Politics of Resentment: Right-Wing Radicalism in West Germany

Abstract

During the past several years, a number of West European countries have expenenced a serious challenge from right-wing populist parties. The French National Front, the Vlaams Blok in Belgium, the Swiss Vigilants, Action National, and the Autopartei, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), and the various progressive parties in Scandinavia are among the most prominent examples of a rising tide of often radical right-wing populism which has raised concern among politicians and political commentators alike.' Referring to themselves as national-conservative or right-conservative parties they pursue a range of similar objectives: a tightening of strict law and order to combat rising crime rates associated with drugs; a return to traditional moral values in the face of a growing number of abortions and the AIDS threat; and, most important of all, the protection of national and cultural identity allegedly threatened by third world immigrants, foreign workers, and refugees. The latest addition to the list of right-wing parties has been the West German Republikaner. Founded in 1983 by Franz Sch6nhuber and disgruntled former members of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), the Republikaner became the focus of attention in the wake of the 1989 elections in West Berlin, where they came literally out of nowhere to gain more than 90,000 votes (7.5 percent of the vote) and eleven seats in the city parliament. Despite attempts by political observers to play down the extent of support for the radical right, the Republikaner repeated their earlier local success on the federal level in the European elections in June 1989: capturing 7.1 percent of the popular vote, they were the main cause for the painful losses of the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and particularly their Bavarian sister party, the CSU. In addition, the German People's Party (DVU), an extremist neo-Nazi party, received 1.6 percent of the vote, increasing the total vote for the far right to 9 percent. Successes in subsequent local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Wiirttemberg in the fall and a respectable 3.3 percent in the state elections in the Saarland in the spring of 1990 against a highly popular minister president, Oskar Lafontaine (Social Democratic Party, SPD), who embarked on a populist course of his own, were indications that the Republikaner might stand a chance to overcome the five percent hurdle in the federal elections at the end of the year. The fact that a right-wing party could rise almost over night to command national and international attention points to serious deficits in West German democracy. After the establishment of the left-libertarian Greens in the early 1980s the gains of radical parties on both sides of the political spectrum largely at the expense of the established catch-all parties expose above all the declining ability of the large parties to bind their respective electorates. As in other West European countries, the number of floating voters has increased considerably during the last decade, from 24 percent in 1980 to more than a third in 1989.2