Pogorelskaya Svetlana Vadimovna – Ph.D. in political sciences, senior researcher, INION RAS
The National Democratic Party of Germany (German: Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, NPD) is changing its brand. Now it is called Die Heimat (The Homeland). The new name adopted at the June 2023 party congress and the course toward an organizational form of the «movement» that is alternative to the existing parties is justified by the desire to make the losing party more attractive and modern. However, is this realistic since the emergence and strengthening of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party? In Germany, as in many other EU states, right-wing populism has become the political killer of right-wing extremism, depriving it of a «civilian electorate». The civilian electorate are voters who, by their convictions, stand to the right of the Christian Right and right-wing liberals, but who do not accept ideological radicalism, political extremism and illegal forms of street protest. Germany has long avoided the European right-populist trend, preferring to fight the ultra-right in its domestic politics, but with the creation of the AfD, the «special German way» was exhausted. Now the German political system, as in many EU countries, has a right-populist party that, at the level of legal opposition, challenges the dominant political trend. Does the NPD have a future in such conditions? In the proposed article, after briefly analysing the successful period of the NPD, its current situation will be investigated and an attempt will be made to forecast the future of right-wing extremism in Germany. It is proposed to clearly delineate the civil dimension of right-wing thinking, which since the 1990s has found its expression in the emergence of large right-wing populist parties and movements, and its extreme right-wing forms, which currently have neither a civil format nor political influence, i.e. right-wing radicalism and extremism. The author is sure that it was the AfD that caused the weakening of politically institutionalized right-wing extremism and its departure to other organizational forms.
NPD, Die Heimat, AfD, right-wing populism in Germany, right-wing extremism in Germany.
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