Middle extremism

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The term middle extremism was introduced into sociology by Seymour Martin Lipset . In his book Political Man (1959) he wrote that left extremism is based in the lower strata and in the working class , right extremism is anchored in the upper strata , and fascism is at home in the socio-economic middle class . With this, the sociologist expanded the analysis of Theodor Geiger , who explained the electoral successes of the NSDAP since the early 1930s from the reaction of the middle class to the world economic crisis , and related it to the diagnostic analysis of extremist and anti-democratic movements from the middle of society. The extremisms from left and right were thus supplemented by a new type and fascism was explained as a typical middle-class movement.

Jürgen R. Winkler counts Lipset's theory - together with the work of Richard Hofstadter (The Pseudo Conservative Revolt ) - among the most important theories in right-wing extremism research . Comparable with the theories of relative deprivation , Lipset's theory deals with the “belonging of individuals to collectives, their perception of their economic and social situation and their sensitivities”. Within this research, Lipset's theory is that “people who see their status at risk” tend to “support right-wing extremist movements”, according to Winkler, “very influential”.

Jürgen W. Falter's socio-economic analysis of Hitler's voters (1991) put the middle-class theses to explain the rise of National Socialism into perspective. Falter found out that 40% of the NSDAP voters came from the middle class, but that the working class also represented a significant group of voters. The denomination turned out to be the clearest social characteristic of the NSDAP voters , since Protestants were much more likely than Catholics to vote for the NSDAP.

In the 1990s, the term also became a political catchphrase with which general criticism of the social system was expressed. With their positioning in the discussions about dominant culture , multiculturalism , nation and immigration , the political and economic elites (and not the right-wing extremist parties themselves) would promote right-wing extremist ideas and thus prepare the way to an authoritarian society.

National Socialism as "Middle Extremism"

The importance of the middle class for the electoral successes of National Socialism was already the subject of the work of various liberal sociologists towards the end of the Weimar Republic . The “extremism of the middle” was considered to be an explanation for the “most recognized danger that Hitler and the NSDAP represented for the parliamentary system”. Theodor Geiger was one of these sociologists , who summed up in 1949:

"The short role of the middle classes in big politics is a paradox of social history: one class indignantly denies being a class and wages a bitter class struggle against the reality and the idea of ​​the class struggle."

In 1930 Walter Mannzen wrote in his essay The Social Foundations of National Socialism that National Socialism had primarily attracted “the entire specific petty bourgeoisie ” and in particular the independent craftsmen. In 1931 Hendrik de Man expressed the conviction in Socialism and National Fascism:

"All sociological studies on the composition of the National Socialist electorate in Germany come to the same conclusion: These strata essentially belong to the proletarianized or so-called middle class threatened with proletarianization ."

The NSDAP is a "typical movement of medium-sized businesses and high-collar proletarians". Carlo Mierendorff firmly believed in 1931 that the middle class socio-psychologically “(would) do everything in order not to be counted as part of the proletariat because of its progressive proletarianization”. The sociologist Svend Riemer also wrote in 1932 that it was a banality that the middle class was considered "the real bearer of National Socialism".

In 1966, Mario Rainer Lepsius examined the influences of right-wing ideologies on the center : "From a sect-like right-wing party, National Socialism turned into a party of the radicalized center." Other proponents of the theory that National Socialism was center-extremism were Umberto Eco , Rudolf Heberle , Rudolf Küstermeier, Harold Lasswell , David J. Saposs, Erik Nölting , the Catholic journalist Walter Dirks and the economist Emil Lederer , while the critics primarily included Theodor Heuss and the socialist historian Arthur Rosenberg .

The best-known proponent of the theory of middle extremism is the American sociologist Seymour Lipset. His essay Der 'Faschismus', die Linke, die Rechts und die Mitte from 1958, which expanded extremism from the right and left by a third type, was published in 1967 by Ernst Nolte in Germany. Lipset assumes that “ left ”, “ right ” and “center” each refer to ideologies that could be moderate or extremist. He assigns each of these ideologies to a social class in which it predominates: in the lower class these are left-wing convictions, the upper class thinks on the right, and in the middle class people tend either to liberalism or to fascism. Lipset thus contradicts the thesis that only the right and left margins of a party system can tend towards dictatorship and the center only towards democracy. So “extremist ideologies and groups could be classified and analyzed in the same way in the same terms […] as the democratic groups, that is, in the terms of the right, the left and the center.” Most of the time, only left or right-wing extremism occurs in and only in countries like France, Italy and Germany could it happen that all forms of extremism occur. Lipset classifies all those movements and parties that are usually classified as fascist under the category of “middle extremism”.

For Lipset, the impetus for developing the theory of center extremism was the current political debate in 1958 about the fall of the Fourth Republic in France. With the coup of the generals in Algeria , many feared a similar coup in France. The Gaullist Rassemblement du peuple français (RPF) and the populist party Pierre Poujades Union de défense des commerçants et artisans (UDCA, German Union for the Defense of Traders and Craftsmen) were trusted to pursue anti-democratic policies. Lipset classified Gaullism as a classic conservative movement with a large number of typical right-wing extremist characteristics. He defined Poujadism as a typical form of middle-class extremism. From this party he saw the greater danger for democracy, since conservative movements and regimes are neither revolutionary nor totalitarian . In his theoretical work, Lipset was not concerned with a contribution to the explanation of National Socialism, but with empirically founded criteria for differentiating the three potentially extremist movements (conservatives, center, communists ) and their anti-democratic dangers:

“If we want to preserve and expand parliamentary democracy, we have to know from which side it is threatened; and the threat from the Conservatives is different from the threat from the middle class or from communism. "

In addition to Italian fascism , Hitler and Poujadism, he also counted McCarthyism in the USA as middle-class extremism.

In large parts of German science, the historical references to Lipset's theory have long been widely accepted. Ralf Dahrendorf wrote in 1961 on Lipset's theory, “The destruction of German democracy is therefore a work of the middle class.” Dahrendorf explained the extremism of mid-1968 by the fact that large parts of German society in the Weimar Republic developed a lack of resistance to anti-democratic forms of politics . Since the liberal tradition was poorly developed, "the new illiberal radicalism of the National Socialists" could develop.

But there was also criticism of Lipset's hypothesis of center extremism. In 1976 Ernst Nolte criticized it for falling short on both ends of the political spectrum: the democratic right could not be classified anywhere in his analysis scheme, since he considered the classic conservatives to be right-wing extremists; The fact that such disparate phenomena as communism and Peronism are summarized as left-wing extremism is "hardly convincing".

The party researcher Jürgen W. Falter came to the result in 1991 with elaborate statistical methods that only about 40% of the electorate of the NSDAP could be assigned to the middle class, but just as much belonged to the working class. Lipset's finding that employees from 1930–1933 voted below average for the NSDAP also speak against the middle class hypothesis. The denomination was a much more important social indicator for the decision to vote for the NSDAP than the social class, which Lipset saw as decisive. Overall, the NSDAP

"In terms of the social composition of its voters, most likely a ' People's Party of Protest' or, as one could put it because of the still above-average, but not overwhelming proportion of the middle class among its voters, alluding to the resulting statistical distribution curve , a ' People's party with a middle class belly '. "

The political scientists Viola Neu and Sabine Pokorny criticized in 2015 that Lipset did not provide a clear definition of fascism, which he viewed purely in terms of social structure . He does not provide empirical evidence for his theses, but relies purely on "plausibility interpretations of the election results of the Reichstag elections 1928 to 1933".

Right-wing extremism and fascism research

In Germany the theory was discussed almost without exception using the example of National Socialism until the 1980s. It was not until the 1990s that the theory also became the subject of present-day analysis. Kraushaar states about this phase: "Judging by the enormous influence that the theorem had over a long period of time in social history ... the abstinence from political theory requires explanation." "Just mentioning it," says Kraushaar with a reference to Uwe Backes and Eckhard Jesse , “triggers massive backlash in many cases. Obviously, the thesis of center extremism hits a critical point. Even the abstract idea that the middle class in the Federal Republic could harbor anti-democratic potential is seen as an imposition, even a provocation. ”Backes and Jesse had warned against“ delimiting the concept of extremism ”and“ authors who use the formula of Use middle-class extremism, disqualified as demagogic. "

In contrast to science in Germany, the ideological continuity of the middle class in the USA was discussed by Arthur Schweitzer since 1964 and reflected on the present in the Federal Republic of Germany . The middle class survived National Socialism “with an intact conservative status ideology”. In the German translation of his book he refers in this connection to the election successes of the NPD in 1966/67, which showed that the middle class was more susceptible to neo-Nazi slogans than other sections of the population. Schweitzer saw one reason for this in the suppression of the experience of the middle class from the early 1930s. Here a “counter-revolutionary potential has formed”.

“Middle Extremism” in Analysis of the Present

In the 1990s, the sociologist Wilhelm Heitmeyer took up the term “middle extremism” again and opened a debate about the extent to which right-wing extremism comes “from the middle of society”. In 1994, Hans-Martin Lohmann published the anthology “Extremism of the Middle”, in which various authors represented the thesis that “a multitude of new right-wing issues in society can be connected”. The political scientist Wolfgang Kraushaar highlighted in the anthology “implicit” and sometimes “explicit approaches” in which the “interpretive figure” extremism of the center to understand the interaction of “covert institutional relationships between authorities and right-wing violent criminals, the role of right-wing populist parties in our political system or the renewed importance of right-wing conservative ideologies in social self-image ”. According to Kraushaar, the category “Middle extremism” is used for the following descriptive contexts:

  1. as an approach "to identify the social origin of the perpetrators"
  2. as an approach "to identify the complicity between perpetrators and politicians, especially between right-wing extremists and state authorities."
  3. as an approach "to characterize modern right-wing populist parties" and
  4. as an approach "to analyze updated right-wing conservative ideologies."

The main points of criticism of the term are mainly formulated by Uwe Backes . According to this, it is a matter of "overstretching the concept". " Middle extremism " is criticized as a conceptual formation or as a constructed political weapon and less seen as a serious tool of political analysis.

Eckhard Jesse and Uwe Backes represent, according to the view represented by Oliver Decker and Elmar Brähler in the Mitte studies , a “normative framework theory” which defines extremism from the margins of society and thus does not include the phenomena addressed in sociology in their theory of to explain extreme poles.

In contrast to this normative theory, Kurt Lenk sees the lack of a fascism definition in extremism research and the “inability” to recognize right-wing extremist ideologies as such, a problem for the object of investigation if only the margins of society are sought and the center of society is ignored: “Out Such an inability to unambiguously define that right-wing extremism only exists on the fringes of society, while a neatly separated 'healthy middle' is immune to it, has long since proven to be a fallacy Messages receptive and lead to “fundamentalist” renationalization tendencies across Europe. Lenk recalls Theodor W. Adorno's warning: “I see the afterlife of National Socialism in democracy as potentially more threatening than the afterlife of fascist tendencies against democracy. Infiltration denotes an objective; The only reason why shady figures make their comeback in positions of power, because the circumstances favor them. ”The British fascism researcher Roger Griffin is in this tradition, who considers middle extremism to be more dangerous than right-wing extremism in“ political and social terms ”. In contrast to dedicated neo-Nazi views, this extremism, which is located in the democratic spectrum, is suitable for the masses, since nowadays it "is experienced by many inhabitants of the western world as normality and common sense."

Example Germany

A series of arson attacks on refugee shelters in the early 1990s sparked a debate about “middle-class extremism”. The sociologist Karl Otto Hondrich drew conclusions from the acts of violence with regard to the attitudes of the social majority:

“The attacks on asylum shelters, condemned by the majority, nevertheless symbolize the opinion of the same majority that the state has to put a stop to the influx of foreigners”.

In the anthology of the same name “Extremismus der Mitte”, Dieter Rudolf Knoell interprets Hondrich's positioning as an invitation to the state “to relieve the perpetrators of the work” and characterizes the extremism of the center at the beginning of the 1990s as a shift in the “ political center” "To" right ":" The right-wing radical position of the day before yesterday is the political center of today ". The " asylum compromise " corresponds to the "realpolitical implementation of Hondrich's program, and it is, almost literally, the adoption of the corresponding passages of the Republican party program from 1987".

criticism

The extremism researcher Uwe Backes criticized the approach based on a wrong concept of right-wing extremism: “No wonder that in the 'middle' anyone who means neoliberal political concepts or the appeal to the nation state by new right tendencies. Then it makes sense to look for her not only on the 'right fool 's seam ', not just on the 'right wing' of the CDU / CSU and FDP, but also among the Greens and the SPD. "

See also

literature

  • Uwe Backes , Eckhard Jesse : Middle Extremism? - Criticism of a fashionable catchphrase. In: Uwe Backes, Eckhard Jesse: Comparative Extremism Research (= Extremism and Democracy 11). Nomos, Baden-Baden 2005, ISBN 3-8329-0997-4 , pp. 157–169 ( fundamental criticism of the concept of middle extremism by the founders of the pole theory variant of extremism research ).
  • Rainer Benthin : The New Right in Germany and its Influence on the Political Discourse of the Present. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-631-30017-4 .
  • Alice Brauner-Orthen : The New Right in Germany. Anti-democratic and racist tendencies. Leske and Budrich, Opladen 2001, ISBN 3-8100-3078-3 .
  • Christoph Butterwegge among others: Topics of the Right - Topics of the Middle. Immigration, Demographic Change and National Consciousness. Leske and Budrich, Opladen 2002, ISBN 3-8100-3419-3 , review .
  • Oliver Decker, Elmar Brähler : From the edge to the middle. Right-wing extremist attitudes and their influencing factors in Germany. Study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation on the spread and influencing factors of right-wing extremist attitudes in the FRG. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung - Forum Berlin, Leipzig 2006, ISBN 3-89892-566-8 , PDF full text .
  • Wolfgang Gessenharter : New radical right, intellectual new right and right-wing extremism: For the theoretical and empirical re-measurement of a political-ideological space? In: Wolfgang Gessenharter, Helmut Fröchling (Hrsg.): Right-wing extremism and new rights in Germany. Re-measurement of a political-ideological space? Leske and Budrich, Opladen 1998, ISBN 3-8100-2053-2 , pp. 25-66.
  • Roger Griffin : Völkischer Nationalism as a pioneer and continuer of fascism: An Anglo-Saxon view of a not only German phenomenon. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.): Völkische Bande. Decadence and rebirth. Analysis of right-wing ideology (= Edition DISS 8). Unrast, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-89771-737-9 , pp. 21-48.
  • Siegfried Jäger : About the penetration of ideologues of völkisch nationalism into the public discourse. In: Siegfried Jäger, Dirk Kretschmer, Gabriele Cleve, Birgit Griese and others: The spook is not over. Völkisch-Nationalist Ideologeme in the public discourse of the present. Duisburg Institute for Language and Social Research DISS, Duisburg 1998, ISBN 3-927388-63-7 , pp. 11-25.
  • Wolfgang Kraushaar: Radicalization of the Middle - On the Way to the Berlin Republic. In: Richard Faber , Hajo Funke , Gerhard Schoenberner (eds.): Right-wing extremism. Ideology and violence . Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-89468-157-8 (= publications of the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial 5).
  • Steffen Kailitz : Political Extremism in the Federal Republic of Germany. An introduction. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 3-531-14193-7 , p. 24.
  • Nora Langenbacher (Ed.): The middle in the crisis. Right-wing extremist attitudes in Germany 2010. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, project "Confrontation with right-wing extremism", Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86872-469-1 , PDF full text .
  • Kurt Lenk : Right where the middle is. Studies on ideology: right-wing extremism, National Socialism, conservatism. Nomos-Verlags-Gesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1994, ISBN 3-7890-3316-2 (extended new edition by Conrad Taler: Right, where the middle is. The new nationalism in the Federal Republic (= Fischer 32 series ). Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1972, ISBN 3-10-077101-X ).
  • Hans-Martin Lohmann (Hrsg.): Extremism of the middle. From the right understanding of the German nation (= Fischer. History 12534). Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-596-12534-0 .
  • Michael Minkenberg : The renewal of the radical right in Western democracies: the USA, France, Germany in comparison. In: Wolfgang Gessenharter, Helmut Fröchling (Hrsg.): Right-wing extremism and new rights in Germany. Re-measurement of a political-ideological space? Leske and Budrich, Opladen 1998, ISBN 3-8100-2053-2 , pp. 253-279.
  • Friedbert Pflüger: Germany is drifting. The Conservative Revolution discovers its children. Econ, Düsseldorf et al. 1994, ISBN 3-430-17471-6 .
  • Wolfgang Kraushaar: Extremism in the Middle - On the history of a sociological and socio-historical figure of interpretation . In: Hans-Martin Lohmann (Hrsg.): Extremism of the middle - From the right understanding of the German nation . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1994, pp. 23-50. ISBN 3-596-12534-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Kraushaar 1994.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h See Kraushaar 1994.
  3. ^ Quotation from Kraushaar 1994.
  4. ↑ a b c Cf. Kraushaar 1994, p. 37.
  5. ↑ a b c d Kraushaar 1994, p. 26.
  • Other:
  1. ↑ Jürgen W. Falter (1981): Radicalization of the Middle Classes or Mobilization of the Unpolitical? The Theories of Seymour Martin Lipset and Reinhard Bendix on the Electoral Support of the NSDAP in the Light of Recent Research. In: Social Science Information 2, 1981, pp. 389-430. See also Seymour Martin Lipset: "Fascism" - Left, Right, and Center. In: Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Johns Hopkins Universitas Press, Baltimore 1981, pp. 127-152. German: Seymour Martin Lipset: The 'fascism', the left, the right and the center. In: Ernst Nolte (ed.): Theories about fascism . 4th edition, Cologne 1976, pp. 449-491.
  2. ↑ Federal Agency for Civic Education, Is "the middle" (right) extremist? , September 21, 2015
  3. ^ Theodor Geiger: Panic in the middle class. 1930. See Daniel Gardemin: The doubly blocked center. A research project on mentalities in the middle of society ( Memento from June 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). University of Hanover, 1997 (accessed March 26, 2007)
  4. ↑ Leonhard Fuest & Jörg Löffler: Discourses of the Extreme: About extremism and radicalism in theory, literature and media. Volume 6 of Film, Medium, Diskurs. Königshausen & Neumann, 2005, ISBN 3-8260-2878-3 , ISBN 978-3-8260-2878-6 , p. 16 ( online )
  5. ^ Richard Hofstadter: The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt. In: Daniel Bell (Ed.): The Radical Right. Garden City 1964, pp. 75-95.
  6. ^ Jürgen R. Winkler: right-wing extremism. Subject - explanatory approaches - basic problems ( PDF ( Memento from May 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive ))
  7. ↑ Federal Agency for Civic Education, Is "the middle" (right) extremist? , September 21, 2015
  8. ↑ Klaus Schroeder: Right-wing extremism and youth violence in D, 2003, ISBN 3-506-71751-0 , pages 110-113
  9. ^ Theodor Geiger: The class society in the melting pot. Cologne / Hagen 1949, p. 168.
  10. ↑ Hendrik de Man: Socialism and National Fascism , Potsdam p. 31.
  11. ^ Svend Riemer: On the sociology of National Socialism . In: Die Arbeit , No. 9. 1932. p. 103.
  12. ↑ M. Rainer Lepsius: Extreme nationalism. Structural conditions before the National Socialist seizure of power . Stuttgart / Berlin / Cologne / Mainz 1966, p. 8.
  13. ↑ Seymour Martin Lipset: The 'Fascism', the left, the right and the center. In: Ernst Nolte (ed.): Theories about fascism . 4th edition, Cologne 1976, pp. 449-491.
  14. ↑ Ernst Nolte: Forty years of theories about fascism . In: the same (ed.): Theories about fascism . 4th edition, Cologne 1976, pp. 70 f .; Viola Neu and Sabine Pokorny: Is the middle (right-) extremist? In: From politics and contemporary history 65 (2015), issue 40, p. 3.
  15. ↑ Seymour Martin Lipset: The 'Fascism', the left, the right and the center. In: Ernst Nolte (ed.): Theories about fascism . 4th edition, Cologne 1976, p. 450.
  16. ↑ Seymour Martin Lipset: The 'Fascism', the left, the right and the center. In: Ernst Nolte (ed.): Theories about fascism . 4th edition, Cologne 1976, p. 482.
  17. ↑ Cf. Dahrendorf: Society and Democracy in Germany. Munich 1968
  18. ↑ Ernst Nolte: Forty years of theories about fascism . In: the same (ed.): Theories about fascism . 4th edition, Cologne 1976, p. 70.
  19. ^ Jürgen W. Falter: Hitler's voters . Scientific Book Society, Darmsttadt 1991, p. 287 f. and 371 f. (here the quote).
  20. ↑ Viola Neu and Sabine Pokorny: Is the middle (right-) extremist? In: From politics and contemporary history 65 (2015), issue 40, p. 3
  21. ↑ a b cf. Arthur Schweitzer: Big Business in the Third Reich. 164
  22. ↑ cf. Arthur Schweitzer: Big Business in the Third Reich. 179
  23. ↑ Cf. educational modules against racism . bildung- gegen-neueradikalerechte.ake-bildungswerk.de. Archived from the original on October 14, 2013. Retrieved June 20, 2013.
  24. ↑ Hans-Martin Lohmann: Extremism in the middle. On the Right Understanding of the German Nation , Frankfurt am Main 1994.
  25. ↑ Uwe Backes: "The thesis of the advance of the" New Right "is based in many cases on an overstretching of the term. No wonder that those who mean neoliberal political concepts or the appeal to the nation state in the" Middle "will find what they are looking for ." ; quoted from Uwe Backes: Shape and meaning of intellectual right-wing extremism in Germany
  26. ↑ Jürgen P. Lang : The theory of extremism between normativity and empiricism ( Memento from April 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  27. ↑ cf. Oliver Decker , Elmar Brähler : From the edge to the center - right-wing extremist attitudes and their influencing factors in Germany (PDF; 731.52 kB) arug.de. Archived from the original on October 6, 2007. Retrieved June 21, 2013.
  28. ↑ Backes, Uwe 1989: Political Extremism in Democratic Constitutional States. Elements of a normative framework theory. Opladen
  29. ↑ cf. Kurt Lenk: Right where the middle is. Baden-Baden 1994
  30. ↑ Kurt Lenk : Right-wing extremist "Argumentation Pattern" . Federal Agency for Civic Education. October 13, 2005. Retrieved June 21, 2013.
  31. ^ Theodor W. Adorno, What means working up the past, in: Interventions. Nine critical models, Frankfurt / M. 1963, p. 126. Quoted from Kurt Lenk: Kurt Lenk: right-wing extremists "Argumentationsmuster"
  32. ↑ Roger Griffin: Völkischer Nationalismus ... , p. 48
  33. ↑ Karl Otto Hondrich: The people, the anger, the violence . In: Der Spiegel , January 4, 1992, cf. also Martin Blumentritt: The deadly poison of the nation and the advantages it promises . comlink.de. Retrieved June 21, 2013.
  34. ↑ See Rudolf Knoell: Teacher Hondrich as a student of the people . In: HM Lohmann: Extremism of the Middle , pp. 144–167.
  35. ↑ Uwe Backes: Shape and meaning of intellectual right-wing extremism in Germany, in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, H. 46/2001, pp. 24–30, p. 29