Women in right-wing extremism

This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

Right-wing extremist women are active in nationalist organizations or appear as activists in national women's organizations. You are an important part of right-wing extremism in Germany .

background

“We have found that women are far too little perceived as convinced, racist, fanatical convicts. Many in the right-wing scene are very involved, actively promoting the inhuman ideology and taking part in actions, campaigns and crimes. "

- Andrea Röpke

In the 1990s, the role of nationalists came more into the public eye. While women until then were seen more as “appendages” of male right-wing extremists in anti-fascist research, it became clear that national women are actively involved in their own ideologically stable circles. The journalist Andrea Röpke said in this context: “The role of women has been underestimated in the last few decades because they were perceived as crickets on the stove or as the apolitical friend of a skinhead . The media and the general public alike always assume that women only slip into the scene because they are the girlfriend of a right-wing man and they know almost nothing about his views. It is difficult for us to admit that women can be fanatical, that they consciously support the strategies of the Nazis and that they even work in sensitive areas such as schools and kindergartens with this attitude. "

In 2000 the German anti-fascist research network women and right-wing extremism was founded. It is an interdisciplinary team of sociologists, political scientists, educationalists, historians and journalists whose research areas focus on gender-specific aspects of right-wing extremism. The network is active in educational work and publishes its results regularly.

Gender balance in practice

Statistics on the proportion of women and men with right-wing extremist attitudes, in right-wing extremist organizations or free commitment to ideology differ greatly in their reliability based on the sources and quality of the data collected.

While 90 percent of criminal and violent acts on record are committed by men, the proportion of women in right-wing extremist parties is up to 30 percent today. This coincides with around a third of female voters in right-wing extremist parties. According to Renate Bitzan (Nuremberg University of Applied Sciences), more recent studies assume that this distribution is becoming more equal among the sexes and that 60 percent of right-wing extremists are cast by men and 40 percent by women.

Relationship to equality and gender mainstreaming

The equality of men and women is mostly relativized or even rejected due to the ideologically predetermined distribution of roles between the sexes. Most right-wing extremist women reject gender mainstreaming with the aim of equal treatment of people of different sexes in their specific life situations as "against the nature of women". At the same time, women in the scene now play a key strategic role, especially as door openers into everyday democratic culture. They are mainly active in social professions such as kindergarten, but also as parents' representatives in order to subliminally increase acceptance of right-wing extremist ideas. They are in no way inferior to their male counterparts in terms of ideological consolidation and actionist orientation, and women's comradeships can now also be proven. Right-wing extremist women are also very active in local politics. These activities should not be underestimated for the right-wing extremist scene as a whole. Right-wing extremist ideas can be conveyed to the next generation, especially when they bring up children. Because women are deliberately gentler and more peaceful than their male counterparts, they arouse less suspicion than the often martial male right-wing extremists and thus find more points of contact in society.

Although there are now women in the NPD both in local politics and at the federal level, according to journalist Andrea Röpke it happens again and again that women have to give up their place on the list or an office in favor of a man.

The Saxon NPD member of the state parliament Gitta Schüßler criticized this practice in 2009 as chairwoman of the party women's organization Ring Nationaler Frauen (RNF) and had to resign from this office.

In the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement , on the one hand, the appearance of female actors is self-confident and determined. They support, for example, the nationalist-racist campaign “120 decibels ”, which denounces violence against women by Muslims and immigrants and, according to scientists, deliberately stirs up fears by suppressing other structures of sexual violence and uses them to create a mood. On the other hand, the identitary activists convey traditional and conventional values ​​as well as classic roles in their posts and videos. According to right-wing extremism expert Heike Radvan, women are given responsibility for maintaining the “national community” among identities. The literary and political scientist Judith Goetz referred to the ideology of the Identitarian Movement, according to which "people, cultures, peoples are of equal value, but not of the same kind". Correspondingly, “men and women [...] because of their differences require different treatment”. Migrants and leftists are generally defamed as misogynistic, whereas they portray themselves as defenders of women's rights. Equality is sold as “our value”, but also set against an “educated gender struggle” which would destroy the “natural” relationship between men and women and, according to the grouping of Identitarian Girls and Women, would “force victim identity ” on women .

ideology

Right-wing extremist women have a völkisch-national attitude and to a large extent reject pluralistic social structures. You advocate a folk-oriented family policy. You see women for the role of “guarantors of the family” against the background of the national and Aryan ideas.

Artamans and Youth Movement

The members of the "Bund Artam e. V. ", which was formally founded in Munich in 1926, called themselves Artamans . V. ". This federation belonged to the German national wing of the German youth movement and was a radical-ethnic settlement federation . Since the beginning of the 1990s, several families have settled as so-called "Neo-Artamans" between Teterow and Güstrow in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . The portal “Endstation Rechts” calls the group “ völkisch ” and “right-winged”. Against the background of a reconstructed neo-pagan-Germanic belief system, women play a decisive role in the Artamanen movement as support for families rooted in national ideology and right-wing extremist tradition.

Nationalists in organizations

Community of German Women (GDF)

The Association of German Women is the oldest women's organization of the extreme right in Germany. It emerged from the Skingirl Freundeskreis Deutschland , which was close to the right-wing extremist music network Blood & Honor . For fear of a possible ban, the Skingirl Circle of Friends dissolved. Former members founded the Association of German Women in 2001 . Organizationally, the GDF was closely linked to the banned German youth who were loyal to their home country , until it was banned as unconstitutional with immediate effect on March 31, 2009 by the then Federal Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schäuble .

Madelring Thuringia (MRT)

The "Mädelring Thuringia" was founded by neo-Nazis from Thuringia and repeatedly organizes lecture events on women-specific topics. The "Mädelring Thuringia" is one of the few pure "girls' comradeships". According to his own admission on the website, he is “an association of active national socialists who want to support the liberation struggle, especially in Thuringia” . The girl's ring uses a combination of the Midgard snake and the “ black sun ” as a “symbol for the rich culture of the European peoples” as its logo . The organization has been present since 2004 through its own demonstrations such as on November 27, 2004 in Apolda or through information stands such as at the “ Festival of the Nations ” in Jena . The ring invites you to events about gender mainstreaming (GM) and family policy .

National Women's Ring (RNF)

The ring is a nationwide sub-organization of the NPD. It was founded on September 16, 2006. Edda Schmidt is the federal spokesperson. The NPD party executive (in which no women were represented at the time) decided in September 2006 in Sotterhausen to found a ring of national women as a sub-organization of the NPD, which "serves as a mouthpiece for women in the NPD", but also for "nationally thinking, non-party women should be a point of contact ” . The initiators of the project were the Saxon NPD member of the state parliament Gitta Schüßler (founding chairwoman), the Lower Saxony NPD member Katharina Becker and Judith Rothe from the NPD Saxony-Anhalt. Most of those interested came from the new federal states and Berlin.

The organization is officially organized on the model of the women's organizations of other democratic parties such as the Women's Union or the Working Group of Social Democratic Women, or imitates their structural levels.

Other right-wing national organizations with a large proportion of women

• The Viking Youth had until its ban in 1994 a women's and girls accounted for 40 percent.

Well-known activists

Significant and largely well-known protagonists of the right-wing extremist scene in Germany are presented here as examples.

Jasmine apple

Jasmin Apfel (* 1983) was active in the NPD and right-wing extremist organizations, but left the party in 2012 and publicly distanced himself from nationalist ideology.

Apfel got involved with her ex-husband Holger Apfel in the NPD. She was a member of the "Ring Nationaler Frauen" (RNF) and on July 30, 2012 resigned from all positions. Apple was a founding member of the RNF and had served in various functions since 2006. Jasmin Apfel has three children with Holger Apfel. Despite her public distancing from the nationalist ideology, Apple initially remained a member of the federal board of the right-wing extremist society for free journalism . Later she completely broke with the neo-Nazi scene and took part in the Saxony dropout program.

Stella Hahnel

Stella Hähnel (born Palau, * 1972 in Berlin ) is a German NPD politician and member of the Federal Party Council. Hähnel comes from Hohen Neuendorf .

Hähnel has been active in the right-wing extremist scene in Berlin-Brandenburg since the early 1990s. At first she was one of the leading figures in the Skingirl-Freundeskreis Deutschland (SFD). After its dissolution, she and other activists founded the Association of German Women (GDF). She was also involved in founding the NPD women's organization Ring Nationaler Frauen (RNF) and acts as its press spokeswoman. Until their ban, Hähnel and her husband were active in the Heimattreuen German Youth (HDJ). She is a member of the national board of the NPD.

Stella Hähnel is married to the songwriter, comradeship activist and state chairman of the Berlin NPD Jörg Hähnel .

Ivonne girl

Ivonne Mädel (* 1982 in Meiningen ) is one of the few neo-Nazists who appear as speakers at nationally significant demonstrations. In terms of organization, girl is counted as part of the “Free National Resistance” in Meiningen. It belongs to the environment of the "Mädelring Thuringia".

Madel is a trained butcher shop and sees herself politically as a “free, non-party activist”. She comes from the environment of the Hamburg activist Christian Worch and appeared for the first time as a speaker at a neo-Nazi march in 2002. She also spoke at the “2. Thuringian Day of National Youth ”in Gotha 2003.

Thematically, her lectures cover the criticism of the Wehrmacht exhibition , freedom of expression, the EU's eastward expansion and the Iraq war . In June 2004 in Dortmund she spoke out against the construction of “any mosques or synagogues or other stuff” . In 2004 the neo-Nazi initiated so-called “Monday demonstrations” against Agenda 2010 in southern Thuringia, for example in Suhl and Meiningen.

Judith Rothe

Judith Rothe (* 1979) runs the scene meeting “Zum Thingplatz” in Sotterhausen together with her partner Enrico Marx . Rothe ran for the NPD in the 2005 Bundestag election and the state election. Together with Katharina Becker (NPD Lower Saxony) and Gitta Schüßler , she founded a “National Women's Ring” on September 16, 2006 in Sotterhausen as a nationwide women's organization of the NPD. Meanwhile Rothe acts as deputy chair of the organization renamed " Ring Nationaler Frauen ". She also maintains good contacts with the Erfurt neo-Nazi activist Isabell Pohl and the “Active Women Fraction”.

Edda Schmidt

Edda Schmidt, 2018

Edda Schmidt (born September 7, 1948 in Lower Austria , born Biber) is a German NPD politician. She is one of the oldest active nationalists in Germany.

Schmidt comes from the Austrian Biber family from Weigheim . Her father Sepp Biber was a member of the Waffen SS . Her mother was a leader in the Association of German Girls during the National Socialist era . Her sister Hildrun was for a long time the national girl leader of the Wiking Youth, which was banned in 1994 . Edda Schmidt began her political career in the Wiking youth.

After graduating from high school in 1966, she moved to the Federal Republic of Germany with her parents. She studied history and English at the University of Tübingen and joined the National Democratic University Association (student organization of the NPD) in 1967 . She did not graduate because she said she wanted to start a family. Edda Biber married Hans Schmidt (* 1939). Edda and Hans Schmidt lived in Bisingen (near Hechingen , Baden-Württemberg) and had four children together. At the same time, the family runs an antiquarian bookshop and an affiliated book service. Because of the sale of Nazi literature, Schmidt was sentenced by the Stuttgart Regional Court on February 6, 1997, to a suspended sentence of 1 year and 8 months and a fine of 3,000 euros for inciting racial hatred , sedition and dissemination of writings harmful to minors.

Edda Schmidt and her husband are members of the neo-pagan " Species Community - Germanic Faith Community for a way of life according to the nature " (AG-GG). In the species community she was temporarily head of the book service. For ten years until 1987 she was "editor" of the organ "The Vikings" and Gaumädelführerin of the Wiking youth. Later she was active in a split, the Sturmvogel - German Youth Association . She drove to Transylvania in 1990 with the petrel . Until the ban in July 1993 she was a member of the "Heimattreuen Vereinigung Deutschlands" (HVD). Shortly before their ban, Edda Schmidt announced a summer solstice celebration for the HVD in 1993 in Haigerloch .

From 1968 to 1984 Schmidt was a member of the NPD for the first time and sat for a long time on the NPD state board of Baden-Württemberg. In 1984 she left the NPD because of disagreements because, according to her, the party distanced itself from various other right-wing organizations. She was active as an activist in the now inactive “Citizens' Action for Law, Order and Stopping Foreigners” (BRO) by Axel Heinzmann from Wannweil near Tübingen. In 1999 she rejoined the NPD and has been an assessor in the Baden-Württemberg state board since 2001, where she is responsible for “Customs, Family and Upbringing”. At times she was deputy state chairwoman of the NPD in Baden-Württemberg.

Edda Schmidt was often a direct candidate of the NPD in the constituency of Tübingen-Hechingen (federal election) in state elections (constituency Hechingen). In the federal election in 2009 she was on the NPD list place 2. From 2009 to 2012 she was federal chairman of the "Ring National Women".

Schmidt has published articles in “ Die Bauernschaft ”, a publication by the Holocaust denier and former SS-Sonderführer Thies Christophersen , the “ German Voice ”, the NPD party newspaper, in “ Nation & Europa ” and in the “ Nordische Zeitung ”, the organ of Species community. She herself published the national school newspaper “Gäck” (circulation: 10,000). For the Wiking-Jugend she published the "Bauge", a publication for the female Wiking-Jugend-members. Edda Schmidt published "Examples of political persecution and arbitrariness in 1994" with the songwriter Frank Rennicke .

Gitta Schuessler

Gitta Schüßler (born September 1, 1961 in Burgstädt ) is an NPD politician and was a member of the Saxon state parliament from 2004 to 2014 .

After completing the 10th grade at the POS, Schüßler trained as a bookseller and, after retraining to become an office clerk / technical clerk, has been working independently in retail since 1998. She is married and has three children.

In 2004 Schüßler was elected to the Saxon state parliament via the NPD state list and became a member of the NPD parliamentary group. She was a member of the Committee on School and Sport and the Committee on Environment and Agriculture and a deputy member of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health, Family, Women and Youth and the Committee on Petitions. On January 21, 2005, Schüßler left the meeting room of the Saxon state parliament together with the rest of the NPD parliamentary group. She did not want to take part in a minute of silence for the victims of National Socialism after the state parliament refused to hold a minute of silence for German war victims. In the 2005 Bundestag election she ran unsuccessfully in the Chemnitzer Land - Stollberg constituency. Schüßler is the managing director and treasurer in the Zwickau-Westsachsen district association of the NPD. Together with Katharina Becker and Judith Rothe , Schüßler founded the “Ring Nationaler Frauen” on September 16, 2006 in Saxony-Anhalt as a nationwide women's organization of the NPD.

Beate Zschäpe

Beate Zschäpe (* 1975) is a German neo-Nazi and former member of the Nazi underground terror group .

The media described Beate Zschäpe as a “Nazi bride” (Bild-Zeitung). The journalist Andrea Röpke criticized the fact that Zschäpe is not portrayed as an autonomous woman with her own neo-national socialist attitude, but as a woman who lived together with two right-wing terrorists.

literature

• Handout on the topic of "Girls and Women in the Extreme Right" for multipliers to introduce the topic of women and right-wing extremism, 2008/09 on behalf of the Amadeo Antonio Foundation.
• "Brown sisters? Feminist analyzes of women in the extreme right", Unrast-Verlag, Münster 2005.
• "Life stories of right-wing extremist girls and young women - Biographical courses in the context of family and group dynamics", Gießen, Psychosozial-Verlag 2004.
• "From" NS Frauen-Warte "to" Victory ". Constructions of femininity in National Socialist and right-wing extremist women's magazines", Berlin Logos Verlag 2004.
• "The participation of welfare workers in the formation and implementation of the" inferior "category under National Socialism", Kassel, Mabuse Verlag 2003.
• "Self-images of right women. Between anti-sexism and ethnic thinking" (Tübingen, Edition Diskord 2000)
• Andrea Röpke (2006): "Savior of the White Race". Right-wing extremist women between street fighting and motherhood. Braunschweig, Educational Association Work and Life 2006, ISBN 3-932082-17-6 .
• "Right women. Skingirls, Valkyries and fine ladies", Berlin, Espresso Verlag 1997.
• Andrea Röpke, Andreas Speit (2011): It's a girl thing! Women in the neo-Nazi scene. Berlin, Ch. Links Verlag 2011.
• Brown fellowships. The new networks of the militant neo-Nazis. Berlin, Ch. Links Verlag 2004, ISBN 3-86153-316-2 .
• “Braune Kameradin - Women in the Neo-Nazi Scene” , documentary on DVD, Braunschweig, Bildungsvereinigung Arbeit und Leben 2011, ISBN 978-3-932082-45-0 .
• Amadeu Antonio Foundation (ed.), Right-wing extremist women - overlooked and underestimated: Analyzes and recommendations for action, Berlin 2014.

See also

• Research network women and right-wing extremism
• Women under National Socialism
• Women's story

Web links

• rechtfrauen.de Women in right-wing extremism from the Center for Democratic Education in Wolfsburg

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Quoted from FR article
2. ↑ https://www.fr.de/politik/heimchen-hitlergruss-11358543.html
3. ↑ Archive link ( memento of February 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) accessed on August 21, 2012.
4. ↑ Sandra Stalinski, friendly, inconspicuous and underestimated ( Memento from May 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Tagesschau.de on May 6, 2014.
5. ↑ Zschäpe is not alone ( Memento from August 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Markus Decker, FR-Online from May 5, 2014.
6. ↑ Neither naive nor harmless: Right-wing extremist women netz-gegen-nazis on May 6, 2014.
7. ↑ Maria Fiedler: Women in the Identitarian Movement: Right Sisters in Front. www.tagesspiegel.de, February 28, 2018
8. ↑ Judith Goetz: “'But we have recognized the true nature of the sexes ...'. Gender politics, anti-feminism and homophobia in the thinking of the 'identitarians' ”. In: Judith Goetz, Joseph Maria Sedlacek, Alexander Winkler (Ed.): Untergangster des Abendlandes. Ideology and reception of the right-wing extremist 'identitarians'. Marta Press, Hamburg 2018 (2nd edition), pp. 259 f., 270
9. ↑ Maik Baumgärtner and Jesko Wrede: "Who carries the black flag there ..." Ethnic and new right groups in the waters of the Bündische Jugend. Educational Association Work and Life Lower Saxony East, Braunschweig 2009, p. 118.
10. ^ Settlement project in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: Housing and life in Nazi tradition , Netz gegen Nazis , September 1, 2010.
11. ^ Stephan Jurisch: Return. The Artaman Movement as an example of an alternative way of life. ( Memento of November 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Here and Now, accessed March 31, 2012.
12. ↑ Oliver Cruzcampo: Settlement Project in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: Housing and Life in Nazi Tradition ( Memento of September 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), accessed December 20, 2010.
13. ^ André Mächler: Ökologische Rechtsgesinnte ( Memento from August 4, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), accessed December 20, 2010.
14. ↑ Andrea Röpke : Braune Biokost - Rechts Siedler im Nordosten , NDR, accessed July 10, 2013.
15. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from September 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
16. ↑ Andreas Debski: From activist to dropout: Jasmin Apfel breaks with neo-Nazi scene , Leipziger Volkszeitung , March 1, 2017, accessed on September 18, 2019.
17. ↑ Juliane Lang, German Women's Council. Magazine “Women's Council. Edition 6/2008: Dangerously on the rise. Right-wing women. "
18. ↑ http://www.netz-gegen-nazis.de/lexikontext/maedel-ivonne
19. ↑ Rights to female voters. taz of September 14, 2006