Far Right are the Others

Abstract

Right-wing violence and structural everyday racism existed and still exist in both post-war German states. The large city of Magdeburg was considered a „stronghold“ of right-wing violence in the early 1990s after reunification. Even so, other city names such as Lichtenhagen, Hoyerswerda, Solingen or Mölln are more present in the collective memory in this respect today. The qualitative ethnographic material of this article shows that these events are partly consciously remembered by actors in Magdeburg’s local initiatives, politics and administration but partly also repressed. The article discusses this repression of the right-wing past and asks about the consequences for today‘s local urban society. Referring to the concepts of „othering“ (Said, Reuter) and „stigmatization“ (Goffman), it is shown how right-wing violence is primarily narrated as a problem of the „others“ by shifting it to other neighbourhoods, rural and suburban milieus, or „West Germans“ who have moved to the East. However, this „othering“ is subject to reciprocity since there is also the foreign attribution of the homogeneous „right-wing East.