Funding: Schleicher-Stiftung
Among the approximately 200 men and women who have become victims of right-wing violence since 1990 are many who died because the perpetrators considered them »asocial« or even »inferior«. The National Socialist propaganda promise of the »national community« differentiated »fellow members of the community« from »aliens to the community«. In the Nazi state, the latter included those who fell into the category of »work-shy«, »asocial«, homosexuals and sick people. They disrupted the racist community ideal, were excluded, persecuted and often murdered. The aim of the research project is to investigate how the National Socialist measures were taken up by extreme right-wing actors after 1945, updated, integrated into political ideas about the order of society in the Federal Republic and in some cases also put into practice. The question is how social »knowledge« about marginalized groups has been discursively perpetuated since the end of National Socialism and what points of reference the extreme right has always found anew. It was not uncommon for the measures taken by the National Socialist state against those »alien to the community« to be counted among the positive aspects of the regime even after the end of the war, which shows that a repressive and disciplinary approach against petty criminals, Sintizze and Sinti, Romnja and Roma, as well as non-conformists, was still acceptable to the majority. It is possible to examine how aspects of extreme right-wing politics were compatible with basic tendencies of democratic societies, but were radicalized considerably in terms of form and content.
