without being prudish, there are some things we have to respect, that’s all . . . Not this chaos and all that, in the FN it’s that, and moreover I can see that the workers think like me . . . When I was Mayor I was right-wing, but Communist workers [that came to see me in my cabinet] they thought the same as me! We’re not here on earth just for a giggle. We have to live each day, and work, girls have to behave themselves, and boys have to work as well, but not this business of having contraceptives outside every chemist, all of that is just not normal, not that I’m for moral order . . . and the FN, it’s that. (Hubert, FN, male, 78)

France: a two-centuries-old galaxy 121 The FN federates, its energy and expressiveness working in tandem with the charisma and verve of JMLP. He personifies at one and the same time nostalgia for another world, unhappiness about how modern-day values are evolving, vehement non-acceptance of the turn they are taking. He could also give shape to the precise anguish or struggle within each individual, set himself up as the herald of lost causes, and the last hope for militants afflicted by the deepest of pessimism: I’m FN at heart, because I am perhaps a bit independent, but it crystallized ideas I already had in my subconscious, and have always had. It’s true, . . . I am maybe not one of the privileged, but I’ve seen . . . it’s obvious, sometimes in life you get some useful revelations . . . Our ideas are all in confusion, and then suddenly, there’s someone who says . . . there are things like that just go without saying, and that’s the way it is! [silence] It’s true there’s plenty to be pessimistic about when you see how things are going, I don’t know any more how I’m going to get through! (Hubert, FN, male, 78) The structural framework the FN provides is one that makes sense of the world at large but, more than this, it voices what individuals want to express, in direct contrast to other structures such as the army or even the family: When I did my [national] service, I realized that this was not the ideal army for me, it wasn’t the army I’d dreamt about, or about which I’d read in books . . . so I was disappointed, and went back into civilian life . . . Then I was already an activist, and in the end I said to myself that being a civilian was much more useful when it came to defending my ideas than the army. In the army, it’s a fat lot of use having principles, you just have to keep quiet, so life as a civilian seemed pretty good to me! (Marc, FN, male, 28) Before, I was just so shy, and so reserved [activism] allowed me to move forward, now I know what I want, and I know where I want to go, I know what I want to do in order to get there, and I’m not so reserved any more. Now I can open my big mouth and say exactly what I think. (Blanche, FNJ, female, 22) Party strategy: provide meaning and a refuge Create a family linked by the idea of exclusion Working in the FN is like finding a family – especially for Algerian veterans who reconstructed in the party their old support networks, rediscovering conviviality in the process – and for young recruits seeking strong social ties: We have evening get-togethers, we get together in groups for a pizza, at a friend’s house or at home, I always end up cooking for seven or eight, it’s

122 Valérie Lafont always spontaneous, we never plan in advance, that’s what’s great, is that we’re one big family . . . Here it’s very fraternal, they call me Miss, if you like I’m a sort of girlfriend, well not really, but the girlfriend of a boyfriend, a girlfriend to the group . . . We are a large, not family exactly, but group, sort of. (Blanche, FNJ, female, 22) The FN strategy aims to cultivate these links by encouraging and organizing all sorts of reunions, from classical political meetings to the militant ‘caravan’, with barbecues and drinks parties along the way. All these events are the occasion to stir the emotions and build upon political associations to create extremely strong affective links reinforced by the opposition to others: It’s heart-warming and then it’s true that we have tears in our eyes but I couldn’t explain why, it’s inexplicable, I don’t know, it’s something that rises up, it’s kind of, well I can’t really explain what it does to me, in fact you really you have to be there to understand . . . I know I cry, it really makes me feel good . . . We nationalists get together, we get on, it feels good when we get any flak, when people insult us, or spit on us, we don’t say anything, but sometimes it’s really humiliating. (Blanche, FNJ, female, 22) FN strategy also aims to instrumentalize the wide variety of individual sentiments of social or political exclusion, to channel these inwards to form an emotional bonding agent for the group. Le Pen does not hesitate to exploit every available classical tool to weld people together and, in the process, blend away the differences: sing the Marseillaise, harangue the crowd with belligerent slogans, recount ‘funny’ stories, organize a kind of carnival where everyone can get dressed up, wave the flag, arrive on a horse like Joan of Arc, etc.: I find it really beautiful to fight for ideas, for something you believe in, for us, that’s France, nationalism, that’s for us, everything we’ve been taught . . . When we sing the Marseillaise, now that brings tears to my eyes, because, it does something for me. Last time, we sang the Marseillaise with Le Pen, and we took a group photo, with the FNJ15 that’s really something; for us, Le Pen is someone, we trust him, we know that in fighting for him, we are fighting for the FN, and we know we’ll get there, even though there are disappointments sometimes, because it’s true we sometimes get stamped on, but in some ways it’s fighting that we like, fighting, fighting. (Blanche, FNJ, female, 22) All these strategies mask the scale of the divergence between ideologies, even though these are real enough. These elements forge a common spirit, like the bond that links members of a great big family. In fact, the political divergences are sometimes major ones but, for most of the time, the internal links permit their total disappearance:

France: a two-centuries-old galaxy 123 The young activist milieu has evolved a lot over the past few years. Firstly, because now all the subgroups that used to float around the Front don’t exist any more, as most of their members have joined the party. And then there’s a kind of community spirit which has emerged since 1990–91, since the Front finally gave up on the old Atlantist themes, we‘ve all ended up united around the same issues . . . Mind you what young people think and what the older generation believe are worlds apart . . . But essentially we’re on the same track, not necessarily about Europe, as on questions of identity we don’t always agree, but that doesn’t stop us from getting on well, we do get on well! (Marc, FN, male, 28) The stigmatization of the FN deflects each individual back into their personal difficulties such as how to acquire a social role, a profession, a job, so they are in phase with contemporary social struggles. The FN becomes in this way a refuge where the face that cannot possibly be shown anywhere else can be developed with fervour: this face is of one or several fictional heroes. Mobilizing with the FN is also for some a way of re-affirming a social domination that was outmoded and had become inoperative, but which was still going strong in a micro-society like the FN: We are knights in armour in the strongest sense of the word. Warriors, yes, I feel like a knight, just the fact of swimming against the tide, not going with the current trend, it almost seems aristocratic, it means refusing the present, it means refusing what we are presented with. So it’s quite a chivalrous or noble spirit, because it’s hard, you have to fight. (Philippe, FN, male, 22) All those who have a leaning towards belonging to a form of countersociety naturally gravitate to this place – the FN – which by cultivating its ‘movement’ quality over and above its ‘party’ quality, has carved for itself the role of nurturer and nourisher, both sociologically and ideologically, for anyone who may feel in any way sidelined. Cultivate ideological diversity and emotional unity The way the FN operates internally is also a key factor in the party’s capacity to bring people together and unite them under the banner of totally anomalous stories and aspirations. The vitality of a whole galaxy of peripheral associations provides a wealth of exit points for individuals to choose from, and in turn replenishes the party’s ideological resourcing. Handing down positions of responsibility links old and young, allowing rifts to be forgotten and makes up for ideological distance in terms of closeness on other levels. These two modes of operation are moreover important vectors for training in ideology and militant practice, and they are therefore also tools for homogenization within the movement:

124 Valérie Lafont I met a local representative, . . . it was him that decided to take me in charge, and he taught me about politics, and showed me how to stick up a poster, distribute a manifesto, to be serious, to put a stop to the political folklore, and then he put me a list, non-affiliated, for the local elections, at that time, 1989 I think, as the FN couldn’t have its own list, so the people in the RPR, the UDF and the CNI let us in discreetly, as we were a movement that was searching for respectability, eloquence, and at that time we didn’t have any choice, so we went onto these lists, and then, after I had been given a position in regional government, I was quite naturally made responsible for the FNJ, then two years later. During this time I polished up my qualifications, the Front trained me, and sent me to classes, I read a lot, I was taken charge of by two older militants who had mobilized also in the Jeune Nation . . . They taught me a lot, and they made me read a lot. And then, well, I went from there. They put me forward for the regional elections in 1992, . . . they helped me a lot the Front, they pushed me, and they helped me develop my mind, and helped me leave behind all the old activist cast-offs [laughs]. (Marc, FN, male, 28) Here we can see that although founder members and ‘new boys’ have radically different political objectives, the means to political action bind them all closely together: older members, having been active in the past, enjoy hero or godfather status to the younger contingent. Strong ties such as these between the generations are also forged internally through the party’s native spirit of conviviality: [at the beginning of my commitment to the FN] I like staying behind after [meetings] . . . going to see people in their offices, talking, getting to know people who were party members, some of whom had been there since time began, I really like it, and then it also turned out to be very useful, too, in giving me an idea of just what the party was like . . . Yes I’ve got loads more memories of the ambiance, which I really liked, in fact I loved it, there was a camaraderie there, and then they were people with faith, or rather who had a faith that I found beautiful, it was something, a noble sentiment . . . I found that these people gave me inner strength, and there was also a, something that I adored, and that I always adore so much in this movement, and that is that there is no difference between young and old . . . People get used to living with each other in effect, and to mobilizing together, going to meetings together, and to the [Bleu–Blanc–Rouge] (BBR) together, so we saw a lot of each other. We worked alongside each other, and I found that really great, to have people aged 70 as friends, and real friends, and for them it was the same, because I believe that in fact that’s something that stays with you. ( Julie, FN, female, 32) Reading matter is also a vehicle for passing on the torch and conveying ideas: the new activists’ library would include some quite ancient texts to nurture, little by little, their ideological culture, which at the outset was completely absent. These

France: a two-centuries-old galaxy 125 readings made for familial or political socialization, which is lacking. Finally, people of very different types end up having the same ‘intellectual’ references, which reinforce the circle of traditional allegiances: The two elders from Jeune Nation who made me read ‘Les financiers qui mènent le monde’ by Henry Coston [laughs], I stupidly and naively thought that decisions about power were the things we saw on television, and then in the end I realized that in fact, it was the people pulling the strings behind the scenes. Then they made me read a book by Ploucard d’Assac, an old tome called ‘Les doctrines du nationalisme’ . . . it looks back over all the great schools of thought in Europe. The French school, and all that, and for me, they were the enemy! And then it was the answer to bring in. Well, these were just books that contributed to my awakening, . . . just the first basic steps . . . it was the older militants who said ‘here, you ought to read this! You ought to read that!’, and more within the Front generally at the time, it was rather, you had to read a little bit, let’s just say, rather more pragmatic things, the internal texts, you know, it was ‘Le guide du militant’, it was that kind of thing, well like, ‘Le guide du militant’ it was really good, it gives you the ABC of it, but, well, for a militant to go forward, he needs a flame, he needs a bit of mystique, you know, that’s what Sorrel was saying, as soon as you become the bearer of a myth, anything at all can happen! And nothing can stop us! (Marc, FN, male, 28)

Conclusion: the acquisition of a political RWE culture There will always be people who belong to the traditional extreme right. Family values, passed down from generation to generation are perhaps not the best vehicles for understanding modern politics: nevertheless, they are a perennial phenomenon, offering permanence even though based on weak political foundations. Yet the phenomenon of the FN, its gravitational pull, its capacity to accommodate politically diverse newcomers from every point of the compass and the rapport established with the younger generation by laying on the extreme right culture they seek, is deserving of our attention; indeed, it represents, in all probability, a platform for future political development. The FN experience has breathed new life into old traditions, and has enabled a specific and relatively sophisticated counterculture on the far right to develop and flourish. The split had different effects on party activists, depending on how integrated they were within the party, and whether they were more or less essentialist, more or less instrumentalist. However, it did nothing to dislodge the very existence of this new far right culture forged over nearly 20 years of success. The disappearance of a leader, or even of an organization, does not in itself mean that the activists concerned are no more, nor does it spell the end of the political representations concerned. The story of the FN and how it began, constructed out of old networks, and following through to the last electoral successes of the JMLP (18 per cent in 2001) following the split, is a textbook example.

126 Valérie Lafont The FN experience also shows how important an organization’s strategy can be to success – and for this party, to the extent that anyone wandering into the field of vision can be drafted in simply by reinforcing and valorizing the negative or fractured aspects of identity in their make-up.

Notes 1 Sofres survey carried out during the 1990 FN congress (N = 1002). Thanks to G. Birenbaum and C. Ysmal for access to original data. 2 These statistics are based on the lists of candidates (N = 565) for Central Committee election as published by the FN in 1997, and the MNR in 1999 – the founding congress of Bruno Mégret’s party born from the FN split. 3 Indeed the FN’s founding members have closer ties with Le Pen than B Mégret, who was not one of the very first members. 4 In the 1960s, the French far right was made up of a multitude of small groups, divided and without any real public existence beyond their shows of violent activism. In 1964, Pierre Sidos created Occident, a group that was principally active in university circles. In 1968, Occident was disbanded, only to reform in 1969 under the name of the Ordre Nouveau, a group supported by former activist members of Tixier-Vignancour’s Association Républicaine pour les Libertés et le Progrès (ARLP) and above all of the – Groupement Union Droit (GUD), a small ‘anti-lefty’ group of students. During a 1972 congress, leaders of the Ordre Nouveau raised the issue of how ineffectual anti-communist activism was, and agreed on the necessity for a coherent programme of action for the nationalist right. 5 October 1972 saw the emergence of the Front national pour l’unité française (Ysmal 1991). The ‘first executive board’ was made up of six members: two from the Ordre Nouveau (Alain Robert and François Brigneau), a former member of the OAS (Roger Holeindre), the Secretary-General of the Mouvement nationaliste de progrès (Pierre Bousquet) and his friend Jean-Marie Le Pen, as a matter of fact the lowest common denominator, officially he was not part of any of the founding activist groups. He was elected president. During the general election in March 1973, the FN entered 133 candidates and got 0.5 per cent of the valid votes. During the presidential election of 1974, Le Pen got 0.7 per cent of the valid votes. Very divided, particularly since the Ordre Nouveau disbanding in 1973, the FN remained in obscurity until the beginning of the 1980s. In 1981 Le Pen could not get enough signatures to be able to run for the presidency. 5 Israelian historian, specialist of the French historical extreme right. 6 Name has been changed. 7 Acronyme for Jean-Marie Le Pen. 8 The French National Railway. 9 Union des Jeunes Progressistes. 10 Comité de Défense de la République. 11 Union Démocrate Républicaine. 12 Communist Youth. 13 Nationaliste révolutionnaire. 14 French sociologist, who wrote her PhD on the French extreme right. 15 Front National de la Jeunesse.

8

Extreme right-wing activism in the Flemish part of Belgium Manifestation of racism or nationalism? Hans De Witte

Research on right-wing extremism in Flanders is characterized by conspicuous imbalance. The 1990s gave rise to a tradition of extensive research into the motives and determinants of voting patterns for the extreme right-wing party Vlaams Blok (VB) (for an overview, see De Witte and Verbeeck 2000 and Billiet and De Witte (2001)). Conversely, research into the motives and determinants which trigger the process of ‘becoming active’ (or ‘militant’) within an extreme right-wing organization (such as the VB) is extremely scarce. Activism requires durable commitment as well as considerable effort or dedication (Klandermans 1997: 89–92). As outlined in Chapter 1 in this volume, activists or militants are of vital importance to a political movement or party: thanks to their militancy the party can acquire power in society.1 It is therefore rather surprising that so little research has been devoted to this category. In this chapter, the results of in-depth interviews with some 30 extreme right-wing militants in Flanders are reported (see Chapter 5 in this volume for more details). The central research question pertains to the reason for their activism: what are their motives for becoming a militant of an extreme right-wing organization, and how does this process develop?

Why and how does one become an activist? Exploring activism’s trajectories and motives As almost no research has been done on the motives for extreme right-wing militancy in Flanders, our starting point will be the conclusions emerging from voter research. In a thorough review of the theories on extreme right-wing voter behaviour, Lubbers (2001) concludes that four dominant motives may play a part: ●

●

The first motive emanates from a negative attitude towards migrants, and is derived from the ‘threatened economic interests’ theory. According to this view, voters who feel economically threatened by migrants choose an extreme right-wing party because it wants to reduce the migrant presence in society. Such a negative attitude towards migrants can be described as ‘everyday’ racism (De Witte 1999), and may also have a cultural undertone: people reject migrants because of their perceived cultural differences. According to the ‘symbolic interests’ theory, socially disintegrated individuals

128 Hans de Witte

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vote for an extreme right-wing party because of the nationalism propagated by these parties. This type of nationalism symbolically offers new group relationships and frames of reference. According to the authoritarianism theory, voters feel especially attracted to extreme right-wing parties because these parties propagate authoritarian views. These views offer simple, straightforward solutions to problems concerning among other things insecurity and criminality. Finally, political dissatisfaction can also constitute a motive. According to this view, choosing an extreme right-wing party is an expression of a political protest, or of an anti-system attitude.

Research into the motivation of voting for the VB in Flanders reveals a negative attitude towards migrants as the mainspring (Billiet and De Witte 1995, 2001; Lubbers et al. 2000; Coffé, et al. 2002). Other motives play a limited, secondary role. People voting for this extreme right-wing party thus first justify their vote by means of ‘everyday’ racism. This may lead to these parties being typified as ‘racist parties’ (Elbers and Fennema 1993). In this chapter, we explore the extent to which this conclusion applies to the militants of the VB: does (a form of) racism indeed constitute the principal motive for their activism? Or do the other motives mentioned above play a more important role? And how important are these motives compared to the racially tinted motive? In the literature, only a few studies have attempted to integrate insights about the ‘trajectory’ followed by individuals when they become active (Hagendoorn 1986; Bilsen and De Witte 2001). The concept of ‘trajectory’ refers to the process describing the causes (or determinants) of activism, along with the phases being passed through. The trajectory describes ‘how’ people arrive at becoming active within an extreme right-wing organization, whereas motives describe ‘why’ they do so. When describing these ‘trajectories’, there is often an indication of dissension (Hagendoorn 1986: 217–18). On the one hand, there are theories that place the cause of the origin of militancy within the individual. In general, the point of departure is deprivation. The core view is that these individuals are confronted with seriously negative experiences on an economic, social, or societal level. There are frequent references to negative economic circumstances (unemployment, job insecurity), to social isolation and/or diverse forms of loss of norms or anomie. These negative circumstances spur the intention to become active, among other things, because the organization provides an ideological answer (or explanation) for the type of deprivation experienced. This ideology may contain each of the motives mentioned above: a negative attitude towards foreigners, nationalism, authoritarianism or political protest, since an ideological answer to the deprivation experienced may be developed from each of these viewpoints. According to this theory, the moment a person becomes active can be explicitly indicated: the sudden occurrence of a specific situation (e.g. dismissal) may have been the ‘rupture’ or ‘trigger’, which led to militancy. The ‘deprivation’ trajectory is similar to the notion of ‘conversion’ as a route to activism, as developed in Chapter 4. The deprivation motive is opposed to the socialization motive.2 Here, the spur is

Extreme right-wing activism in Flanders 129 extraneous to the individual: it lies with the organization and/or the family tradition. According to this view, the activism process is a gradual one. One grows up in an environment honouring specific values, which increases the probability for militancy at a later stage. The same effect may also be achieved by people joining a specific group of friends or a youth movement. In time, it leads to increased contact with like-minded people and increases the chances of being asked to play a part in the organization. This is not surprising, since this organization operates from an ideology which strongly resembles that of the individual, enabling one to be part of a group striving for similar goals. The social element reinforces further integration into the organization: one also finds a group of congenial friends, sharing similar experiences, attitudes and values. According to this view, the ideology that unites these activists may also differ content-wise: all four (rejecting foreigners, nationalism, authoritarianism or political dissatisfaction) are possible ideologies, which may be communicated by means of family tradition or an organization. This route to activism has been labelled ‘continuity’ in Chapter 4. A third, more extreme view can be derived from the socialization model: the indoctrination model (Hagendoorn 1986: 218). This view shows that politically uninformed individuals can be traced and recruited by organizations. Here as well, the initial spur thus lies with the organizations, which set up specific recruiting actions to draft individuals with a lack of political knowledge or insight. These individuals may also come into contact with the organizations or their members by chance. The initial contact leads to an invitation to a meeting, which may be followed by the so-called ‘adhesive effect’. During the first encounter a pleasant atmosphere is created; as a consequence, the individual feels appreciated and secure. This prompts an expanding pattern of activities, eventually leading to the active entry of the individual into the organization. This road to activism has been labelled ‘compliance’ in Chapter 10. ‘Compliance’ refers to people becoming active ‘in spite of themselves’. Four possible motives and three possible processes have thus been charted. Motives refer to the ‘why’ of activism: how is it motivated? ‘Processes’ or ‘trajectories’ refer to activism’s development route: when does it occur, and which people and events play a role in it? We have tried to assess to what extent these motives and trajectories are present in our interviews. 11 activists from VB were interviewed,3 9 from the action group Voorpost 4 and 8 from the student movement Nationalistische Studenten Vereniging (NSV).5 The design, method used and the selection of interviewees have been described in Chapter 5 in this volume. A more detailed overview of the interviewees’ characteristics is shown in Appendix 1, p.277. The interview scheme (Appendix 2, p.286) elaborated by the international team was used as a guideline for all the interviews. In this chapter, we mostly report on the answers given to questions related to ‘becoming a member’ (part 1 of the interview scheme) and to ‘ideology’ (part 4). This allows us to chart activists’ trajectory and to describe their (ideological) motivation. First of all, the results of each individual interviewee were synthesized (individual ‘case’), summarizing their specific trajectory and motives. In a second

130 Hans de Witte step, these individual trajectories were grouped into types, displaying a similar dynamic. First of all, we shall describe the results related to these ‘trajectories’. Next, the results of the respondents’ political attitudes will be discussed. The chapter concludes with a synthesis of the results from both parts, in an attempt to answer the core research questions.

The process of becoming active Almost all the respondents considered their present activism as the continuation of a commitment that originated a long time ago. When we chart the course of that process, a division can be noted. The vast majority of respondents (23 of the 28 interviewees) were incited to militancy via other people. Central to their trajectory was the influence of their parents or family (16 of the 28 interviewees), of a youth movement (4 of the 28 interviewees) or of friends or a partner (3 of the 28 interviewees). In general, their activism followed a gradual and often ‘obvious’ course. Distinct from this majority is a smaller group of 5 respondents where a similar social influence seemed absent. Their trajectory was principally characterized by a confrontation with a specific event. The course of their activism was usually an abrupt one: because of this specific event they decided autonomously (and often also unexpectedly) to become active. The division is not, however, perfect; almost half of the respondents (12 interviewees) displayed a hybrid form of trajectory, and 7 among the latter showed a combination of social reasons and a specific event. These individuals were assigned to the category which they resembled most. The crucial question underpinning this classification was: ‘What is at the core of their activism; and what came first?’

Activism caused by the social environment Three subgroups can be distinguished within this extensive group, with the influence of, respectively, the family, a youth movement and friends being crucial. The role of parents The largest group (16 interviewees) within the category ‘activism caused by the social environment’ relates to the influence of the interviewee’s parents. At the centre is a family tradition of Flemish nationalism which has sometimes developed over several generations. This is how Paul words it: ‘In our house people were always very pro-Flemish. We talked a lot about Flemish politics . . . We took it in with our mother’s milk’ (Paul, VB, male, 27). Or: ‘It’s always been a part of me . . . I was brought up on that . . . I was raised as a Flemish nationalist’ (Kris, VB, male, 50). The dominant role of the family was perhaps most strongly worded by Anton: To give you one small example: every time you used a French word in our house, for example, or an English word, it cost you half a frank or a quarter.

Extreme right-wing activism in Flanders 131 We had to pay a fine for using a word which had a Dutch equivalent. No French was used in our house, English neither, nor German. (Anton, VB, male, 59) He continues as follows: In the evenings there were discussions about the issues of Flanders, Flemish songs were sung in our house, we went on the IJzer pilgrimage,6 we went to the [‘Flemish-national’] Song festival.7 So you got the impulses at home. My parents were pro-Flemish. (Anton, VB, male, 59) In turn, this extensive group can be divided into two. The interviews reveal a division between respondents from a radical Flemish-national family (9 interviewees) and respondents who grew up in a family cultivating a more moderate variant of Flemish nationalism. (7 interviewees). Growing up in a radical, Flemish-national family An imposing part of this group comes from a so-called ‘black family’: their parents or grandparents were radically pro-Flemish before and during the Second World War, and were active in organizations collaborating with the German occupiers. There are frequent references to positions within the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (National Flemish League – VNV),8 and some fought with the Germans against communism on the Eastern front (Russia). After the war, many were convicted because of their involvement. Some interviewees experienced this conviction as ‘obvious’ because of their (grand)parents’ idealism, and in fact tried to gloss over their involvement during the war: And so I grew up in a Flemish-national family, with the consequences one can imagine, that is: my father and mother had problems after the war. Not because they were in league with the Germans, because I never thought that they really knew what was going on, but because they were Flemish nationalists, part of the VNV, that was the reason why they were convicted after the war. (Anton,VB, male, 59) Within radical Flemish nationalism, an outspoken and uncompromising proFlemish attitude is linked to a right-wing worldview (De Witte 1996). The memory of the convictions of these parents did not disappear after the Second World War, and was kept alive in the family circle. Many interviewees refer to discussions pertaining to ‘Flemish issues’, to the presence of the radical Flemish-national weekly ’t Pallieterke in their house and to the participation in Flemish-national manifestations, such as the IJzer pilgrimage and the (Flemish-national) Song festival (cf. Anton’s quotation above).

132 Hans de Witte The trajectory they have followed since differs to a certain extent according to the interviewee’s age. For the older respondents, who grew up during the period immediately after the Second World War, moving from their family to what was then the political party Volksunie (VU)9 was an obvious step. After all, for them the VU was ‘the only Flemish-national party in existence, in those days’ (Anton, VB, male, 59). In time, however, a rift developed with this party, because in their opinion its course was too progressive, or because of the ‘Egmont pact’.10 The VU was involved with the latter as a government party, while the Egmont pact was perceived as betrayal of the Flemish cause. The rift with the VU was thus prompted by ideological motives, reflecting their radically Flemish and ideologically right-wing view. The three interviewees in question were all active within the VB. They already had contacts with VB militants while still active within the VU, and were invited to join the VB when they distanced themselves from the VU. The trajectories of younger people took a somewhat different route, because they grew up in a different period. The Flemish-National Youth League (VNJ) was established during the 1960s as a youth movement which was radically Flemishnational in nature. The parents of most of the interviewees sent their children to this youth movement at a young age. Within the VNJ, youngsters were educated in radical Flemish nationalism by means of activities, games and adventures. In the words of Willy (Voorpost, male, 24): Instead of playing cowboys and Indians for the umpteenth time, we preferred to act out the Guldensporenslag (Battle of the Golden Spurs).11 Within the VNJ, young people established contacts with like-minded people which developed into social networks. They were also encouraged to participate in activities and manifestations. In the course of these actions, it often happened that they were noticed and contacted by a militant from another movement, who would ask them to become active. Switching movements was sometimes a personal initiative, often together with like-minded friends. The family, (ulterior) social networks and ideological affinities thus play an important part in this trajectory. Most interviewees found this course of events self-evident, and experienced a great sense of continuity: ‘For me it was a logical step from the one to the other’ (Rita, Voorpost, female, 46). This course of events is well illustrated by Willy’s (Voorpost, male, 24) history: My grandfather was with the VNV. He was a teacher and pro-Flemish. And before that, certain branches of the family had also been pro-Flemish, not outspokenly so, but there was a reflex, at least. After the war, my grandfather spent seven years in prison, particularly because he was a teacher, I think, because people felt greater resentment when the collaborator was an educator. My grandmother also did some time. So I more or less grew up in the Flemish Movement. My parents took us along to the bigger activities (the IJzer pilgrimage, song festivals). When I was 6, I became a member of the

Extreme right-wing activism in Flanders 133 VNJ. It’s an ideological youth movement, and many children of Flemish nationalists are members. You are given certain values and a particular vision: the pan-Dutch and right-wing view in general. When I was 16, I joined the VNJ leaders’ corps, and at 20 I became active within the Language Action Committee (TAK12), of which my father was also an active member. Coordinating activities interested me especially, because you can achieve more when you have more people. In my region the TAK actions were performed together with Voorpost, because the viewpoints of both organizations overlapped. At a certain point, X asked me to become a member of Voorpost. I agreed, because ideologically I backed Voorpost, and because I had already participated before . . . It’s assumed that someone from my background knows what Voorpost is about. In fact, not much has changed . . . I recently became a member of the Vlaams Blok. When one considers the different life-histories of this group of interviewees, one is struck by the continuity in their evolution. To use figurative language: ‘the torch is lit at home and is passed on.’ Those involved thus become ever-more integrated into the greater radical right-wing Flemish-national movement. Specific events triggering activism do not seem to occur; 2 interviewees (out of 9) did indicate that their confrontation with injustice involving French-speaking persons played a role in their decision to become active. Maria (Voorpost, 39) had grandparents who collaborated with Germany and parents who were active in Voorpost. When she was 14, she participated in a youth camp in the Voer region, organized by the radical Flemish-national movement. At the time, the Voer region was at stake in a (sometimes violent) communal conflict between Dutch-speaking and Francophone people. There she encountered the aggression of some people from the Francophone community: I’m a person who tends to protest against the things I find unfair. At night, the leadership had to stand guard because the Francophone came and slashed car tyres and such like. So there was real aggression coming from the Francophone, and that while we were on Flemish territory. That really made an impression on me and made me become more of a Flemish nationalist, for my own sake. (Maria, Voorpost, female, 39) Anton, also grew up in a family where both parents were radically pro-Flemishnational, and: had had problems after the war. [In the army at that time he was confronted with] the language conditions which prevailed in the army in those days – I’m talking about the years between 1953 and 1965: Flemish officers were discriminated against, conversations in the mess and in the bar took place in French and so on. (Anton,VB, male, 59)

134 Hans de Witte For both respondents, these experiences played a role in their becoming active members. However, the interviews also gave the impression that these experiences were perceived as more problematic because of the socialization received at home. The family seemingly provided a point of reference which made the issue ‘politically relevant’. For (Anton, VB, male, 59) there was also another factor, which may also have had its origin in his home environment. During the same period he met his present wife, who came from an even more radical Flemishnational milieu than himself. She also encouraged him to become politically active. Growing up in a moderate, Flemish-national family Seven interviewees grew up in families with a ‘moderate’ Flemish-national orientation. The parents (mostly the father) could be described as pro-Flemish, although they mostly did not participate actively in politics. In most cases they were pro-VU or voted VU. The parents or grandparents were not involved in collaboration with the German occupiers during the Second World War. Two interviewees in this group indicated more active involvement on their parents’ side: they participated in Flemish-national manifestations and were active within the VU. Annemie (VB, female, 33) puts it as follows: My father was already involved in politics [the VU]. And from the time I was 6 or 7 I went along to stick up posters with my older brothers and their friends. It’s something that comes from childhood. For most of them this was not the case, however. The interviewees often typify their parents as ‘modest’ or ‘half-hearted’ Flemish nationalists, in contrast to their own, more radical involvement: My parents are ‘relatively’ pro-Flemish and in theory my parents are also proFlemish, but they don’t want to do anything about it, because they have a restaurant. (Lieve, NSV, female, 22). This does not mean, however, that the parents did not play a socializing role. Marij (VB, female, 26) comments as follows: The thing about wanting to be Flemish actually comes from home. Being Flemish had its importance in our house. If my father crossed the street and someone asked him the way in French, he would refuse, or he would have to be sure that it was a Frenchman. One interviewee referred to his grandfather, who awakened his interest in Flemish issues with his tales about the war. This grandfather was not involved in collaboration himself, however:

Extreme right-wing activism in Flanders 135 My grandfather was a moderate Fleming, but he was a leftist Fleming. During the war he was a fugitive and refused to work for the Germans. (Luk, Voorpost, male, 18). The parents’ half-hearted Flemish nationalism forms the basis from which their children’s activism could develop. This ‘parental basis’ was not sufficient, however. In each case, in order to become active, an ‘external incentive’ was needed. For the most part, ‘others’ took on this role (5 interviewees): their activism was stimulated by a partner (2 interviewees), a brother (1 interviewee) or by participation in a youth movement (2 interviewees). For the 2 remaining members of this group, an ‘event’ played a decisive role. When we consider the evolution of the interviewees in this group, is seems that coincidence often played a role: a seemingly fortuitous encounter or event fundamentally changed the course of their lives. This ‘coincidence’ happened on ‘fertile ground’, however, because the interviewees had developed a sensitivity to Flemish-national issues at home. Marij (VB, female, 26) is an example of a militant who was active because of her partner’s encouragement: I met X when I was 18. He was at the beginning of his political career in the Vlaams Blok. It grew a little bit from there. He started up the Vlaams Blok in this municipality and because there weren’t enough people I said yes, because I got more interested the more I heard about it. Becoming active within the VB seems fortuitous to her, even though the ideological affinity with her partner possibly played a role in the fact that they got to know one another. It also seems that coincidence played a role in Lieve’s case (NSV, female, 20). Although she was always interested in politics, she replied as follows to the question why she became a member of the NSV: Quite by accident, in fact. Through my first boyfriend who was a member . . . The very first contact with the NSV was also by chance. There was a NSV demonstration in Ghent and I had never seen a demonstration. There was no one to carry the banner and I happened to be closest. In contrast to these interviewees, there are two people in whose case a youth movement played an important socializing role. Both were militants in the student organization NSV. One grew up in a frenchified municipality and became a member of a pro-Flemish youth centre. There he came into contact with young people who took a radically Flemish-national stand, and became part of a group of friends including NSV members. When he left to study, he became a member of the NSV along with some of his friends in the group. ‘It was simply a logical continuation of my activities and my Flemish sentiments’ (Maxime, NSV, male, 24). For Karel (NSV, male, 24) it was more or less the same. He became a member of a very pro-Flemish section of a youth movement which gradually became more radical:

136 Hans de Witte We were Flemings and we wore a lion on our uniforms and the Flemish lion13 was displayed in the camp. And then we quietly started going to demonstrations, on the IJzer pilgrimage and to the Song festival . . . Yes, it was quite the tough thing to do, acting the Flemish radical and wearing a uniform. He, too, became a member of the NSV with his friends from the youth movement, from the moment they continued their (higher) studies. It seems that both received thorough ideological socialization via their youth centre or youth movement, which eventually prompted them to become active members, although sensitivity to this theme was already provided at home. To conclude, 2 more interviewees were prompted to become active by an event. One person was impressed by a VB pamphlet: During the 1991 elections I read a Vlaams Blok pamphlet, which really appealed to me . . . It was mostly made up of short, slogan-like sentences. As a youngster of 13 I understood that well. (Luk, Voorpost, male, 18) At that moment, on his own initiative, he became a member of the VB. The trajectory of Maurice (VB, male, 36) is perhaps the most surprising of all. He indicated that he became a member of the VB as a type of counterreaction to his superior at work: One of my assistant managers at work is a sort of armchair communist, and to bug him we applied for a VB membership card. We knew full well that the party was described as a rightist grouping in the press, but it was more to rattle this person, to stick the membership card under his nose. We were not acquainted with their ideological programme. Activists of the VB invited him to come and introduce himself at a meeting, and he was gradually integrated into the organization. For both these interviewees a sensitivity to the Flemish-national theme was, however, already present in the home environment. The role of a youth movement and friends As regards 7 of the interviewees, their parents (or grandparents) had little interest in politics, and were not involved in the Flemish-national movement either. Their socialization in (often radical) Flemish nationalism was a result of their participation in a youth movement (or youth centre; 4 interviewees). Some others got their information about Flemish-nationalism from friends (3 interviewees).

Extreme right-wing activism in Flanders 137 The role of a youth movement or youth centre The interviewees who indicated a youth movement as the origin of their activism, never referred to the VNJ. That is perhaps not a coincidence. VNJ members were deliberately sent to this organization at a young age by their parents. However, the respondents in this category came from a family where there was no Flemish nationalist tradition. In most cases, they became members of a large ‘traditional’ national youth movement (like the Chiro Youth) which, coincidentally, had a section in their neighbourhood. This section had a strong Flemish-national orientation – which deviated from the national policy of this movement – and communicated this orientation to their members. This is well illustrated by the story of Thomas (Voorpost, male, 54): From the age of 10 I was active in the Chiro Youth. That’s where I became proFlemish and a nationalist . . . That’s where my political foundation was laid. With the Chiro we went to the Flemish Day at the world exhibition in Brussels, to the Flemish-national song festival and on the IJzer pilgrimage . . . As a member of Chiro I was in fact a member of the Flemish movement. After this introduction into the Flemish movement, two possibilities presented themselves; 2 of the 4 interviewees became so heavily involved in this movement, that they in fact moved from the one organization to the next. Thomas (Voorpost, male, 54) puts it as follows: And then the youth movement days were over and automatically – because I had become a Flemish nationalist – one asked oneself the question: What will I do now? There was only one Flemish-national party at the time: the VU. And so I joined the VU. And because I’ve always liked action, I also joined the VMO14 . . . And later on, Were-Di 15 and Voorpost. For these interviewees there is something ‘obvious’ in their ulterior trajectory. For 2 other interviewees, the youth movement laid an important basis for their subsequent involvement, but another event was still needed in order to become militant. For Daan (VB, male, 48) his ‘real interest’ was sparked by an incident at a funeral: I was a NCO in the army, and the father of one of my captains was being buried. The army leadership demanded that the Belgian flag be used. However, in his testament, the father had asked for the Lion of Flanders. So it was a Lion of Flanders that was used, and his career was over. This unjust treatment of his subordinate constituted the ‘trigger’ for his commitment. He became active within the Volksunie (VU) Youth, and helped to establish the local section of the VNJ. After the Egmont Pact, he broke with the VU and joined the VB. The same can be said of Omer (NSV, male, 28) who frequented

138 Hans de Witte a youth centre which was pro-Flemish-national. A fortuitous, communal conflict also acted as a ‘trigger’: There was a Francophone dance party in my municipality. We thought it was a good idea to go there for a laugh. The police was also there and so on, and so I ended up with TAK, and later with the NSV . . . The NSV asked for the membership list of my youth centre and sent out publications . . . When I was studying in Leuven I had some friends in the NSV. So I just made a few appointments with them . . . This way, I got to know quite a few people from the NSV directly, and so I decided to become a member as well. At the core of these four respondents’ trajectories is the important formative influence of the experiences within their youth movement. Their commitment grew from there, or the basis was laid for it to be established. For many, this trajectory also has something fortuitous about it: if they had not joined this youth movement, their future might have been a lot different. In the words of Thomas (Voorpost, male, 54): At a particular moment, the Chiro leaders came to our house: ‘Mister and missus, won’t you allow your children to come to the Chiro meetings?’ I didn’t know anything about Chiro . . . So you see that a person’s life can sometimes be determined by particular circumstances over which you have no control. The role of friends Three younger interviewees indicated that friends at school had played an important role in their trajectory. It is conspicuous that all 3 had a basis which made them sensitive to the call of these friends; in 2 cases, this basis relates to experiences of communal tensions between Dutch- and French-speaking citizens in the region. For 1 person, the migrant issue played a certain part. These concurring factors are well illustrated in the story of Yves (NSV, male, 23): I come from a Brussels suburb, which gives one a different view of communal problems in any case, because – as a manner of speaking – you’re right in the middle of it. In that sense I’ve always had the Flemish reflex . . . There were also a few pro-Flemish children at school. And so you eventually find your place . . . As the years passed, personal contacts at school also became more important. You got to know people better and friendships developed . . . So I became active in the Taal Aktiekomitee [‘Language Action Committee’ – TAK] and in the Vlaamse Volksbeweging [‘Flemish Nationalist Movement’]. In fact, that’s how I came into contact with people from the NSV. That’s how I ended up there. For Anja (NSV, female, 19) much of the same applies, although with a slightly different emphasis. She grew up in a school with many foreigners, which brought some uneasiness with it:

Extreme right-wing activism in Flanders 139 It didn’t really bother me, but I found it unpleasant that Turkish was being spoken on the playground and that they laughed at you and so on. We didn’t understand them, but they always understood us. [This experience may have made her sensitive to the influence of others.] A girl from a boarding school brought me into contact with the NSV. She had been brought up pro-Flemish, and she had a lot of stories to tell about everything and that’s how I joined them. Activism resulting from an event For a limited number of interviewees (only 5 people) family, friends or a youth movement played no role in the decision to become active. Often, it was a specific situation or ‘event’ which triggered activism. A salient feature is the heterogeneous nature of these events: for one person it was experiencing the communal conflict between the Flemings and the French, for another it was a negative experience with migrants, for a third both of these factors together, yet another was disturbed by society’s ‘shift to the left’, and for the remaining person it was the transfer of the body of a war collaborator which prompted him to militancy. This diversity also covers most of the topics frequently associated with radical Flemish nationalism (cf. Spruyt 1995). Often, a feeling of being deprived or of being discriminated against occupies a central position in these trajectories, while these individuals usually took the first step towards an extreme right-wing organization themselves. For Piet (VB, male, 55) being confronted with the unequal treatment of Flemings (compared to those who spoke French) in the army constituted the basic experience from which his activism developed in the long run. This ‘sensitivity’ did not lead to activism, however. When he retired and moved to a neighbourhood with a lot of migrants, he once again experienced this new situation as unfair: In the space of twenty years this place has become completely foreign to me . . . At night I don’t dare go outside. The men are taking things in hand, more and more so, and they make more and more demands . . . They get everything they ask for. He therefore contacted the VB, who invited them to their meetings. These first contacts really appealed to him. He gradually became more involved in the workings of the party and, in time, took up an active function. When still at school, Geert (VB, male, 43) became interested in the Leuven Vlaams question,16 whereby people devoted themselves to the University of Leuven becoming Flemish. He contacted the VU’s youth organization and became an active member of this party. When the latter started toning down its platform, he became disillusioned and for a while remained on the sidelines. The emergence of the VB and especially the ‘purity of their platform’ and of the chairman at the time, Karel Dillen (‘a true idealist and absolutely reliable’) prompted him to contact this party. Because he knew other people there from his VU days, he was quickly given a responsible position in this party. For him this trajectory seemed a

140 Hans de Witte very obvious and natural one: ‘In fact it’s not so much that I joined the Vlaams Blok, but rather that I automatically followed the flow of events.’ As a security officer, Pieter (Voorpost, male, 23) was confronted with migrant criminality. On his own initiative, he therefore contacted the VB, because he considered this party to be the only one which gave attention to problems with migrants. Through party activities, he got to know people from Voorpost who convinced him to become active in this organization, too. His transfer to Voorpost was motivated by his interest in tougher actions: In the past, Vlaams Blok may have been radical, but now that has been toned down, which is logical because it’s a political party. Voorpost has no voters, so one can launch tougher actions. That interested me, because I’m quite a militant, actually, a combatant, in fact. What is conspicuous about this person is his authoritarian attitude and his aversion to foreigners. This paved the way to the VB and Voorpost. Once he became active in these organizations, he got introduced into (radical) Flemish nationalism. For Jan (VB, male, 44) the struggle against ‘society’s shift to the left’ was the cornerstone of his activism. He described his parents as ‘relatively right-wing’, but attributed no meaningful role to them in his trajectory. He became interested in a reaction ‘against society’s and the university’s shift to the left at the beginning of the 1970s’. He thus became active within what was then the VMO (linked to the VU) and Voorpost, and went over to the VB when it was established. The main reason for his militancy is right-wing ideology (he prefers the term ‘ethically rightwing’). Unmistakably authoritarian accents come to the fore in his motivation. The trajectory of Bert (Voorpost, male, 38) is completely different. He states that, even as a child, he identified with a larger community. It was only later that he equated that larger community with the ‘Flemish ethnic group’. This apparently spiritual longing to be part of a greater whole constituted the basis of his later activism. His interest in the Flemish movement started with the transfer of the body of the Flemish war collaborator Verschaeve, who had lived in his home town. He became active only during his student days, and contacted the NSV on his own initiative. Through joint actions and contacts he also became a member of Voorpost, where he later occupied a leading position. At the time of the interview, he had also received a mandate from the VB, although he considered it as being somewhat secondary.

Respondents’ political views Three political topics which, according to the respondents are also closely linked, came to the fore in these interviews. First, all the interviewees stressed that nationalism was the foundation of their ideology. Second, for almost all of interviewees this nationalism generated a certain distrust in foreigners. Third, half the interviewees also adhered to one or more of the aspects of the so-called

Extreme right-wing activism in Flanders 141 ‘ethically right-wing’ ideology. In a final section we will briefly summarize our interviewees’ vision on politics and feelings of deprivation. Ethnic nationalism as an ideological foundation All the interviewees unanimously emphasized nationalism as the core of their personal ideology. For almost all the interviewees, all other aspects of their ideology are linked to this foundation, and derive from it. For all of the interviewees nationalism took the shape of ‘ethnic nationalism’ – that is, ‘Flemish-nationalism’. Bert (Voorpost, male, 38) expressed it as follows: We are a group of ethnic nationalists. That means that our point of departure is that belonging to a nation is an important given. A nation is the community of ethnic people you are linked to by a common culture, a common past and by descent. Ludo (Voorpost, male, 27) adds to this: We see the Dutch nation as an ethnic tribe, characterized by a separate history, a separate language and a separate culture. There’s a German philosopher who said that one can catalogue a nation according to four elements: history, culture, language and territory. Therefore, striving for the conservation and the protection of the Flemish ethnic nation and its singularity, its culture, language and territory, was at the centre of the respondents’ political endeavours. Three elements result from this ethnic nationalistic vision. First, it outlines the way the state must be structured: ‘The core of political power must be organized on the people’s level’ (Bert, Voorpost, male, 38). For him, the state must be built around the Flemish ‘ethnic group’ or ‘nation’: ‘the ethnic group must become the state.’ All respondents pleaded for the abolition of the Belgian state, which they consider to be an ‘unnatural, artificial’ state, in which two ethnic groups who do not belong together are forced to live side by side. They also support separatism (the division of Belgium in two parts), and emphasize the importance of a completely independent Flanders. As a result, the royal family should also be dispensed with. One section of the interviewees (9 persons) drew the line even further and argued that Flanders, the Netherlands and a part of the former Flanders which now belongs to France (French Flanders), should be (re-)united. This HeelNederlandse (‘Pan Dutch’) or Dietse idea is strongly supported by Voorpost, and by some members of the NSV, who were former members of the VNJ. Bert (Voorpost, male, 38) expresses it as follows: What people call the Flemish nation today is in fact something which doesn’t really exist. They form part of the Dutch ethnic nation, which was separated

142 Hans de Witte from the other Dutchmen by historical circumstances, but which is Dutch in essence and which will remain so. For that reason as well, we dismiss the Belgian model without compromise, because the Belgian model stands in the way of the political community’s restoration on a Dutch level. Finally, almost all interviewees agreed that ethnic nations should be given the right to self-determination: every ethnic group should be able to rule itself. On a European level this leads to the rejection of the ‘States of Europe’ and a predilection for a ‘Europe of Ethnicities’: The fact that we demand that our ethnic group must be able to determine its own fate and future, also implies that we must respect other ethnicities. (Omer, NSV, male, 25). Ludo (Voorpost, male, 27) puts it as follows: I don’t agree with the European union as it is now, because it is not formed by communities of ethnic groups but by states, which were created over people’s heads. It’s the wrong way around: first, there must be a European idea and belonging, and only afterwards Europe can be organized. At the moment, people are doing exactly the opposite. Willy (Voorpost, male, 24) adds: In a Europe of Ethnicities every nation must participate directly on the highest level. Flanders, the Bask country, Corsica, . . . should thus have direct representation in the European Parliament and in the deciding organs. Although there is consensus about ethnic nationalism as an ideological foundation, differences of emphasis were also sometimes applied. The fact that not everyone supported the Pan Dutch idea was mentioned above. Along with that, members of VB and unskilled interviewees in particular placed greater emphasis on the economic advantage of an independent Flanders, without however disavowing ethnic nationalism in a wider sense. They put stronger emphasis on the fact that Flemish independence would put a stop to taxpayers’ money flowing to the Walloon provinces and that separatism would lead to an economically strong Flanders. Maurice (VB, male, 36) expresses it as follows: What I’m after, exactly? From an economic point of view, I prefer a strong Flemish state. I’ll show solidarity with the Walloons when they start respecting our comings and goings. But I’m not going to work just to support them. They take too much advantage of us.

Extreme right-wing activism in Flanders 143 The resulting attitude towards foreigners Some two-thirds of the respondents (19 interviewees) mentioned a negative and dismissive attitude towards foreigners as a second aspect of their ideology. This vision was also present for 5 other interviewees, although it came up only indirectly and at a later stage in the interview. Only 3 respondents did not mention this topic during the whole interview, while 1 interviewee explicitly spoke out against what she regarded as VB’s too radical anti-migrant point of view. Those who referred to this issue always contextualized it within their ethic nationalism. According to the respondents, ethnic nationalism thus comes first and functions as a framework for developing a vision about ‘foreigners’. In the words of Kris (VB, male, 50): We are ethnic nationalists. We are convinced that Flanders and the Flemish ethnic nation must be accorded their singularity and must be allowed to develop themselves, without any influence from the outside. Therefore, our struggle is against anything which constitutes a threat to our ethnic group, such as a significant presence of foreigners and the multicultural society. Bert (Voorpost, male, 38) provides what is perhaps the most all-embracing summary of this point of view when he says: Our approach to the foreigner issue is always governed by our solidarity with an ethnic nation and an ethnic community. That means that we want to keep our culture intact. What we are pleading for is limited immigration, and those who come and live here are supposed to adapt themselves to our culture. When the politics of assimilation fail because people are part of a culture which is too far removed from ours [the Islamites], we propose a return policy, because cultural homogeneity in our ethnic nation is very important to us. Karel (NSV, male, 24) adds to this: I believe that every individual and every nation have their singularity, and that singularity is something that must be preserved. In today’s society, that of internationalism and multiculturalism, everyone’s the same and interchangeable. But it’s not true. We speak Dutch and we have different customs and traditions. And we must be proud of that, because it’s a part of our identity. And other nations must be equally proud of their customs and traditions, their culture and their mother tongue. Nowadays, all this is being threatened by Americanization and Anglicization, and previously by Frenchification. Migrants are allowed to come and live here, but they must integrate. They must become Flemings. So, no multiculturalism, no, Flanders is mono-cultural: there’s only one culture and that’s the Flemish one, and that’s the way it must stay.

144 Hans de Witte All the themes that were touched on by the interviewees are included in these quotations: the desire to protect one’s own culture against outside influences, such as French, English and Islam. In the interviewees’ opinion, this does not imply rejecting foreigners, but rather rejecting the parallel existence of a number of divergent cultures. They prefer a uniform culture and reject multiculturalism. According to them, multiculturalism leads to blurring (‘everybody becomes similar’) or to friction, because (foreign) people do not want to relinquish their own culture. The foreigners themselves were welcome, but they had to learn the Flemish language and had to adopt the Flemish culture: they had to ‘become Flemings’. If they cannot or do not want to do so, many respondents support sending them back to their ‘country of origin’ (an ‘accompanied return’). Some add that criminals and the unemployed should be deported immediately anyway, and one interviewee also pleaded for the establishment of a separate education system for foreigners. Most interviewees experience the presence of too many foreigners as problematic, and Moroccans in particular were perceived negatively. They were blamed for their intrusiveness, which is often linked to their faith. Islam is often regarded as a fundamentalist religion which cannot be reconciled with western values. When people of such a religion come to Flanders, they run the risk of becoming uprooted and in this way they will fall victim to criminality. Yves (NSV, male, 23) states: Criminality is essentially the problem of becoming uprooted. Criminal youths are usually people who profess a strong faith. It’s not Islam itself which is responsible for criminality. One sees that in the Muslim countries. It’s the fact of being uprooted and the socio-economic problems among migrant youths that are responsible for criminality. Most respondents strongly stressed the fact that they were not racists: People accuse us of being an anti-migrant party. That is quite untrue. In fact, we’re pro-migrant. Why does a migrant come here? Because he has no job at home. Well, we would prefer people to be able to live a good life in their country of origin. (Anton, VB, male, 59). It was mentioned above that ethnic nationalism occupied a central position, resulting in a (negative) judgement of foreigners. The reverse movement, however, occurred with 2 of the respondents. They first developed a negative attitude towards foreigners because they came into frequent contact with migrants. In their case, this form of ‘everyday’ racism led to contact with an extreme rightwing organization. The latter gradually socialized them into ethnic nationalism. At the time of the interview, ethnic nationalism also occupied a central position in their personal ideology, although chronologically, ‘everyday’ racism had preceded ethnic nationalism. For all other respondents the reverse was true, however: their ‘everyday’ racism resulted from their ethnic nationalism.

Extreme right-wing activism in Flanders 145 Ethically right-wing as a tailpiece Approximately half of the interviewees (13 persons) finally also referred to an aspect of a broader form of cultural conservatism, which was described by a few respondents as ‘ethically right-wing’. They particularly mentioned the rejection of abortion, support for the death penalty and tougher action against drugs and against criminality in general. A degree of authoritarianism filtered through these statements. Many also indicated that they favoured respecting and preserving ‘traditional, eternal values’, such as ‘honour, comradeship, solidarity, duty and responsibility’ (Ludo, Voorpost, male, 27). For some, these values were explicitly linked to ‘ethnically conservative thinking’ (Bert, Voorpost, male, 38). These viewpoints raise the question of the extent to which respondents would describe themselves as ‘(extreme) right’. They were all asked to situate themselves on a scale from ‘left to right’ (seven-point scale): 5 respondents situated themselves at the extreme end of the scale, 16 in the penultimate position and 4 in the ‘centre right-wing’ position; 3 of the interviewees were unable to situate themselves. Taken on average, they were situated on the right-hand side of the political spectrum. Two visions dominated their reactions on the ‘left–right’ axis. First, many respondents contested the use of the term ‘right’. Ludo (Voorpost, male, 27): ‘I’m only right-wing because the left-wing says so.’ Most preferred to describe themselves as ‘ethnic nationalists’. Secondly, most interviewees did indeed describe themselves as ‘right-wing’, however, but often also wanted to distance themselves explicitly from terms such as ‘extreme right-wing’ or ‘far right’: I’m more right-wing, but not extreme right-wing. Those are usually neo-Nazi or fascist movements; I’ve got nothing to do with them. (Paul, VB, male, 27) Finally, 6 respondents were asked whether they saw an inherent relation between ethnic nationalism and right-wing ideology; 2 of them put this connection in perspective: historically, it developed this way in Flanders, but an eventual correlation between ethnic nationalism and a left-wing vision was also possible, in their opinion. Four of the respondents indicated that (ethnic) nationalism is always ‘right-wing’. Bert (Voorpost, male, 38) commented as follows: Right-wing and nationalism obviously belong together. Nationalism is about identity. One’s own identity is an inherited identity, which you acquire by living in solidarity with others who share the same culture. Tradition is one of its very important elements, and refers conservatism, to preserving the values of the past . . . Conservative thinking, a sense of tradition, are things you can call right-wing, by all means. This statement makes clear that the above-mentioned ‘ethically right-wing’ aspects also correlate with – and even result from – the ethnic nationalism of the respondents.

146 Hans de Witte Evaluation of ‘politics’ and feelings of deprivation All interviewees were also asked what they thought of ‘the country’s politics’. Current political events in the country were unanimously described in negative terms: the policies were bad, the politics rotten, corrupt and hypocritical and the politicians were incompetent weaklings. It was conspicuous that this negative description was only given once they had been asked explicitly what they thought about ‘politics in this country’. These negative judgements were thus not given spontaneously when they were asked about the viewpoints they personally found important. This underlines their involvement with politics in general: they have their own, distinct political project which they want to put into practice, and their negative judgement relates only to the current way of practising politics. Another interesting aspect was their formulation of concrete criticism. Current politicians were reproached for not being firm and for being too ready to compromise. Quite a few interviewees suggested that they preferred ‘pure, uncompromising’ viewpoints. This aspect, too, can be linked to ethnic nationalism. According to these interviewees, Flemish politicians have no longer any self-awareness, and no backbone, because they no longer put themselves at the service of their ethnic group. And the obligatory cohabitation in Belgium of two such different ethnic groups (the Flemings and the French) also renders the practice of real politics an impossible task. Bert (Voorpost, male, 38): Politics in this country lacks vision, and I think that it doesn’t come to a political debate and clear choices because we’re stuck with two ethnic communities whose cultures differs so strongly that a common policy about a number of essential matters is no longer possible. Finally, an assessment was made of the degree to which they felt properly treated by society as individuals and as members of their organization. This was a way of assessing feelings of deprivation. At an individual level, only 2 respondents referred explicitly to one or several forms of unjust treatment or of discrimination. Their stories were used to illustrate the descriptions of individuals who became active because of an ‘event’; they were confronted with negative treatment by French inhabitants or migrants. In the opinion of 5 of the interviewees, the unfair treatment of their parents or grandparents also played a role when, after the war, they were sentenced because of collaboration with the German occupier. In the case of the remaining interviewees, individual feelings of being discriminated against played no role. Of greater importance were the feelings of collective discrimination because they were members of a political movement. Nearly all of them complained that their organization and their viewpoints were wrongly represented in the media. Maria (Voorpost, female, 39): You’re right-wing and you’re put in people’s black books and associated with violence.

Extreme right-wing activism in Flanders 147 They also complained that they were being denied the right to express their opinions freely and have meetings. A few of them gave examples of discrimination: they were threatened with dismissal or persecuted because of their views. In conclusion, some pointed to the fact that they were in danger of being attacked in a physical and violent manner. Rita (Voorpost, female, 46): The general climate in the country is against nationalists. Twenty years ago it was easier in that sense. Now it’s becoming more and more difficult to defend our own ideas. For almost all the interviewees, this unfair treatment was not, in fact, what prompted them to become active in their organization, but rather resulted from it. It was because of their activism that the threats and negative treatment fell to their lot.

Summary and discussion In this chapter, we reported on the results of in-depth interviews with some 30 militants from three Flemish extreme right-wing organizations. The selected organizations are part of the broader extreme right-wing movement in Flanders (Spruyt 1995). This was well illustrated by the strong, mutual interrelatedness of the respondents’ positions: many of them were active in more than one of the movement’s organizations. Our core research questions relate to the motives (‘why’) for becoming an activist and the trajectory to activism (‘how’) of the interviewees. The point of departure was the idea that activism might be motivated by four ideological motives: ‘everyday’ racism, nationalism, authoritarianism and political dissatisfaction. We also hypothesized that three possible trajectories could be followed: via deprivation (‘conversion’), socialization (‘continuity’) or indoctrination (‘compliance’). The central research question was whether Flemish extreme right-wing activism was particularly motivated by racism, as appeared to be the case with those voting for an extreme right-wing party in Flanders. Our results indicate that extreme right-wing activism in Flanders is essentially motivated by ethnic nationalism. Every ethnic group (or ‘nation’) has a common history, language, culture and territory, and this singularity should be the foundation of any state or government. This ethnic nationalism constitutes the foundation for the development of a vision regarding foreigners. One’s own culture must be protected against foreign influences. Multiculturalism is therefore rejected. Foreigners have only two options: merging into the homogeneous Flemish culture or returning to their country of origin. The rejection of foreigners is thus chiefly motivated by cultural arguments, although for a few interviewees economic conflicts with migrants also play a role. For some of the interviewees, a culturally conservative or ethically right-wing attitude also formed part of their ideological motivation. These right-wing attitudes, related to authoritarianism, were linked to ethnic nationalism, because they referred to the preservation of the ethnic community’s traditions. As a result of their ethnic nationalism and their own political activism, current politics were rejected.

148 Hans de Witte Reviewing the interviewees’ trajectories to activism made clear that their activism mainly originated from socialization. The influence of the parents and family dominated this socialization trajectory, and continuity was a central aspect of that process. Looking back at the results suggests that we could distinguish four groups of interviewees: ●

●

●

A first large group of respondents grew up in a family with radical, right-wing traditions. The (grand)parents were rooted in pre-war right-wing extremism, and in many cases collaborated during the Second World War. They passed the ideology on to their children, who in their turn became active. The interviewees perceive this evolution as ‘obvious’: they convey a strong feeling of continuity. This group fits very well the ‘socialization trajectory’ (Hagendoorn 1986) and the idea that ‘continuity’ is the most important route to activism. A second group of respondents came from a more moderate Flemish nationalist milieu, or were introduced to radical, ethnic nationalism by friends, or through a youth movement. This resulted in a certain susceptibility from which rightwing activism could develop. This basis was, however, usually insufficient. Many needed an ‘extra stimulant’ to become active: for example, their activism was encouraged by friends or by a negative experience (e.g. experiencing discrimination by French-speaking citizens). To a certain extent, these trajectories are thus hybrids. The ‘socialization’ or ‘continuity trajectory’ remains the most dominant trajectory. For some, however, some degree of deprivation or conversion played a role as well, though a secondary role. Processes of socialization seemed to already have increased the susceptibility for this form of activism. The latter experience of deprivation, in turn, functioned as the ‘trigger’, that lead to activism. For a small third group, composed of a few respondents only, the trajectory was characterized as ‘indoctrination’ or ‘compliance’. This particularly pertained to those trajectories where youth movements played a role. The often accidental (and arbitrary) contact with a youth movement leads increasingly to greater involvement in an ideological youth movement of youngsters who, initially, showed little political insight, knowledge or commitment.

The trajectory of only two of the respondents resembles a trajectory characterized by conversion. Previously, they were discriminated against by French-speaking persons or had negative experiences with migrants. On the basis of these experiences, they contacted the VB on their own initiative, and became gradually more involved in Flemish right-wing extremism. In conclusion, many trajectories were revealed in the in-depth interviews. The most important trajectory, however, relates to socialization (and continuity). As regards motives, the crucial importance of ethnic nationalism became obvious. This is in sharp contrast to the finding that voters for the extreme right-wing party VB motivate their choice chiefly with a form of ‘everyday’ racism (Billiet and De Witte 2001). To be sure, this form of racism is also present among the activists, but their emphasis is on ethnic nationalism, which serves as a basis for the development of

Extreme right-wing activism in Flanders 149 their evaluation of foreigners. Such a nationalistic ideological foundation is absent among the voters (De Witte and Verbeeck 2000), which confirms the often suggested ideological cleavage between voters and militants or activists (De Witte 1996). In sum, Flemish nationalism is of crucial importance in understanding the motives and trajectory of activists of the VB, whereas such ethnic nationalism is irrelevant in the explanation of the vote for this party. Voters are motivated by ‘everyday’ racism, activists by ethnic nationalism. Our findings also allow us to examine the thesis that discrimination and isolation give rise to nationalism (Lubbers 2001). Our study does not support such a causal link between nationalism and feelings of deprivation or isolation. The ethnic nationalism of our interviewees largely appears to be the result of a thorough socialization process instead. Rather than isolation promoting nationalism, the opposite seems to be the case. Through their strong involvement in ethnic nationalism, these extreme right-wing militants in fact stand a greater chance of experiencing deprivation, since they are being stigmatized by society for taking this radical political stand.

Notes 1 This category is of course rather limited in absolute numbers. At the beginning of the 1990s, VB boasted only some 700 militants (Spruyt 1995: 50) while, at the same time, the number of active militants within the action group Voorpost was estimated at about 60 (Verlinden 1991: 241). However, this restricted group of militants forms the backbone of these p arties and movements, who allow them to perform an active role in society. Their importance thus transcends their numerical magnitude. 2 Hagendoorn (1986) calls this ‘indoctrination’ instead of ‘socialization’. In this chapter, we prefer the latter, more neutral, term. 3 My thanks to Kaat Bilsen, who performed these interviews. 4 These interviews were performed by the author. 5 My thanks to Alexander Vander Stichele, Marjan Vertommen, Bart Jansen and Patrick Fransen, who performed these interviews as a preparation for their Master’s thesis. Every student interviewed two NSV militants. They were trained for this task regarding contents and methodology. 6 The ‘IJzer pilgrimage’ is a large-scale political manifestation of Flemish nationalism, held yearly in Diksmuide at the Yzertoren (a tower erected to remember the Flemish soldiers lost during the First World War). Several thousands of Flemish nationalists attend this manifestation, in which the Flemish movement expresses its demands and agenda. At the margins of this manifestation, extreme right-wing groups from all around Europe organize annual meetings and exchange ideas and texts. 7 The Flemish National Song Festival (Vlaams Nationaal Zangfeest ) is a yearly mass gathering of Flemish people, who sing Flemish (ethnic) folk songs, watch Flemish folk dances and listen to a choir singing Flemish songs. The first of these manifestations was held is 1933, so this festival has a long tradition. 8 The VNV is a Flemish-national political party, founded in 1933. Its ideology was closely related to authoritarianism and ‘new order’ ideas (e.g. extreme right-wing ideology). During the Second World War, the VNV collaborated with the German occupiers. 9 The political Flemish-national party Volksunie (VU) was founded in 1954, some ten years after the end of the Second World War. This party was not extreme right-wing, however. Rather, it functioned as a collection of Flemish nationalists of different tendencies, ranging from moderate to the extreme right.

150 Hans de Witte 10 The ‘Egmont pact’ was part of a larger plan to reform the structure of the Belgian state, developed and signed by all governmental parties in 1977. This pact was controversial because it related to the position of Brussels and to the autonomy of the language communities and regions (a.o. Flanders). The VU was part of the then government, and signed the pact. As a consequence, some of their militants left the party. The foundation of the VB originates partly from this rupture. 11 During The Battle of the Golden Spurs (11 July 1302), the count of Flanders defeated the French king. This event is used in Flemish history to celebrate the victory of the Flemings over the French, and the date became the official Flemish holiday in the 1980s. In a symbolic way, this holiday refers to the linguistic conflict within Belgium. 12 The Taal Aktiekomitee (‘Language Action Committee’ – TAK) is a Flemish-nationalist umbrella organization and action group. Most of their actions relate to protests against Frenchification (the use of the French language in Flemish municipalities). 13 The Symbol of Flanders. 14 The Vlaamse Militanten Orde (‘Flemish Militant League’ – VMO) was a radical, extreme right-wing action group. 15 Were-Di is an intellectual group that organizes trainings and discussions on radical Flemish nationalist issues. 16 In 1968, the University of Leuven was still bilingual, even though the territory of Leuven is in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). This provoked a language conflict that was settled by the decision to move all French-speaking students (and staff ) to a new university in Wallonia (‘Louvain-La-Neuve’).

9

‘Doing it for Germany’ A study of Die Republikaner and Junge Freiheit Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon

Since the early 1990s, violent assaults on asylum seekers and immigrants, as in Hoyerswerda, Rostock, Mölln, or Solingen, have made German right-wing extremism particularly noticeable. In 2002, according to police statistics, about 80 per cent of criminal offences (10,579 out of 12,634), were attributed to right-wing extremists (RWE). Between1996 and 2001, the number of RWE classified as likely to commit violent acts increased by approximately 60 per cent (Verfassungsschutzbericht 2000/2002). Dozens of people have been killed and hundreds injured. However, these violent expressions of the phenomenon represent only the tip of the iceberg: xenophobia is rooted in the ‘middle of society’ (Koopmans 2001). If these actions come from a minority of activists, they have support and sympathy from a larger segment of the German population (Lynen von Berg et al. 2002).1 From our social-psychological perspective, right-wing extremism and xenophobia are primarily a collective phenomenon. RWE activists act and think as members of a group, they have a collective identity (Tajfel and Turner 1979, 1986). With other members, they share values, ideas and goals. Self-categorization and self-interpretation processes (Turner et al. 1987) are based on social comparisons between the in-group and the out-group within a societal context structured by intergroup relations. Our main thesis is that RWE and xenophobia are grounded in a ‘politicized national identity’ (see Chapter 12 in this volume) and the psychological processes of identification and demarcation connected with it. This chapter is based on interviews with officials and members of the German party Die Republikaner (The Republicans – REP) and editors of the weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit (Young Liberty – JF).2 These two organizations are obviously different from violent activist ones. However, they provide stereotypes and prejudices concerning foreigners and refugees, as well as slogans (such as ‘foreigners out!’) and an ideological frame legitimizing their acts. REP and JF thus play a part in fostering discrimination of minorities in Germany. While we describe in Chapter 12 the politicized national identity that is at the core of an exclusive worldview with xenophobic tendencies, we want to illustrate here the biographical conditions and socialization processes which lead to such exclusive identifications and close ties to the German nation in the RWE activists’ milieu. Because of the stigmatization of National Socialism and the societal taboo weighing on contemporary RWE organizations, they have had to change both

152 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon organizational form and strategy to be able to mobilize. Current RWE organizations range from militant, criminal groups, often consisting of very young people (for details, see Willems 1996), and parties explicitly referring to the ideas of National Socialism such as the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschland (National Democratic Party of Germany – NPD), or the Deutsche Volksunion (German People’s Union – DVU), to allegedly democratic parties such as the REP and the weekly newspaper JF. While NPD and DVU are assigned to the ‘old extreme right’, REP and JF belong more to the German ‘New Right’ (Ignazi 1992; Stöss 2000). ‘Waving the national flag’ (Billig 1995), these organizations take care not to violate the laws of the German Constitution and make a great effort to gain public recognition as democratic organizations. They explicitly distance themselves from Nazi ideology and violence, and one must clearly distinguish between neo-Nazis prepared to commit violent acts and members of REP or editors of JF, even though both organizations are under the surveillance of the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (National Office for the Protection of the Constitution). As regards the REP, the National Office underlines in its yearly report (Verfassungsschutzbericht 2000/2002: 26–8) that many members of REP have not distanced themselves from right-wing extremists, but not every member is assumed to support extreme right-wing goals. The REP was born from a split within the Bavarian Christian-Social Union (CSU) initiated in 1983 by Franz Handlos and Eckhard Voigt (for details, see Pfahl-Traughber 2000). This split was motivated by their disagreement with the large financial support to the German Democratic Republic – East Germany – (GDR) promoted by Franz-Josef Strauss, the then CSU leader. Hans Schönhuber completed the executive trio of the party. While Handlos and Voigt wanted to provide a right-wing conservative alternative to CDU/CSU and to the right-wing faction of the Freiheitlich-Demokratische Partei (Liberal Democratic Party – FDP), Schönhuber planned to build a modern extreme right-wing party following the model of the French Front National (FN). The conflict culminated with Handlos and Voigt leaving the party in 1985. Later Schönhuber made efforts to separate the image of REP from neo-Nazism and from parties such as the DVU and NPD under the Abgrenzungsbeschluss (demarcation resolution of the REP, 1990). However, when Schönhuber decided to cooperate with the DVU leader Gerhard Frey it led to his replacement by Rolf Schlierer in 1994 and his departure from the party. The party’s greatest success was in 1989, when it gained 7.5 per cent of the votes at the elections for the Berlin senate, and 7.1 per cent of the votes (2,008,629 voters) at the European elections. However, since then the REP seems to have vanished from the political arena. In 1990 the party still claimed about 23,000 members, in 2001 only about 15,000).3 The REP also failed in its former stronghold of Baden-Wurttemberg in the regional elections of 2001, with 4.4 per cent of the votes (it had been up to 10.9 per cent in 1992), just under the 5 per cent electoral threshold. The party was just at this turning point when our participants were interviewed (between January 1997 and August 1998). Most of them were hoping to be successful in the forthcoming elections at that time. The JF was originally founded as a students’ newspaper. In 1986 the chief editor

A study of Die Republikaner and Junge Freiheit

153

of JF intended to offer young people a newspaper for the Freiheitliche Volkspartei (Liberal People’s Party, the party founded in 1985 by Handlos, when he and Voigt left REP after the conflicts with Schönhuber). However, this political project failed. Consequently, JF left and became ‘politically independent’; today the weekly newspaper has a circulation of 35,000 and 11,000 subscribers. The JF publishes authors from the conservative political parties (e.g. from the Christian-Democratic Union (CDU), its Bavarian partner the CSU and from FDP and ideologists from the New Right). Sometimes JF also offers a public forum for activists from the militant Young National Democrats (JND, the youth organization of the NPD). Within the German media, JF thus fulfils a ‘bridge function’ between conservative trends, the New Right and organized RWE (Pfahl-Traughber 2000). The study was restricted to Western Germany because societal conditions for RWE mobilization considerably differ in Eastern Germany (Stöss 2000; Klein 2004). Because of the social asymmetries still existing after reunification, the breeding ground for the mobilization of militant RWE organizations was more fertile there. While xenophobic and anti-Semitic attitudes are shared by about 25 per cent of the German population as a whole, they are more developed in eastern Germany. Most RWE organizations therefore refocused their attempts at mobilization by moving their offices to eastern Germany, as the JND4 did, for example. However, as we are interested in the ‘ordinary societal causes’ of RWE and xenophobia, we decided to centre our study on the West German case. The chapter is divided into three sections. First we shall show that our interviewees are ‘normal’, middle-of-the-road citizens with regard to their social and political positions and milieu. We then shall analyse how REP members and JF editors developed a potential for a national-conservative identification in the course of their lives, because of a conservative national socialization background (family, friends, school), because of the German history tightly knit with their personal biographies and because of networks that cultivated conservative national values. Last we shall see how this potential was turned into commitment and action in RWE movements, because of disappointment with the political system and a search for a new political home.

Middle-of-the-road Germans A first indicator of our interviewees’ social position (Bourdieu 1982; Geiling and Vester 1991) is their level of education, which ranges from middle to high. Thirteen out of 245 had graduated from high school (Abitur, a qualification necessary for university enrolment) or had a university degree; 4 participants had completed their Fachabitur, a technical diploma which enabled them to attend a technical college (Fachhochschule). One had finished extended elementary school, and planned to study. The remaining 6 interviewees had finished elementary or extended elementary school; afterwards 5 of them completed special training courses, comparable to apprenticeships. JF editors in particular showed remarkable historical and political erudition. Further information can be deduced from their profession and way of life. Half

154 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon of the interviewees were salaried, 7 had freelance positions, 2 were retired and 1 was studying at the time of the interview; only 1 was unemployed. Although the interviewees were not asked about their income, apparently most of them were well off, an impression supported by the observation of their homes. For instance August was a salesman, Klaus was a bank clerk, Angela worked for a publishing house, Beate was a commercial executive, Jakob was a businessman, Claudia was employed at the Berlin Senate, Silke was a pharmacist and Heinrich was a doctor. All lived in houses of their own on the periphery of cities. Many remarks made during the interviews confirmed that they belonged to the well-educated middle or upper classes. They were not persons from the margins of society, but rather quite ‘normal’ German citizens. The same can be said about their political profile. On the classical seven-point left–right scale on which they were asked to locate themselves, most of them (19 out of 25) positioned themselves on the right of the political centre. But only 4 positioned themselves on the very extreme right of the scale, and from their comments it appeared that this extreme position was reserved for their competitors in the DVU and the NPD, which they perceived as non-democratic parties. Klaus (REP, male, 49) for instance located himself first at the extreme right but then crossed positions 5 and 6, claiming to be a democrat: Everything is always mixed up in the media: ‘Being radical’ is not wrong. I was once a left-wing radical, following the definition today I’m a right-wing radical . . . But they are mixing up ‘radical’ with ‘extreme’. ‘Radical’ is the way to see something, and to represent it, namely to change something from the roots up, or to see it simply differently to the mainstream. ‘Extreme’ is the method you chose to realize it . . . You can be thoroughly radical and for example be a democrat at the same time. And it is even important in democracy that radical forces shake rusty structures, a little. These self-categorization processes define their collective identity as a REP member within the sphere of German RWE parties. In addition, the interviewees often differentiated between their self-perception of their political position and its perception by others. Sometimes it led them to choose two locations, and explain why, rejecting a diffuse political ‘centre’. For instance, on the ‘national question’ the interviewees tended to agree with political right-wing groups, while on the ‘social question’, sometimes combined with Christian values, they felt closer to political left-wing groups (for their comments, see Table 9.1), as shown by Jakob’s (REP, male, 63) comments: If you say ‘social patriot’, you are a left-wing patriot. And if you are a national [patriot], you are a right-winger, so you are left-wing and right-wing. May be what I don’t like so much is the centre . . . This also has to do with Christianity: [If they are] neither hot nor cold, . . . then I spit them out. Some such as Hans (JF, male, 36) and Albert (REP, male, 28) even positioned themselves at the left end of the scale, insisting, however, on the importance of

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Table 9.1 Left–right scale: self-placement with regard to political orientation

Hermanna(ex-neo-Nazi) Richard (REP) August (REP) Klaus (REP)b Fritz (REP) Michael (REP) Angela (REP) Armin (REP)c Bernhard (REP) Karl (REP) Franz (REP)d Beate (REP) Jakob (REP)e Britta (REP) Claudia (REP) Heinrich (REP) Eduard (REP)f Ute (REP) Florian (REP) Albert (REP)g Silke (REP) Josef (JF) Horst (JF)h Hans (JF)i Gero (JF) j

Left-wing 1 2

3

4

5

Right-wing 6 7

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 X 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 X 0

X 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 X 0 0 X 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 X 0 X X 0 X 0 0 0 0 0 X 0 0 X X 0 0 0 0 0 X 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 X 0 0 X X 0 X X 0 0 0 0 X X X 0 0 0 X X 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 X 0 0 X 0 0 0 0 X

0 0 0 0 X 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 X 0 0 0 0 0 X 0 0 0 0 0 X

Notes a Dropout Hermann explicitly saw himself as being beyond usual standards. b First Klaus made a cross more to the right. After thinking for a while he decided to choose the position nearer to the middle because, from his viewpoint, the position more to the right was reserved for members of the NPD or DVU. c Armin would have made a cross at the extreme right of the scale if considering only his ‘national’ point of view. d Franz distinguished between self-perception (the cross more to the left) and how he is supposedly perceived by others (the cross more to the right). e Jakob explained his cross on the left by his ‘Christian-social’ position. f In a similar way Eduard distinguished between his social engagement to the left and his national position. g The ‘patriotic Social Democrat’ Kurt Schumacher was the point of reference of Albert’s selfplacement. h Horst designated himself as ‘right-wing national’ (rechtsnational). i Hans called himself a ‘left-wing nationalist’ (Linksnationalist) and a ‘national anarchist’. j Gero placed his smaller cross to the left of Richard Scheringer, who turned from a nationalist to a communist during his imprisonment at the beginning of the twentieth century.

their ‘national’ or ‘patriotic’ point of view. Hans explained his self-placement on the left by his ‘national revolutionary’ origins, in reaction against the students’ revolt of 1968 and their permissive values (see Ignazi 1992 on the ‘the silent counterrevolution’). These examples clearly show discrepancies between the way REP and JF are seen in the mass public, at the extreme right of the political

156 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon spectrum, and the far more complex self-placements of the interviewees. Their comments also confirm our hypothesis that their collective identity as RWE activists is fundamentally structured at the ‘national’ level. The political origins and careers of the interviewees do not really correspond to the current categories of ‘extremism’; many had affinities with mainstream German parties before becoming a REP member. Three were former members of CDU/CSU. August (male, 40) was initially interested in ecology and contacted Bündnis ‘90/Die Grünen,6 then he became a member of ÖDP.7 Klaus (male, 49) was once a member of the Young Socialists (the youth organization of the SPD8 – JUSO). Later he became a member of the SPD; 5 others were more or less active members in other parties. Nine, without being actual former members, expressed sympathy or electoral support for established parties.9 One REP member had even voted for Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) in the last communal elections, the latter usually referred to as a prototypical political opponent of the REP. Yet, the active political involvement of these 15 REP interviewees really started, they say, when they became aware of the REP. As for the other RWE parties (NPD, DVU), only 4 of the REP members interviewed showed some sympathy with them, such as Karl (REP, male, 26) who had already taken part in demonstrations organized by JN before he became a member of the REP: For me there is too much aggressiveness in it . . . For example, there is also aggressiveness against people like us, the Republikaner. But I think that the NPD has a certain amount of legitimacy, and both sides . . . just have to tolerate each other. As for the JF editors, they generally showed more detachment from all political parties, after bad and sometimes traumatizing experiences with previous engagements in mainstream parties and in RWE parties, as illustrated by the itinerary of the three following interviewees. Horst (JF, male, 34) was associated with the CDU for many years. He was a member of REP between 1989 and 1991, but he left the party because of the conflicts with Schönhuber. Then he was involved in the Deutsche Liga für Volk und Heimat (DLVH)10 for a short period. But during the interview he distanced himself explicitly from the extreme position of this organization. When he was a member he was assaulted and seriously wounded, while another member of DLVH was assassinated. While recovering in hospital, Horst decided to quit all party activities. Gero’s (JF, male, 29) political career also started with a certain affinity to CDU. Later he came into contact with Franz Handlos of the REP. Disappointed and disaffected by party politics he finally decided to stick to journalism. As for Hans (JF, male, 36) he appears as a typical ‘political wanderer’. Since his childhood as a boy scout he was concerned with environmental problems. Then his experiences as a customs officer at the border within Germany made him aware of the situation in eastern Germany. For instance, he supported the initiative ‘Freedom for Matthias Barth’ who was imprisoned in the GDR. For a short while, Hans was also interested in the

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ecological wing of the NPD. He also took part in several ecological protests of ‘leftwing organizations’, and worked with the Communist Union West Germany (KBW) for a while. Under the influence of the ‘New Right’, ‘national revolutionaries’ and ‘solidarists’ (Pfahl-Traughber 2000: 81f., 210), he worked within a ‘cooperative’ journal. At the time of the interview he described himself as a ‘leftwing nationalist’, ‘national anarchist’, ‘regionalist’ and as a ‘grassroots democrat’. All this shows the diversity of our interviewees’ antecedents, and the small proportion of those who actually came from the RWE scene or even saw themselves as extreme right. Lastly if one looks at their parents, it is roughly the same story. They can also mostly be described as having a middle-class and conservative background. The only ‘extremist’ exception among the interviewees’ families was the father of Hans (JF, male, 36), who was an official in the NPD.

Building up a national conservative potential It is mostly in their family that our interviewees developed the nation-centred worldview that made them potentially receptive to RWE ideas. The impact of peer groups or ‘significant others’, who could have fostered their political education, is not always very clear. So we will analyze here more closely what exactly the family transmitted. Family socialization Many interviewees actually described their parents as ‘not politically interested’. Only 8 interviewees (5 REP, 3 JF) could clearly state their parents’ impact on their worldview. The case of Hans, whose father, as we saw, was an official in the NPD, was an exception: though Hans’ father disapproved of the political activities of his 15-year-old son, both Hans’ political interest in politics and his choice of information were clearly determined by his father: So principally, I was already interested maybe since when I was 14, 15 [years old]. So actually the most important things, for example, were TV newscasts and newspapers. So actually I started to read newspapers in a quite funny way, very early on. [Amused]: because my father always read several newspapers and he marked the very important articles. And I always cut these items out for him, and in this way, I started to read what he had marked or what else I found interesting . . . So from that time on, I actually tried to get involved at a very early stage. (Hans, JF, male, 36) But even for those who were not aware of a direct influence from their parents, the interviews reveal that the latter provided fundamental elements of their current political viewpoint, mainly conservative ideas oriented to the ‘German question’ which made them sensitive to the ideas of the REP later on. For instance

158 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon many interviews refer to the difficult experience their parents went through as expellees, displaced after the end of the war. Michael’s father was a member of CDU until the 1970s; later he voted for the FDP, while his mother voted for the SPD. Yet what marked him out is the fact his parents were, as he described them, ‘national conscious’ and it made him interested in German history: And we often talked about politics. But I was always interested in politics, because history was already my favourite pastime in elementary school . . . So I liked to read history books, historical novels, etc., etc. (Michael, REP, male, 41). Franz remembers his father as following the tradition of Prussian officers: His attitude was: an officer doesn’t join a political party . . . So he completely condemned the idea that officers made a career due to their party membership book, just like the SPD generals in the [19]70s. Because he said: ‘an officer is a government official representing the state, but not a party.’ So from this viewpoint, I didn’t have any political models. (Franz, REP, male, 41) However, during the interview there was a clearer indication of his father’s influence on his political development: Q: ‘But did you generally have political discussions?’ A: ‘Yes, with my father, that’s clear. Well, of course he was conservative, also right-wing and nationally-oriented. That’s right. What’s funny is, I never built up an anti-attitude as some people do, who want to obviously be the absolute opposite of their fathers. Although we didn’t agree with each other in many things, in a funny way, we had the same political opinion. But he didn’t try to impose his ideas on me or to indoctrinate me, but it happened by itself.’ Heinrich, after also describing his parents as people who held Prussian traditions and virtues, confirmed his mother’s impact on his development: My mother was very nationalistic, . . . but national-conservative, upright, without any extreme tendencies of course . . . My father was a bit more reserved; I would say he was liberal nationalist . . . But it was always a dream of my mother that I should march here, through Berlin, as an officer of the guard. (Heinrich, REP, male, 78) Both Britta (female, 44) and Silke (female, 56) described their parents as very conservative. Silke explained: Principally I always had a conservative attitude, actually with an affinity to the CDU. I knew that from the journals my parents had . . . Our teachers didn’t

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mould us differently, either . . . We still grew up with classical ideals, [amused] which are no longer valid today. (Silke, REP, female, 56) Klaus (male, 49), on the contrary, referred to the social democratic traditions of his family, especially his grandfather, strongly opposed to National Socialism. But what mattered in his eyes was the patriotic attitude he transmitted to him. For others, their school years had an influence. One of our interviewees, Jakob (REP, male, 49), spoke at length about the influence, on his education, of a teacher and priest with a strong affinity with German folklore. Along the same lines Richard told us about his teacher in elementary school: I lost my father very early on at the beginning of the [19]50s. My mother wasn’t politically oriented. And maybe I was shaped in school. For the first four years, I grew up in a village with a one-class elementary school. And there was a teacher who liked walking very much and who was very sociable. And he also knew these old folk songs. (Richard, REP, male, 49) The JF editors’ upbringing is also interesting. For instance Josef (JF, male, 38) had a father who was an active CDU member, and openly criticized the JF articles of his son. The political development of Josef started when he was young, corresponding with his father and his uncle, who worked for the Foreign Office. They exchanged political books with written remarks by both. Another uncle was also of importance, a converted ‘Czechoslovakian Jew’, whose parents were killed in Theresienstadt. This uncle was the only in his family who survived the Holocaust. He escaped to London, and later returned to Germany to make a movie about the liberation of the concentration camps for the BBC news. Then he went back to Czechoslovakia as a communist, where he experienced the second loss of his political home through the invasion of the Russians in 1968. However, his uncle remained a socialist for the rest of his life, and he was very important in forming Josef’s political orientation. As a student Josef also came into contact with MSB Spartacus, the students’ organization of the German Communist Party (DKP), and with the squatters’ scene in Zurich. But Josef was soon ‘very repelled’ by the ‘very aggressive tone which was dominating there. It was a tone degrading those of different opinion.’ Finally, the Prussian traditions and values of the family prevailed in Josef’s political socialization, and obviously these values did not contradict the political and cultural diversity within the family circle. Political discussions were always part of the family’s everyday life in the case of Gero, too. The profession of his father, a military historian, and the family’s visits to the German–German border (Interzonengrenze) oriented him towards a nation-centred view of the world very early on: And our parents showed us and also explained to us what that border meant . . . We had family members on the other side, too. In any case, we became

160 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon somewhat aware of the fact that we were not living in a normal state, and that the country was somehow separated. I remember such questions as: ‘Which country is bigger, Germany or Italy?’ When I was 10, I saw a weather map . . . in the news. And I thought: Yes, Italy is bigger than Germany. No, Germany is bigger than Italy. Yes, why? Because the GDR belongs to us, too. So somehow I became interested. And when I was 13, 14 years old, I got interested in doing something about it. On the whole few of our interviewees were aware of their parents’ or teachers’ impact on their political development. Most of the interviewees’ parents were once attached to established parties. But even if there was no evident correspondence between the interviewees’ party choice and those of their parents, conservative families oriented to the ‘German question’ were prevalent. In addition, friends also had an impact on forming opinions and promoting their joining the REP. So the mediation of conservative, traditional and national values in everyday life within the family, school and circles of friends seemed to be apparent among all our interviewees. Obviously this background helped the development of a ‘national’ frame of mind and influenced their readiness to take part in RWE activities and later, on joining the REP, the programme of which was clearly in this nationalistic line.

German history as a biographical experience Our interviewees’ propensity to react to the social world with this ‘national’ frame of interpretation seemed also to be grounded, at least partly, in their personal experiences and lives. On the one hand, there were historical events they saw as critical. On the other hand, there were learning conditions reinforcing ‘national(ist) values’, in certain networks and organizations (see Table 9.2, p. 163). Considering the historical events, our interviewees were either affected personally by these events or their memory was passed on in their families. For example, regardless of National Socialism and the Holocaust, the Second World War was seen as the source of an injustice done to the German nation as a whole. As Klaus (REP, male, 49), for instance, put it: I don’t see why my children should pay for any wrong-doings, which are justified by the fact that we lost the War. And later he added: And there is this German self-hatred. And . . . this tendency to perceive one’s own things in an extraordinary negative way, and to formulate criticism on German conditions extraordinarily severely as it were anticipating obedience to foreign media or to any possible critics. The post-war reconstruction and recovery of Germany was thus perceived as a collective, national effort, the products of which (prosperity and welfare) only

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Germans should be entitled to harvest. Some perceived these achievements as threatened by unrestricted immigration: I also know who reconstructed this country, for example, our mothers and fathers did, if they were not killed in action. My father was killed in action. And before the Republicans came, I saw, how this country was systematically . . . ruined by this unchecked immigration of foreigners for years. (Ute, REP, female, 63) Only 1 interviewee, Heinrich (REP, male, 78), directly took part in the Second World War as a health officer; 1 was a child a the time and 9 others knew about it through their family’s participation. Yet in retrospect, most of them saw their relatives or themselves as innocent victims. Fathers and grandfathers were seen as dutiful soldiers, in the service of their country rather than the Nazi regime. Accordingly, many interviewees were outraged by an exhibition presenting the former German army (Wehrmacht) in a critical light and by a pacifistic campaign ‘Soldiers are Murderers’ (Kurt Tucholsky), which was supported by sections of the Evangelical and Catholic churches, to the point that it led 7 of our interviewees to cut links with their Church.11 From the interviewees’ perspective, it is not acceptable to restrict the history of Germany to the years of National Socialism and the Second World War. In addition, some interviewees even tried to revise history, and relativize the Holocaust. Another type of critical event is linked to the fate of the German expellees, the importance of which is not stressed enough, in their eyes. This resentment was obvious in this comment by Fritz (REP, male, 32, historian), now a member of the nationalist expellee organization Witiko-Bund, when he referred to his parents’ experience: It is no triviality, when a country loses a quarter of its territory and many millions have to flee, and millions of them have to die. This is a unique catastrophe in German history. Therefore, it is astonishing how little is said about it and that so many people just put up with it. One of our interviewees, Florian (REP, male, 59), was expelled from Pomerania, and saw in that event the explanation of his general affinity with RWE. In addition six other participants, including Florian’s wife Ute, referred to expulsions within their families. The former division of Germany (by the Berlin Wall) and the injustice of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) regime in East Germany played a significant role for 19 interviews, although with different degrees of clarity. Some of our interviewees were directly affected by separation from relatives and friends because of the Wall, like Eduard (REP, male, 50): I grew up . . . 150 metres from the border [in Berlin]. A few of my friends lived in Prenzelberg [Prenzlauer Berg: a region of Berlin], and some on our side in

162 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon Gesundbrunnen. On a Sunday [in August 1961 the border to Berlin was closed by means of ‘the Wall’] I came back from holidays . . . And that was the end . . . of our gang. Since that day I’ve been fed up with Red [that is, with socialists/communists]. Others were indirectly affected by contacts with friends or relatives who were suffering from injustice in a totalitarian state. For instance the husbands of Silke (REP, female, 56) and Beate (REP, female, 58), who were also active REP members, had escaped from the GDR. While Gero (JF, male, 29), holding the photograph of a Second World War cemetery, one of our projective tests (see Chapter 5 in this volume), felt a deep commitment to the German nation and history: A country just doesn’t unite because of its constitution, but by what there is hidden in its history, just as in this picture . . . Who is affected while walking across this cemetery? Someone whose family lived in this country, and whose family is suffering from this history as a victim or as culprit. Thus German history is tightly intertwined with the biography of our interviewees and of their families. Besides they openly confess a special interest in history and 4 of our interviewees (2 REP, 2 JF) studied history at university.

Turning potential into activism However, one may well ask why every German with direct or indirect experiences of these events did not develop a RWE stand. We must not jump to the conclusion that there is determinist causal relation between historical/biographical experiences and ideological choices. Our data show only how historical events experienced within the family activate a certain potential which may or may not, under certain conditions, develop into a nationalist system of values and a ‘politicized national identity’ (see Chapter 12 in this volume). The role of ‘abeyance structures’ Some of these conditions have already been mentioned in the context of the interviewees’ political socialization within their families, their circle of friends or at school. Additionally, there were groups or institutions where traditional, nationalconservative ideas were prevalent – ‘abeyance’ or sleeping structures in the sense used by Verta Taylor (Taylor 1989), which permitted the survival of nationalist values, or even reinforced them. Expellees’ organizations have already been mentioned. There also were student fraternities cultivating Prussian virtues such as ‘faithfulness and honesty’ (Treu und Redlichkeit), discipline, order and diligence ( Josef, JF, male, 38; Franz, REP, male, 41; Heinrich, REP, male, 78). And when Josef stated that he belonged to the same student fraternity as his grandfather and his father had, this indicated a long-lasting ‘abeyance structure’. These fraternities,

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the history of which goes back to the nineteenth century and the rise of a German citizenry, also reinforced national tendencies, following the traditional ideas of the ‘Nationalism and Liberalism’ movement. Franz (REP, male, 41) told us with a certain pride how he was once asked about his Mensur (that is, a scar on his face received by a sword in a fraternity ritual), while Michael (REP, male, 41) and Fritz (REP, male, 32) belonged to the same student fraternity as the REP leader Rolf Schlierer. Although they cannot be merely equated with RWE ideas and goals, these organizations served to maintain Prussian traditions and cultural achievements, be it in a nostalgic way. Table 9.2 summarizes the factors promoting the accessibility of this national frame. The search for a new political home Bert Klandermans (1997: 22–5) lists four steps towards movement participation.12 The preceding section illustrates (step 1), how our interviewees became sympathizers of a national-conservative ideology. However, they did not become targets of mobilization attempts (step 2) in a passive way. Disappointment and disapproval of the established parties’ politics led them to an active search for a new political home corresponding to the nationalistic frame that dominated their view of the world. So from the interviewees’ perspective, they were looking for an appropriate field for political activity. The perceived ‘betrayal’ of German interests by the conservative-liberal government under the leadership of Helmut Kohl was the crucial motive leading the interviewees to break with the mainstream parties. Horst ( JF, male, 34; former REP), for instance, described very precisely what brought him and many others to turn their backs on the Union parties (CDU/CSU) and to start looking for a political alternative: It was in the second half of the [19]80s, if I go by my impressions and by the impressions of the people I worked with politically. The Berlin-CDU changed, as regards the contents of their policies, and they were advocating positions that I had not joined the CDU for. And since 1987 I can tell you three, four things: there was the visit of Honecker [SED chairman and head of the GDR] in September; in [19]87 there was the discussion, whether Diepgen [CDU mayor of West Berlin] should visit the mayor of East Berlin in East Table 9.2 Factors promoting the accessibility of national frames Historical /Biographical events generating a ‘national potential’

Abeyance structures reinforcing a ‘politicized national identity’

Second World War (National Socialism) Expellees’ destiny Economic recovery (‘Wirtschaftswunder’)

Expellees’ corporations Fraternities (student) Organizations cultivating Prussian traditions and values

Division of Germany (‘GDR injustice’)

164 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon Berlin. And I was of the opinion that you can’t talk to the masters of Wall, the people who lay barbed wire and give orders to shoot; at least not on that level, but only on an official statesmanlike level. Then, there was that discussion about a monument for Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, at the Landwehrkanal, so at the place where they died . . . [socialist leaders shot by the government troops in 1919 without legal proceedings]. Actually it was, above all, due to the national policy (Deutschlandpolitik), this had always been my motivation why, for example, I joined the CDU. Because, at that time, I still believed that the CDU would have advocated the unity of Germany, for overcoming the division . . . Also, for example, after the ‘billions credit’ engineered by Franz-Josef Strauss in 87, I was quite disappointed that he, of all people, my role model, my idol . . . would make a deal with the leaders behind the Iron Curtain. Besides Horst, who criticized the idea of a monument dedicated to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, Florian (REP, male, 59) also showed a certain anti-communism (or anti-socialism), which was clearly shared by Eduard and Heinrich, and which is also more implicitly implied – often in combination with the perception of GDR – in other interviews. The ‘billions credit’ was also explicitly mentioned by Franz, Beate and Gero. As for Florian, he had no previous affinity with the established parties. From his perspective, the Deutschlandpolitik of any German government had already been discredited much earlier, in the context of the policy of détente: That here are influential people, a so-called ‘connection’ [Florian used this English term actually suggesting, from his point of view, a kind of Jewish conspiracy], if you may say this, who actually determine what the federal government is doing, no matter who is the chancellor. I’m thinking of Brandt/ Scheel in 1968 with their ‘Fall to their knees in Warsaw’ [Kniefall in Warschau] in front of this monument.13 So there are things that actually only reinforce the issue, if you are interested a bit and know how to succeed in muzzling smaller groups [national activists such as the REP]. Then you simply have to do something. (Florian, REP, male, 59) There were also references to more recent events, such as the perceived betrayals concerning the constitutional goal of German reunification. For example, when Klaus (REP, male, 49) expressed his support for German unity within a working group of the SPD, one of his colleagues teased him: ‘So I don’t know at all what kind of Young Socialist this comrade is. Yes, actually he is more like a national socialist!’ And when the SPD voted for the recognition of the GDR, this was unacceptable from Josef’s ( JF, male, 38) point of view. In their retrospective review of which motives drove them to become politically active outside the established party system, 13 out of our 24 interviewees put forward the importance of German unity and their personal disappointment about

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that matter. Six interviewees explicitly disapproved of the Ostpolitik, while 13 referred to the injustice that they perceived was taking place in the GDR. Also after reunification, their expectations were not met. To the promises of Helmut Kohl that there would soon be ‘flourishing landscapes’ in East Germany, Franz (REP, male, 41) opposed the ‘20 per cent unemployment rate . . . in Mid-Germany’14, a statement also used by the REP in its election campaign in 1998. Various political experiences among our interviewees thus led to dissatisfaction and disaffection with the established party system. Accordingly, they perceived the German government as betraying their promise to bring about the ‘welfare of the German people’ (Wohl des deutschen Volkes) with respect to European policy (this was mentioned in all the interviews when we presented interviewees with a photograph of a European flag, one of our projective tests) and with respect to an immigration policy perceived as ‘unrestrictive’ and threatening to German welfare (by 20 of our interviewees, often in connection with the photograph of praying Muslims).15 So most of our interviewees who became members of the REP were once attached to some mainstream party, but their disapproval of German domestic politics turned them into the politically homeless and made them actively look for a new political home. They were not really ‘recruited’ by the REP, rather they rallied on their own initiative. The JF editors, because they were more detached from the party system, made the choice of intellectual warfare, via journalism and opinion making. There, again, they actively applied for the job, rather than just being recruited. What exactly made them aware of the REP? There were leaflets, placards and TV spots. One in particular was mentioned three times, suggesting the cultural decline of Germany in a multicultural environment (probably Kreuzberg, in Berlin) with the music of Ennio Morricone taken from Sergio Leone’s Western, ‘Once upon a time in the West’. Several interviewees also mentioned the influence of Franz Schönhuber. Michael (REP, male, 41) explained his ‘spontaneous’ reaction to join the party after hearing a public speech: Even if Schönhuber didn’t explicitly say it, but he made it clear that the nation state was very important, that the nation state was a basic condition for democracy. And this was the reason, why I joined the party. Because this was not an issue for the other parties in the same way. Jakob (REP, male, 63) said he was outraged, when he attended another meeting of Schönhuber’s in Munich, which needed police protection because of the violence of the counterdemonstrations. That’s when he started to read Schönhuber’s books. Franz (REP, male, 41), after being disappointed by FranzJosef Strauss (who engineered the ‘billions credit’ to the GDR), was also impressed by Schönhuber: Well, I had read in the newspaper, that there was a party . . . founded by Schönhuber, who was the moderator/presenter of the programme ‘Now it’s

166 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon me, who talks’ [Jetzt red’ I’, from the public Bavarian TV channel]. I knew him by hearsay. I didn’t know more about the Republikaner. And then, at the beginning of the [19]80s, I met some people. And then I saw a placard placed by the Republikaner. So I became curious about them. And then I bought the book of Schönhuber, ‘I was involved’ (Ich war dabei ) about his past in the SS troops. It was very controversial, for being so extreme right-wing. But I wondered why, what for? The book is neither left[-wing] nor right[-wing]. It just describes the life [history] of a man who experienced the Second World War, nothing more. And then I became curious. And then I went to the party’s office. Core values and ideology: the national community If they were attracted by the REP or JF, if they immediately felt at home there, it was because such a party fitted their ideas and goals, which one can sum up in one sentence: doing something for Germany. Our interviewees complained about the decline of their country, which they attributed to unrestricted immigration. Foreigners were seen mainly as a burden on the social and economic system of Germany, and blamed for the financial deficit of the social security system and public health service, unemployment, economic regression, increasing criminality, etc. In simple terms, their demand for social change could be summarized as follows: ● ●

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to spend more money on Germans than on ‘Non-Germans’ to eliminate cooperation costs that are not in the direct interest of the nation (that is, generated by international organizations such as the European Union, NATO, United Nations), to restrict or even stop immigration and deport ‘criminal’ or ‘illegal’ foreigners.

However, when looking for ‘adversarial attributions’ (Simon and Klandermans 2001) – that is, for the interviewees’ explanations for these grievances – they actually made the whole German political system responsible, including the media, the education system, churches, unions, etc. At the same time, another fundamental goal of our interviewees was to preserve German culture, their own ‘cultural identity’, the traditional (e.g. Prussian or conservative Christian) German virtues and values. For example Horst (JF, male, 34) explained: I express it . . . positively: My intention is to contribute a bit to the preservation of identity (Identitätswahrung), namely both my personal identity and that of the people (Volk) I belong to, the Germans in this case. And there I partly assess that this identity is enormously threatened by the development towards a multicultural society. Because in my opinion, identity expresses itself in cultural references and of course in language . . . It has also to do with history. So as a German, I don’t have common historical roots with someone coming – I don’t know – from the Middle East or from even further away, the

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Far East. I really don’t have anything in common with them, what could be summarized under the term ‘identity’ . . . But at a time when he [the foreigner/ stranger] forms the majority, at that moment my identity, the identity of my people, is threatened. Some, such as Hans (JF, male, 36) who to some extent sympathized with multiculturalism, in the sense of preserving the cultural distinctiveness of all people, expressed this view in a more moderate way: If I live here now as a German citizen, then I have to adapt to certain cultural norms here without giving up my whole identity. Others phrased their close ties to Germany in the more emotional category of Heimat (see Chapter 12, in this volume), to be protected at all costs against threats from outside. Accordingly, the crucial condition to be entitled to Germany’s welfare system was total commitment, even ‘devotion’ to the German nation with which they identified: And there is no alternative to nation as there is not any alternative to being human (Menschsein). In my opinion nation isn’t a waste product or a remnant of the Third Reich; this is rubbish of left-wing fantasts and crackpots. For me nation is space for democracy, space for solidarity, space for rule of law, space for self-determination and self-realization. (Albert, REP, male, 28) From this point of view, nation is sometimes presented as an almost sacred political principle. Such a religious tie to the nation was, for instance, expressed by Jakob (REP, male, 63): ‘Every nation [Volk] is an idea of God.’ Usually, though, a more secularized perspective was prevalent: Yes, actually of extraordinary importance are what you may describe as social-patriotic ideas. This means that you just base the possibility of democracy, the governance of a politically conscious people, and also solidarity, solely in the context of a nation state . . . So I think that the nation state is a precondition for democracy . . . and for a welfare state. And as far as that goes, the Republikaner are the only party corresponding to my political view of the world. (Fritz, REP, male, 32) For a better understanding of what he meant by ‘solidarity’ Fritz was asked if he distinguished between the normative sense of ‘community’ and the more current term of ‘society’. He answered: Yes, what does community actually mean? In principle, you only have to take the constitution literally. The constitution documents the rights and duties of

168 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon the citizen. And the citizen defines himself by his belongingness to the German nation, as you can read in basic constitutional law . . . I don’t know now . . . [embarrassed smile]. Of course this is not a purely ethnic definition. Of course the German nation is also open for naturalization. It always has been. But you can’t totally suppress the boundary between the citizen and the guest, because then it will result . . . in this mentality . . . of indifference towards the concerns of the community. So I would like civic sense to be upgraded, that you understand yourself as a citizen of a community and not as an individual with just social welfare demands. And Klaus (REP, male, 49) argued: So the famous ‘intellectual–moral turn’ (geistig-moralische Wende) . . . we won’t achieve. But in any case, we will try to set the course somewhere . . . in the direction of conservative values. These are values making a society worth living. Duty cannot be separated from the rights of a free citizen. The rights of a free citizen are balanced by his duties. That’s what gives the possibility to change things. From the interviewees’ point of view, nation was thus the place where all members should take care of each other. But, obviously, only members of the national community – that is, Germans – should be entitled to the benefits of solidarity and social welfare. And becoming part of a particular nation was a delicate issue for the interviewees: they criticized the irresponsible granting of dual nationality because ‘belongingness’ in their eyes entailed total devotion to nation and cultural assimilation. The concept of society conveyed by REP members and JF editors, balancing the rights of German citizens with their duties, can be labelled ‘people’s communitarianism’ (völkische Kommunitaristen, see Klein and Leif 1995). It also implies the subordination of virtues such as efficiency and diligence to the national community, and the rejection of ‘hedonism’ and the ‘leisure society’, perceived as the consequence of an ‘anarchistic–liberal’ individualistic worldview, jeopardizing social, political and, finally, national integration. Our interviewees obviously did not really need a more abstract or more inclusive level of identification (see Chapter 12 in this volume and Turner et al. 1987) than the national one. Moreover, in their view of the world, this category of nation existed, as already mentioned, as a natural, God-given social entity. For example, Beate (REP, female, 58) explained that her ‘natural national feeling’ led her when she was young to ask her dancing partner not to talk to her in French or English, but in German. And Silke (REP, female, 56) adopted a biological perspective in explaining national conflicts: They [left-wing people] say, we are always seeing the thing too biologically. That’s right, we are seeing it biologically. You have to consider it scientifically . . . A human being is also part of nature. But they just don’t believe it, they just believe you can educate him/her, you can change him/her; only a bit on

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the surface, principally he/she stays what he/she is. And it’s good this way, too. There always are two sides. Finally nature functions logically. It only depends on which part will be stronger in getting its way. Along the same lines Franz (REP, male, 41) perceived the head of the nation – in this case, the former Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl –as a ‘father’, which reinforced his disapproval of what he saw as Helmut Kohl’s ‘offences’ to German (that is, ‘the family’s’) interests. He stated: So for me Germany is a certain cultural domain, which has to support interests like a family or a community does . . . So it’s just the next higher level. And then maybe comes Europe, where . . . we are all in the same boat. And then somewhere [comes] the whole world, if there would be a threat from outer space, the whole world would unite. But as long as there won’t be any threat from outer space, the world will never unite. This essentialist, primordial understanding of nation, with its risks of discrimination and xenophobia, shaped the core of our interviewees’ ideology.

Conclusion Our basic hypothesis that a RWE identity was part of an overarching politicized national identity (Chapter 12 in this volume) led us to the question of the accessibility (Turner et al. 1987) of this national frame: What were the origins of our interviewees’ readiness to perceive and interpret their social world in terms of their belonging to the German nation? Our study suggests three steps, which are obviously related. The interviewees told us about socialization in a conservative environment (family, teachers, friends, etc.), emphasizing German tradition and history. They were directly or indirectly affected by the Second World War and its aftermath (expulsions, displacements and resettlements, partition of Germany, repression and injustice in the GDR). The interviewees thus generated a ‘nationalistic– conservative potential’, they were made receptive to RWE ideas. The interviews indicated how they linked their personal life-story to historical and political events and described their political careers in terms of defending German interests against external threats, and principally immigration. This politicized national identity was reinforced within more or less institutionalized networks in ‘abeyance structures’ such as expellees’ organizations, student fraternities, diverse groups and organizations keeping Prussian traditions and values alive. Even if it is not always easy to assign such organizations to RWE circles, they provide a societal niche for people with nationalist ideas, goals and expectations. However, as long as German interests were supposedly represented by the conservative parties within the German political system, starting with the Union parties (CDU/CSU), most of the interviewees did not see a need to become

170 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon politically active themselves or change their political orientation. The actual politicization of their national identity started with the shared perception of betrayals of and offences against German interests by officials of established political parties. From our interviewees’ perspective, this led to a break with mainstream politics, to their political homelessness and, finally, to their active search for a new political home. This social-psychological finding confirms the fact that post-war mobilization of RWE in Germany was not as successful as one might have expected because of the integrative power (Integrationskraft ) of the political and economic system (Stöss 2000: 246). Obviously for a long time the existing parties could satisfy the demands of our interviewees and so in analyzing the origins of German RWE we cannot neglect ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig 1995) as an integrative element of the society (Wimmer 2002). From this point of view, it seems too easy to consign xenophobia and RWE to the margins of society: our interviewees did not correspond to the usual stereotypes of RWE activists as old, cold blue-eyed Nazis or as simple-minded, martial skinheads! Maybe these stereotypes of RWE activists serve the function of protecting us against the recognition of the origins of RWE and xenophobia in the midst of German society. On the contrary, interviewees from REP and JF appeared as quite normal German citizens, hospitable to the interviewer and happy to expose their own elaborated view of the world. On the other hand, mainstream politicians are now also putting forward policies of identity and defence of the German nation and culture in order to mobilize voters. Roland Koch (CDU) was successful in the Hesse election (February 1998) in collecting signatures to stop immigration, for example. After the defeat of the CDU in the federal election in 2002, Jörg Schönbohm made the following comment: ‘We cannot throw away the conservative silverware [value legacy] . . . We have to confide . . . more intensively again in the nation, and we should not only be proud of our soccer team, but also of all the achievements of our people’ (Der Spiegel 7 July 2002). Our study of German RWE shows the risks of ordinary nationalism, and the way that national identities can be instrumentalized in politics. To take steps against RWE and xenophobia, social-psychological research on RWE identity shows that, although ‘[w]e cannot stop thinking at least partially in categories – and therefore in at least something rather like an essentialist manner’ (Calhoun 1994: 19), we may need to reinforce and to activate more inclusive, more integrative levels of identification than the national one. According to the contact hypothesis first developed by Allport (1954), intergroup contact reduces negative stereotyping, prejudice and intergroup discrimination and thus improves intergroup relations when four key conditions are met: ● ● ●

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The group making contact must have equal status within the contact situation. The groups must strive for a common goal. Attainment of common goals must involve a cooperative effort across group boundaries and without intergroup competition. Authorities, the law or custom must sanction intergroup contact (Simon 2004: 135–55).

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With regard to these conditions, steps against RWE and xenophobia require effort from all institutional and collective agents within a civil society (Klein and Simon 2003; Roth 2003).

Notes 1 There is still an ongoing debate in German scientific RWE research about the term ‘right-wing extremism’. It was introduced by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) and it suggests that the phenomenon is mostly located at the margins of society. Even if many social scientists choose to use the term ‘right-wing radicalism’ instead, we submit to the current usage. 2 Each interviewee has been given a fictitious name. In brackets are indicated age, gender and organization. 3 Following the party’s own statements, 13,000 members in the official statistics (Verfassungsschutzbericht 2000/2002). 4 Young National Democrats = Junge Nationaldemokraten ( JN). The JN is the youth organization of the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (National Democratic Party of Germany – NPD), and it contains many former members of militant RWE organizations which have been banned. 5 Ex-neo-Nazi Hermann (male, 24) is an exception for two reasons: he is no longer active, and he never belonged to the REP or JF. The interview with him served as a kind of pretest – that is, to validate the questionnaire and to get further access to the concepts of German RWE. Hermann is therefore omitted in the following analysis. 6 Alliance ’90/The Greens. 7 Ökologisch Demokratische Partei = Ecological Democratic Party; a conservative splinter group of the Greens. 8 Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands = Social Democratic Party of Germany. 9 CDU/CSU: 6, SPD: 2, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen: 4, FDP: 2 (multiple responses were possible). 10 German League for People and Homeland. 11 Altogether 11 out of 24 interviewees did not go to church any longer, 2 were nondenominational. 12 The four steps are: (1) sympathy with the movement, (2) becoming a target for mobilization attempts, (3) motivation to participate, (4) participation. 13 Florian (REP, male, 59) meant the visit of Willy Brandt – Chancellor of the social-liberal government at that time – to Poland on 7 December 1970, where he made this gesture of reconciliation in front of a memorial for the Polish victims of National Socialism in the former Warsaw Ghetto. For Florian, it was a betrayal of national interests, degrading Germany by admitting its guilt in front of Polish soldiers and Jews. 14 Franz (REP, male, 41) was not the only one using the term ‘Mid-Germany’ (Mitteldeutschland) instead of ‘East Germany’ (Ostdeutschland ), which has a revisionist connotation. It implied that there is some territory beyond today’s eastern borders that Germany was entitled to. 15 The projective test of the photo showing Muslims at prayer (see Chapter 5 in this volume) in particular made the interviewees less reluctant to show their discriminations of foreigners.

10 The Netherlands Stigmatized outsiders Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans

Active involvement in the extreme right in the five countries where we conducted our interviews often entailed some measure of stigmatization. Stigmatization of movement activists is not unique for right-wing extremism. Yet, it has become an almost inevitable consequence of activism of the extreme right, and certainly in the Netherlands. In none of the five countries did stigmatization take place to the extent it did in the Netherlands. Therefore, in addition to the stories of entrance, involvement and exit this chapter on the Netherlands will give special attention to the stigmatization of the extreme right. Stigmatization implies that a characteristic of a person is taken as evidence that this person is flawed, devalued and less human (Crocker et al. 1998). The stigma that marks the stigmatized person is a social construction. Perceivers who stigmatize others turn a characteristic of their targets into a stigma and thereby imply that the bearer of that characteristic is morally defective and to be avoided. Targets of stigmatization can hold the challenged characteristic involuntarily (for example, ethnicity), or voluntarily (for example, active involvement in an extreme right organization).

Constructing the stigma Xenophobes, Nazis and fascists are the characteristics ascribed to members of the extreme right. Each of these qualifications is negatively evaluated, especially in the Netherlands. Being labelled ‘Nazi’ or ‘fascist’ and to a lesser extent being labelled ‘xenophobe’, is not flattering at all nor is it meant to be flattering, neither in the Netherlands nor in the other countries. Although perhaps not really relevant in the context of stigmatization, it remains an interesting question whether the stereotype holds: is there a grain of truth in the stereotype or is it entirely made up? In other words, are activists of the extreme right actually xenophobic, Nazi and fascist? The stereotype absolutely holds for xenophobia, which characterizes the mindsets of all our interviewees. Listen to some of them: [B] is borders closed, that is point one. Ehm . . . illegal [immigrants] out, those who are here, ehm . . . thus those out. Then the people who stay here and who are unemployed back to their countries of origin. The people who paid their

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taxes/social security and who perhaps receive disability payment or something similar also back to their countries of origin, perhaps with a little bit of pressure in the right direction if they don’t cooperate, because here we are in a emergency situation . . . only take that multi, that multicultural society. That multicultural society that doesn’t turn out to be a great success in countries such as Yugoslavia and the like and here we are creating it, hence, we mustn’t do that. (Rinus, VNN/NNP, male, 66) Just intelligent politics, our own country for our own people, thus making sure that there is no mass immigration, ehm . . . a single immigrant is fine but not people who come here in masses. With hundreds of thousands, and then they also want to maintain again their own language and culture, their own mosque, their own this and their own that, it can’t be. (Chris, CD/Voorpost, male, 55) But there’s no one who is helping you and if then you see that those foreigners get everything, well then the hatred gets that big at some point, and if you see what misery occurs to divorced wives at social security, who ask for a washing machine and that, that they can’t get one and that a Somali who lives next door gets everything he wants and everything new, yeah people, them, them, them just can’t take it anymore. More are coming to the CD, that is the only party that in the end of the day tries to do something. (Matthijs, CD, male, 59) You know, asylum seekers, heh, they come to here in the disguise of political refugee. And that is often not at all true in 90 per cent of the cases. But it’s the people with the most vivid imagination who know how to tell the most fantastic stories, who come seek asylum for political reasons and then show little burns they caught while baking pancakes and than they say ‘look I am tortured there, there they have put their cigarettes out’. That’s the way it goes and what’s more they come often illegal via smuggler’s routes to the Netherlands. Absolutely, the Chinese who come to Europe via Moscow. Imagine. (Louise, CD/NPP, female, 67) Passages like these can be found in every single interview. Anti-Semitism, Nazism and fascism are less common, though certainly not absent, as shown by the following three quotes: Well, we’re somewhat more extreme, no. We’re more of a fascist kind, no, that’s clear. That’s public knowledge, that’s no secret, of course. Yeah, and that the worthy gentlemen find it difficult that the guy [Freling, then one of the leaders of CP ’86] wants to raise his right hand [make the Hitler salute], at private parties mind you, well, right, let them become members of the CD if

174 Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans they have problems with that. Look, let’s face it, I can imagine that if we were to score nationwide ten seats or fifteen seats [in the Parliament] and this sort of information comes in the open, yeah that may indeed cost us votes, but our party is relatively small and yeah it’s only a matter of a few per cent. We must build on the more extreme and thus I wouldn’t care a damn if Freling raises his right paw, I do it in Madrid and also in Italy and I don’t keep it secret. (Michael, CP ’86, male, 34) I would rather see the majority of the Jews leave to Israel or the like, or somewhere else where they like it, but if they want to stay they must make a clear choice, what they are actually, whether they are Dutch or Jewish . . . Yeah, there’s no place for the Jewish religion here, but there’re very few who are really practising the Jewish religion . . . Well, look I think that every Jew must ask himself am I Dutch or Israeli and the Jew that answers that question saying ‘I am Dutch’ can stay here as far as I am concerned. ( Johan, CP ’86, male, 33) I am not a racist. I am a national-socialist. Hitler had divisions of Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Muslims. If you read Mein Kampf he writes about Über- and Untermenschen as he phrases it but I don’t agree with those terms. I simply say they are all the same, but they must scram from here. And Jews are the worst of all . . . Patriotic, yeah, I find that a disgusting phrase. The worst characters in this country are those who [worship] our flag, our leaders, that is such a cliché. My line is the swastika and my leader is Adolf Hitler. (Guus, CP ’86, Nederlandse Volksunie, male, 30) There certainly is a grain of truth in the stereotype, in fact more than a grain: strong xenophobic sentiments are present in every interview, while we encountered pockets of Nazism, fascism and anti-Semitism scattered through the stories told to us by many an interviewee. This is not to say that the Dutch rightwing extremists are ideologically very much different from those in the other four countries of our study. They are not. To be sure, the specific ideological configuration varies in the five countries, but the basic ingredients are largely the same. However, stigmatization is not only about these ideological marks. It is predominantly about the appreciation of such marks. As was argued in Part I, the socio-political climate in the Netherlands was the least favourable to right-wing extremism. If stigmatization of right-wing extremists is to be expected anywhere, it is to be in the Netherlands. We shall therefore concentrate our discussion on the stories told by the Dutch extremists about stigmatization.

Acquiring the mark: becoming an extreme right activist Stories of stigmatization obviously begin with stories of initiation. Personal histories about how individuals came to acquire the stigmatizing marks. Although all our interviewees had their own history of how they became involved in the extreme

The Netherlands: stigmatized outsiders 175 right movement, there are also many common elements. Based on these common elements we constructed three prototypical routes to extreme right activism. The following three stories illustrate these trajectories. Hans Hans (Voorpost, CP ’86, male, 32) was born in 1965 in Amsterdam. When Hans was ten years old his parents got divorced and Hans, his mother and brother moved to the eastern part of the country. When he was 18 years old they moved to the coastal area near Amsterdam. At age 19 Hans finished school and left the parental home. From the early 1990s onward he worked as a taxi driver. He married in 1996. Since his 15th year Hans has been involved in the movement of the extreme right; from 1990 onwards he served the CP ’86 in various positions, inter alia member of the board of the party, and assistant to the CP ’86 members of a city council (1990–4). At the time of the interview Hans was increasingly active as action leader of Voorpost Nederland. Although Hans became ‘really actively involved’ when he was 19, he had ‘always been interested in politics’ especially in anarchism and nationalism. When he was 15, he requested information from the NVU and the CP, but the CP was too moderate in his eyes: Moreover, they were mostly old men and academics. High school teachers seemed to run that party too. It didn’t appeal to me at all. Teachers were not his friends in those days. At school, he was opposed to what he labelled ‘the soft teachers culture’ and ‘the so-called progressives’. He enjoyed provoking his teachers by taking extreme stands in debates about racism, women’s rights, etc. When he finished school Hans became ever-more involved in extreme right politics. He was part of a group that increasingly engaged in leafleting, painting graffiti, putting up posters. Not massive protests, but little games played with the police: The police always rounded some of us up. Those who could hide among the public could get away with it. Nobody volunteers to be arrested, but you knew that your friends were not going to say anything if they were arrested. If you’re rounded up, that’s bad luck, they kept you six hours at the police station, they confiscated your propaganda material, and then they let you go. The same game was played every other week. Then, in 1987 Hans was involved in a court case. He was accused of racism because of a leaflet distributed in 1986. The court case represented a turning point in his life: I let myself be sentenced although I hadn’t done it. I had done nothing, but I did say that I had done it. Why? Well, it was sort of a turning point. I

176 Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans reasoned, if I say now that I have done it, then there is no way back. I can forget about a career, because I won’t any longer be able to make one. Hence, I don’t have to worry about that any more . . . if I burn all the bridges, in a way, I don’t have to bother any more whether I should or should not. That doesn’t matter any more. That’s what I did. I believe I was 21. From that moments onwards Hans made a rapid career in the extreme right movement. At a time that the JFN (the extreme right youth organization he and Stewart Mordaunt were leading) ran the risk of being outlawed, Mordaunt was approached by the board of CP ’86 to run for a seat on the city council of The Hague (1990). Slightly indignant, Hans contacted Mordaunt as soon as he became aware of his move: What are you doing in that goofy party! Useless organization the CP! He responds: No that [party] is very different now, much more radical. Well, I called his home for a discussion and what he told me did not sound bad. They needed more youth, and more leaflet actions. The same we always did in the youth organization, but now in the name of a political party. More opportunities, that I found appealing. As soon as he had become a member of the CP ’86 (in 1990), Hans organized – at Mordaunt’s request – a meeting with his friends in his home town: I explained what the CP ’86 was about, and what it wasn’t. That what we thought it was from the years before, a bunch of old men who only expressed moderate ideas . . . that that was the old CP from 1984 or 1985. The people who sat on the city council said nothing, did nothing, never distributed any leaflets. We wanted action, provoke demonstrations of the left, put up posters or graffiti, distribute leaflets! That was what we felt to be action. And going together to Diksmuiden (the Yzerbedevaart in Belgium, see Chapter 8 in this volume) or to Germany or England. That was what we liked. Eventually, ten of his friends or so joined him to bring the CP ’86 to life. Initially, they put a lot of effort into leafleting. Later Hans became the editor of the party’s newsletter. He became deputy-secretary of the party and Mordaunt’s assistant on the city council. He took also upon himself the coordination of membership recruitment and protest demonstrations in and around his electoral district. Hans has a clear goal: Like I said before this is my life. My life stands in service of my political idea. That has priority number one. A whole lot further down the line comes my wife. Much further down everything that other people care about. That is absolutely worthless.

The Netherlands: stigmatized outsiders 177 Piet Piet (CD, male, 57) was born in 1940 into a catholic family with seven children. Piet followed the footsteps of his father and became a construction worker. For more than 40 years he worked on concrete construction of bridges and roads. In the early 1960s he got married. He has a son and two daughters and four grandchildren. Since March 1994 Piet has been an active member of the CD. The reason why he became a member of the CD is in Piet’s own words ‘a story in itself’. In the early nineties his oldest daughter left her partner because he was addicted to drugs and alcohol and returned to her parents’ home. The ex-partner was outraged, threatened her and her family, vandalized the garden and wrecked her car twice. When he torched Piet’s son’s car, Piet was ready for murder. All this went on for ten months. Piet was completely bewildered by the way the police dealt with the situation. Recollecting that period years later, he still speaks with great emotion: It really was a horrible time. It is hard to describe. I called the police and then you hear ‘Sir, can you call us back when he really does something?’ I found it mind-boggling to see what someone can do in this country these days. It has cost me a fortune, because I also had to send my daughter to a safe house in the south of the country, otherwise she would have no longer been alive . . . You expect that the police will help you if you are terrorized like this. But nothing happened, absolutely nothing. All those ten months of terror the police didn’t do anything. Later I sued them and won the case. But it doesn’t really help, it doesn’t help at all. Although I received a letter from the police commander with apologies. After ten months his daughter’s ex-partner was eventually sentenced, but Piet’s trust in the police was shaken: You’re so resentful against what you really counted on. I trusted the police. I mean, if you have lived like a decent person all your life, if you have always paid your taxes, I mean, I have worked for 42 years, I have never been unemployed, I have never needed social security. He has always been able to help himself, and the first time that he needed help nobody was there to help him. But there was more to it. Piet was, all these years he worked, an active member of the labour union. In the same period that the harassment by his daughter’s expartner took place he was busy organizing a strike at a steel company in his capacity as member of the regional board of his union. During those two weeks he was busy helping the union’s organizer to do her job. The strike was a success and the union was able to negotiate a deal. During the preparations for the strike Piet used a minibus from the steel company. A month later he was told by the steel company and by his own company (a contractor that worked for the steel company) that the steel company held him responsible and he was fired immediately.

178 Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans Expected that his union would support him, after all the strike had been a success because of his efforts. But then something completely unexpected happened: The union dropped me! At that point I thought: blokes it has been fun, but don’t expect anything from Piet any more. Honestly, I have tried to salvage the situation, but no they weren’t at home. You expect that they are backing you, I have talked it over with them three, four times. I had a good contact with the union. But I really felt abandoned by the union. The local media gave some coverage to Piet’s story and an active member of the CD that had just set out to recruit new members gave him a call: We talked for an evening and I went with him to Haarlem for more information. But I waited two years before I became a member. Wherever I was allowed to come I listened and watched carefully. What are CD-ers I asked myself. I saw people like myself. I mean, I got to know a painter from Haarlem. He is a member of the city council these days. And I got to know a guy from Ijmuiden, a carpenter. A very nice guy. In a second interview Piet emphasized once again that he did not walk on thin ice. But he acknowledged that his step to become actively involved in the CD was predominantly an emotional one: In a way it was sort of a revenge. A revenge on all those agencies that we are paying for but that absolutely don’t work. When he eventually ran for the CD for the city council of his home town, as a final blow he is ousted from his union. Maria Maria (CD, female, 56) has been city council member for the CD in her home town since March 1994. In the council she deals with social welfare, social support and health issues. Maria was born in Delft in a family with six children. Her father was a truck driver. When she was 16 years old she finished her education in child care. Since then she has worked in the social welfare sector. Her husband is also a truck driver. After the birth of her two children she continued her studies, but then her son became chronically ill and she gave up school because she felt unable to combine children and education. Her experience with the health care system – through the problems with the chronical illness of her son, but also through her own experiences when she had a postnatal depression – brought her to be involved in city politics: The fact that from his [her son’s] birth onwards I am trying to find a place [in a health care institution] for him and that it simply fails. And than you see

The Netherlands: stigmatized outsiders 179 people around you with no more than social security money, mothers who have a hard time, and who can’t make both ends meet. At the same time you see Turkish and Moroccan families arriving in homes that are ready for them with carpet and everything . . . A month later they drive in a Mercedes. The only thing they do is call at social security on a Sunday. You wonder are we doing something wrong or are they so clever? Her best friend was actively involved in a local political party and she collaborated with her, especially on health and care issues. In 1993 her brother – who was an active member of the CD – asked her if she would agree to stand on the party’s long list for the city council elections in March 1994. She felt that she should support her brother: Brothers and sisters, you must be ready for each other. As some point you simply notice that you accomplish more if you help each other. I mean, if the one lifts the other to reach for the candy tin than you’re working as a team, better than when you can’t reach it yourself. We have always had a special bond. She had not expected for a split second that she would be elected. At best, she assumed that she would serve as an assistant to the council members. To her great surprise she came second on the list – although according to the party’s rules that was possible only if someone had been a member for at least two years. In 1994 she was elected as council member. Hans, Piet and Maria are exemplary cases of three different routes toward activism: continuity, conversion, and compliance, respectively. Continuity refers to life-histories wherein movement membership and participation are a natural consequence of the preceding political socialization (Roth 2003). Continuity situates social movement participation centrally in the life-course of the activist (Andrews 1991; Teske 1997). Conversion, on the other hand, relates to those trajectories where movement membership and participation imply a break with the past. Quite often critical events play a crucial role in these life-histories. Obviously, conversion does not come out of the blue: it is rooted in a growing dissatisfaction with life as it is, and usually the critical event is only the final spur toward change (Teske 1997). Blee (2002) observed that the women she interviewed about their participation in the Ku Klux Klan in the USA remarkably often referred to a dramatic personal experience (a car accident or being raped) that triggered the decision to engage in radical politics. Blee describes how such decisions are like the sudden religious conversions. In addition to continuity and conversion, the interviews revealed a third road towards extreme right activism that we labelled compliance. It refers to the situation where people enter activism more or less in spite of themselves. Maria is a good example of someone who did not so much chose to become involved in extreme right politics as found herself pulled into it. Rather than their own desire, it was circumstances they did not even always command that pulled them into activism.

180 Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans Continuity, conversion and compliance are three possible lines our interviewees can take when they tell their stories. Whether the stories they tell us reflect the truth is not the point. What they do reflect, however – the past according the interviewee – is precisely what we try to understand; 19 of our interviewees told us stories of continuity, 8 told stories of conversion and 9 stories of compliance. The stories of continuity were either testimonies of life-times of commitment to extreme right politics, or of life-long journeys from one political shelter to the other by ‘political wanderers’. Nine of our interviewees belonged to the first category, which we labelled ‘revolutionaries’ and 10 in the second, which we labelled ‘wanderers’. The 8 activists who told us conversion stories all recalled events that had changed their lives or worldviews and made them receptive to the appeals of the extreme right. Compliance stories usually tell of friends or family members who persuaded someone who did not feel particularly attracted to politics to become actively involved in the extreme right. Continuity The two kinds of continuity stories are told by significantly different types of activists. Educated angry young (on average aged 32) men, who want to make revolution contrasted with much older (on average aged 53) ‘political wanderers’, who end up in extreme right politics having travelled from the party to another in the search for a political home. The involvement in extreme right politics of the 9 ‘revolutionaries’ started invariably at an early age as a kind of provocation. They were all involved in the radical sector of the extreme right (NVU, JFN, CP ’86). Interestingly, 6 of the 9 grew up in single-parent families (mothers only). In fact, two-thirds of the activists who grew up in single-parent families were in this category. The life-stories of these young men are very similar to that of Hans: I began to lose myself in the ideology behind it and thus got to know national socialism . . . I mean, if you begin to analyse the ideology of the Germans in the Second World War then you get to know, of course, national socialism and that was an ideology that appealed to me in those days. At age 15 I became a member of the Nederlandse Volksunie right away. ( Johan, CP ’86, male, 33) At age 13 I began to read creepy booklets about the Third Reich and the SS. Eh, hm, that was, of course, cool. My mother wasn’t really happy with it I remember and, God, at school I was already a special case. The creepy booklets were about Hitler and the Third Reich and so on. I even brought such booklets to school, eh, that surprised the teachers a little bit, though . . . Yeah, I did have problems at school . . . I began to rebel, so to say. At some point, I was send away from school. (Michael, CP ’86, male, 34)

The Netherlands: stigmatized outsiders 181 At age 15 I felt that something was wrong [in this country]. I was at an exhibition of the Anne Frank Foundation . . . On display there was an enlarged poster from the Nederlandse Volksunie, I think. It had a telephone number. Thus, I got Mr Glimmerveen on the phone who gave me the number of Stewart [Mordaunt] . . . At that age I thought it bold and very good that I was part of it . . . It did have something exciting. Though I must say clearly that I wasn’t only interested in provocation. (Fred, Voorpost, male, 25). [In the early 1990s, when he was around 25 years old, Tom saw a demonstration of the extreme right on television.] In some way I felt attracted by the fact that these people expressed their views, that they expressed themselves actively, took a certain risk by coming out in the streets and seeking confrontation with the police by being there. [After some attempts to join he was asked to participate in handing out leaflets.] The content wasn’t marvellous, but after all it was all we had. Yeah, that was great. Finally, I had the feeling that I was doing something. (Tom, CP ’86, VNN, male, 31) The 10 ‘wanderers’ (9 men and 1 woman) are not only much older, as a natural consequence of their ramble through the political landscape they entered the extreme right movement much later in their lives than the ‘revolutionaries’. The vast majority (7) is involved in the moderate sector of the extreme right (CD). Nothing is very special about these activists: they are all from middle-of-the-road families; some have higher education, some lower; some have jobs, some don’t; some have a company of their own, some are employees. They have in common their journey through the conventional political parties that failed to satisfy their needs. Their disappointment in institutionalized politics made them shift to a party with a more extreme ideology. Chris, George and Louise are three prototypical ‘wanderers’. Chris When he was 19 years old, Chris began his political career in the ‘Social Democratic Party’ (PvdA), the party of his parents. He would have preferred a party with a more nationalistic policy, but couldn’t find a proper political home. It took 15 years before he left the party, although the gulf between his political ideas and those of the PvdA grew over the years. After a period of detachment from politics, he started to look around again: In 1980 I read Vrij Nederland and the Haagsche Courant [two Dutch weeklies] and saw that Janmaat [Dr J. G. H. Janmaat, chairman of the CD] and Brookman [Dr H. Brookman, founder of the CD] were involved in something that appealed to me. Somewhat with more national consciousness, but not extreme right. He [Janmaat] was immediately defined as ‘that goes in the wrong direction’, and so on, but I did not think so at all. In my view it went precisely

182 Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans in the right direction. Janmaat’s appeal [was] to a more nationalistic attitude, ‘Netherlanders first’ and obviously that related to frittering away Netherlands’ interests to the multiculturalism or the capital or both. (Chris, CD, Voorpost, male, 56) George George – the political leader of the CD – is a self-made man, who after years of working in a variety of jobs finished undergraduate studies in political science and entered politics via the KVP, the Catholic party of those days, with the firm intention of making a rapid political career. But that appeared to be easier said than done, the opportunities were disappointing. Obviously, the established parties were not anxiously waiting for him. When he delivered a speech in a joint radio programme of the political parties with a few bold statements about migrants his position in the party become problematic. His attempts to mobilize supporters only made things worse. He decided to quit the KVP and politics altogether, but not for long. His political ambitions had not waned. Thus, when he read about Brookman’s initiative to establish a party ‘that dares to say what is wrong in the Netherlands’ he decided to contact Brookman: I decided to contact him [Brookman], which wasn’t easy, because nobody wanted to put me through at the Vrije Universiteit. But at some point it worked okay. After several discussions I became a member of the CP, after they had dissolved the Nationale Centrum Partij [National Centre Party) . . . A month later I became the secretary, I was the seventh member! (George, CD, male, 62) Louise Louise is one of the few activists who was raised in an extreme right milieu, although neither parent was ever actively involved in politics. Unlike her parents she wants to engage in active politics, but cannot find a party of her liking. The VVD – the conservative party – she deems too left. She reads about the Nederlandse Volksunie whose members fought with Moroccans who had sought asylum in a church. She was impressed because: They [the Moroccans] ought not to be there, moreover church asylum was abolished a long time ago. It was a shame that all this was tolerated by the government. Thus I applauded Glimmerveen. But then it was said that he was a Nazi who raised his arm and shouted Sieg Heil. No, . . . better not, that borders on fascism and that I didn’t want either. (Louise, CD, NNP, female, 67) The CD, however, provided a political home. In 1982 she became a member. The leader of the party asked her to organize the party in her province but she declined, because she did not want to upset her husband who was not enthusiastic

The Netherlands: stigmatized outsiders 183 about her membership. She remained ‘a sleeping member’ but when her husband died in 1990 she became actively involved in the CD. Conversion All 8 activists who told a conversion story were men. Like the ‘political wanderers’ they were mostly members of the more moderate CD. In terms of age they ranked in between the two groups of activists in the previous section, but as far as education is concerned they ranked lower than both groups. With one exception, they all joined the movement in the early nineties when the extreme right peaked in the polls and the elections. Blee (2002) describes how stories of conversion are built around events from the individual’s past. She shows, however, that the selection and interpretation of these events is strongly influenced by the current commitments and the movement’s ideology. In a similar way we saw our ‘converts’ tell their stories. All the stories bear a remarkable resemblance: the interviewee describes how he was mistreated by unjust authorities, he describes his anger and frustration, and how in these circumstances representatives of the extreme right in his community showed an interest in his case and offered assistance. Mark, Henk, and Cor explain how they became actively involved in the extreme right. Mark Mark’s story began in 1993 when the company where he worked was faced with a new law requiring that 3 per cent of the workforce must be migrants. Mark, then chairman of the Works Council, was fiercely against it. When the personnel manager suggested checking the sickness records of employees, he concluded that management wanted to fire workers who were often sick to meet the requirements of the new law. He threatened to bring the company to a standstill unless the personnel manager took his suggestion back. When this was answered by the manager threatening to fire him, he walked out and staged a wildcat strike that lasted six days. This marked the beginning of a confrontation with management that culminated in Mark’s refusal to accept a migrant as a member of the Works Council. Eventually, after several legal procedures Mark accepted a proposal to buy him out. He concluded that that one year triggered: . . . The hatred against the government. That the government takes these unpopular measures and that the silent, incapable Netherlander takes it for granted. Someone who has a ready tongue may say what he thinks. But I heard what other people felt, people who get together in a [coffee-] corner and talk to each other. They are afraid to move up and to say ‘this is what we feel’. Thus, increasingly I began to do so. (Mark, CP ’86, NNP, VNN, male, 50) In the meantime some employees of the company who were member of CP ’86 and who had become aware of his troubles with management approached him and

184 Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans asked him to join the party and use the party as an outlet for his opinions. This marked the beginning of a rapid career within the extreme right movement. Mark became a member, he ran for the city council; not much later he was asked to join the national board of the party and soon he was elected as the party’s chairman. Henk Henk’s story starts when migrants opened a coffee house and mosque in Henk’s neighbourhood. This was the latest of a number of problems in the community: All of a sudden there were a coffee house and a mosque. The municipality knew nothing of it and the police had heard about it, that it was going to happen and that it happened without permission. But that nobody makes an issue of it, that it is winked at! Eventually we were left holding the baby. Look I won the lawsuit and I had the whole neighbourhood behind me from the very beginning, that I have done neatly. But if you then see what you come across, how the municipality and the police are treating you, that is unreal . . . As a matter of fact we are discriminated against. (Henk, CD, male, 40) In the middle of this confrontation Henk was approached by the representatives of the CD in the city council of his town, who offered help. Later he agreed to run for the CD in the city council elections and was elected. Cor Cor’s great frustration is the way authorities deal with squatters. Being owner of a real estate company his anger rose to such an extent that he looked for a political outlet which he found in the CD: You were sitting with purple cheeks in front of the television set. Helpless with anger, you think, damn, damn, damn, why aren’t they doing anything? You know, you don’t see them, you don’t hear them, there’s no real opposition, it was taboo to resist it . . . The VVD [conservative party] didn’t give a damn either, let it go completely . . . I found this endless dealing and haggling with those squatters, that took much too long, those negotiations, shall we storm against them, shall we not storm, and in the meantime the owners they were enormously duped, and those who live in the midst are terrorized, although they were expensive apartments. I found it disgusting. (Cor, CD/NB, male, 47) Compliance Interestingly, all but one of the women we interviewed told stories of compliance. Indeed, 4 of the 9 interviewees in this category were women. This seems to

The Netherlands: stigmatized outsiders 185 contradict Blee’s (2002) observation, that not all women in movements of the extreme right are compliant followers of the men in their lives. Our findings seem to confirm the stereotype that Blee thought to be disconfirmed by her interviewees. As a group (men and women) those who displayed compliance in their route to activism were relatively young, and had also had a brief experience of activism. Their level of education was relatively low, 7 out of 9 became member of the more moderate CD. Stories of compliance may be more typical for the women we interviewed, but does not necessarily mean that these women were just compliant followers. To be sure, it was friends, husbands or brothers who pulled them in but, as Maria’s story illustrates, this does not necessarily make them marginal figures in the movement. The example of Janneke confirms this: In fact, I became only active just before the city council elections in 1994. He [her husband] was already a member, I not yet, I also had my doubts, the same prejudices you hear everywhere until he came home with the platform and then you study it in more detail and in fact it wasn’t that bad. Then, it was said we want women on the list [for the elections] would that be something for you? I said you can put me on the list but at the bottom. But as a matter of fact, he became number one and I number three, and thus we both were elected. ( Janneke, CD, female, 36) But it was not just women who were pulled into the movement in a compliant manner. The five men in this category told similar stories. Maarten, for example, followed his friends: I landed in a group of friends who happened to be extreme right. And yeah, God, I found it very enjoyable. I found it exciting too . . . But you must take into account that I met with them predominantly because we went to parties together. I didn’t meet with them for politics, but to go out with them. Every now and then we had discussions and that was okay with them. And then, slowly but steadily I began to help with the distribution of leaflets, and put the first stickers up. In my eyes I was part of a gigantic movement. I was a political dimwit . . . Only later I found out that at its peak it included 22 paying members. (Maarten, CP ’86, male, 28) Ralph was drawn into the movement by his grandmother. Indeed, Ralph is another one of the few activists we encountered who grew up in an extreme right milieu. Both his father and his mother were members of the CD. At 17 years old, Ralph was the youngest activist of the CD: It was my grandmother. She is already 13 years a member and then you get into it automatically. Once you go with her, and you’re pleased with what you find. Obviously, the ideas behind it play a role as well. If you go with her you

186 Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans learn to know the people and you meet with friends who are members of the party and thus you naturally get into it. (Ralph, CD, male, 17)

Facing stigmatization Of the two possible types of first encounters with a movement – the activist approaches the movement or the movement approaches the activist – the former was typical for those who told stories of continuity and the latter for those who told stories of conversion and compliance. Whatever forms the first encounter took, however, everybody had to face the stigmatization associated with being an extreme right activist. Extreme right activists are portrayed in the Dutch media as pathologic quarrellers, troublemakers, opportunists, fanatics, racists, Nazis and fascists and extreme right parties are associated with racism, Nazism, fascism and anti-Semitism. How did they cope with such a markedly negative public opinion and media coverage? Was it a matter of concern when they were considering joining or did it simply not occur to them? It certainly did bother them, but in a different way depending on the trajectory they took. For the ‘revolutionaries’ the stigma was not a problem at all. On the contrary, they took pride in being outcasts. They were also the only ones who did not have difficulty in affirming that their ideological roots were in racism and Nazism. Hans (CP ’86, Voorpost, male, 32), for example, referring to possible sacrifices, said: It is an obligation I have, an obligation to the people, to my people. To other people who have a big mouth but never act themselves I can always say: ‘Don’t blame me if something fails, I worked hard for it, you could have done the same.’ I really see it as an obligation to my people. When asked about the extreme right’s racism, he said: I feel that people who have worked here, the guest workers, that naturally they must be paid . . . but they must leave the country . . . let that be clear . . . I am in favour of a white Europe . . . let that be clear . . . I won’t keep that secret . . . I am against mixture of races . . . I am dead against it. (Hans, CP ’86, Voorpost, male, 32) The ‘political wanderers’ and those who told stories of conversion or compliance denied any links with racism and Nazism or had decided in advance to keep their distance. In Maria’s words: That extreme is a label given by the press. You are left or right but extremism makes that you are compared to the CP ’86 and that is all Hitler adoration. I find that horrifying, I really can’t stand that. And that we are lumped together that I find difficult because it is difficult to get rid of because you don’t get the

The Netherlands: stigmatized outsiders 187 opportunity to explain what you are and what you are doing. I abhor Hitler and the prosecution of the Jews, really that kind of things make me shiver. (Maria, CD, NB, female, 56) Or Harry: There is a huge difference between CP ’86 and the CD, of course. And what I absolutely won’t tolerate and what I have never caught someone doing, is those ideas from the Second World War. That I find absolutely unacceptable. If in a meeting next to me someone would raise his hand [in the Hitler salute] I would knock him of his stool right away, because I find it awful that such things happen. (Harry, CD, male, 45) Yet, they did join a movement that was seen very negatively. The ‘compliants’ tended to neglect the stigmatization or tried to not reflect on it. Paula, for example, who became active after her husband has been actively involved in the extreme right for some time, reasoned: I was already isolated, for me the step was not so difficult, of course. Because of my husband’s position I was already isolated. For some time already I didn’t have many acquaintances and friends. Much people beyond fellow party members and friends you have, I hadn’t anyway. The people who got to know me, learn who I am and than don’t want me anymore. Well, I have experienced that for so many years already, it hurts, but I don’t bother any more. (Paula, NB, female, 45) When Maarten became aware of the political sympathies of his party friends, he was somewhat shocked because he had learned at home and in school that these were dangerous people, but: You must take into account that I only was with them because we went out together . . . I wasn’t with them because of politics, but because we went out together. Every now and then we had discussions, but they never minded discussing. (Maarten, CP ’86, male, 28) Maria did not expect it and therefore the stigmatization hit her hard. It meant an enormous change in her life. Her friends reacted extremely negatively, including her best friend: That has been a great shock to me. I know her since I was five years old. We were friends in everything, in joy and sorrow. She was like a sister to me. And then her husband called that they had taken our address out of their address

188 Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans book and that they did not want to have anything to do with me anymore. It hit me right in the face. I couldn’t believe it. What was happening to me? Those are your best friends, you know. If they are your best friends they should talk with you, meet with you, ask you I don’t understand you, can you explain to me, or, I try to understand you but I disagree with you. Yes, it has hurt me very much. (Maria, CD, NB, female, 56) The most concerned were perhaps the ‘wanderers’ and the ‘converts.’ For them it was a real transition, which none of them took lightly. Piet, for example, spent two years awaiting, looking around, talking to people at meetings and only after he figured that many members of the CD were ordinary people like himself did he take the step of becoming a member. Mark decided to write a letter to his relatives and to withdraw from all his social responsibilities. Matthijs, who became a member of the CD, in 1989 consulted his children: I had thought a long time already. From the very beginning that the CD existed, I wanted to call to become a member. But I thought, why should I do it and for the children of course. I have a son who has a job in a security business, I have a son who has a hotel in this town, thus you must consult your children . . . They must agree with it . . . Once they had a meeting here, and then they have pushed Janmaat’s car into the water, that was in the Hotel Zeezicht. Well, a month later the parents of my daughter-in-law are still being threatened. Hence, I had asked the children, well, they said, that you must know yourself. Also when I put my name on that list, they said, Dad if you feel like doing it and want to stand on the list, that’s your own business. (Matthijs, CD, male, 59)

Bearing the mark: being a right-wing activist Active involvement in the extreme right in the Netherlands is very much framed by the characteristics of the movement. The extreme right has remained a bunch of marginal organizations very much involved in internal and external conflicts. As the movement is small, activists quickly assume positions of responsibility inside the organization. Equally quickly they engage in internal quarrels, are expelled or choose to quit and go elsewhere. Stars rise and fall swiftly, and the activists hop from one organization to another. Responsibility implies visibility and all our interviewees have experienced the social consequences of their involvement in the movement. Stigmatized as they became, they invariably had to pay the price for their activism. How did they cope with that situation? As we saw, the revolutionaries who have chosen to be active early on did not mind. For them the stigma was a badge of honour. Indeed, most of them deliberately chose a life on the fringe. But for the others stigmatization may have come as a surprise, as something they did not expect and were not prepared for. As they have burned their boats, they may feel trapped. Willem, Mark and Paula are good

The Netherlands: stigmatized outsiders 189 examples. They represent three types of activists: the ideologue, the entrepreneur and the helper. Willem Willem (Voorpost, male, 34) began his activist career in the JFN, a career that via positions in several other ER organizations ended in a leading position in Voorpost-Netherlands. Initially, he tried to stay ‘backstage’ as he did not want to put his private life and his business in jeopardy, but since the early 1990s he played a prominent role on the extreme right scene. He put much effort into the strengthening of the organization and the ideology of the Dutch extreme right. As CP ’86 in those years increasingly ran the risk of being outlawed, some key members established a new party, the Nederlands Blok (NB). For a while Willem was a member of the NB board. At the same time he was asked to advise the CP ’86 board about the reorganization of the party. Through all those years he was involved in the development of training programmes for party officials. In these different roles he had a part in the many conflicts that plagued the extreme right. Cor, Mark, Willem, Johan and Michael, were all among the other leading figures involved in these conflicts. When the merger of the extreme right parties eventually failed and when the fights within the CP ’86 intensified, he withdrew to where he came from – Voorpost – and devoted his time and energy to such new initiatives as the establishment of a Nationalistic Student Association, and the preparation and organization of training programmes and summer school for the extreme right. Willem was one of the ideologues of the extreme right. He wrote newsletters, brochures, organized training programmes and advised the party board. In his own words: My activities have a few phases. On the one hand, I feel that a body of thoughts must be discussed and developed, on the other hand, I would like to make my own contribution in that regard. And perhaps the most important my own development, I would like to develop my own thoughts. Every day with each book that I receive at home new ideas and inspiration come and I move ahead a little bit. That is special for me. Whether I can spread all this or can communicate part of it to others that would be nice because eventually that contributes to the other phase, that you make things discussible. It is [with] a certain sense of pride that I can contribute my mite. That I can say at some point you see that’s what I have accomplished . . . Meanwhile [the newsletter] has more than 200 subscriptions, that is not nothing. The numerous brochures that are sold, the books, well that are a few of those things. But Willem had to pay his price. Although he tried as long as possible to stay backstage, in 1998 his name and business were mentioned openly in the regional newspaper in reference to his activities in the extreme right. It meant the end of his marriage, which was already in a bad shape, and of his business:

190 Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans In fact, I was put under pressure. By my ex-wife and a factory. The combination of the two made me decide to quit my business and that has only cost me money. It became impossible to make any money. My largest supplier only wanted to deliver if I paid cash in advance . . . At the same time the bank did not want to give any more credit. Mark Mark (CP ’86, NNP, VNN, male, 50) entered the movement when his company fired him. The CP ’86 was for him a channel to vent his anger, not only about the way his company had treated him, but also anger about governmental policy. Soon he discovered how poorly organized the party was. From then on he devoted much of his time to training and educating the activists. He worked very hard to get the merger between the CD and CP ’86 off the ground. This merger has some urgency as CP ’86 ran the risk of being banned. When the merger failed his disappointment and frustration were great. He accepted an invitation from Janmaat (the chairman of the CD) to join the CD. Soon he became a member of the board, which was viewed by other activists with a mixture of jealousy and suspicion. All kinds of rumours and innuendos about him began to circulate. He had his fair share of the internal fights and conflicts. Sick and tired he decided to quit, shortly before he was expelled from the party, accused of being a member of the security police. He continued as an independent representative on the city council. In 1997 he was invited to join a new party the Volksnationalisten Nederland (in fact, a continuation of CP ’86 but without Johan and Mordaunt who have been expelled). Mark was the prototypical entrepreneur: wherever he appeared he began to organize: Well, then they got to know Henk for the first time, who wanted some policy in the party. At home I had prepared some flaps and stuck those on the wall. There they felt silent, that they had never experienced. On the flaps I had put the policy of the party, its goals, and a platform. He felt responsible and took on a missionary role, he wanted to show others the way: I am not the kind of person to sit and wait and see how everything goes astray. Not that I want to go in the front, but I don’t want to have the feeling that after all I didn’t do anything. That drives me, I simply want preferably every day, to tell everybody, men watch out, think of it, look around. That’s my objective. To make sure that people do not shut up unthinkingly, while their hearts tell them differently. Become mature and responsible, dare to speak, accept the punishment you’ll get. But Mark had mixed feelings about his work on the city council. It started when he was sworn in as a city council member. Demonstrations and protests by the Antifa accompanied the ceremony. Mark blamed the mayor for not interfering

The Netherlands: stigmatized outsiders 191 and actually felt threatened. He also found it disappointing that none of the other council members wanted to collaborate with him, not even the right-wing parties: I must say, that right now I find politics less appealing. Why? You can’t achieve anything here unless you belong to the governing party so that you have power. But an opposition party? Look at the large opposition party in [this town] even that can’t achieve anything, let alone a small one. So, I have never had that illusion. His active participation in the extreme right changed his life dramatically. He got to know those who fought against the extreme right and sought confrontation with them. All his time and money went to the party. But this was nothing, according to Mark, compared to the changes in his social and personal life: It changes your life completely . . . at Scania I had a constituency with whom I interacted on a daily base nice and friendly. Now I have a constituency with whom I interact in a political way . . . At the time I worked for the people’s interest, for their money, the circumstances at their work. That’s very different today. Interacting [in a] political [way] is always acting with suspicion, with a little bit of fear, carefully balancing your words, depending on whom you are talking to. What can I say, what can I not say. Paula Paula (NB, female, 45) became involved in the extreme right through her husband. She assisted him in his work for the party and was his assistant during the years that he occupied a seat on the city council for the CP first, then the CD and, finally, for the NB. She was the only daughter in a family of three, who after the death of her mother took care of the family. Paula herself was never really interested in politics; she was basically mothering her two sons who were both mentally handicapped. But when her children were old enough to go to school she began to support her husband in his work for the extreme right. She helped him organizing and preparing and distributing propaganda material; she joined him as a bystander when he attended the meetings of the city council, and when he was elected as a representative for the newly erected NB, she became his assistant. The latter function required much more political craft in committee meetings and the like. Repeatedly during the interview, she displayed her aversion to politics, and also extreme right politics, but she felt that she had no choice but support her husband: Of course, I feel responsible, after all it is the party of my husband. I work for him but at the same time he is my husband and you don’t say no so easy to your husband. If I were his assistant but not married to him than I would say that I would want to be left alone for a week or so. But then I see that he is going to do the work himself. What am I to do? So I help him again.

192 Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans She must participate in the political debates in committee meetings but fears to be ridiculed and feels incompetent and powerless: But you can’t show that, hence you try to figure what they are talking about. That’s very tiring. Once at a committee meeting I was almost laughed at. About some topic I listened to what everybody had to say often completely opposite to what the others were saying. I was listening and it made me desperate. Eventually my turn came and I said ‘I’m very sorry but actually all of you are right in a way’. Well, came a roaring laugh of the chairmen and I laughed myself too, but obviously, it is not a cheer to yourself. I decided that next time it will be better to shut up altogether . . . That’s what I do more often now, otherwise you make capital blunders. It is not only me losing face, but I pull the party down as well. Interestingly, the three trajectories seem to lead to different activity patterns as the three exemplars illustrate. Activist whose embrace the movement as a logical step in a longer trajectory (continuity) are more likely to take the role of the ideologue of the movement. They develop the ideas for the movement, they are involved in educating the membership and the like. Converts are angry, feel disadvantaged. They want to do something, they are the entrepreneurs of the movement. Finally, those who were pulled into the movement more or less compliantly predominantly restrict themselves to lending a helping hand to the others.

Experiencing stigmatization Activities can be performed ‘front stage’ or ‘back stage’. Public positions such as representatives in city councils or the Parliament are necessarily performed front stage. Other activities leave a person some degree of freedom as to whether they are acted out in public or remain behind the scenes if not wholly private. In the Dutch context, the odds of stigmatization are an important reason for some of our interviewees to stay behind the scenes. All our interviewees explain how they have experienced stigmatization, be it in the form of repression, attacks from the countermovement or exclusion from their social environment. Organizations and individuals were repeatedly brought to court because of the leaflets or statements they issued. If not prohibited by authorities, events and meetings were interrupted by anti-fascist organizations or demonstrations. In the political arena proper, representatives of the extreme right were neglected or boycotted. In their personal life interviewees and their families were blackmailed and threatened, they lost their job or business, or experienced problems with their employer or colleagues. Many interviewees lost friends and were ousted from organizations or groups they belonged to. As far as repression is concerned, the authorities for a long time banned any demonstration by the extreme right and tended to prohibit meetings. Leaflets and other written material were scrutinized and individuals or organizations were

The Netherlands: stigmatized outsiders 193 prosecuted if unlawful passages were found. One of the parties (CP ’86) was prosecuted and eventually sentenced for being a criminal organization, which in fact meant the end of the organization. Frans (VNN, Voorpost, male, 34) remembers how he and the other members of CP ’86 in his home town were rounded up by the police because he stood for CP ’86 in an election: Six o’clock in the morning the police stood at the door. Q: At your door? A: Yeah, wanting me at my door. I had to come with them, suspected of membership of a criminal organization. Yeah, they can take everybody into custody for that in principle thus that, ehm. Q: Everybody can be arrested? A: Yeah apparently, yeah, that is no problem. Thus I had to come with them, and ehm . . .. In principle there is little they can do, but they acted as if they were allowed quite a bit. They began immediately to check my bookshelves. I said you even don’t have a search warrant. You can try what you want, but I won’t let it happen. Yeah only a quick look at your books. There’s nothing strange there, thus, ehm . . . yeah, they could see that themselves as well. The one wanted to put handcuffs on, but the other said I don’t believe you have the intention to run away. No, think of it, running away that’s totally useless. So, I just went with them . . . I was kept until 4 o’clock, only than they began with their interrogation, and that interrogation lasted until 9 o’clock at night I believe. (Frans, VNN, Voorpost, male, 34) In terms of attacks by the countermovement, Cor remembers his installation as a member of the city council: Ehm . . . the whole event, the whole, ehm, ehm . . . the whole ceremony heh, that was ehm, you see that the whole hall is completely jammed with, ehm . . . punkers and squatters heh, that are just your arch-enemies and then it takes an hour and a half for the police to bully everybody out that is just a great, great, great pity. My parents where there for the event . . . they had taken all the trouble to get there, after all they weren’t that young anymore and there they stood in the entrance of the city hall next to each other like two pitiful little birds very, very meek while really the squatters and the police everybody passed there by, bleeding or not bleeding, by my parents, well they found it horrendous, for them it was ehm . . . really, ehm really such a big scandal, they have never forgotten. (Cor, CD, NB, male, 47) The archetypical attack by the countermovement every interviewee referred to is the hotel fire of Kedichem in 1986. The anti-fascist organizations in the country used to besiege meetings of the extreme right if they became aware of them, which often resulted in violent confrontations. As a consequence, most

194 Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans owners of meeting spaces tended to refuse to rent space to extreme right-wing organizations. In their turn, these organizations reacted to the situation by attempts to rent meeting space secretly in disguise (as an organization and as an individual), or to go to places individually and set up a meeting on the spot rather than rent space collectively. Kedichem was one of those meetings set up in the late 1980s between representatives of the CD and CP ’86 to discuss a possible merger. The anti-fascist movement got the information about the meeting and turned the place into a battlefield. Be it deliberately or by accident, the hotel was set on fire and several of those present at the meeting were seriously injured, among them Cor, one of our interviewees. The event led to a re-definition of strategies on both sides of the divide. Louise (CD, female, 64) describes the event: They began to throw bombs . . . stones to break the windows and after that they threw smoke bombs that were actually fire bombs. So they threw fire bombs inside. At first that went well because we could beat the bombs out with tablecloths that lay on the tables. But yeah then a curtain took fire that we could not reach and that was the beginning of the end. I went to the balcony at the back waited for a while and simply jumped of the balcony. But [the others] all went to the side of the hotel . . . wandering around because the whole of the hotel was completely white from the smoke . . . had to find their way by touch . . . some through the cellars . . . others jumped out of the windows. Well, that was quite a fall. That was at least 3 to 4 metres before they hit the ground. That’s why it turned so badly for Wil Schuurman [one of the members of the CD] because they had shattered the windows she cut her leg with the glass. That was sad, very sad. Perhaps it could have ended well had there immediately been an ambulance but the ambulance couldn’t get there because the whole road was blocked by fire brigades . . . therefore they had to leave her there for half an hour and that was why they had to amputate her leg . . . Janmaat [the political leader of the CD] did file a complaint and eventually there has been a court case [against the troublemakers] but what happened? They were acquitted of the charges because it was a political act. That’s why it was allowed and they just let them go. It was . . . well that made me furious . . . if we were to do something similar we all would have been in prison. But they can get away with it. (Louise, CD, NNP, female, 67) Many feel that the countermovement is officially supported, or at least tolerated, by the authorities and are outraged about it. This was reflected in Louise’s angry reaction to the follow-up of the Kedichem meeting, it is also clear in Maarten’s incensed commentary on what he sees as the official policy of the city administration: [ T]he anti-fascist movement got 20,000 guilders just to fight us. I mean, what has come over the municipality to fight a democratic party with public funds, after all we are registered by the electoral council, our statutes are in good

The Netherlands: stigmatized outsiders 195 standing, that means everything is in good standing. That I find unreal. I can imagine that people disagree with us but I don’t find that the municipality . . . the municipality is everybody’s institution, people are elected into it and they tell their stories, but I don’t think that it is the municipality’s job to . . . imagine that you live a Christian fundamentalist town and for example a liberal women’s party would run for the elections. The whole of the Netherlands would be up in arms if the municipality set 30,000 guilders aside to fight that party . . . I find that the national government and the local government alike go way beyond their bounds if indeed they use public funds to fight parties that are accepted in the democratic order, otherwise they must ban them. Indeed, as a right-wing extremist or a nationalist, no matter how you name it, I pay for my own suppression . . . I have experienced that so often. (Maarten, CP ’86, male, 28) In general, in the political arena proper the representatives of the extreme right are neglected and excluded by their colleagues. Paula (NB, female, 45) describes how representatives of other parties refused to work with her or even talk to her. All this came to a climax with the death of her son Bart: Bart then passed away. I received a card from only two council members, I mean, that’s not normal! I really think so . . . I find that really . . . Of course, they could have read it in the newspaper. They knew it all too well, because I sent a card to the mayor, to the aldermen who sent a letter of condolence, to be sure, but not a single personal gesture because you must not think that [the then mayor] will shake hands with me, so sorry for the wife of . . . forget it . . . Q: What did you feel? A: Anger, terrible anger. And then they dare to say that I am a-social, in the sense that I am a fascist in their eyes. Yeah, how are they like that? How are they themselves? (Paula, NB, female, 45) Harry (CD, male, 45) remembers how a new council member of Iranian descent spat at the table and turned away when his assistant wanted to congratulate him on his election. Making public someone’s affiliation to the extreme right is common strategy of the countermovement. First of all, every person who is known to be a member of an extreme right organization is listed on several countermovement websites, including any personal information the countermovement can obtain. Secondly, several of our interviewees found themselves confronted with information in the media meant to publicize their involvement in the extreme right. Willem is one of them. One day an anti-fascist magazine had an article titled ‘The Nationalistic Shopkeeper’: The article with the name of the shop and the street has the title ‘The Nationalistic Shopkeeper’ with statements by Van Donselaar [an expert on

196 Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans right-wing extremism] like ‘the odd man, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the smartest and an erudite man’. Well, that was flattering, of course, as such it made me smile. Thus far, my activism had not provoked any reaction. It was in that paper on Thursday. I [was] scared stiff, I had my heart in my throat. The day after I met some colleagues who pounded me on my shoulder saying don’t let them put you down. (Willem, Voorpost, male, 34) Eventually, as we have seen already, Willem had to give up his business. Fred (Voorpost, male, 25) was portrayed in the local newspaper of his home town: On the front page of the same newspaper [that announced his election] there was an article that you are . . . to say so, if I may use the phrase . . . a horrible creature, like a monster and that you should not be allowed to act . . . So, on the front page and to make it worse it has the information where I am working and what I am doing and that is, that was for many people reason also people who had nothing to do with the music school but who then phoned the director of the music school Do you know who you are employing? That kind of questions. A torrent of phone calls . . . The moment I heard about it I first felt . . . oh boy that’s going wrong completely and yeah the moment you’re really . . . on the front page of the newspaper and eh you see it, well you’re really scared . . . You think that your whole future collapses, that is your first reaction and also, of course, the fear that people will recognize you in the street and how your colleagues, the people at your work, your family, your friends will react . . . Yeah it is a psychological pressure that you experience at that moment . . . that is difficult to describe. And that is also really a matter of not being able to sleep . . . Fortunately, it wasn’t all that bad in the end but at the very moment your world really collapses. Almost every interviewee reports stories of exclusion. Be it friends or members of their family who do not want to meet them any more, a job they lost or could not get, a business that was troubled. Maria , for instance, concludes a long clause about how the reactions of her friends have shocked her by saying: They put me down . . . I mean, . . . I was always ready for everybody, also for the people who dropped me, for whom I really did everything. But they never gave me the chance to explain what my motives were. In fact, there should be no need to do so. For, if they were real friends then we would discuss a lot with them, real friends must be able to do so. Indeed, they should then know my motives. They could perhaps throw at me ‘Maria, this is not the way’. That would have been fine, but it didn’t happen, it left me embittered. (Maria, CD, NB, female, 56) Paula lost most of her friends as well, a fact she did not really care about, but what really did upset her was that her child was bullied at school:

The Netherlands: stigmatized outsiders 197 ‘Your parents discriminate’ one recently accused Max. I told the mentor ‘I hope Max can take it’. Because Max already is worrying about the death of his younger brother and now this. It is a mentally handicapped child . . . well, that is so awful, I find that criminal, that parents set their handicapped child up. That has happened before, yeah, and Max is a child that finds it difficult to defend himself . . . He is not even able to read the materials we are busy with, he has no clue. There’s no need for that either in my view, a child must be kept out of this, it is a different world. But yet he is pestered with it. (Paula, NB, female, 45) Several times she felt that she did not get a job she applied for because of the political background of her husband, she was no longer welcome in the folkdance club she was a member of and participants made remarks about her political activities. She complains: With every activity outdoors I encounter this. I can’t just be myself. If I were to be myself they don’t want me, that’s the experience I have. They reject you completely. They pigeon-hole you, you’re damned, you’re bad someone they don’t want to have anything with you otherwise they might burn their fingers, you know. (Paula, NB, female, 45) Mark lost contact with the members of his family, and with friends and colleagues: Over time one gets used to the estrangement from family members. In the beginning it really hurts but right now I say they are grown-ups. It’s the way it is. But my brother and two sisters have made that choice I don’t see them anymore . . . An Indonesian guy who is born and grown up here with whom I have been on vacation several times felt that he couldn’t be friends any more. I had quite a few friends from the business club businessmen who because of their business couldn’t talk to me anymore. In private in a bar or a restaurant yes, but not in public. (Mark, CP ’86, NNP, VNN, male, 50) Johan had planned to finish his studies before he ran for the municipal elections, but then a car accident foiled his plans: I was still busy with my thesis when I was already running for the elections. When my supervisor got to know that, he withdraw. He didn’t want to supervise my thesis anymore, because yeah initially he was very enthusiastic, because yeah it would be publishable, and yeah we could turn it into a book, because nobody had ever written about it. Thus he was very enthusiastic about it, because he thought, of course, that could be nice for him too, than his

198 Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans name would be on it as well, but yeah then he discovered who I was and then he didn’t find it so nice anymore that his name would be on it. ( Johan, CP ’86, male, 33) He could not find somebody else who was willing to supervise him, and in fact never finished his studies. Edwin lost his job after his boss saw him on television taking part in a demonstration of the extreme right in Zwolle. It was the first time that a mayor had allowed a demonstration by the extreme right in his community. The first Monday after the weekend when Edwin went to work, his boss said: I saw you on television. What were you doing there? I don’t want you here anymore. Your future here has finished . . . And of course, quite a few members of my family did not know. Must be scaring all those bald heads and then they think are you part of this? I have always seen you as a nice guy. Their whole ideal fell apart so to say. (Edwin, CD, Voorpost, male, 29) Rinus, finally, lost customers: For example with the purchaser of one department [of the city of Amsterdam] I had a very good relationship and then at a given moment he said to me because he knew about it, he knew that I was a member of that party, look I don’t talk politics with my customers also not if I were a member of a different party. But then he said, what about that party? I said, do you know about it? Well, he said, the newspapers are full of it. He said, I live in Flevoland [the province for which Rinus is elected], ehm . . . you know it doesn’t bother me but other employees came to me and they didn’t want you anymore . . . And I have had other clients who literally told me now you are a member of that political party you’re no longer welcome. Well you can take it or leave it, well I took it. (Rinus, NNP, VNN, male, 66).

Some throw the burden off Several years after we conducted our interviews, we went back to our interviewees and asked them whether they were still actively involved in the extreme right. In the meantime the extreme right had been wiped out in the elections, while extreme right organizations fell apart or had difficult times. Ten of our interviewees said they were no longer active in the extreme right. Ten others left their organizations but continued to be active in the extreme right in a different organization. Sixteen stayed involved in the organization they were participating in at the time of our first interview. Stayers, shifters and leavers were distributed over our four entrance categories in a meaningful way. Only one revolutionary left, two changed

The Netherlands: stigmatized outsiders 199 organization, and the remaining six stayed actively involved in their organization. Half of the wanderers continued to wander and changed to other organizations, two quit, while three stayed. Three of the converts quit, two changed organizations and three stayed and, finally, four of the compliants quit, one changed and four stayed. The changes in the organizational field of the extreme right are obviously reflected in the stories our interviewees told us, if only because we interviewed quite a few of the key figures in the field. Two organizations – Voorpost and the NNP – seem to be able to manage the legacy of the extreme right. Voorpost became a specimen of an organization in abeyance, a place for the extreme right to regroup and reorient itself after the devastating elections, a place to reflect rather than to act. In the words of Willem: With regard to Voorpost it [the decline of the extreme right] meant that, eh, the development since has been that Voorpost has grown. That all kinds of people joined. That, eh, since some months we are busy in changing the strategy somewhat, eh, from that moment on, actually, since 1997, we were busy to turn Voorpost into a base, and we succeeded, eh, to keep it a bit low key, to acquire that way a central base of the movement. To create. And now we have through the formation of chapters, eh, we are busy to bring it more into the open and to make sure that Voorpost will grow further. That we don’t grow inside the movement, but that we move further outside. Thus we established the base. What we could do inside the movement as a whole, including the party, we have done. What we did not accomplish, what there is still to be done, will come naturally. In any event, we have shown to everybody that Voorpost is a place to rest. That all sorts of things can originate from it. (Willem, Voorpost, male, 34) The place to act, on the other hand, was the NNP, an attempt to revive extreme right politics after the disastrous elections and after the CP ’86 has been outlawed. Former members of the CD and CP ’86 gathered in the new organization. Unsurprisingly, it was the ‘ideologues’ who predominantly turned to Voorpost, while the ‘political entrepreneurs’ established the NNP after they had first established the VNN, the NNP’s forerunner. In the margins, the NVU and the NB continued to exist. Those who stayed involved in the extreme right, be it in the same or in a different organization, refer to their ideals, to the goals they are aiming for, to their commitment to the people in the movement. Frits, for example, to the question why he stayed actively involved, answers: Because I still believe in those ideals, and yeah, also because I don’t want to abandon people. I mean, that are meanwhile, eh, also because of external pressure, simply friends. And friends you don’t abandon. It’s that simple. (Frits, NNP, male, 30)

200 Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans And Henk: Why [do] I stay? Well look, in the first place I have said at some point, look I made myself available because, look I live in an old part of town. I grew up here . . . Yeah, I am still living here, I am living in it, with it, thus I know what I am talking about. Look someone must do it, look if everyone runs away then it is all together . . . Look that is exactly what politics want of the small parties. Whatever small party, they don’t want it. Because it is undermining their authority. In fact, them have power, so to say. Yeah, I am so . . . yeah I eh . . . I guess I carry on. (Henk, CD, male, 40) Mark says: This work I put into it, it doesn’t bring me any profit, it is very costly in financial terms, so much money is spent, it often is very frustrating, I think a normal person couldn’t cope with it and would leave the party immediately . . . I’m not a normal person, I’m a striver, I have this goal in mind and I want to reach it . . . The goal is to establish a party where I feel at home, where I can work together with other people and combine it with some politics, it could also be a movement or an organization as long as it is focusing on protecting our national identity, our culture and our way of living. (Mark, CP ’86, NNP, VNN, male, 50) Maria adds yet another dimension: On the one hand it is terribly tiring and stressful, but on the other hand it is so interesting. I learn so much, I do so much more now, I get a lot of new information, I have to admit I’m sort of addicted to it now! (Maria, CD, female, 56) Interestingly, it is the daily hassles in the party, the conflicts, the hatred and malice rather than the stigmatization that made people quit. For the same reason others changed organization. Apparently, stigmatization was all in the game. Participants were prepared to take it, but they were not prepared to cope with the hassles inside the organization. Michael, for example, one of the key figures of the extreme right, responds to the questions about whether he is still actively involved: No, not at the moment, no. I look on nicely for the time being and that suits me very well. I can come to myself again and I have more time to read books. Time to rest, because yeah I must say that the last time if you look back, I had to deal with quite a number of idiots. Look, eh . . . all those fights, and so on. I think that in a way it is just as well if they stay small, because, yeah, my impression is that there are just more and more crooks in the extreme right. (Michael, CP ’86, male, 34)

The Netherlands: stigmatized outsiders 201 Ronald, a CD activist, representative in a city council between 1994 and 1998, quit because of increasing discontent with the internal organization: Reasons to leave? Ha, it’s an accumulation of dissatisfactions. The organization was led very badly, mister Janmaat was chairman of the party and his wife was the treasurer, that’s very strange, eh? . . . He occupied a seat in Parliament, as did his wife, I think that is way out of line! It was like a family business . . . No, to be honest, little by little I experienced this growing feeling of discontent. Finally, that was what made me decide to quit! (Ronald, CD, male, 72) Poor leadership was also a reason why Maria, CD activist, representative on a city council between 1994 and 1998, left the organization: The way we were supported . . . Of course, the people in The Hague [the party leadership], didn’t support us! They didn’t undertake any action, I felt abandoned and on my own. They didn’t motivate me at all . . . And the people within the party, they’ve never been real colleagues, I never knew on which side they were, some were real followers of Janmaat, others claimed they were opposing, but they never expressed their ideas to Janmaat, so I felt all alone. (Maria, CD, female, 56) For others the internal troubles were a reason to shift to another organization; for example, Frans, VNN activist, vice-chairman between 1997 and 1998: I was elected the vice-chairman of the new party VNN. But very soon trouble came our way, because two activists, Hoogstra and De Boer, wanted to overpower us . . . They were annoying me so much that after six months I decided to leave that party. It was a shame, because before that time all of us had the same goal in mind, but in the new party, people were trying to get into power . . . I then decided to become active in Voorpost, where I am active as a member of the daily board . . . for me it’s a way to express my ideas and suggestions, Yeah and we come together on a regular basis, we discuss things and there is a good atmosphere. (Frans, VNN, Voorpost, male, 34) Louise, CD activist, was tired of the CD leadership and decided to leave the CD and to turn to the VNN – later the NNP: Yes, we just wrote a letter to Janmaat [the CD leader], at least I did that, I wrote that I didn’t have the impression that collaboration between us would be possible any longer. And that I terminated my membership. Asked them to make that known also in their administration, because I know Janmaat, he will just pretend that I am still a member. Because he wouldn’t tell anybody, I

202 Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans informed also the press, that I quit and that the whole province of Brabant came with me. Because that was the case, everybody came with me. (Louise, NNP, female, 67)

Conclusion The extreme right in the Netherlands never grew beyond a somewhat disorganized amalgamate of splinter parties and marginal organizations, nor did its members ever gain any respectability in the Dutch political landscape. Indeed, Dutch activists of the extreme right were more than anywhere else confronted with stigmatization, manifesting itself in the form of repression by the authorities, attacks by countermovements and exclusion by their social environment. Although some were taken by surprise, most activists seem to have known beforehand that they were going to have a hard time. Obviously, that did not deter them from entering the movement, though retrospectively a few interviewees may have wished that they had chosen otherwise at the time. The activists coped with stigmatization in a different manner depending on their initial trajectory. Those who felt attracted to the extreme right early on – the revolutionaries – took pride in their stigma. Those who were reluctantly pulled into activism – the compliants – had the most difficulty coping with it, if only because they were the least prepared. The ‘wanderers’ and the ‘converts’ were much better prepared, not the least because they were the most concerned about entering the movement. None of them took the transition to extreme right activism lightly. Expecting bad reactions when joining the extreme right, they took longer to decide, and many took precautionary measures. Expecting hard times did not prevent our interviewees from becoming actively involved in the extreme right. Apparently, it was all in the game, and part and parcel of the society they were fighting against. Nonetheless, it did not mean that they could foresee what would happen: what encounters with the authorities and the countermovement they would experience, and who in their social environment would let them down. To many, these events still came as a shock and an unsettling surprise. They never imagined what they were actually up against, and indeed many activists were unprepared. Yet, stigmatization was not the main reason for activists to quit. The daily hassles inside the movement, the conflicts, the incompetence and the poor leadership made activists chose to leave the organization. This was, of course, spurred by the electoral failure of the extreme right in the Netherlands, but remember that despite that failure close to three-quarters of our interviewees stayed involved in the extreme right, albeit it sometimes in a different organization than the one they were part of at the time of the interview. Interestingly, whether interviewees stayed, shifted to another right-wing organization or quit the extreme right altogether was related to their entrance trajectory. Most of the revolutionaries stayed, most of the wanderers shifted to other organizations, while few converts and compliants joined other organizations – they left or stayed.

The Netherlands: stigmatized outsiders 203 Several years later, when Pim Fortuyn’s star began to rise, some of our interviewees looked for an association with his political movement, but as Fortuyn and his heirs had an interest in denying that they were an extreme right party, this was not really welcomed. Even in that environment, the stigma continued to work, to the point that shortly before we wrote this chapter, the party forced a representative to resign because of his extreme right sympathies. More than anywhere else extreme right activists in the Netherlands were confronted with stigmatization. This is not to say that the Netherlands was the only country where we encountered stigmatization; on the contrary, in each of the countries included in the study the interviewees reported that they had suffered from degradation because of the hostile environment. But the Dutch context is like a magnifying glass of the persistent ostracism that plagues extreme right parties and activists. Reprobation reaches its climax in the Netherlands and in Germany: being an extreme right activist there not only isolates one from the mainstream society but can jeopardize one’s job, career and sometimes life. It is at its lowest level in Italy where a party like AN has become part of the political establishment. This hierarchy is mirrored by the judgement collected by Van der Brug and Van Spanje (2004) in their study of ‘cordon sanitaire’ policies against ‘anti-immigrant parties’ in Europe. Of the 11 countries they studied, the highest score for the strictness of the ‘cordon sanitaire’ went to the German REP, the Dutch CD and the Belgian Front National – three parties which never managed an electoral take-off, never developed stable and viable party structures. Then one finds the Flemish VB and the French FN, two movements which, on the contrary, have succeeded on the partisan and electoral level, but are kept out of office by the strategy of the other parties (Van der Brug and Van Spanje 2004). At the other end one finds the movements that have not only attracted voters and militants but gained access to power, the Austrian FPÖ, the Italian Lega Nord and at the very bottom Fini’s party, the AN. The hierarchy of ostracism reflects precisely the political achievement of these movements: the more stigmatized they are and the more costly it is to join them, the more difficult is their electoral and partisan development. Yet stigmatization is at the same time a resource for the movement, helping it to hold together, as shown in the French interviews. These findings confirm the experience of the French journalist and extreme left activist Anne Tristan, who joined a local section of the FN in the underprivileged Northern housing projects of Marseille. She lived their life for two months. She concludes the book she made out of her experience by quoting Albert Cohen’s comment about his experience of anti-Semitism in Marseille: they are ‘decent people who love each other from hating together’ (Tristan 1987: 257). For our activists, as diverse as they are, one could well turn the sentence round: it’s being hated together that makes them love each other all the more.

11 One root, different branches Identity, injustice and schism Patrizia Catellani, Patrizia Milesi and Alberto Crescentini

As previous chapters have amply shown, extreme right-wing parties in the various European countries have not remained unchanged and stable over time. Some of them have gradually increased their strength and consensus, others have disappeared after having enjoyed consensus for many years, and others still have split, giving birth to new parties. Emblematic in this respect are the continuous transformations of extreme right-wing parties in Holland (see Chapter 10 in this volume), or the schism of the Front National (FN) and the birth of the Mouvement National Républicain (MNR) in France (see Chapter 7 in this volume). In this chapter, we examine psycho-social processes connected to the dissolution of a right-wing party and the development of major v. minor new right-wing parties, taking as an exemplary case what happened in Italy after the Fiuggi Congress in 1995 (for a description of the social and historical development of rightwing parties in Italy see Chapter 6 in this volume). At the 1985 Fiuggi Congress, the Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement – MSI), the extreme rightwing party founded at the end of the Second World War, was dissolved. While most of its members joined a new party, Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance – AN), a minority perceived the new party as an illegitimate deviation from the core principles of the Right and, as a reaction, they founded two more extremist parties: Movimento Sociale-Fiamma Tricolore (Social Movement-Three-Color Flame – MS-FT) and Movimento Fascismo e Libertà (Movement for Fascism and Freedom – MFL). Since then, Italian right-wing activists have continued to divide themselves into those belonging to the major party (that is, AN), well represented in Parliament and holding less extreme positions, and those belonging to minor parties, giving voice to more extreme positions (MS-FT, MFL, as well as the more recent Forza Nuova and Destra Nazionale). We shall analyse the psycho-social processes related to these right-wing parties’ mutations by comparing autobiographical accounts by activists of AN, MS-FT and MFL. We shall start the chapter by focusing on collective identity and the role it plays in collective action (see Kelly and Breinlinger 1996; Simon and Klandermans 2001). In particular, we shall briefly summarize the state of the art as regards three main issues: (a) collective identity and intergroup relations in a schismatic context; (b) collective identity in major v. minor groups; and (c) collective identity and perceived injustice (see Gamson 1992; Klandermans 1997). In the rest of the

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chapter, we shall present our analysis of right-wing activists’ accounts focusing on the three issues given above. We shall also show how various levels of political identity were referred to in the accounts and how differences between interviewees of the major v. minor parties in reference to those levels. Related issues of intergroup differentiation and perceived injustice will also be dealt with. In the final discussion, we shall argue that our results offer a new angle on the existing psycho-social theories of political action and of schism within groups, opening up new directions for future research in the field.

Collective identity and collective action Many early psychological approaches to the study of collective action – from Le Bon’s (1895), Tarde’s (1890) and McDougall’s (1923) crowd psychology, to Lipset and Raab’s (1970) ‘politics of unreason’ and to Gurr’s (1970) relative deprivation – mainly viewed collective actions and social movements as the products of ‘unbridled affect’ (Stryker et al. 2000: 2), a set of irrational behaviours by a mindless mob. More recent social psychology, however, has focused on the interplay of both emotional and cognitive aspects in individuals who are actively involved in a given social context. This has provided fruitful explanations of how an individual begins to be, and keeps being, involved in collective action or a social movement. Explanations of this type are those based on the notion of ‘collective identity’. According to Turner et al. (1987), there are circumstances in which people perceive themselves as an integral and interchangeable part of a group or a wider social unit (‘collective identity’). In these circumstances people stress not so much that they are unique and distinct entities, but that they are exemplars of a social category. One’s characteristics and behaviours are assimilated to those of the group one identifies with, and coincide with characteristics and behaviours that are distinctive of that group as compared with others. A person may identify with several groups, and some of these multiple identities may be hierarchically organized in more inclusive v. less inclusive identities. An example of how these identities may coexist in the same person is offered by research on the relationships between regional, national and European identities (Sousa 1996; Huici et al. 1997; Klandermans et al. 2004; for a review see Catellani and Milesi 1998). More recent studies have shown that collective identity is a significant antecedent of collective action (Kelly and Kelly 1994; Kelly and Breinlinger 1996; Simon et al. 1998; De Weerd and Klandermans 1999). These studies have involved different kinds of groups and movements acting in favour of a community, from feminist and gay movements to trade unions and parties. In a study on activism in a feminist movement, Kelly and Breinlinger (1996) integrated quantitative data on collective identity and related variables with qualitative data based on in-depth interviews carried out on the same feminists’ sample. These data offer insights on how activists refer to their collective identity in discourse. Many interviewees stated that expressing values they believed in was an essential component of their feminist identity. Actually, ‘sharing values’ with the other members of the group

206 Patrizia Catellani, Patrizia Milesi and Alberto Crescentini has often been described as a necessary component of identification with groups of various types (see Tajfel and Turner 1986; Gecas 2000). However, what seems to characterize identification with political groups is the necessity not only of sharing values within the group, but also of ‘expressing values’ in public, in order to gain further consensus around these values. Expressing values is a way of acting, and ‘acting together’ was another essential component of collective identity often referred to in feminists’ interviews (Kelly and Breinlinger 1996). As compared to members of groups of a different nature, members of groups with a political connotation seem to be especially inclined to perceive that their membership in the group is deeply rooted in acting together and that participating in collective action determines a further increase in their collective identity (Andrews 1991; Brewer 2001). The issue of how collective identity is referred to in activists’ discourse, however, needs to be explored further. In particular, in our analysis of interviews given by Italian right-wing activists the following three questions were asked. (a) How is collective identity referred to when right-wing activists belong to groups stemming from the schism of a previous existing group (in our research, the MSI party)? (b) How is collective identity referred to when right-wing activists belong to a group that can be clearly defined, because of its size and social acceptance, as a major v. minor group (in our research, AN v. MS-FT and MFL)? (c) How are collective identity issues related to perceived injustice issues in rightwing activists’ discourse? Let us briefly consider the previous literature on these three points. Collective identity and schism A schism may be defined as ‘the division of a group into subgroups, and the ultimate secession of at least one subgroup from the parent group’ (Sani and Reicher 1998: 624). An intergroup context resulting from a schism, such as the Fiuggi Congress of 1995 in Italy, is not at all equivalent to a ‘normal’ intergroup situation, where an in-group is confronted with a completely ‘stranger’ out-group. On the one hand, the groups resulting from a schism share a common ‘ancestor’: they are thus linked to each other, whether they like it or not, by their ‘common’ past. On the other hand, they are also the result of different competitive identities. Collective identities are defined in terms of what makes the group distinctive in relation to other relevant groups. Consequently, in an intergroup context where the groups stem from a common parent group competition, not only differentiation, between groups is likely to occur: the core question of the debate is which group is the ‘true’ heir of the common ancestor, which is faithful to the core ideology of the parent group. Sani and Reicher (1998) have traced the origin of schismatic processes and the development of new categories to a failure in the process of consensualization

Identity, injustice and schism 207 within the parent category. Social psychology of group processes has commonly assumed that all the members in a group share a common understanding of their collective identity: they are supposed to agree on issues relevant to the meaning of their membership (Tajfel and Turner 1986; Abrams and Hogg 1990; McGarty et al. 1994, among others). However, it has often been overlooked that common understanding is the eventual outcome of a process of consensualization often accompanied by strong discussion and conflict (Haslam et al. 1998). The entire process may end up with schism, instead of consensus, when one faction within the group sees the position of another as not only different from its own but also as subverting the very nature of the group. Under such circumstances, compromise is impossible because the disagreement is over the essence of identity, and when people disagree over what their group is about, they are likely to split. Some suggestions about the circumstances in which the process of creating consensus within a group is likely to fail may be found in Orfali’s (2002) analysis of the schism which occurred within the FN in France in 1998 (see Chapter 7 in this volume). Orfali’s analysis suggests that the process of creating consensus is especially likely to fail when a party grows from a minority into a majority party. Such a transformation may end up displacing the front line of intergroup conflicts. Insofar as the party occupies a minority position in the political spectrum, the main conflicts are directed outside the party. As soon as the minor party has turned into a major party, intergroup conflicts are likely to rise inside the party itself: inner fights among pre-existing subgroups may become so acute that a schism is likely to occur. According to Orfali (2002), the transformation of FN was facilitated by the ‘normalization’ of the party’s social representation. FN dropped some of the negative features commonly attributed to it – those related to fascism, racism and anti-Semitism. On the other hand, FN kept other of its core features, such as a strong emphasis on immigration, national identity, security and unemployment. The absence of any direct historical link between FN and fascism or Nazism made transformation easier. Consistently with the above described process, after FN’s success Jean-Marie Le Pen and Bruno Mégret, who until that time had represented two different souls within FN – ‘heart’ and ‘reason’, respectively – split. So, according to Orfali’s study, a change in the relative status of a group – from a minor party into a major party – within a given context may be at the origin of a schismatic process. Sani and Reicher (1998) analysed the schism that occurred in 1991 within the Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party – PCI), which gave rise to two different political parties: Partito Democratico della Sinistra (Democratic Party of the Left – PDS) and Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Re-Foundation – RC). In their study, unstructured interviews with PDS and RC activists were carried out soon after the schism of the former PCI: activists were asked to say what they felt was relevant to and important about that event and how they had experienced it. It emerged that members of both PDS and RC reconstructed the relationships between their own party and the former PCI in such a way that their in-group was seen as the group that embodied the true essence of the former PCI, while the outgroup was seen as the group that had betrayed it. Sani and Reicher concluded that

208 Patrizia Catellani, Patrizia Milesi and Alberto Crescentini members of different groups born after a schism share a similar process of identity definition: defining themselves as the true heirs of the previous group seems to be the favoured strategy to create consensus and homogeneity in the new group. In the present study, this issue was further investigated, assuming that we might find not only similarities – as Sani and Reicher did – but also differences between groups born after a schism, according to whether they were a major or a minor group. In order to specify these possible differences further a closer look at the psycho-social literature on collective identity in major versus minor groups may prove useful. Collective identity in major v. minor groups In the present chapter, by ‘major v. minor groups’ we mean both a difference in group status (high v. low status groups) and a difference in group size (large v. small groups). A minor group offers better opportunities for distinct self-categorization (Ellemers et al. 1988; Simon and Hamilton 1994; Ellemers et al. 1999). According to Social Categorization Theory (SCT) (Turner et al. 1987), the process of selfcategorization is regulated by the principle of distinctiveness: people identify with the category which maximizes the ratio of perceived intergroup to intragroup differences – that is, with the category that best accentuates intergroup differences and intragroup similarities. In a minor group, distinctiveness may be favoured by two factors: (a) the fact of having a limited number of members (group size); (b) the fact of being perceived as more homogeneous than a major group (group homogeneity). As regards group size, the Optimal Distinctiveness Theory (ODT – Brewer 1991) may be recalled. According to this theory people identify best with intermediatesize groups, since they may satisfy both the need for inclusion (that is, the need to belong to a social group and feel similar to other group members) and the need for differentiation (that is, the need to perceive oneself as a unique being). As regards group homogeneity, studies on self-categorization have shown that a more homogeneous group will also be perceived as a more distinct one (Brewer 1993, among others). Secondly, studies on minority influence have repeatedly observed how minority groups often present themselves as very compact and homogeneous, this being functional to their visibility and possibility of exerting an influence on other groups (Moscovici 1985; Maass et al. 1987 among others). Starting from these results, we expected to find differences in the identity definition processes of extremists belonging to major v. minor Italian right-wing parties.

Collective identity and perceived injustice Beside collective identity, another major psycho-social antecedent of collective action is what has been termed perceived injustice. Its emotional as well as behavioural correlates have been studied by the Relative Deprivation Theory (RDT – Runciman 1966; Mark and Folger 1984), according to which the feeling of undergoing an injustice arises when people notice that they want more than they

Identity, injustice and schism 209 have and have less than they feel rightly entitled to. Perceived injustice has been further specified as material injustice (that is, lack or unfair distribution of resources or opportunities) or social injustice (that is, discrimination and stigmatization at work or in public places). Both types of injustice have been shown to play a relevant role in fostering participation in collective actions and social movements (see Klandermans 1997). A peculiar type of perceived social injustice may occur when people feel that they are the target of socially prejudiced derogation because their ideology is dissonant with that prevailing in their community. Taking into account past stigmatization of right-wing ideology in Italy (see Chapter 6 in this volume), in this study we assumed that this peculiar type of social injustice would play a relevant role in right-wing activists’ accounts of their political involvement. More specifically, we assumed that reference to perceived injustice would be linked to reference to collective identity. Several authors have indeed proposed to integrate SIT and RDT in order better to explain involvement in collective action (Tougas and Veilleux 1989; Haselau et al. 1991; Petta and Walker 1992; Tropp and Wright 1999). An element in favour of this integration is that SIT and RDT share the same founding process – that is, a process of social comparison. For both theories, the in-group’s status is assessed through comparison with other groups (Lalonde and Cameron 1994; Mummendey et al. 1999).

Analysis of autobiographical accounts To analyse psycho-social processes related to schism and mutation within rightwing parties, we took into account the sample of Italian right-wing activists described in Chapter 5, making a comparison between AN activists, on the one hand, and MS-FT and MFL activists, on the other. In the analysis of the activists’ autobiographical accounts, our attention was focused on only some of the codes of the coding scheme presented in Chapter 5, those related to collective identity (code 1.3) and perceived injustice (code 4.2). For the sake of clarity, in presenting our results we will focus on collective identity first and on perceived injustice afterwards, highlighting both similarities between parties and peculiar features of major v. minor parties. In the final summary, however, collective identity and perceived injustice will be dealt with together, to highlight their interaction.

Collective identity in extreme right-wing parties Similarities between major and minor parties ‘To know who you are is to be oriented in moral space, a space in which questions arise about what is good and bad, what is worth doing and what is not, what has meaning and importance for you and what is trivial and secondary.’ This quotation from Taylor (1989: 27) highlights an identity component to which the right-wing extremists interviewed made frequent reference. In their accounts of activism, especially when reconstructing the initial phases of their involvement in

210 Patrizia Catellani, Patrizia Milesi and Alberto Crescentini politics, nearly all the interviewees said that the main reason why they got involved in active politics was to express the values they believed in, and to affirm their political identity. Furthermore, inasmuch as activism was seen as an expression of values that were essential to them, it was described as giving a sense of fulfilment (see Gecas 2000). Both aspects clearly emerge in the following two passages: [Being a member of the movement] makes me feel fine . . . I mean . . . since for me those things are important . . ., professing them . . ., doing active politics . . . makes me feel alive . . ., makes me feel glad. (Vincenzo, AN, male, 29) It is a way to . . ., it is also a way to fulfil myself . . . because it is the best way . . . even more, it is the one and only way I have to express what I have inside . . . Otherwise, I would feel . . . I would not feel at ease with myself. (Renato, MS-FT, male, 22) Political activism was often reconstructed as the final outcome of the search for an adequate opportunity to express one’s own values. This search for answers to basic issues at both the existential and the social levels led to the construction of an ideological identity. Ideology provides both an interpretation of the whole world and the cultural means of either changing or maintaining it. Interviewees often described their ideology as a standard of reference not only for their political life, but also for their life as a whole. The ideological choice was often described as an innate orientation, a primary choice, and also as an unavoidable development of one’s own nature, of what was written in one’s own genetic code. Consequently, in retrospect interviewees often felt that they could not have done otherwise. Actually, this was always the case for the interviewees whose family was close to fascist ideology, or whose relatives were actively involved in fascism. The excerpt below is taken from the interview of an activist whose father was a fascist and was imprisoned after the civil war, while the mother opened the house to leading members of the former fascist regime and contributed to some of the gatherings that gave rise to MSI soon after the civil war (1946). The interviewee was 13 years old in 1945, when he started to get involved in active politics; at the time of the interview he was 64, and this is what he said looking back on a whole life of militancy: I am in the condition of a man who couldn’t have done anything else. I couldn’t . . ., there was no choice . . . I mean that, given . . . given my background, my characteristics, my story, my readings, and my experiences . . ., it couldn’t be anything else but this. (Vittorio, 65, MS-FT) When the interviewees did not have such right-wing family background, the process of ideological identification was often presented as becoming gradually aware of what one is and what one wants; some interviewees also acknowledged

Identity, injustice and schism 211 that their first approach to political activism was made by instinct, and that they understood the real meaning of their choice only later. Political activism was depicted not only as a consequence of an already structured value system of the individual, but also as an experience that contributed to making clear and organizing the values the individual believed in. In the passage given below Davide, whose parents were neither interested in active politics nor close to rightwing parties, recalls the very beginning of his political involvement as a young boy: Well . . . I began, as probably many boys do, at the soccer stadium, where I went when I was 14, among the fans of the North Curve, the one where supporters of Inter [one of Milan’s soccer teams] gather . . ., well, the North Curve is typically considered as right-wing . . ., well . . . it is a popular belief, then you have to understand what you mean by ‘right-wing’ of course . . . then the meaning obviously became clear to me, and I understood that there are some differences . . . though . . . at the time, you began this way . . . that is, I began this way, from the point of view of attraction and instinct, above all . . . because in the end it is a feeling of being different without understanding yet what it really means, you know . . . thus, there is an affinity even only at the instinctive level, skin level, which afterwards you refine when you decide to go on to a more committed type of membership . . . of adhesion. (Davide, AN, male, 21) The initially vague search for answers to existential and social issues thus gradually developed into a more definite process of ideological identification, consisting in a perception of being closely linked with people sharing the same ideology. In most cases, this process of identification gradually led the interviewee to enter a party, to choose a distinct and meaningful political category to which to belong. The approach to the party was often described as the outcome of a ‘positive match’ between the values the individual believed in and the values the party professed to respect. Since we are dealing with autobiographical reconstructions, we cannot claim that the match between the interviewees’ own values and those of the party was the ‘actual’ motivation for their entering the party. We may simply note that interviewees stressed the relevance of that match, thus highlighting the ethical consistency of their choice. Joining the party was often described as the end of a journey, described by some interviewees as direct and linear, by others as consisting in various phases of involvement in different political or pseudo-political organizations and/or of absolute abstention from active politics. In the quote below, the final outcome of the search for a party to which to belong is described. In a previous section of the interview Saverio had recalled that, while attending high school and afterwards university, he had been a member of the juvenile movement of the former MSI for a short while. Then he had left the movement because he could not find adequate satisfaction for his cultural and religious needs. After that, he discovered a right-wing oriented cultural association, with a strong

212 Patrizia Catellani, Patrizia Milesi and Alberto Crescentini religious connotation, which he joined. Finally, when AN was founded, he joined the new party: Combining some readings and encounters with some people . . ., this is what drove me to make a precise choice . . ., a well-pondered choice, . . . much more rational than the previous ones. They made it possible for me to find in Alleanza Nazionale what at the best . . ., obviously not the optimum . . . which I don’t believe may exist, a party representing me at 100 per cent . . . rather the best place where I might express my ideas and spread them around, together with people who more or less might understand them. (Saverio, AN, male, 49) Many interviewees described their participation in active politics as the outcome of their strong motivation to see some essential values respected not only at the individual level but also, and crucially, at the social level. Interviewees made frequent reference to responsibility. They stated that, when people are willing to take responsibility for changing an unsatisfying social status quo, they should join an organization that gives them the opportunity to act both consistently with their own values and responsibly towards society. Acting consistently with one’s own values often elicits feelings of affirmation, pride and satisfaction. Furthermore, when one is true to one’s own values, one is true to oneself in a fundamental way, and a feeling of authenticity is very likely to arise: . . . To me, some things have always been true . . . that is, if they were true before, they are also true right now, it is not that . . . well, some superficial things may have changed, but . . . the very pillars, that is the pillars my life is based on, where I find my happiness . . . that is, I feel happy when I pursue the objectives I think are true . . . When I don’t pursue those objectives . . . maybe because I look for a shortcut, as all people do, or because I think I am better . . . or my conscience doesn’t follow those roads, then I am deeply disappointed . . . On the contrary, when I can keep faithful to those principles, to those values, I am happy. (Vincenzo, AN, male, 29) As a way to express one’s own values, activism had the cogent valence of a duty, of a moral obligation, and it often acquired the features of an ethical, in some cases even religious, commitment. For example, Davide compares himself below to a medieval warrior fighting in the name of faith, ready to face any possible obstacle: It’s a mission . . . basically. [I feel] a crusader . . . a Templar. I chose this road . . . so one goes on even though the road may be difficult . . . passing through the storms. Surely . . . it gives me strength also against the storms, a strong moral force . . . anyway strength against difficulties. (Davide, AN, male, 21)

Identity, injustice and schism 213 Inasmuch as it means bearing witness to one’s faith, activism cannot be suspended or avoided, and can never be dropped. It is a task the individual must carry out in every spatial and temporal context, it is a life-style and not only a political label. Vincenzo stresses below that his political activism is not a contingent experience, neither context-bound nor limited in time; instead it is a choice based on values that by definition transcend any specific context. When one feels some things are true . . ., those things, you must tell them to others . . . and you must tell them . . . because those things . . ., it’s like a fire . . . they burn inside you . . . thus, whether you tell them to a friend of yours . . . whether you tell them to your brother, . . . to your father, to your mother, to your child, whether you tell them to a thousand of people . . . it makes no difference, because you will always tell those things. (Vincenzo, AN, male, 29) To conclude, we may say that interviewees of all three right-wing parties agreed in putting a special stress on their ideological identity, and presented value expression and action as inextricably linked to it. Peculiarities of the major party Beyond stressing the higher-level ideological identity, interviewees of the major right-wing party (AN) made frequent reference to a lower-level collective identity that might be defined as subparty identity. They often stressed their belonging not so much to the AN party itself, but to a subgroup inside the party – a club, a circle, or a juvenile movement – describing it as the environment where activism acquired meaning for them, as the group they actually joined when they entered the party. We should remember that the foundation of AN was meant to be a real change as compared to the previous MSI party. AN presented itself as a modern right-wing party that would be able to play a crucial role in Parliament in the near future. It would be able to guide the country, along with other political parties, in a context of political alternation. This objective, and what it required, implied the risk of losing continuity with the ‘mother’ previous party, MSI, and with its consolidated identity. As often noted by AN interviewees, entering parliamentary political life meant renouncing the anti-system attribute (that is, the party being an alternative to the established political system) that had been a crucial attribute of MSI. In addition, it increased the risk of losing some traditional core values of a right-wing party and of getting confused with the so-called ‘centre’ (that is, conservative) parties. This latter risk was further increased by the sudden growth AN had experienced in quite a short time. Interviewees often observed that AN was growing rapidly because many people were joining it, but the newcomers had very distinct and different previous political experiences, and they were often merely driven by material interests. Lorenzo discusses these risks below. Lorenzo was a member of the juvenile

214 Patrizia Catellani, Patrizia Milesi and Alberto Crescentini movement of the former MSI and joined AN when it was founded. He points to the new character the party was acquiring as a problem and a source of potential conflicts: I think that the creation of Alleanza Nazionale changed something in our way of doing politics . . . because we had many guys coming here before . . . they had very definite ideas . . . and we had quite precise ideas as well . . ., now in AN this is a problem, because we thought of creating . . . and it was undoubtedly good . . ., we thought of creating a container where many young people might feel they were being represented . . ., everybody with his/her own peculiarities . . . but that container . . . cannot or is not able to draw a cultural line that can give birth to new generations and along which people can recognize themselves. (Lorenzo, AN, male, 29) The variegated composition of AN often led interviewees to represent the party as a container, where people coming from very different and not homogeneous backgrounds were merging. According to many interviewees’, reference to specific subgroups within the party, and the consequent development of a strong subparty identity, was the only way for them to overcome the heterogeneity of the new party and not lose their roots. Peculiarities of the minor parties While AN interviewees made frequent reference to their subparty identity, this was not the case for interviewees of the two minor right-wing parties (MS-FT and MFL), who instead stressed their party identity. They presented their party as a solid homogeneous group to which they felt strongly committed. Perceived group homogeneity was basically founded on one common feeling shared by interviewees of both MS-FT and MFL: the feeling of being the only ones who had kept faithful to the original values of the Right. The transformation of MSI into AN was described by these interviewees as a deviation from the core values and principles of the original right-wing movement. The foundation of a party opposed to AN, though deriving from the same root, was intended as an affirmation of identity: the constitution of both MS-FT and MFL was described as an answer to the need to create a distinct social category expressing an ideological identity in danger of being lost – in other words, of embodying the original right-wing identity in a strong well-defined entity. Such an affirmative valence is patent in the following passage: [At the founding ceremony of MS-FT] We all wept . . . because actually it was a kind of ‘finally, it’s us’ . . . that is, finally we got back our identity, . . . we had no ballast any more . . . of opportunists, mercenaries, supporters of Badoglio and betrayers . . . because this is what I consider Alleanza Nazionale to be. (Gabriella, MS-FT, female, 37)

Identity, injustice and schism 215 In this passage a normative valence of activism is clearly evident. Although present in interviewees of all three parties, in MS-FT and MFL interviewees such a normative valence was particularly strong and assumed distinctive features, which may be summarized as follows. (a) Perceived faith and loyalty to a mission, with even mystic connotations. In MS-FT and MFL interviewees’ activism had a further meaning besides making one able to express values one believes in and to act consistently with them: it also meant fighting in the name of a mission. Mystic and even messianistic implications were frequently stressed in the interviews. Many interviewees, particularly MFL interviewees, held the firm persuasion that their idea was the only right one, and professed their faith in Mussolini along with the certainty that fascism could sooner or later come back again to society. (b) Sense of honour and pride for the ‘heroic’ past of the movement Consistently with their commitment to the mission, a sense of honour was strongly stressed. Virtually all the interviewees claimed that they were people of honour, who did not betray the word they had given. (c) Belief in future victory What finally drove interviewees to active involvement in extreme minor parties was the perception that a positive result might still be obtained, along with the definite will to get it. Some interviewees observed that this was a time of transition, a changing context, a time to be seized in order to accomplish their ideals. Others just anticipated a future victory and claimed the necessity of fighting because sooner or later their idea would win. In the following quote these three points may be seen to merge: We members of Fascismo e Libertà represent the Fascism of the future . . . What I believed in when I was a young boy . . . I aspire to its fulfilment in Fascismo e Libertà . . . [Fascism] has been the only revolutionary movement that will not finish at the end of this century, rather it will go further . . . So, the reason why to militate in such a movement, which in the end doesn’t reward you . . . and not to join a mass party, where you are confounded with others, is . . . I want to win, and I want my dreams to win . . . and I am persuaded that if they are not fulfilled today, they will be fulfilled maybe in 2050 . . . Fascism is the revolution of the man who thinks he has fought for the right idea and wants to transmit it to future generations . . . The movement collects all the Fascists of pure faith . . . to continue our ideal fight and to get to those objectives I was talking about . . . if not today, it will be tomorrow . . . We are now putting the basis . . . today we are only sowing . . . and we will harvest. (Marco, MFL, male, 63) The normative valence of activism in MS-FT and MFL interviewees was enhanced when they compared their own membership in a party where material and social rewards were virtually absent with the ‘easier’ membership in AN, a party which enjoyed power and political success. However, for the interviewees

216 Patrizia Catellani, Patrizia Milesi and Alberto Crescentini the material drawbacks of their own membership were amply compensated for by the perceived purity and integrity of the parties they belonged to; the necessity and the will to keep themselves as the ‘pure ones’ were in consequence often stressed.

Perceived injustice in extreme right-wing parties Similarities between major and minor parties Interviewees of all three Italian extreme right-wing parties stated they were victims of injustice, not so much material as social injustice. They perceived that they were discriminated against because of their ideology, and they stressed that the negative consequence was not so much being deprived of material benefits or a social position, but not having the right to express their ideas as openly as anyone else. Fascism is the unavoidable and necessary ideological reference for Italian rightwing activists (see Chapter 6 in this volume). Interviewees of all three parties explicitly mentioned fascism. Some of them directly referred to the period of the regime and called Mussolini a great statesman; others mainly referred to the phases when fascism was not yet a regime, as in the so-called sansepolcrismo period, or no longer a regime, as in the period of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI). As historians and political scientists have stressed (Pavone 1994 among others), fascism, the Second World War, and the Resistance constitute historical events with which contemporary Italian society must still reckon . The way in which such recent history is interpreted is still a crucial distinctive feature, a social belief in which people recognize their own and others’ political identity. In the politics of post-war Italy, neo-fascism was often represented as a new instance of the enemy against which a war of liberation had been recently fought, while the new state was founded on the acknowledgement of the Resistance movement as an ethical value, and only the forces that had joined or supported that movement were assigned the full right to participate in political life. In such a context, many interviewees denied Resistance and 25 April 1945 – the date of the final victory of the Allies over the Germans – as ethical values (‘To me 25 April is a date of infamy, of opprobrium, because it celebrates the civil war’, Guilio, MFL, male, 62), and represented those events as instead a terrible betrayal: My lieutenant, who had given me orders until the very last moment . . . two days after [25 April] was going around with the blue handkerchief of the Demo-Christian partisans . . . it was lucky for him that while he was trying to be funny, a grenade burst in his hands and blew him to shreds . . . The partisans were outlaws who went to the mountains to rob and kill people and nothing else . . . or they kept hidden in houses and came out to shoot people in the back of the head, then blame others for that and run away. (Nicolò, MS-FT, male, 69) With more or less emphasis nearly all interviewees perceived that the interpretation and the social meaning contemporary Italian society gives to those

Identity, injustice and schism 217 events are still a ‘hot’ issue, a source of injustice against them as well as a source of conflict for society as a whole. The following passages are taken from interviews with AN activists: If only we could get to a national pacification so that 25 April would not be any more the celebration of the winners against the losers, but a celebration of all the people. (Lorenzo, AN, male, 29) That day [that is, 25 April] divides the country and fosters the fight against us . . . It is not that we are against 25 April as such. The problem is that they always refer to this date to divide the country, . . . on the contrary, with that date we would like to reconcile the country . . . so injustices are surely committed . . ., that is, have always been committed against us. (Stefania, AN, female, 25) As a consequence of the way in which the civil war has been socially interpreted, interviewees perceived current Italian society as being intrinsically derogatory as regards fascism, and thus unfair. When interviewees considered the commonly accepted interpretation of recent history, they often perceived a deeply rooted ideological injustice: in their eyes, history is usually reconstrued in an very biased way – that is, not on the basis of an objective analysis of the facts but rather on the wave of an opposing ideology which depicts one side as always wrong and the other side as always right. This kind of injustice was often perceived for the first time in high school, which in many cases was also the time when interviewees began to get involved in politics. The official version of history taught at school was perceived as biased against fascism, and also lacking some basic information about that period and the civil war. Furthermore, when interviewees happened to have some relatives who had actively participated in fascism, the version of history they had got to know in their own family was dramatically different from the version they were taught at school: From the teacher to the textbooks we were meant to study . . . well . . . there was obviously a strong ideological contrast because on their side . . ., on their side there was the presumption of truth and . . . the will to be the sole owner of the sacred texts. (Davide, AN, male, 21) At school . . . above all in our area . . . there is a feeling of rebellion, because at school they tell you the exact contrary of what you think . . . Today schools are more or less left-wing oriented . . ., consequently there is the tendency to teach one type of history, from a certain point of view . . . so there is often a spirit of rebellion that drives you to get interested in the other side. (Renato, MS-FT, male, 22)

218 Patrizia Catellani, Patrizia Milesi and Alberto Crescentini As can be seen from the last quote, the perceived bias against fascism and in favour of the Resistance and anti-fascist forces often brought interviewees to rebel against the socially accepted interpretation of history and choose the opposite side. Moreover, interviewees sometimes recognized that their rebellion against that biased version of history combined with the rebellions drive typical of adolescents, each fostering the other. In the end the perception that the Right was underrepresented and stigmatized, together with the juvenile instinct for rebellion, drove interviewees to join the party officially, if they had not already done so, in order to find an ideological and practical support, a place where they could share their ideas and points of view with somebody else: I had rebellion in my blood . . . so I had been suspended from school many times . . . I had an experience in a band, at the soccer stadium . . . and then at San Babila [a central square in Milan, in the 1970s and early 1980s a meeting point of right-wing youth]. I was a hell-raiser by nature, so that doing active politics was just a way to enact the rebellion I felt against society . . . Somebody found it in the Left, sometimes extreme groups . . . somebody else found it in the Right, but ultimately I believe the problem is . . . the reason is that deep down inside you have the instinct to rebel . . . against the teacher . . ., against parents . . ., against society that doesn’t give you any space . . . and you look for a motivation and find it in what you called at the time ‘ideology’ . . . Well, without thinking upon it . . . now it seems such an important word . . . well, we may call it ideals . . . or values. (Tullio, MS-FT, male, 32) Perception of an unbalanced interpretation of history became perceived deprivation because according to the interviewees the Right and fascism did not enjoy the place they deserved in the Italian collective conscience. Most interviewees stressed that the fascist experience had been a cultural and political treasure that could and should be acknowledged and still used today, whereas it was ignored or stigmatized. According to them, the current image of fascist ideology is a stereotyped and superficial one, substantiated with the worst events that characterized its history, such as the racial laws and the concentration camps of Dachau and Auschwitz. On the contrary, they stated that fascism is rooted in the western tradition that had nourished civilization for centuries, and in important spiritual and non-materialistic moral values that have been recently replaced by Anglo-American values of money and materialism. The consequence was a ‘flattening’ of Italian national culture. Many people who had died for Italy – for example, the soldiers who fought for the RSI – have been absolutely forgotten, since they fought on the ‘wrong’ side. For the interviewees, in contrast, those soldiers who fought in desperate conditions and with the prospect of certain defeat were people who deserved respect and to be remembered:

Identity, injustice and schism 219 Those people are a strong source of inspiration for us . . . and not only for our political battles but also as regards life-style . . ., for our own behaviour, because belonging to the Right is also a life-style . . . We’ve inherited and idealized the spirit of those people who fought for the Italian pride against everybody and everything during the Repubblica di Salò. (Davide, AN, male, 21) Perception of the disadvantaged position of the Right and fascism was enhanced by social comparison with the opposite ideological and political side, the Left and left-wing parties. In addition to depicting left-wing ideology as simplistic, materialistic and dehumanizing, fictitiously making all men equal but in fact ignoring fundamental human differences, the interviewees construed the left-wing ideological position in society as an advantaged one. For interviewees, left-wing ideology was widely approved socially, it was supported by the media and the legal system and it enjoyed full rights to participate in political life. Not only was history taught from a leftist point of view but society as a whole was organized on the basis of a leftist ideology. As a consequence, many negative events ascribable to leftwing ideology had been socially reconstructed as positive events. This had been the case for events that happened during the civil war or soon after its end, such as the violence perpetrated by partisans against fascists, which had been exalted and even socially rewarded. Peculiarity of the major party If social injustice due to ideological derogation was an issue for interviewees of all three right-wing parties, the stress laid on it, as well as the interpretation of it, were different in interviewees of the major v. minor parties. Most AN interviewees acknowledged the advantages offered by the changed political context, in terms of their being allowed to take part in active politics without serious stigma. However, a difficulty in dealing with the party’s ‘black history’ still existed, and the issue of finding full recognition and legitimation in society was still something of a problem. AN activists had to manage the issue of how to find their place in society as members of a ‘renewed’ right-wing party, a party which had transformed itself with a view to finding a legitimate role in contemporary Italian society and gaining electoral success. Widespread support and social acceptance were obviously the first requirements for participation in any parliamentary democracy. At the same time, AN activists were trying to keep the perceived core and defining features of an ideology that had until recently been socially denied and stigmatized. In the interviewees’ accounts, AN was often represented as a party that aimed to represent all the Italian people, hopefully in a conciliatory political context. The issue of reconciliation was represented as the healing of an open wound in the political life of the country, and the difficulty of gaining full social acceptance as a completely renewed party that did not deny its origins was often stressed. This

220 Patrizia Catellani, Patrizia Milesi and Alberto Crescentini issue was particularly evident when the interviewees spoke about the symbols of the party. They noticed the difficulty of using some symbols that had an embarrassing historical heritage, that were stigmatized and that were likely to bring about the charge that the party had not changed at all. Even so, fascist values were not denied. For example, continuity with perceived positive aspects of the fascist period and its ideology emerges in the following quote, where Mauro discusses how not to betray the fascist heritage and at the same time to handle it today, in Italian anti-fascist society: In AN it is often stated that Fascism cannot be used in this political context any more . . ., however, at the bottom there are some roots . . . Some roots still remain, which cannot be rooted out . . . and the difficulty in the current situation consists also . . . in making those roots bear new fruits . . . without mutating them, rather enriching them. (Mauro, AN, male, 54) AN interviewees thus made frequent reference to their being victims of injustice because of their fascist ideology. However, reference to injustice was often made in an overall context of reconciliation, of seeking all possible ways of mitigating injustice through negotiation and avoidance of open conflict. Such a reconstruction of injustice actually anticipates the integration of AN in the Italian political system which actually took place in the following years. Peculiarities of the minor parties If AN interviewees focused on possible ways of reconciling suffered injustice, MSFT and MFL interviewees were much more inclined to stress the existence of injustice. According to them, injustice suffered because of fascist ideology was further amplified by the betrayal perpetrated by AN, which had given up the fight against injustice. In other words, the creation of AN was described as having the main effect of adding injustice to injustice. The transformation of MSI into AN was perceived as treason, as a mere tactic of convenience, driven by financial and power motives. It had led AN to neglect and deny some basic ideological values as well as the movement that had embodied them. For example, according to MS-FT and MFL interviewees, AN officially recognized the historical importance of the Resistance period, but they did so only for instrumental reasons, to be socially and politically accepted. Such behaviour was perceived as a betrayal of all the people who had died defending the fascist regime and Italy. The foundation of AN entailed the risk of cancelling out a political as well as a human patrimony. The purpose of preserving such a patrimony was often adduced as the initial drive that led MS-FT and MFL interviewees to join one of the two extreme right-wing minor parties: After the so-called turning point [that is, the foundation of AN], I felt the inner need to put myself at [its] disposal . . . in the attempt to create something . . .

Identity, injustice and schism 221 which did not deny all that had made up fifty years of history, turbulent and painful, but also rich in hopes, adventure, in happy as well as tragic pages. All of that, at least for me, could not be cancelled with a stroke of pen . . . from one day to the next, and I felt the moral need to participate. (Vittorio, MS-FT, male, 65) Perceived betrayal acquired the valence of deep injustice, thus constituting an additional source of grievance for interviewees of the two minor parties. AN activists not only got political success while MS-FT and MFL activists, the ‘faithful ones’, gained no material or social advantages from their loyalty. AN activists also officially claimed to be the legitimate heirs of the core values of fascist ideology. Such enhanced injustice clearly emerged when MS-FT and MFL interviewees spoke about party symbols. For example, in the following quote Gabriella remarks on how AN is wrongfully using the most meaningful symbol of the former MSI: The flame is the spiritual flame . . . the ideal continuity with Fascism . . ., that is, the symbol of the flame was not assumed by chance . . . It’s a flame with a spiritual meaning, which should be . . . kept . . . so that Jean-Marie Le Pen wanted it as a symbol . . . and we are fighting like lions to take the flame away from AN, which has no right to carry it. (Gabriella, MS-FT, female, 37)

Summary: levels of political identity after a schism In their autobiographical accounts, Italian extreme right-wing activists referred to three different levels of political identity: ideological identity, party identity and subparty identity. These identity levels are embedded within each other (see Turner et al. 1987; Ashforth and Johnson 2001). They are likely to be normally found in people who are actively involved in political groups, although the relative salience of each of them, as well as the meanings and values associated with them, are likely to vary from one group to another. Our analysis of activists’ accounts has shown that consideration of these different levels of political identity may help in understanding the psycho-social processes connected with schism within political parties. Ideological identity was strongly referred to by activists of both major and minor extreme right-wing parties included in the sample (see Figure 11.1). Activists define themselves first of all as right-wing people. This self-definition appears to be comprehensive and to cover not only the sphere of public life but all the different spheres of the activists’ life. Development of a strong ideological identity is reconstructed as a logical, consistent, unavoidable route, a sort of predestination. In activists’ words, ideological identity mainly consists of the possibility of expressing the values one believes in, and of acting together to create the highest possible consensus around those values (see also Andrews 1991; Kelly and Breinlinger 1996). In-group–out-group differentiation plays a relevant role in defining the profile of right-wing activists’ ideological identity, consistently with the assumption that

222 Patrizia Catellani, Patrizia Milesi and Alberto Crescentini Party size

Higher level

Identity levels

Medium level

Lower level

Majority right-wing party (AN)

Minority right-wing parties (MS-FT, MFL)

Ideological identity (Right, Left)

Ideological identity (Right, Left)

Party identity

Party identity (AN, MS-FT, MFL)

Subparty identity (local section of AN, juvenile movement, party elite, circle of friends)

Subparty identity

Note: Larger ovals correspond to higher salience of identity level in discourse. Most frequently cited comparison groups are reported in parentheses.

Figure 11.1 Levels of political identity and their salience in extreme right-wing activists’ discourse, as a function of party size.

social comparison is a relevant process in identity definition (Turner et al. 1987). When interviewees focus their discourse on ideological identity, they often quote the Left as a comparison group, and this appears to be functional to a distinct and positive definition of their own group. The Left–Right contrast is also employed to highlight the type of perceived injustice extreme right-wing activists stress most – that is, social discrimination because of their ideology. Interviewees often say that, after the Second World War, right-wing ideology was stigmatized while left-wing ideology was favoured at all levels of political and cultural life. Although quoted by interviewees of all three parties, social injustice because of ideology takes on different nuances in major v. minor extreme right-wing parties. AN activists refer to it in softer tones and mainly in order to suggest ways of overcoming it. They attempt to mediate between the defence of a stigmatized ideology and the desire of being accepted as a deeply renewed party having all the necessary requisites to be integrated into the political spectrum. MS-FT and MFL activists, on the other hand, put an especially strong stress on injustice. They stress ideological homogeneity and continuity with the pre-existing MSI party, highlighting the strong and unfair stigmatization of right-wing ideology (in both the past and in the present), and the duty for them to fight against this stigmatization. As it often happens in minority groups (see Ellemers et al. 1999, among others), the strength of these parties seems to come precisely from keeping, and even defending, their marginal status. One might even say that these minor parties actually tend to legitimize their existence as a form of reaction against injustice.

Identity, injustice and schism 223 Such data may be seen as an extension of those obtained by Sani and Reicher (1998) regarding identity definition processes after the schism of the Italian Communist party. Sani and Reicher observed the general tendency of new leftwing parties to present themselves as being the true heirs of the previous left-wing grouping. According to our data, however, vindication of true ideological inheritance from an old party is likely to be much more developed in a new minor party than in a new major party. The different emphasis on ideological inheritance is probably due to the fact that, compared to a major party, a minor party has a stronger need of legitimization: defining itself as the only advocate of an ideology with solid roots in the past may be a good strategy in this direction. Adopting a similar strategy may not be so necessary for a major party, which already finds legitimization in the large consensus it can count on. Moving on to the next level of political identity, party identity, our analysis has shown that reference to this identity level is especially stressed by activists of the two minor extreme right-wing parties (see Figure 11.1). They hardly ever refer to subgroups within the party, whereas they continuously stress party homogeneity, shared values and shared goals. This behaviour is consistent with the ODT (Brewer 1991), according to which groups of limited size provide a more distinct, accessible and homogeneous category to identify with. In this case, perceived group homogeneity is probably further enhanced by the distinctive history of these small parties, born after the schism of a large party (MSI). As we have seen, members of these parties define themselves as the true heirs of the former MSI, the only ones who are really faithful to its ideology. This clear, well-defined identity is compared with the blurred, ambiguous party identity of AN activists. As a matter of fact, our analysis of AN activists’ autobiographical accounts has confirmed that these activists do not refer to their party identity very often. Instead, they frequently refer to a lower level of political identity, namely, subparty identity (see Figure 11.1). They tend to stress the values and experiences shared with a subgroup within the party, such as a local section of the party, the juvenile movement within the party, or a circle of friends connected to it. In the case of AN activists, identification with a limited subgroup within the party seems to satisfy the need of having a welldefined group to identify with, rather than identification with the party itself (for a similar hypothesis, see Abrams 1994).

Conclusion In the present chapter, we have examined the psycho-social processes related to schism in extreme right-wing parties, taking the schism which occurred in 1995 within Italy’s major right-wing party (MSI) as an exemplary case. First, we have shown that extreme right-wing activists belonging to parties born after a schism refer to multiple levels of political identity and that identity-related issues, such as intergroup differentiation and perceived injustice, vary accordingly. Secondly, we have shown that the relative salience of each level of political identity varies according to whether the activists belong to a major v. a minor party born after a schism.

12 Identity in German right-wing extremism Levels, functions and processes Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon

Right-wing extremism is a collective phenomenon. Like most, if not at all, political behaviour, it takes place in the context of social groups or structured systems of social groups. Right-wing extremists, irrespective of whether or not they are members of formal organizations, do not act as isolated individuals. Instead, they share their right-wing extremist ideas and actions with other people or groups of other people, while at the same time they express their ideas and perform their actions in opposition to yet other groups. These ideas and actions thus reflect and reinforce right-wing extremists’ embeddedness in a system of in-group–out-group relations. In other words, they reflect and reinforce right-wing extremists’ collective place or identity in the social world. Consequently, we put forward the working hypothesis that right-wing extremism cannot fully be understood without a proper social-psychological analysis of the role of collective identity. Scholars of social psychology have long acknowledged the causal role of collective identity in social perception and behaviour (e.g. Tajfel and Turner 1979, 1986) and there is a solid body of empirical evidence that corroborates the role of collective identity as an explanatory variable. For example, the concept of collective identity helps researchers to predict when, and to understand why, people stereotype themselves and others, discriminate against out-groups in favour of in-groups and accept influence from in-group members, but reject influence from out-group members (for reviews, see Brown and Gaertner 2001). It has also been shown that collective identity influences people’s justice concerns (Tyler and Smith 1999) and their willingness to engage in social protest as well as in other collective activities that aim at social change (Simon et al. 1998; De Weerd and Klandermans 1999; Simon 2004). In this chapter, we draw on social-psychological theorizing and research to develop a collective identity perspective on right-wing extremism that throws additional light on the findings of the collaborative research project discussed in the earlier chapters of this volume. The remainder of this chapter is divided into five major sections. In the first, we present a social-psychological definition of collective identity together with the guidelines for the development of a topography of RWE collective identity (RWE identity). In the second, we discuss important social-psychological functions of collective identity, in general, and RWE identity, in particular. In the third, we focus on the processes that operate in the service of these

Identity in German right-wing extremism 225 identity functions. In the fourth, RWE collective identity is further specified as an instance of politicized collective identity. In the final section, we summarize our collective identity perspective and its contributions to a better understanding of right-wing extremism. Throughout the chapter, we seek to illustrate our main points by drawing on 25 semi-structured interviews conducted in the context of German right-wing extremism (for further details, see Chapter 5 in this volume). Despite its focus on the German case, the perspective developed in this chapter has also been substantially informed and improved by the expert knowledge about their particular countries of the other contributors to the collaborative research project. We are thus confident that, notwithstanding important historical, political, economic and possibly cultural differences among countries or nations, the theoretical significance of the perspective offered extends beyond the German context.

Definition and topography of collective identity In the most basic social-psychological sense, identity is a place in the social world. A place is a metaphorical expression and stands for any position on any socially relevant dimension such as nationality, ethnicity, gender, age, trait, attitude and so forth (Simon 1999). In contrast to individual identity (‘I’ or ‘me’), collective identity (‘we’ or ‘us’) is a place that is shared with a group of other people. It is thus a more inclusive identity (Turner et al. 1987). Note that ‘collective identity’ is employed in this analysis as a (social)-psychological concept and not as a sociological concept in a Durkheimian sense (Durkheim 1895/1976; Rucht 1995). That is, collective identity in the present sense is the identity of a person as a member of a more inclusive collective, not the identity of a collective as a sui generis entity. It is collective in the sense that the person shares the source of his or her identity (that is, a particular place or group membership in the social world) and hence also the ensuing identity with other people. Especially in modern society, people have access to multiple places in the social world. These places are typically shared with other people, but not necessarily with precisely the same group of other people. As a consequence, there is a potential for multiple, partly overlapping or cross-cutting and even conflicting collective identities. However, not all the collective identities of a person are salient at the same time. Which specific collective identity becomes salient while the others remain dormant depends on which socially shared place moves into the psychological foreground, and this is, in turn, a joint function of personal variables (e.g. personal needs, goals, prior experiences) and social context variables (e.g. common fate, the ratio of intragroup to intergroup similarities, the presence of a salient out-group) (Oakes et al. Turner 1994; Simon 1999). Similarly, stability of collective identity depends on the stability of these antecedent variables (Onorato and Turner 2001). Just as the shared place or group membership from which a collective identity derives is embedded in a comprehensive web of places or group memberships, so is the particular collective identity embedded in a web of other collective identities. This web can be conceived of as having both a horizontal and vertical dimension.

226 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon The horizontal dimension reflects the fact that people typically define and evaluate their collective identity in contrast to the collective identity of an out-group (e.g. males v. females, Germans v. Americans, conservatives v. liberals). The vertical dimension reflects the insight that collective identities can be construed at different levels of abstraction related by means of class inclusion (Turner et al. 1987). A particular collective identity is nested in a more inclusive collective identity that is shared with a larger group of people. This more inclusive collective identity is also shared with people who, from the perspective of the original (less inclusive) collective identity, would be regarded as out-group members. For instance, the collective identity as a resident of the city of Berlin is nested in the more inclusive collective identity as a German citizen which includes also residents of the city of Hamburg. Although the more inclusive collective identity recedes into the psychological background once a particular (less inclusive) collective identity has become salient, the former still serves as the frame of reference for comparisons between (the less inclusive) in-group and out-group and thus also for the evaluation of the salient collective identity (Rosch 1978; Turner et al. 1987). For example, given a person’s salient collective identity as a resident of Berlin, he or she is likely to compare residents of Berlin with, and evaluate them in comparison with, residents of Hamburg (or any other major German city) on attributes that characterize German citizens in general (e.g. efficient). Drawing on both the horizontal and vertical dimension, it is thus possible to map out a particular collective identity and its context. In short, we can develop a topography of the collective identity. A topography of RWE identity The participants that were interviewed for the research reported in this book were mostly highly engaged members of specific RWE political parties or organizations. More specifically, the majority of interviewees in the German sample were members of the RWE political party Die Republikaner (REP). Accordingly, we use that party membership as the starting point to illustrate a possible topography of RWE identity. The critical components of this topography are summarized in Figure 12.1. Overall, the interviews confirmed that the party members saw themselves and their party as part of the political right wing, though not necessarily as part of the extreme right (see Chapter 9). For example, when rating himself on a left–right scale, one interviewee (Karl, male, 26)1 summarized the political spectrum in Germany as follows:2 I would say in the middle there is the SPD/CDU, one step further to the right is the CSU, another step further to the right is the Bund Freier Bürger or DSU, then us and then it would continue with NPD, DVU and so forth.3 Other interviewees were particularly eager to demarcate their party from other parties or organizations within the German RWE spectrum. One interviewee (Britta, female, 44) explained:

Identity in German right-wing extremism 227 We also have the NPD and all other ultra-rightists who should be mentioned as well, because they . . . All that is mixed in the same pot, intentionally. That’s the problem. They are not a democratic party any more. We are the only right-wing democratic party. Angela (female, 35) claimed: We also work on problems that exist today. For instance, when we think about family politics today or . . . as far as tax reform is concerned or that we stand up for issues, that differentiates us very clearly from the DVU. These demarcations and comparative evaluations clearly reflect the horizontal dimension of collective identity as a REP member. The mention of other RWE political parties as relevant comparison groups also involves the vertical dimension of collective identity in that it points to the importance of the shared, more inclusive RWE identity as a frame of reference. Explicit contrasts with the ‘left-wing camp’ are another, more direct indicator of the involvement of the vertical dimension and the importance of the more inclusive RWE identity. Such contrasts involve a variety of groups including former sympathizers of the students’ movement of 1968, the ‘Green Party’ (Die Grünen), communists, the (Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (Party of the Democratic Socialism – PDS), and to some extent also the liberal press and other media. For example, August (male, 40) commented: Basically, considering the present spectrum of political parties, every political party is an opponent, for me personally especially the Green Party.

National identity as German (v. foreigners)

RWE identity (v. left-wing camp)

Collective identity as ‘Republikaner’ (v. DVU, NPD)

Collective identity based on circles of friends in the party (v. friends outside the party) Notes: RWE= Right-wing extremist. DVU = German People’s Union. NPD = National Democratic Party of Germany.

Figure 12.1 A typography of RWE collective identity: the case of the German Republikaner.

228 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon Eduard (male, 50) remarked: Well, my personal opponents are and still remain the communists. In this respect, I am unable to change, because . . . also the development of the PDS clearly follows the path of the communists, that is really, well – they are my explicit opponents. I wouldn’t say enemies, but they are opponents. And Heinrich (male, 78) stressed: What is also very important, the mass media are against us. And that is something that is very bad in Germany. I don’t know whether it’s the same in other countries. The mass media have too much power. However, clearly the most consistent theme that we could extract from the interviews is the national perspective which moves us further up the vertical dimension of collective identity. The national perspective was shared by almost all 25 interviewees. The only exception was Hermann, the ex-member of the other RWE party who had already publicly turned away from right-wing extremism. He did not provide any detailed answers to questions concerning the personal importance of Germany because he found this issue ‘not so interesting’. Conversely, all other interviewees highlighted their ‘German’ standpoint in one way or another. It served them as an anchor for self-definition and identity and provided direction for their political attitudes and activities. Britta (female, 44) expressed the national perspective very clearly: The most important goals and ideas [are] first of all, I say, to represent and to defend my fatherland; to defend in so far, well, to be allowed as a German to show my nationality, my national consciousness, my patriotism, and also to be allowed to live it. This is number one for me. The other interviewees made similar comments. For example, Franz (male, 41): And therefore, the basic idea underlying this entire political orientation is that one, well that the established parties or the left entirely negate the nation-state and say: ‘That is something that is dissolving, that plays no role anymore, we now have to think globally and so forth.’ And I say, this is a disastrous development . . . This is the basic idea from which you can deduce everything, that I say, for me the nation Germany has value. Ute (female, 63): Well, first of all, if I shall say it very clearly, Germany and German interests first. Armin (male, 32):

Identity in German right-wing extremism 229 That is, when I say we have to repair this social structure, to re-build it, to deliberately care for the persons, the people, the individuals as such, then this refers in the first place only to Germans. And the surroundings abroad or the rest of the world is secondary. Occasionally, interviewees even favoured the attribute ‘national’ or ‘nationalconservative’ over the attribute ‘right-wing’ in self-description, most likely in order to escape negative stigmatization. National identity was also expressed by way of out-group rejection. More specifically, immigrants, asylum seekers, or other foreigners were often construed as a problem for, or even a threat to, Germany. For example, Richard (male, 49) proclaimed: Our party has to serve the interests of the indigenous population. It is certainly the first obligation that we say: so, we must do somewhat more for our fellow citizens than for asylum seekers or false asylum seekers. For it has been proven that of those who are asylum seekers here, only a fraction are or will finally be admitted as such. Similarly, Beate (female, 58) declared: We must not let in all and everyone, especially because we also import criminality. Eduard (male, 50) complained: I become extremely angry when I hear today from young Turks or the Turkish community: ‘We have re-built Germany.’ Because I know very well who re-built Germany, it was my grand-father. And he worked very hard till he was 86 and could not enjoy life very much . . . Our old people re-built Germany. Ute (female, 63) recalled: And my mother used to say, when it started with the family reunions [of foreigners] and so on: ‘You will see’ – she said very clearly – ‘we will not get rid of them any more’. After all, they were called guest workers. And guest workers means for me, you go home again after some time. And then it started with the family reunions. The high accessibility of national identity and the national perspective seemed to be grounded at least partly in the interviewees’ personal experiences and histories (Turner et al. 1987). The biographical data revealed that many interviewees saw themselves or their close relatives as innocent victims of German history. Several of the interviewees had personally been expelled from formerly German regions in the wake of the Second World War or were immediate descendants of

230 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon such expellees, while many others were negatively affected personally or vicariously through close relatives by the post-war totalitarian regime in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) (e.g. by the Berlin Wall). Overall, national identity as a German served as the most important (self-) definitional frame for our interviewees. Relative to national identity, all other less inclusive levels of identity were presented as secondary, seeming to serve merely an instrumental function. In line with this view, several interviewees explicitly acknowledged that they had engaged in rather systematic searches for information about different political parties and had considered or even tried alternative party memberships before they eventually joined the REP. For example, several interviewees reported that before they joined the REP they had been sympathizers or even members of conservative parties such as the CDU or CSU, but then turned away from them because of disappointment with these parties’ lenient politics toward the regime in the GDR (e.g. when it became known in the early 1980s that the former chairperson of CSU Franz-Josef Strauss had engineered financial support for the GDR). Hence, party membership in the REP was often the result of an informed, rational choice which might be revised should this party membership fail to meet the interviewee’s expectations. Thus Silke (female, 56) confirmed that party membership [I]s really a tool for something. Because otherwise you can’t do anything, you are totally helpless. You can do it only through a party in a democratic system. The party is like a tool for me, to form something and to exert influence. This rational or instrumental attitude toward party membership resonates with reports that close interpersonal relationships and friendships typically were the consequence rather than the precursor of party membership. For example, Ute (female, 63) reported: Actually, I have won friends through the party. It’s always nice when you are together with people, when you have this conviction, when you are together with people, this binds together, people who have the same opinions, even though sometimes there may be some differences, don’t you think? Franz (male, 41) recalled a similar experience: At first, I didn’t really have any friends in the party. I might have had party friends, but no friends, only had friends outside the party. And now I would say, I have perhaps what one calls friends, a quarter of my friends outside the party and meanwhile almost three-quarters of friends in the party. It happens automatically if you do so much together with them. August (male, 40) summarized his experience as follows: ‘Party colleagues they are, friends they will be.’ He continued:

Identity in German right-wing extremism 231 It is the precondition that I am able to do a successful job . . . The better the relationship among Republicans, the more successfully we can work and the higher the motivation. Occasionally, intraparty friendship was also referred to as ‘comradeship’, and even compared to comradeship among soldiers, to underline its importance or instrumental value for social validation, mutual support and successful cooperation. Circles of friends within the party thus emerged as important stabilizing interpersonal (intragroup) contexts which seemed to provide party members with a lower-level collective identity as comrades. However, like the more inclusive collective identity as a REP member or the even more inclusive RWE identity, this lower-level collective identity was subsumed under the most inclusive national identity. The latter served not only as the logically superordinate frame of reference, but also provided all lower-level collective identities with content and meaning. In fact, the collective identities depicted in Figure 12.1 seemed to be almost perfectly related by means of class inclusion, and collective identity at a given level of inclusiveness (e.g. REP member) was interpreted by the interviewees as the prototypical, if not ideal, instantiation of their collective identity at the next more inclusive level (e.g. ‘German’). Functions of RWE identity Proper appreciation of collective identity as an explanatory social-psychological construct requires an understanding of what collective identity does for the person. In other words, we need to understand the social-psychological functions of collective identity. More specifically, collective identity is assumed to serve a particular identity function to the extent to which it provides the person with a psychological experience (e.g. a feeling of ‘belongingness’) that promotes his or her social adjustment or well-being. In this sense, identity functions contribute to the attractiveness, and thus to the adoption and maintenance, of collective identity. This should be true especially for identity functions that relate to basic psychological needs. We shall now discuss five possible identity functions which seem particularly relevant in the present context and which the psychological literature suggests may indeed be related to basic psychological needs – namely, the needs for ‘belongingness’, distinctiveness, respect, understanding (or meaning) and agency (Maslow 1970; Tajfel and Turner 1986; Brewer 1991; Baumeister and Leary 1995; Smith and Mackie 1995; Fiske 2000). ‘Belongingness’ Collective identity confirms that one has a place in the social world. What is more, it emphasizes that one shares such a place with other people. One is thus part of and belongs to the collective place. As suggested by the topography depicted in Figure 12.1, RWE identity can fulfil the ‘belongingness’ function at different levels. More specifically, in the German case collective identity as a REP member

232 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon reflects ‘belongingness’ to a political party. At the same time, by virtue of its embeddedness in the more inclusive right-wing spectrum or camp, this party membership also confers a more inclusive RWE identity and thus ‘belongingness’ to an even more widely shared place. And, to the extent to which both collective identity as a REP member and the more inclusive RWE identity are construed as prototypical, if not ideal, instantiations of German identity, ‘belongingness’ can be claimed at an even higher level of inclusiveness, namely belongingness to the entire German nation (Heimat). As Bernhard (male, 22) explained: And the last point, the last kick, what made me join [the party] was the hope to move something in my country or, yes, in my fatherland. Even though this expression may again sound right-wing extremist, but it’s simply true, this is my home . . . It is the place where I live, where I dwell, where I was born, where I was raised; and hence these close ties with my home [Heimatverbundenheit]. Among our interviewees, the ‘belongingness’ function was also served by a collective identity that was located at the lower end of the (vertical) inclusiveness dimension. Here, circles of friends within the party were viewed as a more exclusive, but still collective, place to which one belonged. For example, Ute (female, 63) stated: I have actually won friends through the party . . . And of course there is such a feeling of togetherness. Although I wouldn’t be friends with everyone, you know. But I . . . simply feel close ties with them, without seeing each other a lot. Finally, the temporal aspect of ‘belongingness’ deserves attention. That is, the ‘belongingness’ function can also be served by pointing out the continuity of one’s collective identity over time. Long-term party membership is helpful, but not necessary, in this respect. In fact, as discussed above, the interviewees actually construed changes in their party memberships as evidence for the temporal continuity of their right-wing or at least conservative attitude and political orientation and thus laid claim to an enduring collective identity or stable ‘belongingness’ to a collective place. The great interest of many interviewees in German history or the great personal importance they attributed to German history (e.g. Prussia, the Second World War, expulsion of Germans in the wake of 1945, post-war economic reconstruction, politics concerning the GDR, the Berlin Wall, German ‘reunion’) can be interpreted along similar lines. It reflects their attempts to anchor Germany’s place in time and history so that national identity can better serve the ‘belongingness’ function. Bernhard (male, 22) claimed: It begins some time in the early Middle Ages, and it goes on till today. I mean, those are things which strictly speaking do not concern me any more. But there is still this connection that I can say: my ancestors . . . who live here the same way, they have achieved this. Other nations have simply not achieved this.

Identity in German right-wing extremism 233 Distinctiveness Collective identity defines not only where one belongs, but also where one does not belong. It not only reflects who one is, but also who one is not. Collective identity as a REP member thus permitted the interviewees to highlight their distinctiveness vis-à-vis members or supporters of left-wing parties (e.g. the SPD, Die Grünen), but also vis-à-vis members and supporters of other RWE parties within the right-wing camp (e.g. DVU, NPD). As illustrated above, the interviewees mentioned concrete political issues on which they saw disagreement with other parties (e.g. family politics or tax reform), but they also highlighted the party’s distinctiveness on more abstract dimensions such as idealism combined with patriotism. For example, Karl (male, 26) noted: It’s idealism . . . I don’t know whether the other parties have so much idealism or whether they see it the same way. I almost believe, that’s less or so. Similarly, Klaus (male, 49) remarked: Well, I would call it patriotic idealism, that exists among Republicans, about which one does not need to talk much, but it is simply and naturally there . . . I have not experienced it like this anywhere else. Albert (male, 28) stated: The party differs – that really matters – it differs from other parties in that it approves of the nation; the nation as historical reality. The party’s distinctiveness was thus derived from its perceived uniqueness as the best representative and advocate of the German nation. The German nation itself was also portrayed as a distinct collective place which differs from other nations in terms of economic and cultural achievements because ‘[o]ther nations have simply not achieved this’ (Bernhard, male, 22). Although occasionally the distinctiveness of a more inclusive RWE identity is highlighted through comparisons with the left-wing camp, party identity and national identity clearly emerged as the principal and closely interrelated sources of distinctiveness. Respect In addition to confirming that there is a place in the social world to which one belongs, collective identity also promises that one is respected there. Collective identity signals that one shares a collective place with, and is therefore similar to, other people, though not all other people. Collective identity thus implies that one can expect to be respected at least by these similar others which is, in turn, conducive to self-respect and self-esteem. The respect function of collective identity gains further in importance when groups feel stigmatized, as was the case for our

234 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon interviewees ‘because from outside one is demonized somehow by the media and so’ (Ute, female, 63). Beate (female, 58) could thus say: And through the appreciation of others, especially others in the party, I started to develop a certain self-esteem. The feeling of being stigmatized also extended to the level of national identity. Germany was seen as the victim of disrespectful treatment and exploitation from outside, and it was suspected that Germany’s role in the Second World War had been instrumentalized by other nations to justify this mistreatment of the entire German nation so that, according to Britta (female, 44), ‘wherever we go, we apparently cannot walk with our heads up’. Britta further complained that the German nation foolishly accepts this mistreatment: And that is also something I consider a danger; but it has been going on for some time, that the world laughs at this nation Germany. Because they must gloat over this and say: ‘How stupid they are that they let everybody exploit them like this.’ That is, we are really stupid. Accordingly, an important political goal of the interviewees was to provide Germans with a national identity again that could serve as a source of national respect and pride. Britta declared that the most important goal for her was ‘to be allowed as German to show my nationality, my national consciousness, my patriotism, and also to be allowed to live it’. Similarly, Albert (male, 28) elaborated: And where I found my party vindicated was during the soccer world cup, yes? Suddenly I saw so many allies, I suddenly saw people . . . I always admired the smallest states where, how passionately young people or people in general sang the national anthem together, young beautiful women painted with national colors, and with a national enthusiasm, singing the national anthem with great passion. It is not aggression, it is an expression of love. It is an expression of togetherness. It is dedication. It is something great. And it is nothing aggressive and nothing evil. For this, to maintain this, that’s what the Republicans stand for, like no other party in Germany. In conclusion, collective identity as a REP member seemed to be viewed as the germ out of which national identity as well as national pride and respect could develop for all Germans. Understanding (or meaning) Collective identity as a place in the social world also provides a perspective on the social world from which this world and one’s own place in it can be interpreted and understood. Moreover, because this perspective is socially shared, it is socially

Identity in German right-wing extremism 235 validated and meaningful (Festinger 1954). The understanding function of collective identity is particularly apparent in the political arena where political opponents reason and argue about social and political issues, their causes and consequences, and about the right way to deal with them. Collective identity supplies socially validated standpoints and guidelines for thinking and arguing about such issues. These standpoints and guidelines are sometimes explicitly codified in texts such as a party programme, but they can also be part and parcel of more informal and implicit collective representations, norms, or ideologies. One interviewee (Albert, male, 28) nicely summarized this point with respect to his party, the REP. He stated: It is this what really differentiates the party, really differentiates fundamentally, that you . . . really get the relationship between family, woman, children and state, that everything is connected in a certain way, formulated and transformed into a political programme. This is very important, this is very important. More specifically, the party perspective comprised definitions of problems, socially shared explanations, attributions of responsibility and implications for problem solving concerning issues such as immigration, unemployment and crime which were typically presented as threats to the German population. For example, when describing the circumstances of his entry into REP party, Richard (male, 49) explained: Also, the former slogan [of the party] ‘The boat is full’, already immigration was going on then, although in different numbers. And one increasingly saw the problem of asylum seekers in Germany. And August (male, 40) proposed that the perspective of the REP permitted a superior understanding of the political situation in Germany: Well, I am convinced that 95 per cent of the citizens in Germany do not have a comprehensive picture of the real and current democracy in our country . . . It must be one of the first goals to inform the population, the citizens where we stand politically, what we want, what our goals are . . . and that we miss not a single opportunity to explain the real dangers for our democracy to our citizens. It should be noted that we do not maintain here that such shared perspectives necessarily reflect deficient thinking, cognitive laziness, or passive acceptance of official party lines on the part of RWE. On the contrary, the shared perspectives that became visible in the interviews often reflected an active, effortful and sophisticated cognitive elaboration and validation of the collective worldview and self-understanding. The interviewees also indicated that interpersonal exchanges with others who shared the REP or RWE identity, especially within the inner

236 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon circle of friends, facilitated the elaboration and validation processes and thus the production of understanding and meaning. Albert (male, 28) acknowledged: The advantages are . . . that you are together with people who have the same political perspective . . . But I have people who go with me in this direction. And you participate. That is really the nice thing that you have people with whom you can talk. Agency Collective identity signals that one is not alone but can count on the social support and solidarity of other in-group members. Consequently, as a group, one can be a much more powerful and efficacious social agent. As with the understanding function discussed above, the agency function should also be particularly relevant in the political arena where people try to exert influence and engage in a power struggle to reach their goals. Indeed, collective identity as a REP member was associated with the wish and felt responsibility to do something about ‘problems’, such as immigration and unemployment, as well as with the expectation that one could actually do something about them. Although collective identity as a REP member did not seem to serve the agency function by promising that the party solutions would be accepted by society some time soon, there was nevertheless the hope that by acting in terms of this collective identity, in the long run, one might eventually be able to affect society or large segments of it. For example, when asked about the personal importance of his REP membership, Karl (male, 26) answered: For me, it means at the moment to get something done together with people with whom I get along well, with people from whom I can learn something, to get something off the ground together . . . And something that is meaningful in my opinion, you know? Albert (male, 28) stated: I don’t say that we have found the philosophers’ stone, nor will we re-invent the wheel. Those are not our intentions. But in certain contexts and certain political developments, we can from our side – I believe – contribute something and influence something. Franz (male, 41) formulated a similar hope: Perhaps overall our party can move something some day. One does not know that yet, that is not clear yet. But I don’t feel so powerless . . ., I simply feel that I have this feeling and as long as I still have this feeling, it is not hopeless. Thus, I can perhaps through my involvement, together with the involvement of many others, still perhaps influence the political orientation in Germany.

Identity in German right-wing extremism 237 And Beate (female, 58) was hoping to influence the youth: And we shouldn’t be surprised that the youth get increasingly impatient. However, they do not understand the reasons yet because they have been indoctrinated very differently. But some day, one day it will surface, then they will wake up. Finally, even one’s unsuccessful attempts to exert influence and to change the course of events were expected to confer recognition as a social agent on oneself. In this connection, Ute (female, 63) drew a grotesque parallel: Well, I always tell myself, my son can, if everything really goes downhill, my son can say my mother did something, yes? Like it was also always said in the past: ‘Why didn’t you do anything?’ I mean, concerning the Nazis. The parents were then blamed for that. And well, our son, in this respect, our son cannot blame us for anything, neither me nor my husband, yes? Nor do the two of us need to blame ourselves. We really do a lot, as we see it.

Processes of RWE identity Social-psychological literature suggests four important processes that operate in the service of the identity functions discussed above. These are (self-)stereotyping, conformity, prejudice, and discrimination (Simon and Klandermans 2001). These processes are spurred by collective identification and in turn help collective identity to better fulfil its functions. We will briefly discuss the relevance of each of the four processes for right-wing extremism. (Self-)stereotyping Social-psychological research has shown that the stereotyping of self and others is a typical cognitive outcome of identification with a group or collective. Once a particular collective identity is adopted, people ascribe attributes that they consider typical of the in-group to their fellow group members as well as to themselves and ascribe attributes that they consider typical of the out-group to outgroup members. In addition, they accentuate intragroup similarities and intergroup differences so that both in-group and out-group are homogenized and simultaneously differentiated from each other (Oakes et al. 1994; Simon and Hamilton 1994). As a result, the self is unmistakably located in a distinct in-group, and both the ‘belongingness’ and distinctiveness functions are served. Moreover, the content of the underlying (self-) stereotypes typically reflects and endorses the social reality as perceived and understood by group members. Accordingly, the understanding function is served as well. (Self-)stereotyping was also observed in our interviews with members of the REP party. More specifically, the party and its members including oneself were ascribed, among other attributes, ‘straightness to speak openly’ (Richard, male,

238 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon 49), ‘idealism’ (Karl, male, 26); ‘patriotism’ (Britta, female, 44); belief in or respect for ‘traditional values . . .: order, punctuality, diligence, discipline’ (Armin, male, 32) and a conservative, national or ‘national-conservative’ orientation (e.g. Beate, female, 58). The content of these self-stereotypes again underlines the close interrelation of party identity and national identity as well as the interviewees’ feelings of belongingness to a party that was construed as the unique representative and advocate of the German nation. At the same time, these selfstereotypes allowed the interviewees to demarcate themselves and their party from relevant out-groups within or outside the right-wing spectrum which in turn were counterstereotyped, inter alia, as ‘chaotic’ and ‘ultra-right’ (Britta, female, 44) or as ‘fuzzy’ (Richard, male, 49) and as those who ‘have almost entirely sacrificed German interests . . ., betrayed the own nation’ (Franz, male, 41). The (self)stereotypes can thus be understood as part and parcel of the interviewees’ national perspective which guided their understanding of the political arena and their place in it. Conformity Conformity is a behavioural consequence of collective identity. Conformity means that people behave in line with the norms, rules, and expectations of the group with which they identify. From a social-psychological point of view, conformity is behaviour in terms of one’s collective identity (Sherif 1967). Once a particular collective identity is adopted, behaving in terms of this identity is ‘the natural thing to do’. Just as singers sing and dancers dance, so group members behave in terms of what they are. Moreover, conforming behaviour verifies one’s collective identity. It demonstrates to oneself and others that one shares a particular collective identity (that is, belongs to a distinct collective place in the social world). Without conformity, one would lose one’s entitlement to a distinct collective identity. Consequently, group members do what people like them are expected to do, and they don’t do what people like them are expected not to do. Like self-stereotyping, which is usually its cognitive precursor, conformity thus serves both the ‘belongingness’ and distinctiveness functions. In addition, conformity facilitates coordinated, joint action which in turn increases the group’s chances to function as an efficacious social agent. Conformity thus also serves the agency function of collective identity. Because our interviews focused more on the research participants’ (self-) perceptions and interpretations than on their actual behaviours (see Chapter 9 in this volume), it is not too surprising that we found only some indirect evidence of the operation of conformity processes. Nevertheless, the link between collective identity and behaviour becomes visible in statements such as: I came to the world as German. And I have the right to be German . . . I want to preserve that, carry on with it, justify it somehow . . . I also want to represent my fatherland to the outside world. (Britta, female, 44)

Identity in German right-wing extremism 239 Moreover, in line with the interviewees’ national (self)-stereotyping there was a widespread consensus that party membership proscribed acting in terms of national identity. ‘German interests first’ (Ute, female, 63) was acknowledged as an important common behavioural guideline so that ‘this central theme in this entire acting, in the entire work is Germany’ (Armin, male, 32). Moreover, there was the feeling among the interviewees that fellow party members ‘go with me in this direction’ (Albert, male, 28), and the own party’s behaviour was contrasted with that of other parties who ‘take advantage of right-wing voters to actually pursue an entirely different policy’ (Franz, male, 41). There was thus some indication of behavioural conformity to specific party norms that may further have reinforced feelings of belongingness, distinctiveness and collective agency. Prejudice Psychological research has shown that positive affect and self are closely intertwined in that people have a strong tendency to positively value ‘me and mine’ (Smith and Mackie 1995). This tendency extends also to the group or collective level. People generally experience more positive affect toward others included in their own collective identity, whereas more negative affect is a typical experience in response to those who are ‘not like us’ (Tajfel and Turner 1986). Accordingly, prejudice, defined as dislike of the out-group or greater liking of the in-group relative to the out-group, is considered an important affective consequence of collective identity (Wilder and Simon 2001; cf. Brown 1995, for a more comprehensive conceptualization). Prejudice serves the respect function of collective identity in that increased liking among in-group members facilitates mutual respect which is further enhanced through downward comparisons with an allegedly less likeable out-group. Because of the importance of national identity to our interviewees, it comes as no surprise that they expressed a clear affective preference for their own nation relative to other nations. At the same time, however, they seemed very anxious to avoid any open or direct expression of prejudice. For example, Heinrich (male, 78) declared: ‘[T]he German culture I love, the other cultures I respect.’ Silke (female, 56) explained: Irrespective of whether I like the Germans or not, they are my people, I am used to them, I know what to think of them, I am familiar with them, they are my cultural circle and I actually want to preserve it. Bernhard (male, 22) admitted: I am really proud of my home country [Heimat] . . . especially in light of everything that we have achieved so far, things that the people in this country have achieved so far. Interestingly, nation was typically equated with culture, and preference for own

240 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon culture was often accompanied by the perception of threat to the German culture allegedly emanating from alien cultures (see also Gilroy 1992). In this context, prejudices could then be expressed in a rather subtle way. Thus, after his declaration of love for the German culture and his respect for other cultures, Heinrich (male, 78) added: However, our culture must by no means perish or be diluted [through contact with other cultures], must it? Contact, but not dilution. Similarly, Silke (female, 56) completed her statements: And I want to preserve it [the German culture] for my children: a peaceful country, where you have a right to be; and not one where there are conflicts some day because others push you out or because you are suddenly in an alien environment, in an alien culture. I do not want to have to make way because others are pushing in. And Bernhard (male, 22) clarified soon after his statements concerning his national pride derived from past achievements that his pride was also based on lower respect for out-groups: ‘Other nations have simply not achieved this.’ Taken together, prejudice was expressed primarily against national, religious, ethnic or cultural out-groups, such as Turks and asylum seekers, and mostly in a rather indirect and subtle way (Pettigrew and Meertens 1995). Intergroup differences took on an essentialist meaning in that they were construed as indicators of immutable and insurmountable differences between Germans and alien outgroups with respect to a deeper, underlying psychological, if not biological, makeup or essence (Medin and Ortony 1989; Rothbart and Taylor 1992). However, beneath this seemingly factual recognition of essential intergroup differences lurked the assertion of essential superiority of the German in-group and essential inferiority of the alien out-groups. Such subtle claims of in-group superiority and out-group inferiority seemed to serve the mutual reassurance of in-group members that they belonged to a national in-group that deserved to be respected. Discrimination Discrimination is unequal or unfair treatment of individuals because of their group membership (for a discussion of conceptual issues, see Mummendey and Otten 2001). Social-psychological research has shown that collective identity often increases the likelihood of discrimination against an out-group in favour of the ingroup (e.g. Brewer 1979; Messick and Mackie 1989; Mummendey and Otten 2001), although the relationship is by no means deterministic and is moderated by additional variables (see Turner and Reynolds 2001). From a social-psychological point of view, discrimination at the behavioural level is in many respects what prejudice is at the affective level. Like prejudice, discrimination against an outgroup carries the same (often implicit) meaning that the out-group is essentially

Identity in German right-wing extremism 241 inferior to the in-group and does not deserve the same respect. Like prejudice, discrimination thus also serves the respect function of collective identity, but it is the overt behavioural expression of respect for the in-group and disrespect for the out-group. In this sense, it is prejudice in action. In addition, discrimination suggests or even proves that one has power or control over the out-group so that the agency function is served as well. The interviews revealed that discrimination was typically directed against national, religious, ethnic, or cultural minorities in Germany that were also the targets of prejudice, especially Turks and asylum seekers. Those minorities were not considered legitimate parts of Germany. Instead, they were excluded and singled out for unequal treatment. For example, Richard (male, 49) requested: So, we must do somewhat more for our fellow citizens than for asylum seekers or false asylum seekers. Similarly, Ute (female, 63) was anxious to restrict access to Germany for foreigners: ‘But I just want that Germany remains the home for Germans, predominantly at least.’ There was also a tendency to discredit foreigners as criminals and thus to justify discriminatory action against them. Beate (female, 58) declared: But I believe we must not let in all and everyone, especially because we also import criminality. Heinrich (male, 78) expressed a very similar opinion: [A]lso the issues of criminality and foreigners, which are interconnected, . . . I am also strictly against that Germany is an immigration country. And Ute (female, 63) referred to the official party slogan to express her discriminatory intentions: Actually, basically our slogan for the election . . . that first of all criminal foreigners must be deported, as long as they have not German citizenship because then they are no longer foreigners, are they? In conclusion, prejudice against alien minorities, and the associated disrespect for them, translated at the behavioural level into opposition to immigration and equal rights for minority members. From a social-psychological perspective, a more liberal immigration policy and equal rights for minority members would imply that they deserve the same respect and might soon have the same power as oneself and one’s fellow in-group members. However, such a development seemed unacceptable to our interviewees, most likely because collective identity as a (native) German would then lose its function as a zone of guaranteed respect and a source of superior power and agency.

242 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon

RWE identity as a politicized collective identity Politicized collective identity is a form of collective identity that underlies group members’ intentional engagement, as a mindful and self-conscious collective, in a power struggle with other groups, knowing that it is the wider, more inclusive societal context in which this struggle takes place and needs to be orchestrated accordingly (Simon and Klandermans 2001). This definition rests on three critical pillars: collective identity, the struggle for power between groups and recognition of the societal context of this power struggle. RWE identity can be understood as an instance of politicized collective identity because the analyses of our interviews with members of REP presented in the preceding sections strongly suggest that the phenomenology of RWE identity revolves largely around these three pillars. First, RWE such as the German REP members do not understand themselves or act as single, isolated individuals in the political arena. Instead, they are aware that they share important social and political attitudes (e.g. concerning immigration, unemployment, or crime) with other people, but not all other people. They are aware of group boundaries that separate ‘us’ from ‘them’ and that there is relatively more agreement on important respects within groups than between groups. Second, they are interested in exerting influence and propagating their positions. However, they also know that, while pursuing these goals, they will meet resistance from powerful others (e.g. the left-wing camp, the established parties, or the media) and that they need power to break this resistance. They therefore consciously engage in a power struggle with other groups and are prepared for intergroup competition and conflict. Third, they know that the power struggle takes place in a wider societal context so that additional groups or segments of the wider society are likely to get involved and need to be taken into account as well. For example, while trying to win the German nation, the REP expect resistance from German leftwing parties (e.g. Die Grünen) or other left-wing circles including former sympathizers of the students’ revolt in 1968 (‘die 68er’), but also from the political centre or establishment and its various institutions including the government, the judicial system, the police and the secret service. Specifically, the media are recognized as an important player in the political arena that has to be feared and strategically enlisted for one’s own agenda at the same time. One interviewee (Albert, male, 28) summarized this point as follows: I assume that if one of us spoke – let’s say the national chairperson Dr Schlierer – for half an hour on all channels during the best broadcasting time, then we have a changed republic afterwards, you bet. Because then, it will be here, I mean, it is totally different then. But there is an immense number against us, a mixture of very different interest groups. In their triangular model of politicized collective identity Simon and Klandermans (2001) suggest that politicized collective identity, defined by the conceptual triad of collective identity, power struggle and societal context, unfolds through a sequence of politicizing steps that gradually transform the group’s relationship to

Identity in German right-wing extremism 243 its social environment. More specifically, they suggest that the politicization process can be summarized as an idealized or ideal-typical sequence of three steps or stages. These are: awareness of social grievances, adversarial attributions to blame opponents and involvement of society by triangulation. These steps or stages can also be distinguished in the context of RWE identity. Although the three stages and the associated processes often overlap, interact and feed back on each other, the proposed sequence can help to delineate the process of politicization of RWE identity. For instance, among German RWE, the construal of shared grievances revolves to a large extent around the perceived exploitation of the German welfare state at the expense of native Germans by immigrants, asylum seekers, and other aliens who are accused of having contributed nothing to the welfare state in the first place. For example, one interviewee (Ute, female, 63) complained: Hence I don’t see that this can work at all, when you are a welfare state, when you have a social security system, that this is then used by people – I refrain from saying abused now – but used, who come here and have never contributed a penny. It simply cannot work. Similarly, Richard (male, 49) recounted: I was a social welfare recipient, had to sell everything. And then I saw the hallways full of social welfare recipients who had no command of the German language. For them, everything worked out much better. Related grievances are the alleged threat to German culture because of the presence of too many immigrants and the perception that attempts ‘to protect’ German culture and identity are constantly stigmatized and discredited as nationalistic or fascist activities. Accordingly, Claudia (female, 51) remarked: [A]s a German you don’t have the right anymore to open your mouth, otherwise you are automatically a Nazi. And these are such things that disturbed me enormously. In general, these grievances are construed as being shared at the more inclusive national level, but they are also strongly felt at the less inclusive levels of RWE identity or collective identity as a REP member. In fact, because they view their more exclusive collective identity as the epitome of national identity, REP members seem acutely aware of these grievances, and in line with their selfunderstanding as the active carriers of the national torch feel particularly victimized by stigmatization and unpatriotic defamation. In the words of an interviewee (Jakob, male, 63) who complained that Germans were constantly confronted with unjustified accusations of xenophobia: I am no longer willing to accept that I have to give consideration, in such a

244 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon degrading way, always, also to scoundrels. I don’t go along. I really want to walk upright in the sense of Bloch also concerning national matters. As regards adversarial attributions, it is, on the one hand, aliens who are blamed for shared grievances. On the other hand, however, ‘those who are in the government for years’ (Eduard, male, 50) and the media are blamed as well. In fact, while aliens seem to be blamed for their sheer presence in Germany, the government and the media are blamed for their actions and/or passivity. They are accused of doing nothing or too little to protect the interests of the German people and ‘our culture and identity.’ Florian (male, 59) even alluded to some kind of conspiracy because ‘people rule here, a so-called “connection” . . . that really decides what the German government does, whoever is chancellor’. Moreover, together with the political left, the government and the media are blamed for their alleged unpatriotic, pro-alien bias and defamation of REP members as nationalists and fascists. Accordingly, Albert (male, 28) recounted: One can [take] such a pledge of national unity . . . To the SPD [Social Democratic Party of Germany] I couldn’t mention it all. I was at a meeting, and I had to experience how they insulted me as a reactionary and a blind man, and who knows what else. Taken together, while aliens are blamed because they are perceived as the immediate problem, and thus become targets or victims of prejudice and discrimination (see the section on Processes of RWE Identity on p. 237), the government, the media and the political left are blamed because they are perceived as the responsible cause or wrongdoer, and thus become opponents or even enemies. Finally, right-wing extremists, in general, and the REP as a political party, in particular, try to involve society at large in their power struggle against the groups they hold responsible for their and the entire nation’s grievances. In accordance with their self-understanding that they do it for Germany, RWE typically assume that the people or the silent majority, if only adequately informed and forced to take a stand, will eventually take sides with them against their opponents (e.g. the aliens, the establishment, the political left) who ‘are afraid that this could spread after all’ (Silke, female, 56). One interviewee (Beate, female, 58) summarized this hope as follows: But on the other hand I tell myself, well, some day the bill will be presented, that the people wake up after all and say: ‘Well, if it hadn’t been for you and if you had not fought for us unremittingly, then it would be much worse.’ Attempts to triangulate the power struggle against their opponents by involving the silent majority include ‘moderate’ actions such as the public campaigns by REP members for the immediate deportation from Germany of ‘criminal’ foreigners, but there was also some indication in the interviews that more militant actions may also be seen as politically helpful. Thus, one interviewee (Florian, male, 59)

Identity in German right-wing extremism 245 alluded to violent and pogrom-like actions by young neo-Nazis and right-wing skin heads referring to their activities as ‘[S]tupid ideas [that] are not always the best.’, but continued: ‘[B]ut after all, they tried to scare the state a little bit perhaps.’ In other words, he seemed to acknowledge that, beyond attacking foreigners or other ‘un-German’ outsiders (e.g. homeless people) as the immediate targets, the strategic aim of such militant actions could be to awaken the silent majority and marshal its support in order to put pressure on the government and other representatives of the establishment to take corrective action and to alleviate the alleged grievances.

Summary and conclusions This chapter was built on the premise that right-wing extremism is a collective phenomenon. RWE define themselves and act not as single, isolated individuals, but as members of more inclusive collectives or social groups. It follows that RWE identity affects the perception and guides the behaviour of RWE and therefore deserves careful attention as an explanatory variable. The social-psychological analysis presented in this chapter illuminated four major aspects of RWE identity, exemplified by the identity of our interviewees as members of the German political party the REP. First, we started with a topography of RWE identity by situating this identity in a multi-layered network of nested identities and contrasting outgroups (see Figure 12.1). In particular, this topography illustrates the close interconnectedness of RWE identity and national identity, at least for the German case (but see also Billig 1995). The more inclusive national identity serves as the crucial frame of reference for the definition and demarcation of the less inclusive RWE identity which is in turn construed by RWE as the prototypical, if not ideal, instantiation of the former. In short, national identity gives RWE identity meaning, while RWE identity gives national identity a concrete form. Second, RWE identity derives its attractiveness, at least partially, from its socialpsychological functions through which it contributes to the satisfaction of basic psychological needs. Specifically five identity functions seem relevant, namely the ‘belongingness’, distinctiveness, respect, understanding, and agency functions. People derive from RWE identity the feeling that they belong to a distinct collective place in the social world and that they are respected at least by those who share the same place or identity. Because RWE identity is closely connected to both more inclusive and more exclusive collective identities (e.g. the more inclusive national identity or the more exclusive collective identity based on circles of friends, see Figure 12.1), the ‘belongingness’, distinctiveness, and respect functions are simultaneously served at different levels of abstraction and intergroup relations, such as relations between nations, between political camps, between political parties and between friendship circles. Moreover, because RWE identity is anchored in the political arena, the understanding and agency functions seem to be particularly important sources of its attractiveness. RWE identity offers a socially validated and thus phenomenologically meaningful and stable perspective

246 Ludger Klein and Bernd Simon on a rapidly changing and complex social world from which this world and one’s place in it as well as one’s interests, friends, enemies and grievances can be understood. RWE identity also serves as a platform or springboard for acting in and on the social world. It unites and empowers people so that they can participate as efficacious social agents in the struggles for or against social change. Third, several fundamental social-psychological processes operate in the service of the functions of RWE identity. (Self-)stereotyping processes at the cognitive level and conformity processes at the behavioural level accentuate ‘what we are and what we are not’ and thus serve the ‘belongingness’ and distinctiveness functions of RWE identity. (Self-)stereotyping also contributes to the understanding function and conformity to the agency function. Prejudice at the affective level and discrimination at the behavioural level support the respect function, and the latter tends also to support the agency function of RWE identity. Taken together, these processes strengthen RWE sense that they belong to a distinct and superior group that provides them with mutual respect, a meaningful understanding of the social world and the collective strength or power to act in that world. Finally, RWE identity is (an instance of) politicized collective identity. In accordance with Simon and Klandermans’ (2001) triangular model of politicized collective identity, RWE identity is politicized in that it underlies, and is reproduced by, RWE engagement as self-conscious group members in power struggles with other groups knowing that it is the more inclusive societal context in which these struggles have to be fought out. Awareness of shared grievances, adversarial attributions and involvement of society by triangulation are three critical antecedent stages of the politicization of RWE identity. As regards shared grievances, the analysis of RWE identity points to an interesting variant of this antecedent. For many other politicized groups (e.g. feminists, supporters of the civil rights movement, or the gay and lesbian movement) shared grievances derive from perceived illegitimate inequality that disadvantages the ingroup. However, RWE such as the German REP members perceive or suspect illegitimate equality between the indigenous population and alien minorities (e.g. between native Germans and immigrants) and construe this condition as a shared grievance for themselves and for their compatriots in general (see also Wimmer 2002). Illegitimate equality is experienced not just concerning the distribution of material resources, but also concerning the respect for different collective identities or cultures. The ‘natural’ privilege or taken-for-granted hegemony of one’s own collective (national) identity is seen as under threat. At the stage of adversarial attributions, aliens are blamed for this (as well as for grievances that are more directly related to material resources), but civic authorities and other segments of the establishment are also held responsible for (not doing enough to remedy) this identity grievance. At the final stage of triangulation, right-wing extremists take this issue to ‘the people.’ In addition to the immediate opponent or enemy, the silent majority is thus involved as a third party and forced to take a stand in the political arena. Taken together, all along the politicization process, RWE try to align RWE identity with national identity. They emphasize and exploit the interconnectedness of both levels of identity as a transmission belt for political mobilization whereby

Identity in German right-wing extremism 247 the silent majority shall eventually be won over. The functions and processes of RWE identity are also likely to prove useful, and to be strengthened accordingly, during the politicization process. For example, in line with its understanding function, RWE identity and the associated stereotyping processes facilitate causal attributions which blame out-groups and thus provide RWE with seemingly simple explanations for shared grievances (see also Pettigrew 1979; Hewstone 1989). A similar mechanism holds for the agency function of RWE identity and associated conformity processes. Knowing that one is joined by other like-minded group members in the pursuit of common goals increases self-perception as a efficacious social agent and hence increases RWE willingness to engage in power struggles with other groups. A careful social-psychological analysis of RWE identity, its connections with other forms or levels of collective identity, its functions and associated social psychological processes thus contributes to a better understanding of right-wing extremism as both a political and psychological phenomenon. We would like to conclude this chapter with a brief comment on the generalizability of our analysis. In particular, we suggest that multiple levels of collective identities also play an important role in many (new) social movements. Just as RWE identity can be understood as the politicized form, or one of the politicized forms, of national identity, many social movements or social movement organizations seem to provide their members with a politicized form of a more inclusive collective identity. Research conducted in several different social movement contexts indicates that social movement or activist identities are meaningfully embedded in more inclusive collective identities, such as collective identity as an older person, a fat person, or a gay man (Simon et al. 1998; Stürmer et al. 2003). Hence, a particular activist identity cannot adequately be understood without recognition of the more inclusive collective identity from which it derives its meaning. At the same time, activist identities link such broader collective identities to collective action. Just as REP members represent and propagate the translation of national identity into a politicized RWE identity, many social movements (strive to) translate broader collective identities into politicized activist identities (e.g. identity as an older person into identity as a Grey Panther, Simon et al. 1998). The notion of collective identity with its various levels, functions and processes is therefore a promising conceptual building block for more integrative analyses.

Notes 1 All interviewees were given fictitious first names. This ensures anonymity of our interviewees, but makes cross-references possible. Gender and age are indicated as well. 2 All quotations in the text are taken from interviews with members of REP and were translated from German into English by the authors. The emphasis was not on literal translation, but rather on conveying the gist of the interviewees’ statements. 3 PD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, Social Democratic Party of Germany); CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands, Christian Democratic Union of Germany); CSU (Christlich-Soziale Union, Christian-Social Union); Bund Freier Bürger (Association of Free Citizens); DSU (Deutsche Soziale Union, German Social Union); NPD (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, National Democratic Party of Germany); DVU (Deutsche Volksunion, German People’s Union).

13 Do right- and left-wing extremists have anything in common? Antonio Chirumbolo, Nonna Mayer and Hans De Witte

A commonly received idea is that extremes meet, and that left- and right-wing extremists have a lot in common. In academic circles, the publication of Adorno et al.’s The Authoritarian Personality in 1954 sparked started off a similar debate. Adorno and his colleagues saw authoritarianism essentially as the mark of the ‘anti-democratic’ and ‘potentially fascist individual’ (Adorno et al. 1950: 1). Several authors suggested that left-wingers could be authoritarian as well, starting with the early work by Eysenck (1947), Rokeach (1960) and Stirls (1960) to the most recent work by Feldman (2003), Stone et al. (1993), or Bob Altemeyer’s attempt to build a specific ‘Left-wing Authoritarianism’ scale measuring ‘revolutionary’ conventionalism (Altemeyer 1996: 216–34). Until now, they show no conclusive evidence. Altemeyer himself admits that ‘if you want a living, breathing, scientifically certifiable authoritarian on the left, I have not found a single one (1996: 230). Yet the debate could start up again at a time where radical populist rights are developing in Europe (Betz 1994; Taggart 2002) and left-wing extremism reviving with the antiglobalization movement and its sometimes violent confrontation with the police. The aim of this chapter is therefore to complete our understanding of right-wing extremism by a comparison with left-wing extremism in three different contexts. France, where both extremes are thriving at the polls, is perhaps the most emblematic case. In the presidential election on 21 April 2002, the score of the two extreme right candidates, Jean-Marie Le Pen (FN) and Bruno Mégret (MNR) rose to a record level of almost 20 per cent of the valid votes, while together the three Trotskyite candidates, Arlette Laguiller, Olivier Besancenot and André Glückstein, attracted more than 10 per cent. In Belgium, as we have seen, the extreme right is strong but left-wing extremism disappeared from the electoral scene during the 1990s. There is only one small ‘Maoist’ extreme left political party left, without seats in Parliament, next to a small number of extra-parliamentary groups. In Italy, there is an important extreme left, born from several splits from the former Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party – PCI). After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, the PCI became Partito Democratico della Sinistra (Democratic Party of the Left – PDS), taking a more social-democrat orientation. The PDS won the 1996 election within the left-wing coalition and was part of the government for the first time in its history, its secretary becoming prime minister two years later. This party is now called Democratici di Sinistra (Democrats of the

Right- and left-wing extremists: anything in common? 249 Left – DS). Those who remained faithful to the old communist tradition founded in 1991 the Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (Party of the Communist Reorganization – PRC) which gained 5.6 per cent of the votes in the 1992 elections and are perceived as extreme left. Another schism occurred inside the PRC in 1996, those who were in favour of support to Prodi’s government and the PDS founding the Partito dei Comunisti Italiani (Party of the Italian Communists – PdCI). What makes these extremists alike? What makes them different? To answer these questions we shall rely on two kinds of data. In France we draw on a postelectoral survey conducted after the 1995 presidential election on a national sample of registered voters, considering as ‘extremists’ respondents who located themselves at one end or the other of the classical seven-point left–right scale.1 In the two other countries a specific survey was designed on symmetric samples of extreme right and extreme left activists, conducted in 1996 in Italy and 1997 in Belgium.

Theories and hypotheses There are obvious limitations in using Adorno’s study to deal with contemporary extremist activism. The potential ‘fascist’ of today can hardly have the same features as 50 years ago (Billig 1979). Authoritarian attitudes are not necessarily predictive of authoritarian behaviours. Extremist activism in particular can be seen as a non-conventional political response at odds with the typical conventionalism of the authoritarian (Shils 1960; Billig and Cochrane 1979). Authoritarian attitudes not only reflect a type of personality, they also depend heavily on factors such as education (Shils 1960), context (Milgram 1974) and social domination (Sidanius and Pratto 1999). But what the study points to is the coherence of an individual’s convictions, and the pattern they form. In that perspective we shall first focus on the psychological factors of political extremism, assuming if not a personality feature at least, in a ‘social learning’ perspective, a cluster of authoritarian and intolerant attitudes specific to RWE if not to all forms of extremism. Bob Altemeyer, for instance, offers a modernized and more reliable version of the F-scale, defining authoritarianism as a combination of three sets of attitudes: ●

●

●

‘Authoritarian submission’ is ‘a high degree of submission to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives’. ‘Authoritarian aggression’ is the tendency to punish and repress, ‘a general aggressiveness, directed against various persons, that is perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities’. ‘Conventionalism’ is social conformism, ‘a high degree of adherence to the social conventions that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities’ (Altemeyer 1996: 6).

On the other hand, one can emphasize the political dimension of extremism, and think in terms of values and ideology rather than personality and psychodynamics. In Europe, at least, the left–right divide still appears as the main

250 Antonio Chirumbolo, Nonna Mayer and Hans De Witte structuring factor of the political scene, widely recognized as such (Fuchs and Klingemann 1989; Klingemann 1995: 192). If the values and issues on which both sides oppose change through time and space (Bon 1991), several studies point at enduring differences between left-wing and right-wing values. For Norberto Bobbio (1994), for instance, left and right fundamentally disagree in their conception of equality. For the left inequalities are social and must be corrected, while for the right they are natural and should be preserved. One should in any case expect extreme right and extreme left activists to hold contrasted if not diametrically opposed views of the world. As Lipset and Raab put it in their study of extremism in America (1970): ‘In terms of specific issues, extremism mostly means the tendency to go to the poles of the ideological scale.’ What extremists on both sides share, however, in spite of substantively different ideologies, is a political style. Extremes contrast with moderate or centre positions. It is a well-established fact that political interest follows a bell-shaped curve as one moves along the left–right scale, going up at both extremes and plummeting in the centre (Deutsch, Weill and Lindon 1966: 21; Converse and Pierce 1986: 128). The former are systematically more politicized than the latter: they show more interest in politics, they are more consistent in their opinions, they are more likely to be ‘ideologues’ or ‘near-ideologues’ as Philip Converse defined them (1964). As compared to moderates, extremists are also supposed to have a more radical approach to politics, a wish to change and revolutionize the world, that can legitimate violence and come to conflict with democratic norms. As Lipset and Raab (1970) put it, extremism is at the same time ‘a generalized measure of deviance from the political norm’ and ‘a specific tendency to violate democratic procedures’. ‘In this sense, extremism means going beyond the limits of the normative procedures which define the democratic political process’ (Lipset and Raab 1970: 4–5): limits which, like the issues on which left and right clash, are not given once and for all. Along these lines we will compare the level of authoritarianism and ethnocentrism and the core values of left- and right-wing extremists, their degree of politicization and their commitment to democratic norms and procedures.

French extremists In the French study, respondents were asked to place themselves on a seven-point scale: ‘One usually classifies the French on a scale of this type, going from left to right. Where would you personally locate yourself on this scale?’ Left

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Right

Ninety-eight per cent of the sample were prepared to locate themselves on the scale, and a sizeable proportion chose an extreme position, 6 per cent position 1 (N = 226), which we shall consider as left-wing extremists (LWE) and 5 per cent position 7 (N = 298), which we shall consider as right-wing extremists (RWE).

Right- and left-wing extremists: anything in common? 251 Authoritarianism and ethnocentrism Whatever indicator we use, extreme right-wingers always stand out as the most authoritarian and ethnocentric of all, in line with Adorno’s findings. They wish to restore the death penalty (64 per cent of RWE v. 37 per cent of LWE ‘very much agree’), they want school to teach children discipline and effort rather than form independent minds (69 v. 46 per cent), they give utmost value to the word ‘authority’ (83 v. 59 per cent) and they reject all minority groups. On a scale of ethnocentrism, combining questions about immigrants, Islam, feeling at home in one’s own country and French v. European identity, the highest scores are found among RWE (11 v. 8 among LWE ).2 While left-wingers in general, whether they locate themselves on position 1, 2, or 3 of the scale, always stand out as the most tolerant and permissive of all. Table 13.1 sums up the differences on an authoritarian–ethnocentrism scale, comprising three questions which are regularly asked in national election surveys, Likert-style. Respondents must say how much they agree with the following statements: ‘There are too many immigrants in France/Nowadays one does not feel as much as home as one used to/One should re-establish the death penalty.’ The answers are tightly correlated and the scale varies between 0 (those who always give the most tolerant answer) and 9 (those who always give the most intolerant answers).3 On this scale the average score of RWE is almost twice as high as the score of LWE; throughout the period covered (1988-2002) LWE are not necessarily the polar opposite of RWE. They often appear slightly more ethnocentric, repressive and authoritarian than respondents in positions 2 and 3, although always below the sample’s average. This is mainly a result of socioeconomic status, which remains as one of the main explanatory factors of authoritarianism and ethnocentrism. The proportion of working-class and poorly educated respondents is higher among extreme left than among moderate left respondents. Once the effects of class and education are controlled for, the differences between left-wingers tend to disappear. If one goes beyond the specific issues of authoritarianism and ethnocentrism to explore the worldview of LWE and RWE, it is, as expected, structured by the left– right divide. Right-wingers are economically liberal, they have a far better image of ‘profit’ (seen as positive for 57 per cent of RWE and 38 per cent of LWE) and ‘privatization’ (70 per cent v. 26 per cent), while left-wingers defend the welfare state, public service, collective action and the rights of the working class. For Table 13.1 Scores on authoritarian ethnocentrism scale, by location on a left–right scale Location on left–right scale

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Eta

1988 (M: 5.3) 1995 (M: 5.4) 2002 (M: 4.7)

4.0 4.7 3.6

4.2 4.1 3.3

4.4 4.1 4.0

5.6 5.7 4.9

6.0 5.8 5.4

6.8 6.7 6.2

7.7 7.5 7.0

0.57*** 0.45*** 0.52***

Note *** p < 0.001; the eta is tabulated on the two extreme groups (positions 1 and 7).

252 Antonio Chirumbolo, Nonna Mayer and Hans De Witte instance ‘unions’ are seen as positive for 78 per cent of LWE (v. 35 per cent of RWE). And while 44 per cent of RWE think that the first mission of the state is to ‘increase economic competitiveness’ (v. 10 per cent of LWE), 86 per cent of LWE think that it should above all ‘improve the condition of the working classes’ (v. 53 per cent of RWE). Right-wingers are also socially conformist, they defend more intensely traditional values – family, religion, morals – while left-wingers are more permissive on issues such as the rights of women or sex. Thus 73 per cent of LWE (v. 52 per cent of RWE) totally agree with the idea that women should play the same part than men at work and in politics4 and 66 per cent (v. 36 per cent) consider that homosexuality is ‘an acceptable way to lead one’s sexual life’. But again RWE and LWE are not diametrically opposed because of the interplay of socio-economic factors. LWE are more conformist than moderate leftists, while RWE are economically less liberal than the moderate right-wingers, because of their more working-class background and lower education. The sharpest differences, though, are found, as suggested by Bobbio, when it comes to the value of equality. Respondents were asked to say for a list of words if they suggested for them something positive or negative. The proportion of respondents to whom the word ‘equality’ has a ‘very’ or ‘somewhat positive’ ring goes up in a straight line as one moves from position 7 to position 1 on the left– right scale (see Figure 13.1). The same is true for the word ‘solidarity’ (see Figure 13.2).5 This time, LWE and RWE are diametrically opposed and their answers reveal two contrasted visions of society. RWE respect hierarchy, which they see as natural: individuals can move up the social ladder but they must fend for themselves. LWE want to change the social order, reducing inequalities by promoting cooperation and mutual aid.

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3 Extreme left

Left

Centre left

Centre

Figure 13.1 Want of equality, by left–right scale.

Centre right

Right

Extreme right

Right- and left-wing extremists: anything in common? 253 Political matters Only on political involvement indicators does one find the expected bell-shaped curve. Indeed at both extremes of the left–right scale, politics matters more than for middle-of-the-road voters. Those who place themselves in positions 1 or 7 show far more interest (see Figure 13.3). They say they talk about politics with friends, spouses, family, colleagues more frequently (see Figure 13.4) and they feel closer to people who have the same political ideas (see Figure 13.5). They want to change the world and they believe in the power of politics to do so (see Figure 13.6). Lastly we explored support for basic procedures and rights in a democracy. As there were no questions of that kind in the 1995 survey we used surveys from 1988 and 2000.6 In 1988 three questions asked about basic democratic procedure: how 0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4 Extreme left

Left

Centre left

Centre

Centre right

Right

Extreme right

Centre right

Right

Extreme right

Figure 13.2 Want of solidarity, by left–right scale.

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3 Extreme left

Left

Centre left

Centre

Figure 13.3 Political interest, by left–right scale.

254 Antonio Chirumbolo, Nonna Mayer and Hans De Witte 0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4 Extreme left

Left

Centre left

Centre

Centre right

Right

Extreme right

Centre right

Right

Extreme right

Figure 13.4 Talking politics, by left–right scale.

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1 Extreme left

Left

Centre left

Centre

Figure 13.5 Common political interests, by left–right scale.

serious would it be if one suppressed the National Assembly, political parties and the right to vote? They form an attitudinal scale of democratic commitment. The scores vary between 1 and 10 and the sample’s average is 8.6. Today representative democracy is obviously the norm, yet, there are slight differences by political orientation. Attachment to these basic rights goes down as one moves from left to right, from a maximum of 9.1 among LWE to a minimum of 8 among RWE. And the 2000 survey, which was specifically designed to explore

Right- and left-wing extremists: anything in common? 255 commitment to democracy, gives an even more contrasted picture. On questions about strong leadership, power of experts and trust in Parliament, RWE always show a streak of anti-democratic tendencies, which does not appear among LWE (Table 13.2). So, as far as ‘extremists’ are concerned, defined as respondents who choose one of the two extremes on the left–right scale, whatever their side, they are more politicized, more confident in their capacity to change the world and more radical. The similarities stop there. RWE are authoritarian and ethnocentric, socially conservative, economically liberal, with a clear anti-democratic streak. LWE are 0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1 Extreme left

Left

Centre left

Centre

Centre right

Right

Extreme right

Figure 13.4 Will to change society, by left–right scale. Table 13.2 Attitudes towards authority and power, by location on a left–right scale (%) Self-defined as right wing

Self-defined as left wing

Very much

Somewhat

Not very

Not very

Somewhat

Very much

Authority should be more respected

97

95

93

66

85

88

Confident in National Assembly

55

64

53

54

56

35

It should be experts, and not the government, who decide what is best for the country

36

53

52

54

54

63

What the country really needs is a strong man at its head that doesn’t bother about Parliament or elections

23

34

37

42

49

72

Note Eta of 0.37, 0.20, 0.22 and 0.43. p < 0.001.

256 Antonio Chirumbolo, Nonna Mayer and Hans De Witte anti-authoritarian, anti-ethnocentric, socially non-conformist and economically interventionist, and far more attached to basic democratic rules and principles. However, our indicator of extremism can be criticized. People who place themselves at one end or the other of the left–right scale are not necessarily active members in extremist parties, they may even not feel close to these parties at all.7 To go further, we need to turn to actual involvement in extremist groups, as was done in the Italian and the Belgian study.

Italian extremists A specific study was conducted to explore similarities and differences between Italian RWE and LWE, investigating personality, ideological attitudes and social values. The sample consists of 80 Italian political activists, 40 from extreme rightwing movements and 40 from extreme left-wing movements. Among the rightwingers 26 were males and 14 females, and the average age was 34.7 years old. 30 subjects belonged to parliamentary organizations such as Alleanza Nazionale or its youth branch and Fiamma Tricolore (PT), while 10 subjects belonged to extraparliamentary organizations. Among the leftist group 23 were males and 17 females, and the average age was 38.3 years old. 30 subjects belonged to the former communist party (Partito della Rifondazione Comunista) and its youth wing, and 10 subjects belonged to extra-parliamentary organizations. The two groups were comparable with regard to educational level. All participants of the survey came from Rome or from southern Italy and completed a questionnaire including an Italian authoritarianism scale (Aiello and Areni 1998), a set of items tapping various ideological attitudes (Chirumbolo 1996; Chirumbolo et al. 2003), and a ‘Social Value Inventory’ (Braithwaite and Law 1985). Authoritarianism and ethnocentrism The few studies that have investigated activists of various extreme right-wing groups by using the F-scale (for a detailed review of these studies, see Meloen 1993) showed that they scored very high on scales of authoritarianism. We checked if it was the same for the participants of our study, using an updated authoritarianism scale of 18 items.8 The results showed that the two groups of activists significantly differed in terms of authoritarianism.9 The RWE had a mean of 5.39, while the LWE had a mean of 3.35. Following the cut-points outlined by Meloen (1993) in his meta-analysis, we can distinguish three groups of people according to their score on the F-scale: the ‘anti-authoritarians’ (mean lower than 3.5), who systematically reject authoritarianism; the ‘moderate’ or ‘neutral’ (mean between 3.5 and 4.5), being neither outspoken highs or lows; and the ‘authoritarians’ (mean higher than 4.5), who have at least some of the characteristics attributed to the authoritarians. Furthermore, Meloen found that activists of ultranationalistic, racist and fascist groups scored higher than 5.0. The same classification applies to our sample of activists (Table 13.3). Right-wingers are more of the authoritarian type and represent the bulk of the ‘authoritarian’ group (35 out of 43 or 81.4 per cent) while left-wingers are indeed more of the anti-authoritarian type.

Right- and left-wing extremists: anything in common? 257 Table 13.3 Levels of authoritarianism among left- (LWE) and right-wing (RWE) extremists (%)

‘Anti-Authoritarians’ Low (M < 3.5) ‘Moderate’ Medium (3.5 < M < 4.5) ‘Authoritarians’ High (M > 4.5) Total

LWE

RWE

Total

(55 (25 (20 (40)

( 0.0 (12.5 (87.5 (40.0)

(27 (19 (54 (80)

Note χ2(2) = 40.62; p < .001.

Only extreme right activists scored higher than 5.00, as many as 29 out of 40, which is a very high level indeed, and none could be classified as ‘antiauthoritarian’. The results are not exactly symmetric for the extreme left, among which a small proportion (20 per cent) can be defined as authoritarians. Taken together, these results confirm that the authoritarian profile is far more frequent among extreme right-wing activists, although a small minority of extreme left activists can be called ‘authoritarians’. Ideology and attitudes ‘Ideology’ is often described as a broad and vague concept, defined and understood in different terms (Boudon 1992). Nevertheless, in social psychology there is broad consensus in studying ideology in terms of beliefs, attitudes and values (De Witte and Scheepers 1999). According to the most accepted definition ‘an ideology is a set of coherent concepts and beliefs centered around a general idea or concept that usually commits believers of the ideology to behaviour consistent with the beliefs of the ideology’ (Kerlinger 1984: 13). Ideologies can be understood as being descriptive, normative and prescriptive at the same time. In fact, they do not only tell how the world is shaped, but also how it should be and what should be done. They pervade wide areas of belief and behaviour, give meaning to many aspects of human concerns, and tend to unify thought and action (Kerlinger 1984). Ideology, in many aspects, can be considered as the ‘worldview’. In this sense, ideology concerns should be far more salient among political activists than among people who are not politically active. We asked our activists to answer a series of questions regarding relevant political topics. They had to indicate whether they agreed or disagreed on a scale from 1 ‘absolutely disagree’ to 7 ‘absolutely agree’. Anti-system attitudes One of the characteristics of extremists is that they are very critical towards the existing political system. In fact, anti-system, anti-democratic and anti-parliament attitudes were considered by many scholars as among the most specific dimensions of right-wing extremism (Falter and Schuman 1988; Mudde 1996). In this sense, as regards Italian history, if compared to the tradition of MSI, the polo escluso, the Italian Communist party has a different story. It is far more integrated within the

258 Antonio Chirumbolo, Nonna Mayer and Hans De Witte political arena and committed to Parliament and other democratic institutions (Colarizi 1994), and we can expect differences between our two samples. We thus asked first a set of questions tapping anti-system attitudes (Table 13.4). Both groups display a certain level of distrust towards traditional politics, probably because it is perceived as corrupt and opportunistic. However, as expected, only right-wingers expressed significantly high levels of distrust and clear antidemocratic tendencies. They are more prone to limit the power of representative politics (that is, parties and Parliament) perceived as slow and inefficient in decision making, and unable to solve the real problems of the country. On the contrary, left-wingers tend to consider the Parliament and democracy as the best form of government. RWE also clearly stand apart from LWE in their support for a strong centralized government, reminiscent of the fascist ‘strong state’ tradition (Table 13.4), and in their demand for strong charismatic leadership so that law, order and discipline may be guaranteed. This tendency is revealed in four other items (Table 13.5) assessing the political need to have a strong leader at the head of the country. Ethnocentric attitudes Another typical feature salient in the political discourse of the extreme right in Europe has been the anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner issue. For countries such as Belgium and France, it has been the key point of RWE parties’ electoral success. Italy’s case is different. It experienced growing immigration only after 1985, mainly from north African countries (Morocco) and from eastern countries (Albania). In the past, out-group derogation and racism were mainly directed against immigration within the country from the south to the north, or towards ethnic groups such as gypsies. Because of this relatively recent trend compared to other European countries, anti-immigrant stands did not play a crucial role in the political discourse of the Italian ‘traditional’ extreme right. However, as the immigration flows grew in the late 1980s and in the 1990s, anti-immigration issues Table 13.4 Scores of LWE and RWE, on scales of anti-system and anti-parliamentary attitudes Items

LWE

RWE

Eta

I don’t trust traditional politics any more

4.00

4.85

0.22*

Parliament should be abolished since it can’t solve any problems

1.88

3.65

0.44**

Political decisions would be surely faster and more efficient if we could limit the power of Parliament and political parties

2.05

5.05

0.73**

Parliament and democracy are the best form of government (reversed item)

4.58

2.28

0.26**

Political power should be centralized as much as possible

2.20

2.45

0.59**

Note * p < 0.05 ** p < 0.01

Right- and left-wing extremists: anything in common? 259 become more and more relevant in the political discourse. A law restricting immigration has been proposed by Gianfranco Fini (the leader of AN and viceprime minister of Berlusconi’s government), and Umberto Bossi (the leader of the Lega Nord and a minister in Berlusconi’s government), and it was approved by the right-wing coalition Casa delle Libertà (House of Freedom). We asked our activists whether they agreed/disagreed with some ‘classical’ antiimmigration and ethnocentric items (Table 13.6). Overall, right-wingers were twice more likely than left-wingers to think that immigrants should be immediately sent home because they stole jobs and caused criminality. At the same time, left-wingers believe that there is no such thing as a ‘superior race’ and they are of the opinion that all human races, religions and nations have the same value. Right-wingers strongly reject these opinions. The latter findings suggest that the ethnocentrism expressed by RWE is not simply an ‘anti-immigration’ attitude but something more deeply rooted in racism. This ethnocentric inclination is also revealed in their nationalist stands (Table 13.7). Indeed, the Table 13.5 Law and order and need for a strong and powerful leader among LWE and RWE Items

LWE

RWE

Eta

Law and order We need more order and discipline for everybody

3.63

6.55

0.62**

Police should keep order with more firmness

3.93

5.63

0.40**

Need for a strong and powerful leader What we need is a brave and strong leader, one the people can rely on

2.17

6.18

0.80**

Only a powerful leader can solve the problems of our country

1.75

5.53

0.79**

Note * p < 0.05 ** p < 0.01

Table 13.6 Scores of LWE and RWE, on scales of anti-immigration and racist attitudes Items

LWE

RWE

Eta

Criminality grew up in Italy because of immigration

2.15

5.80

0.56**

Illegal extra-communitarian immigrants should be immediately sent back home

3.45

6.55

0.42**

We should forbid immigrants from stealing jobs from Italian people

1.70

5.85

0.63**

Among human kind, there are no superior races

5.95

2.12

0.57**

In the end, all races, religions and nations have the same value

5.65

2.28

0.48**

Note p < 0.05 ** p < 0.01

260 Antonio Chirumbolo, Nonna Mayer and Hans De Witte Italian extreme right has identified with the ‘European Nation’, seen mainly as an identity of western civilization contrasted with the rest of the world, and above all with southern Muslim developing countries. This apparent ‘Europeism’ overlaps with a strong national identity that is still present and which they want to preserve. By contrast, extreme left-wingers appear open to a cultural pluralism in which other cultures and diversity are seen as a resource and not as a threat. Socio-economic conservatism As expected, regarding economic beliefs extreme right-wingers are more in favour of ‘free enterprise’ and individual initiative, while the extreme left are more in favour of state intervention and welfare (Table 13.8). Social values Values are assumed to work as guiding principles in one’s life, and to shape an individual’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviours in specific situations (Rokeach 1973; Schwartz, 1990; Heaven and Oxman 1999). Studies on the relationship between values and political orientation (Braithwaite and Law 1985; Heaven 1991, 1990; Heaven and Oxman 1999) tend to show that left-wingers and right-wingers possess a different value system. The left-wingers are more likely to hold ‘harmony’ values (Braithwaite and Law 1985), that entail improving others’ well-being and welfare, highlighting freedom and equality, and also favour personal integrity. RightTable 13.7 Scores of LWE and RWE, on scales of nationalism and cultural pluralism Items

LWE

RWE

Eta

We should have a stronger national feeling The state should preserve our national identity Our school should teach more about other countries, their culture and religion

3.23 3.70

5.93 5.75

0.58** 0.54**

5.5

2.7

0.63**

Note * p < 0.05 ** p < 0.01

Table 13.8 Scores of LWE and RWE, on scales of economic attitudes Items

LWE

RWE

Eta

Free enterprise In our country we should favour more free enterprise

3.30

5.20

0.52**

State economy The state should regulate the economy of the country

5.78

4.71

0.35**

Note * p < 0.05 ** p < 0.01

Right- and left-wing extremists: anything in common? 261 wingers are more inclined to hold ‘security’ values, that stress order, discipline, personal success and power. Those values are more concerned with the outcomes of behaviour and imply obedience to societal norms (Heaven and Oxman 1999). Billig and Cochrane (1979) found somewhat similar results among a sample of British political activists: ‘Equality’ turned out to be the most important value for LWE (communists) and the least important for RWE (British National Front – BNF, now BNP), while ‘national security’ was the most important value for rightwing activists. Our participants were administered the Value Inventory (limited to the part regarding social values, see Braithwaite and Law 1985) in order to test similarities and differences in terms of values. This instrument is composed of a list of 14 values (followed by a brief description), referring to society, nation and people in general. Respondents had to state their acceptance/rejection of each value according to a scale ranging between 1: ‘I reject this as guiding principle of my life’ and 7: ‘I accept this as guiding principle of my life’. The results are shown in Table 13.9. RWE above all endorse values stressing ‘national security’ and ‘national greatness’. What is very important from their point of view is being a united, strong, Table 13.9 Scores of LWE and RWE, on Social Value Inventory Values

LWE

RWE

Rule by the people (involvement by all citizens in making decisions that affect their community)

6.30*

2.45*

The rule of law (punishing the guilty and protecting the innocent)

5.45

5.73

A world of beauty (having the beauty of nature and the arts: music literature, arts etc etc . . .)

6.20

5.80

A good life for others: (improving the welfare of all people in need)

6.63*

5.73*

A world of peace (being free from war and conflict)

6.63*

4.47*

National economic development (having greater economic progress and prosperity for the nation)

5.45

5.63

National security (protection of our nation from enemies)

3.63*

6.05*

Greater economic equality (lessening the gap between the rich and the poor)

6.43*

4.55*

International cooperation (having all nations working together to help each other)

6.28*

4.30*

National greatness (being a united, strong, independent, and powerful nation)

2.93*

5.98*

Human dignity (allowing each individual to be treated as someone of worth) 6.60*

5.50*

Social progress and social reform (readiness to change our way of life for the better)

6.33*

5.18*

Equal opportunity for all (giving everyone an equal chance in life)

6.73*

5.25*

Preserving the natural environment (preventing the destruction of nature’s beauty and resources)

6.58

6.58

Note Means with * are significantly different ( p < 0 .05).

262 Antonio Chirumbolo, Nonna Mayer and Hans De Witte independent, powerful nation, well protected from external or internal enemies. Those values are rejected by LWE; the values endorsed by left extremists and rejected by right-wingers are ‘rule by the people’, the value on which one finds the highest difference between LWE and RWE scores (3.85), ‘a world at peace’, ‘greater economic equality’ and ‘international cooperation’. In other words, the guiding principles for left-wing activists are equalitarian and cooperative values: involvement by all citizens in making decisions, reducing the gap between the rich and the poor and being free from war and conflict, having all nations working and cooperating together. Interestingly, the two groups of activists do not differ with regard to values such as ‘the rule of law’ (that is, punishing the guilty and protecting the innocent), ‘a world of beauty’ (that is, having the beauty of nature and the arts – music literature, painting, etc.), ‘national economic development’ (that is, having greater economic progress and prosperity for the nation) and ‘preserving the natural environment’ (preventing the destruction of nature’s beauty and resources). Other values are slightly but significantly more important for leftwingers, though they are not completely rejected by right-wingers. These values are ‘a good life for others’ (improving the welfare of all people in need), ‘human dignity’ (allowing each individual to be treated as someone of worth), ‘social progress and social reform’ (readiness to change our way of life for the better) and ‘equal opportunity for all’ (giving everyone an equal chance in life).

Flemish extremists In the Flemish part of Belgium, two contrasted groups were surveyed. The action group Voorpost (‘Vanguard’) was selected as example of an extreme right-wing organization. This radical organization has about 100 active core members and probably about 300 members in total (Verlinden 1998: 3561–2). The socio-cultural organization Christenen voor het Socialisme (‘Christians in favour of Socialism’ – CvS) was selected as exponent of the extreme left-wing movement. This small LWE group has about 300 core members, which are mostly involved in discussion and action related to contemporary topics such as anti-globalism, social inequality and Third World issues (see Soetewey 1995). Both groups were contacted in 1997, and agreed to distribute a questionnaire by mail among part of their membership. Voorpost distributed some 110 questionnaires among their most active core members, and 49 of them returned a completed version. This response rate was even more favourable regarding the left-wing CvS, as 45 out of 60 distributed questionnaires were returned. The composition of both groups according to background characteristics is not entirely similar, however. The members of CvS are older (on average 56.4 years compared to 41.6 years), and more educated than those of Voorpost (86 per cent of the CvS group has some degree of higher education against 39 per cent of the Voorpost group). The difference is not significant regarding gender: 66.7 per cent of the CvS members are male, compared to 79.6 per cent of Voorpost members. The questionnaires gathered information about motives for being active in the organization, ideology, attitudes and values.

Right- and left-wing extremists: anything in common? 263 Motives for active membership All respondents had to score 21 items concerning their motives for active membership (scores on a five-point scale, from ‘totally unimportant’ to ‘very important’). The set of items was derived and adapted from a large-scale survey among active members of the Christian labour Movement (ACW) in Flanders (Van Gyes and De Witte 1996). In that study, three different motives were distinguished, inspired by Van De Vall (1970): instrumental (individual advantages of membership), social and ideological. We list only the most important examples of these three categories in Table 13.10. The results show that both groups motivate their engagement in an almost identical way. For both, being active in their organization is chiefly inspired by ideological motives: they agree with the ideology of the organization, stress the importance of collective effort and action, want to persuade the public and want to devote themselves to their (ideological) goals. Other motives are less relevant (social motives) or even irrelevant (instrumental motives). This strongly underlines their political commitment: they became active because they wanted to ‘change the world’. Ideology and attitudes In order to analyse their attitudes and ideology, information was gathered concerning seven topics which had proved relevant in previous research and theory (see e.g. Billiet and De Witte 1995, 2001; Lubbers 2001). These topics were covered by 54 items, that had to be rated on a five-point scale, ranging from ‘totally disagree’ to ‘totally agree’. After performing factor analysis, scales were computed. The scales used to analyse the differences between both political groups were: ethnic nationalism (with items such as. ‘I’m proud to be a member of my ethnic Table 13.10 Motives for membership of LWE and RWE (%) Motives

LWE

RWE

Eta

Ideological motives Because I agree with the points of view of this organization

100

91

n.s.

Because we have to organize ourselves if we want to achieve something

98

96

n.s.

Because we have to persuade the public of our views

98

80

0.34*

Because it gives me the opportunity to devote myself to my ideals and goals

96

93

0.35*

Social motives Because it is an enjoyable and cheerful group of friends

40

40

n.s.

8

7

n.s.

Instrumental motives Because they give me help and services in return Note Sum of ‘important’ and ‘very important’, * 0.05 > p > 0.01.

264 Antonio Chirumbolo, Nonna Mayer and Hans De Witte group’), negative attitude towards foreigners, an attitude closely related to ‘everyday’ racism (‘Foreigners cannot be trusted’ and ‘Foreigners endanger the employment of Belgians’, see De Witte 1999), biological racism, in which the biological superiority of the ‘white race’ is emphasized (‘The white race is superior to other races’), authoritarianism, adapted from the F-scale of Adorno et al. (1950), political dissatisfaction (‘politicians are incompetent and corrupt’), anomia (‘everything is so confusing nowadays, that I do not know how to behave any more’), derived from Srole’s scale (Srole 1956) and a scale devised to measure extreme right-wing ideology (De Witte et al. 1994). This scale measures some aspects of this ideology that are not covered in the previous scales, such as a preference for a strong leadership, anti-leftist attitudes and anti-parliamentarism.10 Together, the seven scales cover the four most important attitude domains that are linked with RWE in the literature: nationalism, racism, authoritarianism and anti-system attitudes (e.g. Lubbers 2001). All scales were transferred to an 11-point scale, ranging from zero if total disagreement with the content of the scale to 10 if total agreement with the content of the scale. A score of 5 indicates the neutral midpoint of the scale. Table 13.11 contains the scores of both groups on the seven attitude scales. Table 13.11 shows strong attitudinal and ideological differences between both groups, especially with regard to ‘ethnic nationalism’, ‘negative attitudes towards foreigners’, ‘biological racism’, ‘authoritarianism’ and ‘extreme right-wing ideology’. The strongest differences relate to nationalism and the rejection of foreigners: the RWE group is strongly in favour of ethnic nationalism and equally strongly against foreigners. This combination truly makes then ‘ethnocentrists’, as suggested by Sumner (1906): they favour their ‘in-group’ and at the same time reject ‘out-groups’. The RWE respondents are also more authoritarian than the LWE respondents more in support of ‘extreme right-wing ideology’. As for ‘biological racism’ the RWE respondents reject its content, but the LWE respondents reject it to a much stronger extent. It is interesting to see that there is no difference regarding ‘anomia’: neither group shows much agreement. This suggests that anomie does not play a significant role in their activism or in their ideology. Both groups do evaluate politicians Table 13.11 Scores of LWE and RWE, on seven attitudinal scales Attitude scales

RWE

LWE

Eta

Ethnic nationalism Negative attitudes towards foreigners Biological racism Authoritarianism ERW ideology Anomia Political dissatisfaction

7.7 6.9 4.1 5.9 5.4 2.3 7.5

3.0 1.5 0.2 2.4 1.2 2.4 5.9

0.84*** 0.92*** 0.78*** 0.80*** 0.84*** n.s. 0.47***

Note Mean scores on 11-point scales; *** p < 0.001.

Right- and left-wing extremists: anything in common? 265 and the political system in a rather negative way, but the dissatisfaction with politics is stronger among the RWE than among the LWE respondents. In order to analyse the attitudes that really differentiate both groups, a discriminant analysis was performed. The seven attitude scales were used as predictors and the analysis tried to determine whether they could predict the membership of both groups, RWE v. LWE. The results of this additional analysis were remarkable: all respondents could be correctly classified with only two attitude scales: a negative attitude towards foreigners is the most discriminating attitude between both groups (standardized discriminant coefficient: 0.83), and ethnic nationalism plays a moderate additional role (standardized discriminant coefficient: 0.34).11 Values In the questionnaire, we also administered a shortened version of the ‘value inventory’ (Schwartz 1992). All values were rated on a six-point scale, ranging from ‘against my principles’ to ‘extremely important’. Schwartz (1994) claims that his values can be classified in two bipolar dimensions: ‘openness to change’ or ‘selfdirection’ v. ‘conservation’ or ‘conformity’, and ‘self-transcendence’ (e.g. ‘universalism’) v. ‘self-enhancement’ (e.g. ‘power’ and ‘achievement’) This is in accordance with the view of Triandis (1995) who distinguishes four ‘value orientations’: universalism, competition, self-direction and conformity. The questionnaire was designed to measure these four value orientations (see also Van Gyes and De Witte 1999). Universalism combines the value of equality and the focus on social justice and tolerance (3 items, Cronbach alpha 0.67). Competition combines the acceptance of inequality, the existence of a hierarchically ordered society, with a focus on the individual. Crucial values are achieving ‘wealth’, ‘social recognition’ and ‘social power’ (5 items, Cronbach alpha 0.81). The central idea is that the individual can achieve the ‘top’ in society by adopting a competitive attitude. Selfdirection combines the idea of equality with a focus on the individual. This leads to an emphasis on autonomy (with values such as ‘choosing your own goals’ and ‘freedom’), and adventure (6 items, Cronbach alpha 0.69). Conformity, finally, combines a focus on others with the acceptance of a hierarchy; key values are ‘obedience’, ‘politeness’ and ‘respect for tradition’ (6 items, Cronbach alpha 0.92). All value orientations are rescored into 11-point scales ranging from zero (total disagreement with this value orientation) to 10 (total agreement with this value orientation). A score of 5 indicates the neutral mid-point of the scale. Table 13.12 contains the scores of both groups on the four value orientations. Both groups show a distinctive difference concerning ‘conformity’ and ‘universalism’. The difference regarding conformity is especially striking: the RWE respondents strongly emphasize values such as obedience, politeness, social order and decency, whereas the LWE respondents seem to stress these values to a much lesser extent. With respect to ‘universalism’, this difference is somewhat less pronounced, since both groups seem to stress these values, even though the LWE respondents highlight these values more strongly. This is especially true regarding the basic value ‘equality’: the LWE respondents rate this value as ‘extremely

266 Antonio Chirumbolo, Nonna Mayer and Hans De Witte Table 13.12 Scores of LWE and RWE, on four value orientations Value orientation

RWE

LWE

Eta

Universalism Competition Self-direction Conformity

7.0 3.6 6.0 7.8

9.0 2.6 5.6 4.5

0.62*** 0.28** n.s. 0.74***

Mean scores on 11-point scales. ** 0.01 > p > 0.001; *** p < 0.001.

important’ whereas the RWE respondents score ‘rather important’. Both groups give a low rating to ‘competition’, even though the LWE respondents reject this value orientation more strongly than the RWE respondents. ‘Self-direction’ is moderately emphasized by both groups, and the difference between both groups is not significant. The most important value orientation for the RWE respondents seems to be ‘conformity’. The LWE respondents put more emphasis on ‘universalism’. Again, a discriminant analysis was performed, to find out whether both groups could be differentiated according to their value orientations. The results suggest this to be the case, even though the power of the analysis does not equal that of the analysis with the attitude scales.12 Two values were important: ‘conformity’ (standardized discriminant coefficient: 0.92) and ‘universalism’ (standardized discriminant coefficient: —0.69). A preference for conformity predicts the membership of the RWE group, whereas a preference for universalism predicts the membership of the LWE group. In total, 94 per cent of the respondents could be classified correctly. Politicization Our questionnaire also gave indications about the respondents’ interest in politics and ideological consistency. One finds a remarkable coherence between their selfplacement on the left–right scale, voting behaviour and party commitment. Respondents were asked to place themselves on a left–right scale. Two LWE respondents (4.5 per cent) and 10 RWE respondents (20 per cent) refused to do so. The remaining group was strongly differentiated on the scale: all remaining LWE respondents placed themselves at the left side, mostly ‘left’ (65 per cent) as contrasted to ‘centre left’ (11 per cent) or ‘extreme left’ (23 per cent), and all remaining RWE respondents placed themselves at the right side of the scale, mostly ‘right’ (54 per cent) as contrasted to ‘centre right’ (10 per cent) or ‘extreme right’ (36 per cent). This strong ideological difference was reflected in their voting behaviour. All but one of the RWE respondents had voted for the extreme rightwing party VB at the previous elections, whereas the LWE respondents had all voted for a leftist party: the ecological party Agalev (42 per cent), the socialist party SP (21 per cent) or one of the extreme left parties that did not obtain a seat in parliament (33 per cent).

Right- and left-wing extremists: anything in common? 267 Despite these strong ideological differences however, both groups shared an important feature, both were extremely politicized, as were those in the French sample. No less than 92 per cent of the RWE respondents stated that they were ‘strongly interested’ in politics. Among the LWE respondents, this figure was 80 per cent, and 16 per cent stated that they were ‘rather interested’ in politics.13

Conclusion The results show that in the three countries, however one defines them, extremists of the left and of the right stand clearly apart. RWE reveal a syndrome of authoritarian, repressive, ethnocentric attitudes to a degree that has no equivalent among LWE. The key values for RWE seem to be conformity, obedience and respect for hierarchy, while for LWE equality, solidarity and social justice come first. More generally, their world visions are clearly opposed, along the changing lines of the left–right cleavage. They only have one thing in common: their interest in politics and their faith in its capacity to change the world and make things better, at least from their point of view, remarkable at a time when the membership of mainstream parties is declining and when political disenchantment seems to be growing, But what makes them different there is that LWE, at least those studied here, keep their action inside the limits of representative democracy, however critical of the way it functions they may be, while RWE seem more likely to trespass these limits because of their strong political authoritarianism. And if all extremists face the same dilemma – being in or out the system – the tension may be even greater among the activists of RWE parties, especially those which are electorally successful, such as the French FN or the Flemish VB, or even part of the mainstream parties and in office such as the Italian AN (see Dézé 2001).

Notes 1 8–23 May 1995, national sample (quota method) of 4,078 registered voters, face-to-face interviews. 2 Five items, Cronbach alpha 0.75, sample average 8.5. 3 Cronbach alpha of 0.73 in 1988, of 0.80 in 1995 and of 0.77 in 2002. Respondents not answering one of the scale questions are excluded. The 1988 and 1995 data come from Cevipof 1988 post-electoral surveys, national samples representative of registered voters and face-to-face interviews (N = 4,032 and 4,078). 4 Respondents scoring 1 on a 10-point scale ranging between 1: the feminist pole (women should play the same part as men at work and in politics) and 10: the anti-feminist pole (women’s place is at home). 5 One finds a correlation of 0.41 (Pearson’s R) between the answers to these two questions. 6 Cevipof 1988 post-electoral survey and experimental survey on democracy (Grunberg et al. 2002) conducted between 9 May and June 2000 on a national random sample of 2,150 people representative of the population aged 18 or more living in France. 7 Actually the two indicators are tightly correlated (Pearson’s R 0.57 between party proximity and location on left–right scale), and both tightly correlated with voting intentions in the first round of the presidential election (Pearson’s R 0.57 and 0.51). 8 This scale is a translation and an adaptation to the Italian culture of the classical F-scale

268 Antonio Chirumbolo, Nonna Mayer and Hans De Witte

9 10

11 12 13

(Adorno et al., 1950, updated by Aiello and Areni (1998). This scale has been widely used in Italy in recent decades and is usually found to be reliable (in this study, the Cronbach alpha was 0.93). Subjects were asked to state their agreement/disagreement on a seven-point scale. Higher scores are indicative of higher authoritarianism. F(1.78) = 72.2, p = < 0.001. The Cronbach alpha, which measures the reliability of the scale, is 0.89 for the ethnic nationalism scale (5 items), 0.97 for the negative attitude towards foreigners scale (15 items), 0.92 for the biological racism scale (5 items), 0.92 for the authoritarianism scale (12 items), 0.79 for the political dissatisfaction scale (5 items), 0.86 for the anomie scale (4 items), and 0.91 for the extreme right-wing ideology scale (8 items). Canonical correlation = 0.93, Wilks’ Lambda = 0.14, P < 0.001. This time the canonical correlation equals 0.83, Wilks’ Lambda = 0.30, P < 0.001. The difference between both groups is not significant statistically.

14 Through the magnifying glass The world of extreme right activists Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer

We have tried to picture the world of extreme right activism. As through a magnifying glass, we have focused on a small part of that world, approximately 150 activists in five different countries. They allowed us into their homes and into their movements, but more than anything else it is the stories that they told us in sometimes lengthy interviews that gave us a unique look into their lives. Lifehistory interviews are like invasions on someone’s private territory. By letting us in and showing us around, our interviewees made it possible for us to put together a unique set of data. We do not know, certainly regarding the extreme right, of any comparable compilation of interviews and additional information about the interviewees, their organizations, their position and their activities inside the movement. The previous chapters in this volume attest to the richness of these lifehistories. In this one we will try to sum up what we have learned.

Not so extreme The first impression one gets is at odds with the picture of marginality, pathology and violence given by earlier studies such as Adorno’s on ‘authoritarians’ (Adorno et al. 1954) or Billig’s (1979) on ‘fascists’. To be sure, our interviewees form quite a diverse group, from different backgrounds, age and education, but on the whole they appear as perfectly normal people, socially integrated, connected in one way or another to mainstream groups and ideas. If they are isolated or marginalized, it is not so much the cause of their activism but more often a result of it. With a few exceptions, they are not admirers of Hitler or nostalgic for the Third Reich. If quite a lot of the Italian subjects define themselves as heirs of ‘fascism’, and are proud to be so, they loudly claim fascism’s intrinsic difference with Nazism, its lack of antiSemitism and minimize the violence committed in its name. If almost all our interviewees take open and clear cut anti-foreigners’ and anti-immigrant stands, most of them avoid blatant racist or anti-Semitic formulations, or anything like ‘hate speeches’. The majority of them do not even consider themselves as ‘extreme right’ at all. Most admit to being right-wing, in opposition to ‘left-wing’, but they massively reject the stigmatizing label of ‘extreme’ right, which they keep for even more radical movements. On the classical left–right scale they generally have difficulties in choosing a position, resisting what they see as too ‘simple’ a way to

270 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer define themselves. Some refuse to answer, others go off the scale, some say they are ‘neither left nor right’, sometimes they tick two different points on the scale. Others offer instead an ideological self-definition choosing such labels as: ‘nationalist’, ‘ethnic nationalist’, ‘right-wing national’ ‘left-wing nationalist’ or ‘national anarchist.’ In fact, one of the main features of our activists is that they do not consider themselves as extreme right, and that they look at politics with different eyes than the mass public. Symmetrically, the same phenomenon is observed on the extreme left of the political scale. Asked about their position one the left– right scale, the Trotskyite activists of the French Communist Revolutionary League (LCR), place themselves outside the scale, or define themselves as ‘simply leftwing’, the ‘real left’, or ‘revolutionary’ (Joshua 2003).1 This just goes to show the relativity and the complexity of political perceptions and frames of interpretation.

Not so new There is a ongoing debate about the novelty or archaism of the movements studied here. Are they heirs of the fascist and Nazi organizations of the 1930s? Or are they New Radical Right (Kitschelt and Mc Gann 1995), Post-Industrial Right (Ignazi 1992), starting afresh, freed from the past? Both theories actually contain some part of the truth. Social movements never emerge from nothing: they are a combination of old and new elements; it is a cumulative process. Verta Taylor (1989) developed her concept of ‘abeyance’ from the study of feminism in the United States, showing how current movements built upon previous waves and past experiences, know-how and frames and how niches, secretive meeting places and invisible networks allowed the movement to survive in hard times. It is the same with extreme right movements. In a country such as France, for instance, such networks have developed and piled up in successive waves for two centuries. At the level of the individual, what strikes us first when we reconstruct our interviewees’ political trajectories and the path that led them to their present activism is indeed, one way or another, the continuity with early RWE. There are, of course, cases of conversion and compliance, owing to contingencies, unexpected events and circumstances, which brought to right wing extremism people who had no previous leaning or contact with it. ‘Converts’ did not grow up in a right-wing milieu, but landed in the extreme right movement as a consequence of grievances held against society, government, politics, etc. They are mostly people whom life has treated badly and who have found some understanding in the movement. They are there because they have a score to settle with politics. ‘Compliants’ did not choose to join, they yielded to the pressure of a spouse, a friend, or a relative. This dependent attitude is mostly found in the women in our sample, as was the case in Birgitta Orfali’s study of the French FN (Orfali 1990).2 But in all countries except the Netherlands, these cases are a minority. Most of our interviewees were preconditioned, exposed to the same kind of ideas and values since their childhood. Family is the most important socialization agency for our activists. In fact, many belonged to the extreme right scene long before they actually joined a movement,

The world of extreme right-wing activists 271 even if some came from traditional right movements or, more rarely, from the left. For some there was direct transmission of the creed, from parents to children, with the same commitment running through three or four generations, sometimes in the same organization such as the Italian MSI or the French Action Française. In Flanders, the vast majority of the interviewees grew up in radical or moderate nationalist milieux and were socialized into Flemish nationalism early on. Sometimes the families of our interviewees supported collaboration with Nazi Germany, and paid the price for it, breeding in resentment against the victors of the Second World War. For others the impregnation goes back to more recent events, such as the aftermath of the decolonization wars. In France, for instance, the majority of FN activists interviewed come from families who did not accept the independence of its former colonies and fought, sometimes violently, in terrorist networks such as the Secret Army Organization (OAS), for a ‘French Algeria’. But in each country we found people who were exposed to traditional, nationalist, authoritarian and hierarchical values, which conditioned them to be inclined towards the far right, and placed them at odds with the evolution of post-industrial society towards permissiveness, multiculturalism, the opening of borders and so on. In that sense, the analysis of Piero Ignazi (1992), explaining the rise of new rights as a ‘silent counterrevolution’ reacting against the spread of post-materialist values, fits well. Most of our interviewees, even the younger ones, look towards an idealized glorious past. In that sense they are ‘anti-conformist’, and proud to be so. They resent the present state of affairs; they are ‘revolutionary’ in the actual meaning of the term, trying to roll back the wheel of history. Ulterior socialization at school, in the army, in networks, fraternities, youth movements, or sometimes the encounter with a charismatic teacher or a person/hero to identify with, merely consolidated the first exposure.

Nation first RWE parties developing today in Europe are often presented as ‘anti-immigrant’ or ‘xenophobic’ parties. Indeed what mainly attracts their voters, and makes them different from the others (except perhaps for those of the AN) is basically, rejection of all ‘others’: immigrants, foreigners, refugees (Ivaldi 2001). Our interviewees share these xenophobic attitudes with the rank and file but for them they have a deeper layer, they are part of a more articulated and consistent set of ideas. If one were to find a common ideological core among them it would be less xenophobia than nationalism, in the sense of in-group favouritism. The first, most important in-group in their eyes would be their people. It is not so much that they are against foreigners, but they feel the urge to defend their stock; they see foreigners as a threat to the integrity of their people and their culture. This valorized in-group can be the nation as a whole (as for the activists of the French FN, the German REP, the Dutch CD, the Italian AN or MS-FT), or their region, which they would like to see independent (as for the VB militants in Flanders). An almost biological image of the nation runs through the interviews, as a natural consanguine community, with its territory, its language, its culture, that surpasses all others – family, work,

272 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer religious ties – similar to what the French extreme right-wing ideologue Charles Maurras theorized as ‘integral nationalism’. Rejection of the ‘enemies of the nation’ stems from this doctrine, but there is more to it than just being against immigrants and foreigners. In that sense, it is very clear that extreme right activists do not think like extreme right voters. It is particularly striking in Flanders and in Italy. Some of our VB militants defend a kind of ethnic nationalism, promoting the independence of Flanders, the secession from Belgium, the abolition of monarchy, even the creation of a Great Netherlands including Flanders and the Netherlands in a pan-Dutch nationalism, ideas which are not at all shared by the great mass of voters (de Witte 1996). While in Italy, although Gianfranco Fini has succeeded in changing the image of his party since its aggorniamento in the Congress of Fiuggi, and attracting more and more centre right voters (see Ivaldi 2001), it is obvious that many AN party members, at the local level, are still impregnated by the fascist tradition. If they stay in the party it is because they have found a niche in some of its parallel networks, youth movement or friendly circles, which function like an internal abeyance structure, where they can go on as before and cultivate a ‘subparty identity’.

Coping with stigmatization The other common link between our interviewees – perhaps the most important – is the discredit they suffer from as ‘extreme right’ activists, even though most of them strongly reject this qualification. Such a label associates them with Nazism, the Holocaust, the very essence of evil or, in its milder versions, with xenophobia and ethnocentrism. It is their specific stigma in the sense of an attribute that is deeply discrediting, evidencing to the other members of society that they are ‘less human’ (Goffman 1963). For a long time communists, on the extreme left, suffered from a symmetric stigma, meanwhile, the Wall has fallen and communism doesn’t frighten people any more, but extreme right movements still provoke such repulsion. Although the Netherlands seems to hold the record, we encountered experiences of stigmatization in every interview, be it in the form of repression by authorities, confrontations with countermovements, or exclusion from one’s political and social environment. Interestingly, the way people cope with stigmatization depends on their previous trajectory to activism. The more ideologically motivated activists, the ‘revolutionaries’, take pride in their stigma, they do not care about being an outcast. They feel an inner obligation to act and to them the stigma is like a badge of honour. The ‘wanderers’ landed in the extreme right on their search for a new political home, disappointed by the mainstream political parties. Some went on to other destinations while others stayed and seem less concerned. The ‘converts’, who are more instrumentally oriented, carefully balanced the pros and cons before taking the decision to join and concluded that it was worth the price, although they might have underestimated the costs. Many of the ‘compliants’ were taken by surprise, they did not expect to be hit so hard and find it difficult to cope with.

The world of extreme right-wing activists 273 Yet, whatever their experience of stigmatization was like, it was rarely a reason to quit the movement. The activists who left the Dutch extreme right complain more about the daily hassles and conflicts within the movement. In fact, they allude to stigmatization as a factor that fosters cohesion: indeed, in all countries, it seems to function as a binding force. Stigmatization may deter people from activism, as suggested by our comparison of the relative strength of extreme right in the five countries, but once they are in it it becomes the cement that holds them together because of the feeling of injustice and discrimination it generates. The French journalist and extreme left activist Anne Tristan decided to join a local section of the FN in the underprivileged northern housing projects of Marseille to understand the activists’ motivations from the inside. She lived their life for two months, and concluded the book she made out of her experience by quoting these lines from the writer Albert Cohen: FN activists are ‘decent people who love each other from hating together’ (Tristan 1987: 257). For our militants, one could reverse the sentence: being hated together makes them love each other all the more.

Collective identity Extreme right activism obviously stands in opposition to extreme left activism. Anti-communism was an essential part of our activists’ collective identity. Today anti-communism may have lost its appeal but other extreme left parties (such as the Greens) can and do serve as a functional equivalent of the communist foe. The evidence presented leaves little doubt about the antagonism between the two ideologies. But beyond the left–right opposition there is a more inclusive national identity which takes side for one’s own people – German, French, Italian, Dutch or Flemish – against others globally identified as foreigners – be it Muslims, refugees, guest workers, North Africans, Walloons, or people from Southern Italy. National identity and the felt necessity to defend it against the undermining influence of alien elements appears to form the central element of the collective identity of our extreme right activists. It is their most encompassing claim, which includes every member of their nation or their people, as they prefer to say. Being labelled ‘nationalist’ rather than ‘extreme right’ is therefore their strong preference. At a much lower level of inclusiveness we find party and subparty identities. In fact, one could wonder whether there is such a thing as an ‘extreme right’ activist identity, and whether it might be more important to be a REP member, as opposed to a member of the DVU or the NPD, or to be involved in the CD, as opposed to the CP ’86 or Voorpost, or to be an activist of AN rather than the MFT or MFL. Even inside the larger organizations such as the AN, the VB, or the FN there is a whole spectrum of subgroups that might be more important as a source of identification than the organization as a whole. The intensity of the conflicts between parties and sections within parties suggests that these more exclusive identities can generate stronger loyalties than the more inclusive ones. If we were to ask people why they stay engaged in right-wing activism, despite its adverse consequences, it is probably these loyalties and collective identifications they would refer to. Such collective identities can be reinforced by stigmatization.

274 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer Processes of identification also explain why internal conflicts are more likely than stigmatization to make people quit. The former undermine collective identity while the latter seems to strengthen it.

The future of right-wing extremism In terms of the strength of right-wing extremism we can categorize our five countries into two groups: on the one hand, Belgium, Italy and France with a large, well-organized extreme right movement sector, on the other hand, Germany and the Netherlands, with a marginal, poorly organized extreme right movement sector. A complex set of historical and contemporary factors accounts for this state of affairs. The legacies from the past, the opportunity structures, the state of the political demand for and supply of extreme right social movements all contribute to the strength of extreme right movements in the first three countries and their weakness in the latter two. Although demand and supply reinforce each other, we have argued that the supply side of right-wing extremism plays a decisive part. Had there been a leader with the charisma of Jean-Marie le Pen, in the Netherlands or in Germany, we could bet that a different picture would have emerged. The short-lived success of Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands lends support to that assumption. His flamboyant personality and his ability to address the Muslim immigration issue and antigovernment sentiment, attracted more than 20 per cent of the votes. At the same time, the rapid disintegration of the movement after his death shows that without solid organizational structures it is impossible for a movement to survive (Lucardie 2004). The electoral anchorage of the French FN, in contrast, came from its capacity to build a party machine all over the country between 1988 and 1999. Xenophobic and anti-system sentiments alone are not enough to establish an enduring political movement. The large parties run a different risk, though. As they turn from a minority movement into a mainstream one, when the outsiders become insiders, they run the risk of internal conflicts and breakaways and splits, as the history of the Italian and the French movement shows. These large organizations amalgamate smaller groups and currents within the extreme right family. These factions are held together, as we saw, by strong structures and charismatic leaders, on the one hand, and outside hostility and stigmatization, on the other. The more the party becomes mainstream the more this external binding force disappears, with the possible risk of schismatic processes as more exclusive but stronger identifications with subgroups within the movement begin to gain saliency. These movements will not disappear in the near future, on the contrary. The demand for extreme right protest will continue to exist, especially when such protest stays within the limits of democratic rules, as for most of the movements studied here. One may even argue that the demand has increased since 2000, with the extension of neo-liberal globalization, the enlargement of the European Union, the rise of Islamic terrorism and the crisis of representative democracy. The success of the NPD in Saxony-Anhalt, gaining 9.2 per cent of the valid votes in the

The world of extreme right-wing activists 275 regional elections of September 2004 and getting 12 deputies elected, shows this clearly. Even if several countries have passed or sharpened anti-extreme right legislation it has not prevented extreme right movements from appearing on the political scene, be it in various degrees from one country to another. We do not expect the observed differences in strength and weaknesses to vanish, either. This is both a matter of socialization and mobilization. As we saw, socialization in the parental milieu plays an important part on the pathway to extreme right activism. Such socialization is more likely to occur in countries where there is a strong movement than in countries where the movement is weak. That alone should make it easier for the strong ones to survive, moreover, strong organizations are better recruiters than weak ones, so one would expect the sustainability of the former to be higher. But, of course, internal conflicts and schisms may weaken the large parties in Belgium, France, and Italy, while in the Netherlands or Germany an extreme right supply that appeals more to the imagination may boost the movement. We have shown that movement activists are different from followers. The former tend to be true believers (Klandermans 1997), they are the ones who care the most about the movement’s goals. The core of the militants interviewed are such true believers – ‘the revolutionaries’ as we called them. To be sure, there are also the ‘converts’, the ‘wanderers’, and the ‘compliants’, and some of them eventually turn into true believers, but the Dutch interviews show that it is the ‘revolutionaries’ who are most likely to carry on even after a major setback such as the electoral defeat of 1999 for the CD. More generally, the Dutch case shows that such a setback is no reason to quit. Despite the devastating elections, threequarters of the activists we interviewed remained actively involved in the extreme right. Identification with the movement and its goals at the different levels of inclusiveness gave them the stamina to go on.

Limitations and lines for future research The most obvious limitation of our study is the limited range of organizations, and therefore of types of activists, included in our study. In each country the extreme right movement encompasses many more than those that were included in our study. As we selected those organizations that abided by the basic rules of their societies, one could say that we have interviewed members of the more moderate sector of right-wing extremism: not necessarily moderate in terms of their ideas, but in terms of their behaviour. As a consequence, our picture is incomplete and one should be careful in generalizing our findings, for they exclude the more radical fringes of the extreme right world. The second limitation is our own limited ability to exploit what was available in the interviews, 450 hours of audio-tape, 4,500 pages of transcripts are impossible to scrutinize and evaluate within a reasonable time-frame. Without much difficulty we could have gone on for many more years. In that sense, this book is a compromise between our desire to make our findings public and our desire to be conclusive. It offers a first exploration of the rich material collected in the course of

276 Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer five years of field work. It is our objective to make our material available to those who are interested in further analyses. We will certainly continue to work with it ourselves to do more detailed analyses on more specific questions. One of these is the role of gender. There seems to be a paradox in finding women active in extreme right movements which consider that the place of women is at home and militate against feminism (see for instance the analysis of ‘femi-Nazis’ in Mushaben 1996). Although we have a limited number of women among our interviewees we have enough to lead a more focused comparison of their motives and views. Another question concerns the impact of generation. Our interviewees range between 18 and over 70 years old; they can be members in the same party, at the same time and yet have very different frames of reference because they joined at different moments in time, because they were marked by different events. A third limitation we share with many studies of movement activism is that we interviewed only the activists who belonged to the movement at that time. As activism is an enduring form of participation one needs to take into consideration the turnover, including those who left as well (on the processes of disengagement, see Fillieule forthcoming). Indeed, those who are still there chose to live with the stresses of activism while those who were not prepared to bear them quit. Although we were able to exploit some of our own data by comparing the Dutch and French activists who left after the respective crises in the two countries, more can be done in that respect. But, in spite of these limitations, we feel that looking through our magnifying glass allowed us to understand the complex world of right-wing extremism better.

Notes 1 See also Cécile Péchu’s interview with one of the leaders of Droit Au Logement (DAL), a French radical squatters’ movement, explaining why he cannot possibly locate on such a scale because he feels so far away from the existing left-wing parties of today, the word has lost its meaning (Péchu 2004: 417). 2 For a different finding, see Kathleen Blee’s study of women in a quite different small ‘hate-group’, the Ku Klux Klan, where they appear to have joined of their own free will (Blee 2002).

Appendix 1 Samples

Flanders Age, gender, name

Organization and start of activism

Position in organization

Level of education

Occupation

Residence

26, female, Marij

VB, 1991

Medium

Medium

White-collar worker

Antwerp

44, male, Jan

VB, 1978 (since start)

Medium

High

Self-employed Leuven

43, male, Geert

VB, 1978 (since start)

Medium

Medium

White-collar worker

Antwerp

50, male, Kris

VB, 1991

High

Medium

Retired

Limburg

59, male, Anton

VB, 1980

Medium

Medium

White-collar worker

Limburg

27, male, Paul

VB, 1989

Medium

Medium

Blue-collar worker

Antwerp

36, male, Maurice

VB, 1986

Medium

Medium

White-collar worker

Leuven

55, male, Piet

VB, 1991

Medium

Medium

Retired

Limburg

33, female, Annemie

VB, 1987

Medium

High

White-collar worker

Leuven/Diest

50, male, Jef

VB, 1979 (since start)

Medium

Medium

Self-employed Region of Ghent

48, male, Daan

VB, (?)

Medium

Medium

Blue-collar worker

Limburg

23, male, Pieter

Voorpost, 1995

Medium

Medium

White-collar worker

Region of Ghent

54, male, Thomas

Voorpost, 1976

High

Medium

White-collar worker

Antwerp

39, female, Maria

Voorpost, 1988

Medium

Medium

White-collar worker

Antwerp

18, male, Luk

Voorpost, 1994

Low

Medium

Student

Region of Ghent

278 Appendix 1 Age, gender, name

Organization and start of activism

Position in organization

Level of education

Occupation

Residence

24, male, Willy 38, male, Bert 27, male, Ludo 46, female, Rita 28, male, Jaak 21, male, Stefaan 22, female, Lieve 20, female, Krista 24, male, Karel, 24, male, Maxime 19, female, Anja 23, male, Yves 25, male, Omer

Voorpost, 1996

Low

Medium

Voorpost, 1978

High

High

Blue-collar Region of worker Ghent Self-employed Antwerp

Voorpost, 1996

Medium

High

Voorpost, 1976

Low

High

Voorpost, 1993

High

High

NSV, 1994

Medium

NSV, 1995

Region of Ghent Antwerp

High

White-collar worker White-collar worker White-collar worker Student

Medium

High

Student

Ghent

NSV, 1995

Medium

High

Student

Leuven

NSV, 1991

Low

High

Student

Ghent

NSV, 1991

Medium

High

Student

Leuven

NSV, 1995

Low

High

Student

Ghent

NSV, 1993

Medium

High

Student

Leuven

NSV, 1992

Low

High

Student

Leuven

Leuven

The Netherlands Age, gender, name

Organization and start of activism

Position in organization

Level of education

Occupation

Residence a

32, male, Hans 34, male, Willem 33, male, Johan 30, male, Frits 34, male, Michael 30, male, Guus

CP ’86, Voorpost, 1984 CP ’86, Voorpost, 1981 CP ’86, 1979

High

Medium

White-collar

Randstad

High

Medium

Self-employed South

High

Medium

Unemployed

Rotterdam

Low

High

White-collar

East

High

Medium

Unemployed

The Hague

Low

Unemployed

East

NNP, VNN, 1994 CP ’86, 1978

CP ’86, High Nederlandse Volksunie, 1990

Appendix 1

279

Age, gender, name

Organization and start of activism

Position in organization

Level of education

Occupation

Residence a

36, male, Herman

VNN, 1986

Medium

Low

Blue-collar

Randstad

31, male, Tom

CP ’86, VNN, 1993

High

Low

Blue-collar

Randstad

25, male, Fred

Voorpost, 1988

Medium

High

White-collar

Randstad

69, male, Arend

Nederlandse High Volksunie, 1976

Medium

Retired

The Hague

62, male, George

CD, 1981

High

High

White-collar

The Hague

34, male, Frans

VNN, Voorpost, 1993

Medium

Medium

White-collar

West

34, male, Jan

CD, 1982

Medium

Low

Unemployed

Randstad

56, male, Chris

CD, Voorpost, 1981

Medium

High

Retired/ Randstad Social security

63, male, Sander

CP ’86, 1986

Low

Medium

Retired

Randstad

29, male, Edwin

CD, Voorpost, 1993

Medium

Medium

White-collar

Randstad

67, female, Louise

CD, NNP 1982

Low

Medium

Retired

West

72, male, Ronald

CD, 1982

Low

High

Retired

Randstad

45, male, Harry

CD, 1993

Medium

Low

Self-employed Randstad

47, male, Cor

CD, NB, 1981 High

Medium

Self-employed Utrecht

50, male, Mark

CP ’86, NNP, VNN, 1993

High

High

Retired/ North Social security

59, male, Matthijs

CD, 1990

Low

Low

Retired/ North Social security

57, male, Piet

CD, 1992

Medium

Low

Blue-collar

Randstad

40, male, Henk

CD, 1993

Low

Medium

Blue-collar

Randstad

45, male, Peter

NB, 1995

Low

Low

Self-employed Randstad

65, male, Paul

CD, 1990

Medium

Low

Retired/ South Social security

25, male, Arie

CD, 1993

Medium

Medium

White-collar

West

28, male, Maarten

CP ’86, 1986

Low

Medium

White-collar

East

280 Appendix 1 Residence a

Age, gender, name

Organization and start of activism

Position in organization

Level of education

Occupation

45, female, Paula

NB, 1986

Medium

Medium

Retired/ Utrecht Social security

56, female, Maria

CD, NB, 1993 Low

Medium

Retired/ Randstad Social security

36, female, Janneke

CD, 1993

Medium

Medium

White-collar

Randstad

37, male, Marcel

CD, 1993

Low

Low

Blue-collar

Randstad

66, male, Rinus

NNP, VNN, 1984

High

Low

Retired/ Amsterdam Social security

17, male, Ralph

CD, 1995

Low

Low

Retired/ Randstad Social security

27, female, Anita

CP ’86, 1991

Low

Low

Retired/ East Social security

24, male, Anton

CD, 1989

Low

Low

Unemployed

Randstad

Note a We categorized ‘residence’ into the four big cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, The Hague; Randstad (centre of the country, not big cities), west, east, north or south.

France Age, gender, name

Organization and start of activism a

Position in organization

Level of education

Occupation

Residence

23, male, Eric

FN, 1995 RE, ex PR

Active at local level

High

Student

North

70, male, Marcel

FN, 1983 UDCA

Active at local level

Medium

Self-employed/ North Retired

75, male, Hubert

FN, 1983 Ex RPR

Active at local level

High

Self-employed/ Retired North

17, male, Tristan

AF, 1994

Active at local level

Medium

Student

Paris

28, male, Gaëtan

FN, 1991 Ex RE

Active at local level

High

White-collar

Paris

26, male, Stéphane

FN, 1988 Ex RE

Active at local level

High

White-collar

Paris

28, male, Marc

FN, 1987, TP, Active at ex FNJ, RE, JC local level

High

White-collar

Paris

35, male, Paul

AF, 1976

Active at local level

High

White-collar

Paris

32, female, Julie

FN, 1989 Ex RE

Active at local level

High

White-collar

Paris

Appendix 1 Age, gender, name

Organization and start of activism a

Position in organization

Level of education

Occupation

Residence

34, male, Guillaume

FN, 1988 GRECE

Active at local level

High

White-collar

Paris

23, male, Nicolas

FN, 1996 Active at TP, ex PFN, JC local level

Medium

Unemployed

Paris

26, male, Christophe

FN, 1993 RPR

Active at local level

High

White-collar

North

22, male, Laurent

FNJ, 1993

Active at local level

High

Student

South

60, female, Yvonne

FN, 1992 FF

Active at local level

High

White-collar/ Retired

South

27, male, François

FNJ, 1995 PNFE

Active at local level

Medium

White-collar

South

61, female, Marie-Jeanne

FN, 1989 Ex UDF

Active at local level

High

White-collar/ Retired

South

62, female, Odette

FN, 1987 local level

Active at

Low

White-collar/ Retired

South

53, female, Simone

FN, 1993 Ex NAR

Active at local level

Medium

White-collar

Paris

22, female, Blanche

FNJ, 1995

Active at local level

Medium

Blue-collar

South

22, male, Olivier

FNJ, 1994 DPS

Active at local level

Medium

Blue-collar

South

28, male, Enguerrand

FNJ, 1994 Ex MPF, PR

Active at local level

High

White-collar

South

25, female, Amélie

FNJ, 1995 Ex AF

Active at local level

High

Student

South

22, male, Lionel

FNJ, 1996

Active at local level

Medium

Student

South

51, male, Robert

FN, 1975, DPS, Active at ex OAS, ARLP local level

Medium

Blue-collar

South

22, male, Philippe

FN, 1992 Ex AF

Active at local level

High

Student

South

50, female, Thérèse

FN, 1995

Active at local level

Medium

White-collar

North

46, male, Jean-Pierre

FN, 1988 ex RPR, UDR, UJP

Active at local level

High

Unemployed

North

24, male, Blaise

FN, 1989

Active at local level

High

Student

North

54, male, Baudoin

FN, 1986

Active at local level

High

White-collar

North

58, male, Michel

FN, 1972 JN, ex OAS, GRECE

Active at local level

High

Self-employed/ South Retired

281

282 Appendix 1 Age, gender, name

Organization and start of activism a

65, male, Jacques

Position in organization

Level of education

Occupation

Residence

FN, 1974 Active at FAC, CNR, local level ex OAS, CFTC

Low

White-collar/ Retired

South

56, female, Jacqueline

FN, 1989 MEN

Active at local level

High

White-collar

Paris

18, female, Laure

FN, 1997 RE

Active at local level

High

Student

Paris

53, female, Francine

FN, 1994

Active at local level

Medium

White-collar

Paris

32, male, Bertrand

FN,

Active at local level

High

White-collar

Paris

35, female, Désiré

None, 1985

Active at local level

High

Unemployed

South

Age, gender, name

Organization and start of activism

Position in organization

Level of education

Occupation

Residence

21, male, Davide

AN, 1992 MSI

Medium

Medium

Student

Milan

49, male, Saverio

AN, 1994

Medium

High

Medium

Milan

42, female, Antonella

AN, 1970MSI

Low

High

High

Milan

29, male, Vincenzo

AN, 1995

Low

High

Medium

Milan

19, male, Carlo

AN, 1995

Medium

Medium

Student

Milan

25, female, Stefania

AN, 1992 MSI

High

Medium

Student

Milan

54, male, Mauro

AN, 1980 MSI

High

High

High

North

29, male, Lorenzo

AN, 1982 MSI

High

Medium

Medium

Milan

69, male, Nicolò

MS-FT, 1948 MSI

Low

Low

High

North

32, male, Tullio

MS-FT, 1982 MSI

High

Medium

Medium

Milan

51, male, Bartolomeo 38, male, Sandro

MS-FT, 1965 MSI MS-FT, 1996

Medium

Medium

High

North

Low

Medium

Unemployed

Milan

Italy

Appendix 1 Age, gender, name

Organization and start of activism

Position in organization

Level of education

Occupation

Residence

37, female, Gabriella 65, male, Vittorio 22, male, Renato 59, female, Roberta 63, male, Marco 50, female, Franca 40, male, Mario 39, male, Osvaldo 35, male, Ugo 61, male, Andrea 62, male, Giulio 40, male, Fabrizio 37, female, Linda 35, female, Susanna 49, male, Matteo 42, male, Salvatore 31, male, Alberto 54, male, Riccardo 30, female, Wanda 48, male, Fernando 42, male, Filippo

MS-FT, 1947 MSI MS-FT, 1949 MSI MS-FT, 1990 MSI MS-FT, 1979 MSI MFL, 1948 MSI MFL, 1948 MSI MFL, 1980 MSI MFL, 1990

High

Medium

Unemployed

North

High

High

Retired

Milan

Medium

Medium

Student

Milan

Medium

Low

Retired

Milan

High

Medium

Retired

North

Low

High

Medium

North

Low

Low

Low

North

Low

Medium

Low

North

1987

Low

High

High

North

1950

Low

Medium

Medium

North

1947

Low

Medium

Medium

North

1994

Medium

High

Medium

Milan

AN, 1986 MSI MS-FT, 1975 MSI MFL, 1991

Medium

Medium

Unemployed

South

Medium

Medium

Medium

South

High

Low

Low

South

MFL, 1976, MSI MFL, 1994

High

Medium

Medium

South

High

Medium

Medium

South

Medium

High

Medium

South

Medium

High

Student

South

Medium

High

Medium

South

High

Medium

Medium

South

MFL, MSI MFL, MSI MFL, MSI MFL,

AN, 1960 MSI AN, 1987 MSI MS-FT, 1971 MSI MS-FT, 1972 MSI

283

284 Appendix 1

Germany Age, gender, name

Organization and start of activism

Position in organization

24, male, Hermann

Ex-member, 1986

49, male, Richard

Level of education

Occupation

Residence

Former high Medium

Unemployed

NordrheinWestfalen

REP, 1989

Medium

Low

Self-employed

NordrheinWestfalen

40, male, August

REP, 1996

Low

Medium/ High

White-collar

NordrheinWestfalen

48, male, Klaus

REP, 1993

Medium

Medium

White-collar

NordrheinWestfalen

32, male, Fritz

REP, 1996 (1982)

Medium

High

White-collar

BadenWürttemberg

41, male, Michael

REP, 1993 (1987)

Medium/ High

High

White-collar

BadenWürttemberg

35, female, Angela

REP, 1989

High

Medium

White-collar

NordrheinWestfalen

32, male, Armin

REP, 1990

Medium

Medium

White-collar

NordrheinWestfalen

22, male, Bernhard

REP, 1996

Medium

Medium

White-collar

Bayern

26, male, Karl

REP, 1996

Medium

Medium/ High

Student

Bayern

41, male, Franz

REP, 1989

High

High

White-collar

Bayern

58, female, Beate

REP, 1989 (1984)

High

Medium

White-collar

Bayern

63, male, Jakob

REP, 1983

High

Medium

Self-employed

BadenWürttemberg

44, female, Britta

REP, 1994

High

High

Self-employed

Rheinland Pfalz

51, female, Claudia

REP, 1989

High

Medium

White-collar

Berlin

78, male, Heinrich

REP, 1989

Medium/ High

High

Retired

Berlin

50, male, Eduard

REP, 1992

High

Medium

Unemployed

Berlin

63, female, Ute

REP, 1989

Medium/ High

Low

Retired

Berlin

59, male, Florian

REP, 1989

Medium/ High

Low

Retired

Berlin

28, male, Albert

REP, 1992

High

Medium

White-collar

Berlin

56, female, Silke

REP, 1989

High

High

White-collar

Berlin

Appendix 1 Age, gender, name

Organization and start of activism

38, male, Josef

Position in organization

Level of education

Occupation

Residence

JF, 1995 (1994) High

High

White-collar

Berlin

34, male, Horst

JF, 1995 (1989) High

Medium/ High

White-collar

Berlin

36, male, Hans

JF, 1996 (1990) High

Medium/ High

White-collar

Berlin

29, male, Gero

JF, 1986

Medium/ High

White-collar

Berlin

High

285

Appendix 2 Interview scheme

1. Becoming a member: Introductory question (IQ): You’re a member of X, could you tell me how you became a member of this organization? Follow up questions (FQ): Could you tell me a bit more about the first contact you had with this organization? When did you first became interested in politics and how did that happen? Could you tell me when you first got involved in the ER movement? Probes for: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Personal contacts or influences (family, friends, parents) Situational context (school, work, free time) Critical events (personal, political) Any readings Media.

2. Being a member IQ: Could you tell me what are your activities in this organization? Probes for: 1. 2. 3.

Action repertoire (attending meetings, distributing publications, writing articles or leaflets) Role in organization (position, responsibilities) Level of involvement (time spent).

FQ: Are you satisfied with your role in the organization? Could you tell me what you are learning in there? Could you tell me about the people you spend time with in the organization? Probes for: 1. 2. 3.

Their role Who are they, friends, comrades, fellow activists did you recruit members yourself?

Appendix 2

287

Could you tell me about your friends? 1. 2. 3.

Inside/outside the organization Time spent with them Kind of activities.

3. Staying a member IQ: What would you say that are advantages and disadvantages of being a member of this organization? Probes for: 1. 2. 3.

Personal (affective) Professional Social.

FQ: Do you have the feeling that your membership has changed something in your life for better or worse? Could you tell me whether you have ever considered leaving? What would you lose if you were to leave?

4. Ideology IQ: Could you tell me about the ideas and goals of your organization? FQ: Could you tell me which among them are the most important for you? How did you came to adhere to these ideas? Have you always felt that way? What do you think about the political situation in your country? If something could be changed in this country in the future what would you like the most to be changed? Could you tell me who is on your side in this country and who is against you? Who are the politicians you admire most and who do you despise most? Could you tell me about the symbols of your organization? Here are some photographs about issues that are currently discussed in the press. Could you tell me what they call to your mind? 1. 2. 3. 4.

EU flag Graveyard with star of David Muslims praying in the street Troops marching.

5. Identity IQ: We have been speaking now a long time about your membership in X and many other issues. Could you tell me what it means to you personally to be a member of this organization?

288 Appendix 2 FQ: What is the effect of your membership on how you see yourself as an individual?

6. Demographics Date and place of birth Date of entry in the organization Current occupation (if retired or unemployed: last occupation) Duration of unemployment Education Parents’ education, occupation, nationality, political view Brothers and sisters Partner (if any: occupation, involvement in politics) Children: how many, age Religion Neighbourhood Last vote Left–right self placement Party one would never vote for Active membership in other organizations

Appendix 3 Code book

The code book is divided into five sections. Each section consists of code families. A code family is represented by one or more key questions (Q ). Code families are divided into groups of codes. Codes may be illustrated through examples. The coder must assess in each interview whether a code is present or absent. Some specific issues – yet of importance – may have been forgotten: the coder may in that case make a comment and add these specificities to the code book.

1. Processes of socialization From a life-history perspective, becoming an activist typically occurs in two phases. The generation of potentiality and the transition of potentiality into actual participation. In this section we map the generation of potentiality. The key question here is: are there any cues that the interviewee grew up in a familial and social environment that breeds right-wing extremism? Therefore, we try to describe the social environment activists grew up in, focusing on political socialization. Where did interviewees grow up, how was their relationship with their parents and the rest of family, what experiences were important in their youth, what cues are there in the course of their lives, that relate to their being active in a RWE movement today? 1.1 Interpersonal relations Different phases in life are coded here. Which supporting factors and barriers do interviewees encounter in the course of their life that relate to what they are doing today as activists? The focus here is on the past of the individual. Q: In what way did interpersonal relations in the following domains of the interviewee’s social life contribute to his or her current activism? 1.1.1 Intra-family relations: relations with father, mother, siblings, extended family; leaving home 1.1.2 Relations at school: relations with teachers, class-mates, friends and peers 1.1.3 Other social relations: dealing with scouts, sport, music, religion 1.1.4 Army relations: army, civil service and equivalents

290 Appendix 3 1.1.5 Relations at University 1.1.6 Professional relations: professional milieu and training 1.1.7 Own ‘family’: partnership, children. 1.2 Political and ideological socialization Here we focus on agencies and content of socialization : how and what is transmitted? Q: What is the content of socialization and through which agencies are values transmitted? 1.2.1 Values transmitted through the family: moral, politics and religion; activist habitus 1.2.2 Values transmitted through the school 1.2.3 Values transmitted through other social groups 1.2.4 Values transmitted through Army 1.2.5 Values transmitted through University 1.2.6 Values transmitted through professional milieu 1.2.7 Values transmitted through own family 1.2.8 Other sources of socialization: libraries, media, newspapers, books. 1.3 Social-psychological explanations Explanations and justifications given or suggested by interviewees to explain why they became politically active in RWE organizations. Also, elements of social change, mobility and breakdown that could appear in the interviewee’s life history presentation. Q: What explanations does an interviewee give for becoming an activist of a RWE party? 1.3.1 Injustice frame: any negative pattern enriching feeling of injustice – entitlement, comparison, envies foreigners, deprivation, everybody is against me, being discriminated, discontent, unhappiness, anger; social mobility: downward social mobilization, little man, repression, paradise lost, pessimism 1.3.2 Excitement – thrill – pleasure: sensation seeking: positive element; breaking taboo, excitement, something secret, provocation, revolutionary vision, expectation 1.3.3 Identity search, affirmation, development.

2. Critical events Critical events may be looked upon as turning point in someone’s life. The effect of the turning point may differ, however. In some cases one event can have a dramatic impact of itself, in other cases accumulation of events can finally lead towards taking the ‘last’ barrier.

Appendix 3

291

Q: What events did play an important role in becoming a RWE activist according to the interviewee?

3. Entry to the organization This part deals with the moment the interviewee joined the organization. Q: How does an interviewee get in contact with a RWE movement or organization for the first time? 3.1 Joining on personal initiative 3.2 Joining on exterior recruitment (networks)

4. Maintenance of commitment 4.1 Structural integration Q: How much time is spent as an activist? Q: In what type of activities is the interviewee involved? Q: What is the position of the interviewee in organization? 4.1.1 Special events dealing with organization life 4.1.2 Totality of integration: participation in other groups, social networks within the movement and outside the movement. 4.2 Psychological meaning What does it mean to be active? What do people get out of being active? Does it give a sense of fulfilment to be active? Why does it make sense to be active? Does it give – through ideology – meaning to the world? We examine these questions first on a rational choice perspective, second on an identity analysis and finally on an ideological perspective. 4.2.1

Instrumentality Q: What are the costs and benefits of activism?

4.2.1.1 Material costs: money, time 4.2.1.2 Social costs: friends, social relations, family, occupational, social isolation, loss of respect for oneself, careful about discussing political issues 4.2.1.3 Identity costs: stigmatization, moral reprobation, fear; everything affecting self-esteem negatively 4.2.1.4 Material benefits: job, money, etc. 4.2.1.5 Social benefits: friendships, career in party, responsibilities

292 Appendix 3 4.2.1.6 Identity benefits: substitute family, sense of fulfilment, overcoming stigmatization, ideological benefits, meaning to the world, pride in being different, affecting self-esteem positively. 4.2.2

Identity Q: How does the interviewee define himself in terms of social categories and groups he belongs to? Q: What does it mean to be active within the group as an activist? Evaluation of activity for oneself, importance of activism, emotional bonding to activism.

4.2.2.1 Groups; levels of inclusiveness – generational (ex. generation of war/generation of economic crisis) – gender (ex. man/woman) – social (ex. bourgeois/poor) – ethnic (ex. white/blacks) – cultural (ex. French/US, west/south) – national (ex. the Dutch/the Turks) – religious (ex. atheists/believers, Christians/Muslims) – political groups (right/left, FN/RPR). 4.2.3

Ideology Q: What norms and values does the interviewee hold?

4.2.3.1 Ideology of RWE extremism: racism, nationalism, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, anti-democratic attitude etc. 4.2.3.2 Special comments on photographs 4.2.3.3 How the interviewee sees the ideology of the movement and eventual perceived discrepancies 4.2.3.4 Links with past ideologies: does the interviewee link or disconnect present and past?

5. Exit Q: Did the interviewee ever consider quitting activism? 5.1 Physical, actual exit 5.2 Psychological exit 5.3 Costs and benefits of disengagement 5.3.1 5.3.2 5.3.3 5.3.4 5.3.5 5.3.6

Material costs Social costs Identity costs Material benefits Social benefits Identity benefits.

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Index

abeyance 11–13, 26, 59, 162, 270; structures 11–12, 20, 26, 39, 59, 162–3, 169, 272 Action Française (AF) 6, 18, 94, 96, 116 activism 6–7, 10–14, 33, 48–50, 56, 62–3, 116, 127–30, 135, 139, 147–8, 162, 179, 209–15, 249, 269–70, 273–6; turning the potential into activism 162 agency 231, 236, 238–9, 241, 245–7 Algeria 12, 19, 94, 101–4, 114–15, 118, 271 alliance and conflict system 28, 34 Ancien Régime 95, 118 anomia 264 antifascism 26, 39, 69 anti-foreigner 37, 43, 128–9, 139–40, 143–4, 147, 151, 166, 229, 258, 264–5, 269, 271–3 anti-immigrant 37, 43–4, 48, 127–8, 139–40, 143–4, 147–8, 229, 258, 269, 271–2 anti-muslim 273–4 antiracist legislation 33, 48–9, 275 anti-refugee 151, 271–3 anti-semitism 173–4, 186, 269 anti-system attitude 4, 13, 36, 42–4, 128, 257–8, 264 attribution 235, 243–7 authoritarianism 4, 6, 128, 164, 248–51, 256; authoritarian attitudes 6, 14, 42, 106, 128–9, 140, 147, 248–51, 255–6, 264, 271 belongingness 14, 91, 168, 231–2, 237–9, 245–6; feeling of belonging 74, 88–9, 92, 231 biographical queries 58 Camelots du Roy 96 Catholicism 21, 98–9

class cleavage 111 code book 59–60, 289 coding scheme 3, 58–9, 61–2, 209 collaboration 19, 21–2 commitment 3, 49–50, 59–61, 73, 88, 98, 100, 106–10, 115–16, 127, 130, 137–8, 180, 263; to democracy 255 compliance 129, 147–8, 179–80, 184–6 conformity 14, 237–9, 246–7, 265–7 contact hypothesis 170 continuity 11, 13, 16, 26, 49–50, 56, 67–8, 74–5, 92, 129, 147–8, 179–80, 270 conversion 49–50, 56, 62, 147–8, 179–80, 183, 186, 270 coping processes 90, 92 cordon sanitaire 34, 36–7, 40–1, 203 counterculture 47, 118, 125 countermovements 38–40, 49, 193, 195 critical events 49–50, 56, 59–61, 179, 290 data processing 58 de Gaulle, Charles 19, 100–1, 106–7 deprivation 128, 141, 146–9, 205, 208 Die Republikaner (REP) 5, 25–6, 30, 37–8, 42, 45–8, 54, 151–4, 165–6, 170, 203, 226–7, 230–7, 242–7, 271 discrimination 14, 31–2, 67, 72, 76–83, 86, 88, 90–2, 146–9, 151, 169–70, 209, 222, 237, 240–1, 246, 273 distinctiveness 14, 83–5, 208, 231–3, 238–9, 245–6 electoral rules 10, 28 electoral strength 45 emotional unity 123 ethnocentrism 4, 250–1, 256, 259 everyday racism 127–8, 144, 147–9, 264 exclusion 6, 83, 118, 121–2, 192, 196, 202, 272

308

Index

exemplary quotes 59, 61 exit 59–61, 292 fascism 4, 6, 11, 16–19, 22, 26, 34–5, 67–8, 72, 76, 81, 91, 173–4, 216–19, 269 Flanders 5, 12, 20–2, 26, 30, 36, 39, 48–9, 52, 127–8, 131, 141–2, 271–2 Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) 102, 115 Front National (FN) 3, 13, 19–20, 29–30, 35–6, 45–8, 93–126, 207, 271–4 gender 52, 262, 276 German history as biographical experience 160, 162 grievance 8, 243–7 group size 208 holocaust 24, 161, 272 identity 8–9, 13–14, 58, 196, 204–8, 224–6, 231; collective 8, 11, 13–14, 49, 151, 154, 156, 204–9, 213, 224–8, 231–47, 273–4; functions 14, 225, 231, 245; ideological 210, 213–14, 221–2; marginal 117; multiple-level 223, 247; national 151, 162, 169–70, 207, 229–34, 238–9, 243, 245–7, 273; party 69–70, 214, 221–3, 233, 238; politicized collective 14, 225, 242, 246; RWE 14, 169–70, 224–7, 231–3, 237, 242–7; sub-party 213–14, 221–3, 272 ideology 8–9, 11, 56, 257, 263, 264; anti-communist 19, 36, 94, 99–100 in-depth interviews 3, 62 in-group favouritism 271 in-group identification 87, 90–2 injustice 118, 160–2, 204–5, 208–9, 216–23, 273 instrumentality 8, 56 intergenerational transmission 93 interview scheme 56–8, 286 Junge Freiheit ( JF) 5, 54, 151–4, 165, 168, 170 Le Pen, Jean-Marie 19–20, 28–30, 36, 47–8, 104–5, 107, 118–19, 122, 207, 248 leadership 12, 45–8, 201–2, 264 Lefebvre, Archbishop 99 left-wing extremism (LWE) 248, 250–2, 255–67 life-history interviews 49, 51, 56, 62

majority/minority 207, 222 Malraux, André 106 Mégret, Bruno 20, 36, 48, 94, 120, 207, 248 mobilization 42, 49, 61, 163 modernization loser 6 monarchists 34–5, 95, 98 motives 7–9, 42, 127–9, 147–9, 263 Mouvement National Républicain (MNR) 20, 93, 248 multi-organizational field 12, 28, 34–6, 48 national conservative potential 157 nationalism 4, 12–13, 20–1, 106, 114, 127–32, 135–6, 139–49, 170, 263–5, 271–2; ordinary 170 nazism 4, 6, 16, 22, 26, 186 networks 10–11, 21, 26, 38–9, 88, 101–2, 121, 125, 132, 153, 160, 169, 245, 270–2 new right 6, 22, 42, 111, 113, 152–3, 157, 271; new radical right 270 ninistes 108 Organisation de l’armee secrète (OAS) 19, 98, 103, 115, 271 Ordre Nouveau 19, 94 ostracism 67, 69, 72, 90, 203 party split 20, 23, 36, 48, 111–14, 120, 125, 152, 204, 207, 274 party strength 46 pieds-noirs 103–4 political culture 98, 117 political demand 7, 10, 12–13, 42, 61, 274 political dissatisfaction 128–9, 147, 264 political opportunities 10, 30, 33 political protest 128 political supply 7, 10, 12–13, 42, 44, 61, 274 political wanderers 180, 183, 186 politicization 243, 246–7, 250, 266 post-industrial right 270 Poujade, Pierre 104–5 prejudice 14, 81, 87, 170, 209, 237–41, 244, 246 projective tests 56, 162, 165 quite ‘normal’ German citizens 154, 170 Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) 5, 20, 30, 35, 94, 106 repression 192, 202, 272

Index resistance 16, 31, 39, 68, 73, 77–9, 81, 106–7, 118, 216, 218, 220 resource mobilization 7–10 respect 14, 231, 233–4, 239–41, 245–6, 267 revolutionaries 18, 180–1, 186, 188, 202, 272, 275 right-wing culture 125 right-wing extremism (RWE) 3–7, 11–13, 248, 257, 274 samples 52, 54–6, 249–51, 277 sampling 51–2, 55 schism 14, 37, 70, 204–8, 221, 274–5 search for a new political home 153, 163, 165, 170, 180–2, 272 (self-)stereotyping 14, 237–9, 246–7 simplism 6 social competition 86–7, 92 social creativity 83, 85, 92 social movement 6–11, 28, 33–4, 38, 42, 205, 209, 247, 270 social support 73, 88–9, 92, 236 socialization 13, 49, 56, 59–60, 93, 103, 125, 128–9, 134, 136, 147–51, 157, 169, 179, 270–1, 275; political 49, 59, 93, 110, 125, 159, 162, 179, 289 socio-economic conservatism 260 stigmatization 13–14, 67–8, 81–3, 117–19, 123, 151, 172, 174, 186–8, 192, 200, 202–3, 209, 222, 272–4

309

Terre et Peuple 113 Tixier-Vignancour, Jean-Louis 19, 98, 101–4 topography 14, 224–6, 231, 245 trajectory/trajectories 51, 56, 62, 115, 127–32, 136–9, 147–9, 175, 192, 202, 270, 272 transcription 59 treason 220 triangulation 243, 246 trigger 127–8, 139, 148 true-believers 11, 275 understanding 14, 231, 234–8, 244–7 Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF) 5, 20, 30, 35, 105, 124 values 9–11, 84–6, 91–2, 104, 106, 111, 129, 151, 206, 210–12, 215, 250, 260, 265; and ideology 166, 249; social 256, 260–1 Vichy 19, 94–8, 106 Vlaams Blok (VB) 3, 21–2, 30–1, 36, 45–7, 127–8, 203, 271–2 voters (extreme right-wing) 5, 13, 17, 20, 25, 37, 42–3, 45, 127–8, 148–9, 271–2 xenophobia 4, 13, 31, 34, 43–4, 151, 169–72, 243, 271–2