The special focus of this third volume in our series is a critical engagement with questions around racism, national identity, and their relationship to (violent) extremism/terrorism and democratic debate. 

As is widely observed, including by the authors in the preceding two volumes of this series, greater diversity and fluidity are key characteristics of the emerging ecosystem. When it comes to analysis and prevention, a greater focus is placed on ideology, motivational factors, and the wider enabling conditions of extremism in democratic societies. The adoption of a new nomenclature by governing bodies and security agencies across democratic nations is reflective of such shifts.

• the ‘ideologically vs religiously motivated’ terminology used by Australia’s domestic security agency ASIO, with the sub-categories of ‘nationalist/racist’ violent extremism identified as particular areas of concern;
• or the ‘racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism (REMVE)’ and ‘violent right-wing extremism (VRWE)’ designations common in the US, UK or EU for example.

Aside from signalling recognition of a changed threat environment, the updated terminology is said to provide greater flexibility for a more amorphous landscape. ¹

Germany’s ‘Office for the Protection of the Constitution’ offers this definition, which explains how nationalism and racism are essential elements of the neo-National Socialist ideology in the German context: “The field of right-wing extremism is characterised, to varying degrees, by elements of nationalist, antisemitic, racist and xenophobic ideology. Right-wing extremists allege that a person’s value is determined by the ethnic group or nation they belong to. This notion is fundamentally incompatible with the Basic Law.” ²

In media and policy discourse, the broader terms of far-right extremism and terrorism, the radical, far or extreme right are more common, often used seemingly interchangeably. But the overall focus is the same: domestic and transnational networks groups which espouse some variation of racist, anti-Semitic, and Islamophobic ideologies and worldview, often with misogynistic and homophobic elements.

Whatever designation one uses, racism is commonly seen as at the centre of current and evolving manifestations of (violent) extremism. This comes following graphically violent attacks such as the 2019 Christchurch massacre, mass shootings like El Paso and Buffalo in the US or the Halle and Hanau attacks in Germany, which moved the issue of racism into the global spotlight.³ At the same time, a growing focus on so-called structural racism, inequality and injustice in society more broadly followed from the death of George Floyd and the ensuing ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests. This is reflected in amplified international discourse and debates about ‘white supremacy’, seen as closely linked to a rise in transnational far-right extremism. As a result, at the policy level racism is recognized as a serious societal and transnational challenge – reflected, for example, in initiatives such as the EU’s ‘Anti-Racism Action Plan 2020-2025’, Germany’s first annual ‘Situation Report on Racism’, New Zealand’s ‘Royal Commission into the Christchurch Attack’ and its ‘National Action Plan Against Racism’ (2022) or Australia’s planned ‘National Anti-Racism Framework’, for which scoping reviews are under way. ⁴

There is no doubt about the detrimental impacts if racism is allowed to persist – in particular, the pernicious effects of racist violence on individual lives. But despite much-needed political attention and policy initiatives, the applicability of concepts like ‘white supremacy’ and ‘structural racism’ across time and space is not as straightforward as assumed. Racism is, for a number of reasons, not a singular phenomenon.

For one, respective countries’ historical experiences with colonialism vary, and so do their post-colonial trajectories. This is not always recognized or factored in, as one contribution to this volume discusses in detail. Moreover, the effects of racial discrimination within one society are also not uniform but varied, due to a myriad of contemporary variables; this is especially the case in multi-ethnic or migration societies. A recent study from New Zealand for instance, investigating the connection between racism and health outcomes in Aotearoa, noted how “societies like New Zealand have transformed socially, culturally and demographically, but racism is largely still defined by histories of colonisation.” The study highlighted the need for more differentiated frames of analysis that consider the impact of other socio-economic variables and their interaction with structures of disadvantage in determining health quality. ⁵

Such a thorough understanding of the interplay between institutional/systemic racial inequality and other sociological factors (to do with geography, family structure, socio-economic background, culture and religion) remains a challenge, both as an empirical focus and how such insights can be communicated to better inform public and policy debates about racism. This is, for example, illustrated in the controversy around the 2021 report by the UK’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, the so-called ‘Sewell Report’.⁶

It goes without saying that this is polarized space of public debate, which means any analytical contribution in this area requires careful positioning to avoid politicization, while at the same time avoiding censorship when expressing positions that may be politically unpopular.

Most importantly, there are important qualitative distinctions between racism in a structural sense, as a system of institutions and practices that entrench bias and privilege in favour of majority groups, and explicit ideologies of racism, as religion-like belief in the primacy of one primordial group based on natural inequalities between human beings according to physical, essentialist characteristics. And it is with the latter that the immediate connection points to (violent) extremism lie, since such views are inherently incompatible with the tenets of liberal democracy and its fundamental respect for individual rights.

This differentiation is fundamental to approaching the topic. Because if we conflate the two, we inadvertently create a label that throws citizens who hold prejudiced, discriminatory views (as unpalatable as that is) but who respect individual rights and do not act in a misanthropic way, in the same mixed bag with racist supremacists who think foreigners are lesser human beings who do not deserve the same quality of life as we do, and those who violently express these beliefs or plan for race war.

In this volume, we engage with the topic by zooming in on particular debates om structural racism taking place in Germany – or, according to our authors, that should be taking place. We deliberately chose authors who have deep subject-matter knowledge from primary research in Germany, along with experience in other cultural contexts, such as in Australia and the US/UK.

Germany is known for its longstanding engagement to eradicate far-right violence, driven by the burden of its historical legacy. “Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung”- the responsibility to critically engage with the past – and a culture of remembrance of the Holocaust became central to Germany’s post-war identity. The horrors of the Nazi era and Shoah certainly constitute the most consequential manifestations of racism and anti-Semitism. Yet, Germany’s experience of racism did not end with the demise of National Socialism, with racist violence targeted at migrant Germans in consecutive decades. In the years following German reunification, extreme-right terrorism and racist violent attacks have claimed over 200 lives, with official figures said to underestimate the extent of the problem.⁷

The authors featured in this volume,  Josefin Graef and Sandra Kostner,  bring into sharp focus two distinct problem-sets associated with debates about racism, violence and belonging in Germany, highlighting what they perceive as key aspects of the debates we need to have: Zeroing in on the binary between ‘Germans and Ausländer (foreigners/migrants), Dr Graef’s contribution examines framings of ‘Germanness’ in connection to far-right/racist violence, such as the string of killings perpetrated by the NSU terror cell and the Hanau shooting  She highlights the importance of stories – about the victims and their place in German society – in building resilient national responses. In a conversation with migration expert Dr Kostner, we critically unpack the trajectory of ‘structural racism’ as the term made its way into the German debate. Dr Kostner highlights the discursive pitfalls that come from implanting abstract concepts from other contexts without the needed differentiatio.   Both experts raise important points about what is at stake: the effects of letting our societies be divided into ‘us and them’ – people who ‘fully belong vs people who do not’ or ‘the inherently privileged versus the perpetually underprivileged’. 

This way, their distinct vantage points open up a clearer view on the breadth of the problem-sets at hand, including where responsibilities and leverage points for prevention may lie. In discussing racism, one inadvertently addresses phenomena directly linked to injustice, violence, and trauma, historic as well as acute ones. For social scientists, this means situating oneself in spaces fraught with heightened emotion from political controversy, as well as in connection to human suffering and its instrumentalization by different groups and power interests. In their contributions to ‘A New Wave?’, Dr Graef and Dr Kostner speak their ‘researched truth’ as academics dispassionately, with candour as well as nuance, highlighting what they consider to be the key issues and controversies at stake. The results are thought-provoking insights about the relationship between racism and violence, as well as its impact on national identity/ belonging and democratic debate. These insights apply well beyond Germany.

Structural racism seems to emerge as one of those entrenched areas of contention and conflict, for which there are no easy policy solutions. As the contributions in this volume shed light on contrasting aspects of this debate, we can also see how these different facets may interlock. Despite Germany’s ‘exceptional’ trajectory, value partners such as Australia and New Zealand share similarly complex friction points as they seek to navigate evolving extremism trends and challenges to democratic cohesion amidst unresolved historic controversies.  Reflecting on how Germany is grappling with the rise of far-right populism for Inside Story, Professor Klaus Neumann observed a few years back: ​​“As far as postwar West German history is concerned, narratives that tell the past through the lens of its presumed outcomes all too often make success seem inevitable.” ⁸

It is our hope that through this volume, we can bring into better focus the range of issues at stake, highlighting the topic as worthy of ongoing critical discussion and empirical evaluation.  

November 2023

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