educational practice in Germany between racism and far-right ideologies

Preventing Violent Extremism in Germany

Over the past decade, Western democratic societies experienced an increase in far-right mobilization that in some cases turned violent (Koehler, 2016). In Germany 2019 and 2020 saw far-right violence in terror attacks on a Synagogue, the murder of a local politician, and a deadly attack on ethnic minorities in Hanau. Responding to the increased visibility of far-right violence and populist right-wing mobilization Saxony’s first minister declared far-right extremism to be the biggest threat to democracy (mxw, November 3, 2020). These developments sparked calls for increased efforts to prevent far-right extremism and radicalization in public schools. International frameworks from the Council of Europe (2016) or from The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (2016) established strong policy models to prevent violent extremism through education (PVE-E; Christodoulou & Szakács, 2018; Jackson, 2008). The German National Government (2016) dedicated formal public education as an important area of preventing far-right violence and extremism. The Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Federal States [Kultusministerkonferenz] (KMK), the main coordinating body for education policy in Germany, also issued multiple resolutions for public education to address racism and diversity (KMK, 1996/2013, 2003, 2015, 2009/2018).

In academic research, the field of Preventing Violent Extremism through Education (PVE-E) made many contributions to a better understanding of how education contributes to prevention work (Davies, 2018; Waller, 2020). Empirical research examines informal education settings (Miller-Idriss & Pilkington, 2017) or engages with teaching about the atrocities of the historical far right through Holocaust education (e.g. Meseth & Proske, 2015; Oeser, 2019; Ortloff, 2015; Vitale & Clothey, 2019). We know much less about how formal education engages with the far rights´ contemporary manifestations (Christodoulou & Szakács, 2018; Lakhani & James, 2021; Pels & de Ruyter, 2012).

The following paper thus makes two distinct arguments: First, we need to better understand whom teachers classify to be far right and why. Second, we need to understand how teachers seek to intervene. These arguments are based on data from 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in ethics classrooms in Berlin’s secondary schools including interviews, participant observations, and policy and curriculum analysis (Graefe-Geusch, 2020a). The fieldwork took place during the long summer of migration, thus capturing an important moment in far-right mobilization in Germany (Gessler & Hunger, 2024).

Researching Far-Right Ideologies and Education Practices

The far right¹ is defined by the belief that “some groups are superior to others” combining authoritarianism and nativism (Gattinara, 2020, p. 316). While it is not a monolithic movement, ethnic exclusion, expressed through racism, antisemitism, and anti-Islamic sentiments is often considered a defining category (Mudde, 2007; Rydgren, 2018). It is further underlined through anti-state and authoritarian views. In recent years far-right narratives have also been mainstreamed, finding their way into public rhetoric (Mondon & Winter, 2020; Mudde, 2019; Wodak, 2020), increasing far-right sentiments in Germany’s population (Zick et al., 2019; Zick et al., 2023), and widespread anti-government, anti-Semitic, anti-diversity public mobilization during the Covid-19 pandemic (Virchow & Häusler, 2020). Recent European parliament elections also saw strong voter turnout for far-right parties in Germany with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) receiving the second-highest number of votes following the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Remarkably, with young voters, the AfD received 16% of the votes, posing a significant increase compared to the last election (Pfeifer, June 10, 2024). This increases the visibility of these groups, possibly leading to an increase in mobilization, recruitment, and violence, (Abbas & Awan, 2015; Rees et al., 2019) enhanced by deep-set economic and social inequality (Weisskircher, 2020).

Research on German youth engagement with extremist groups showed the complex relationship youths might have with far-right and possibly violent groups, symbols, and brands (Graefe-Geusch & Miller-Idriss, 2019; Miller-Idriss & Graefe-Geusch, 2020; Miller-Idriss & Graefe-Geusch, 2024; Miller-Idriss, 2017; Mudde, 2014). Throughout adolescence and early adulthood, young people may move in and out of extremist spaces, causing their sense of belonging to remain fluid. While rising incidents of far-right ideology being voiced in classrooms (Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa), May 2, 2019; Pauli, July 16, 2023) may indicate the mainstreaming of this ideology it is not necessarily indicative of actual levels of radicalization or engagement in violence. However, the increasing visibility of far-right ideology through public protests may make the far right more attractive to youth (Miller-Idriss, 2018). Research thus calls for interventions to target the emerging adults in and around the far right (Miller-Idriss & Pilkington, 2017; Miller-Idriss, 2018, 2020) tasking education broadly to build resilience against far-right ideology whether students are actively engaged in its ideology or not. Yet very little research addresses preventing far-right extremism in formal education in Germany (Christodoulou & Szakács, 2018) and elsewhere (exception: Lakhani & James, 2021). Instead, research focuses on out-of-school and informal settings, where interventions interact directly with youth already part of the scene (Miller-Idriss & Pilkington, 2017); although this is slowly changing (Hinz et al., 2023).

Who is Far-Right?

In predominantly white German school contexts, the teachers in my sample oftentimes mainly focused on one specific aspect of far-right ideologies: racism and/or xenophobia.

As one of the teachers in my sample explains:

Our students here in Marzahn-Hellersdorf [Northeastern district, known at the time for little ethno-religious diversity] have the problem that they have almost no contact to foreign cultures and that… so to say, racism is still a really big issue here, I think. (Frau Wels, Interview May 27, 2016)

Teachers seeing racism as the main problem in the student body was a common argument within the interviews with teachers in schools with predominantly white ethnically German student bodies. However, they rarely pointed to the far right specifically. Instead, they alluded to it by referencing for example current events:

Well they live in Berlin here, there is cultural diversity everywhere. That means for my teaching that I don’t want to create children that stand in front of a bus and yell “We are the people [Volk]”… (Herr Klausen, Interview March 9, 2016)

In this passage, Herr Klausen references an incident near Dresden on February 18th, 2016, where inhabitants of a small town blocked the path of a bus transporting refugees to a refugee shelter in town chanting “We are the people” [Wir sind das Volk] and anti-immigrant slogans (dpa, February 20, 2016). This incident was attributed to and later mobilized by far-right advocates. So although Herr Klausen is not specifically naming the far right here, he alludes to his students being in danger of espousing these attitudes.

Other teachers may discuss the far right but only hypothetically or through referencing the experience of other teachers:

So I have not experienced this myself, but I have heard it from one of the teaching trainees [Referendar*in]. There were comments from students that were extremely far- right [extrem rechtsextremistisch] […] They [the teaching trainee] discussed the issue with their headmaster, and it appeared that the parents of especially this student were real members of the far right [wirklich Rechtsextremisten]. So this does exist. (Frau Mayer, Interview April 26, 2016)

Frau Mayer discusses this while describing how the topic of refugees was taught in both her own classes and in the classes of the teaching trainees she was advising. While she does directly name the far right as an issue here, she only does so by referring to someone else’s students.

What these descriptions have in common is that besides mentioning racism and anti-immigration attitudes teachers rarely referred to other characteristics of far-right ideology – like authoritarianism or anti-constitutional attitudes² – or name the far right as an underlying problem directly, at least when teachers were discussing their own students. This reluctance to name the problem might in turn create difficulties addressing the issue in a systematic and coordinated way, as the next section shows.³

How do German Teachers Seek to Address the Far Right in Teaching Practice?

While the previous sections showed the importance of understanding how teachers identify and conceptualize the problem of far-right attitudes in their students, next I will describe why it is important to also understand their responses in educational practice. As Waller (2020) shows there are several possible educational responses. In Berlin, teachers in my sample mainly used two approaches – facilitating contact and strengthening critical thinking skills – in their classrooms with little coherence or agreement between them on which approach might be best.

Interventions that facilitate contact seek to “change the way students engage with each other” (Waller, 2020, p.2) so that “children will be permanently more open-minded about ‘others’, and indeed vaccinated and resistant to the disease of prejudice and stereotyping” (Davies, 2018, p. 13). Davies (2018) also argues, that interventions based on the assumption of positive effects through intergroup contact are not new and have been implemented into practice for decades.⁴

Interventions targeting students’ reasoning seek to improve critical thinking skills. They address student knowledge mainly targeting areas like citizenship values, knowledge of human rights, and history (Waller, 2020, p. 2).⁵ The underlying idea is that by strengthening students’ knowledge and democratic values, they will be better able to resist far-right violence and radicalization as they are offered “non-violent alternatives of activism and civic participation” (Waller, 2020, p. 6). These interventions are thus based on the assumption that this will create resilience against the often “simple, black-and-white and all-or-nothing perceptions of the world” espoused by violent extremists and populists by strengthening the student’s ability to critically analyze arguments (Waller, 2020, p.7).

Herr Klausen tried to counter racist and anti-immigrant attitudes predominantly by creating opportunities for students to engage with the “Other”. He for example deliberately seated a refugee girl in his class next to a student whose parent had uttered anti-refugee sentiments in his presence. In addition, he used field trips to facilitate intergroup contact:

Well, the children here [in Treptow-Koepenick] for example also have a problem with going to Neukoelln [very diverse district in central southern Berlin] because here there are hardly any people with a migration background. Now we just went to Kreuzberg [another very diverse district in central Berlin] recently and then they all rolled their eyes and thought “Where am I here?” (Herr Klausen, Interview March 9, 2016)

To him this was a learning opportunity to engage in questions like “how can they deal with these live experiences in an ethically correct way?“. The diversity in his class and field trips to more diverse places in Berlin thus served as ways of exposure and constructive learning. While this may work in some instances, it of course also bears significant risks, in this case particularly for the refugee girl potentially exposed to her classroom neighbour’s possibly harmful attitudes. As research from the UK shows, simply creating contact does not necessarily combat racism or xenophobia (Cockburn, 2007).⁶ In addition, contact is always “mediated and embedded in particular historical and geographical contexts of power relations between and within social groups” (Matejskova & Leitner, 2011, p. 721). This is especially problematic if these contexts reproduce racialized categories of diversity that reinforce white supremacy (Auernheimer, 2005; Fylkesnes, 2019; Gogolin, 2008).

While other teachers were not against creating opportunities for intergroup interactions in certain settings, they relied on interventions that sought to increase the critical thinking skills of their students. As Frau Wels states:

Ethics is just much more than… right… then this fact about intercultural understanding. In classes that are really mixed, I can totally see it, that you say ethics is especially great for this […] And now we have a platform to create a dialogue together. But at our school, this doesn’t fit because they all have the same opinions, they are all coming from them same… well really most of them are from the same cultural heritage. […] Ethics is not there to create a dialogue between all different cultures, because we just don’t have them… And […] my focus in ethics is more on argumentation and reasoning (Frau Wels, Interview May 27, 2016)

Frau Wels, an early career teacher at a non-diverse school in Berlin’s Northeast, reflected here on a question related to ethics potential for facilitating peaceful conviviality. The setting she taught in was comparable to that of Herr Klausen, however, in her opinion teaching intercultural understanding by creating contact was not possible in her classroom. For her students, whom she perceived as coming from the same cultural heritage – ethnic German growing up in former East Berlin with parents mostly shaped by their East German past – ethics was supposed to facilitate critical thinking skills.

Some teachers, however, were openly critical of the effectiveness of an intervention addressing critical thinking skills:

Well, a thing, where I am so to say…regularly overwhelmed [überfordert] I have to say, is when I observe everyday racism [Alltagsrassismus] in class that I don’t really know what I should do against it. I can of course choose this cognitive reflective approach, but I always have the feeling that you should be trained completely differently didactically and pedagogically. And I am not trained at all, and neither are other ethics teachers. (Frau Janka, Interview December 4, 2015)

Earlier in the interview, Frau Janka had described that many of her students – and some of the teaching staff at her school – displayed underlying racism against “those who have always been affected” – those “with headscarves and black hair who have little money” (Frau Janka, Interview December 4, 2015). However, she described that an approach focused on critical thinking may be insufficient to combat racism in ethics. Most importantly, she addresses the need to provide better training for teachers to prepare them for combating issues like racism and far-right attitudes in their classrooms.

Teaching Practice and Education Research

As my data shows, teachers in Berlin in most cases did not name far-right ideologies as a possible problem for their students directly but rather alluded to the far right or referred to the problem as racism and/or xenophobia thus mixing two related but not fully superposable issues. They mainly used two approaches to addressing far-right and racist attitudes in their classroom: creating intergroup interactions and strengthening critical thinking skills. They also did not agree on which one might be best suited to counter these issues. Some even expressed dissatisfaction with teacher education in general, as it did not adequately prepare them to handle these issues. In Berlin’s schools, there is thus no systematic approach towards countering far-right attitudes. Instead, responses were left to teacher’s discrepancies with little agreement between them on what might be best. While teachers have every right to choose an approach that they deem as the best fit for their specific classroom, this also means that an increasingly important issue in German education is not addressed systematically. What should become clear from the data discussed above is that there is no single best approach. For the longest time responding to far-right attitudes in youth was left to non-formal education spaces targeting only those already in the scene. What the data above shows, however, is that far-right attitudes and racism are widespread in German classrooms even if teachers only allude to far-right ideologies as an underlying problem.

In education research and practice there are many different possible interventions to racism and far-right attitudes. They range from interventions to counter or prevent extremism through education as described by Waller (2020) and Davies (2018) but may also include anti-racist education (e.g. Arneback & Jämte, 2021; Lynch et al., 2017). In Germany, educators may even draw on the expertise of the field of critical migration pedagogy (e.g. Mecheril, 2016) or include a postmigrant framework in educational practice (Foroutan, 2019; Yurdakul, 2024). There are many possible ways to address the challenges laid out here, however, as researchers and educators we need to have honest and thorough discussions about them. These discussions work best if they are based on evidence. Education research thus needs to derive insight on two interrelated issues: (1.) how do teachers conceptualize the problem and (2.) how do they currently seek to address it? Through this understanding, we will be better able to create targeted and systematic responses in education.

 

References

Abbas, T., & Awan, I. (2015). Limits of UK counterterrorism policy and its implications for Islamophobia and far right extremism. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 4(3), 16–29.
https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.v4i3.241

Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Addison-Wesley.

Arneback, E., & Jämte, J. (2021). How to counter racism in education – A typology of teachers’ anti-racist actions. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 25(2), 192–211.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2021.1890566

Auernheimer, G. (2005). The German education system: Dysfunctional for an immigration society. European Education, 37(4), 75–89.
https://doi.org/10.2753/EUE1056-4934370406

Blee, K., & Latif, M. (2021). Sociological survey of the far right. In S. D. Ashe, J. Busher, G. Macklin, & A. Winter (Eds.), Researching the far right: Theory, method and practice (pp. 45–59). Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315304670-3

Bostancı, S., Biel, C., & Neuhauser, B. (2022). “Ich habe lange gekämpft, aber dann sind wir doch gewechselt.” Eine explorativ-qualitative Pilotstudie zum Umgang mit institutionellem Rassismus in Berliner Kitas. German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM). (NaDiRa Working Papers, 1).
https://www.dezim-institut.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Demo_FIS/publikation_pdf/FA-5371.pdf

Christodoulou, E., & Szakács, S. (2018). Preventing violent extremism through education: International and German approaches. GEI.
https://repository.gei.de/handle/11428/297

Cockburn, T. (2007). ‘Performing’ racism: Engaging young supporters of the far right in England. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 28(5), 547–560.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01425690701412564

Council of Europe. (2016). Competences for democratic culture: Living together in culturally diverse democratic societies. Council of Europe Publishing.
https://rm.coe.int/16806ccc0c

Davies, L. (2018). Review of educational initiatives in counter-extremism internationally: What works? University of Gothenburg, The Segerstedt Institute Report.
https://www.gu.se/sites/default/files/2020-03/1673173_review-of-educational-initiatives-180110.pdf

Deutsche Presse-Agentur. (2016, February 20). Grüne machen Seehofer für den Vorfall in Clausnitz mitverantwortlich. Die Zeit Online.
https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2016-02/clausnitz-blockierer-fluechtlinge-polizei-gruene

Deutsche Presse-Agentur. (2019, May 2). Rechtsextremismus in Schulen: Das Hakenkreuz im Klassenzimmer. Frankfurter Rundschau.
https://www.fr.de/politik/rechtsextremismus-schulen-12240595.html

Deutsches Zentrum für Integrations- und Migrationsforschung (Ed.). (2022). Rassistische Realitäten: Wie setzt sich Deutschland mit Rassismus auseinander? Auftaktstudie zum Nationalen Diskriminierungs- und Rassismusmonitor.
https://www.rassismusmonitor.de/fileadmin/user_upload/NaDiRa/CATI_Studie_Rassistische_Realit%C3%A4ten/DeZIM-Rassismusmonitor-Studie_Rassistische-Realit%C3%A4ten_Wie-setzt-sich-Deutschland-mit-Rassismus-auseinander.pdf

Doğmuş, A. (2022). Professionalisierung in Migrationsverhältnissen: Eine rassismuskritische Perspektive auf das Referendariat angehender Lehrer*innen. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37721-2

Dovidio, J. F., & Banfield, J. C. (2015). Intergroup cooperation. In D. A. Schroeder & W. G. Graziano (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of prosocial behavior (pp. 562–581). Oxford University Press.

Fereidooni, K. (2016). Diskriminierungs- und Rassismuserfahrungen im Schulwesen: Eine Studie zu Ungleichheitspraktiken im Berufskontext. Springer Fachmedien.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-13616-1

Foroutan, N. (2019). Die postmigrantische Gesellschaft: Ein Versprechen der pluralen Demokratie. Transcript Verlag.
https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839442630

Fylkesnes, S. (2019). Patterns of racialised discourses in Norwegian teacher education policy: Whiteness as a pedagogy of amnesia in the national curriculum. Journal of Education Policy, 34(3), 394-422.
https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2018.1482503

Gattinara, P. C. (2020). The study of the far right and its three E’s: Why scholarship must go beyond Eurocentrism, electoralism and externalism. French Politics, 18, 314–333.
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41253-020-00124-8

German National Government. (2016). Federal government strategy to prevent violent extremism and promote democracy.
https://www.bmfsfj.de/blob/115448/cc142d640b37b7dd76e48b8fd9178cc5/strategie-der-bundesregierung-zur-extremismuspraevention-und-demokratiefoerderung-englisch-data.pdf

Gessler, T., & Hunger, S. (2024). The politicization of immigration and radical right party politics in Germany. In M. Weisskircher (Ed.), Contemporary Germany and the fourth wave of far-right politics: From the streets to parliament (pp. 115–139). Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003120049-9

Gogolin, I. (2008). Der monolinguale Habitus der multilingualen Schule (2nd ed.). Waxmann Verlag.
https://doi.org/10.31244/9783830970989

Gomolla, M. (2002). Institutionelle Diskriminierung: Die Herstellung ethnischer Differenz in der Schule. Unter Mitarbeit von Frank-Olaf Radtke. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-91577-7

Graefe-Geusch, A. (2020a). Teaching ethics for peace and integration: Ethics teachers and the question of diversity in Berlin’s secondary schools [Doctoral Dissertation]. ProQuest.

Graefe-Geusch, A. (2020b). When the global comes crashing in – A chance for GCE? Reflections on teaching (about) refugees in Berlin’s ethics instruction. Tertium Comparationis: Journal für International und Interkulturell Vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaft, 26(2), 122–130.

Graefe-Geusch, A., & Miller-Idriss, C. (2019). “Der Ruf bleibt ja”: Thor Steinar – historische Entwicklung und Bedeutung der Marke für Jugendliche heute. In G. Botsch, J. Raabe, & C. Schulze (Eds.), Rechtsrock: Aufstieg und Wandel neonazistischer Jugendkultur am Beispiel Brandenburgs (pp. 195–213). be.bra Verlag.

Hinz, A., Jahr, D., & Kruschel, R. (Eds.). (2023). Inklusive Bildung und Rechtspopulismus: Grundlagen, Analysen und Handlungsmöglichkeiten. Beltz Juventa.

Jackmann, M., & Crane, M. (1986). “Some of my best friends are black…”: Interracial friendship and whites’ racial attitudes. Public Opinion Quarterly, 50, 459–486.
https://doi.org/10.1086/268998

Jackson, R. (2008). Teaching about religions in the public sphere: European policy initiatives and the interpretive approach. Numen, 55(2/3), 151–182.
https://doi.org/10.1163/156852708X283032

Jaffe-Walter, R. (2017). The more we can try to open them up, the better it will be for their integration: Integration and coercive assimilation of Muslim youth. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 11(2), 63–68.
https://doi.org/10.1080/15595692.2017.1288616

Koehler, D. (2016). Right-wing extremism and terrorism in Europe: Current developments and issues for the future. PRISM, 6(2), 84–105.

Kultusministerkonferenz. (2003). Das deutsche Bildungswesen und der Dialog mit den Muslimen: Weimarer Aufruf.
https://www.kmk.org/fileadmin/Dateien/pdf/PresseUndAktuelles/Beschluesse_Veroeffentlichungen/Lerngemeinschaft_10.pdf

Kultusministerkonferenz. (2013). Interkulturelle Bildung und Erziehung in der Schule: Beschluss der Kultusministerkonferenz vom 25.10.1996 i.d.F. vom 05.12.2013.
https://www.kmk.org/fileadmin/veroeffentlichungen_beschluesse/1996/1996_10_25-Interkulturelle-Bildung.pdf

Kultusministerkonferenz. (2015). Darstellung von kultureller Vielfalt, Integration und Migration in Bildungsmedien: Gemeinsame Erklärung der Kultusministerkonferenz, der Organisationen von Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund und der Bildungsmedienverlage.
https://www.kmk.org/fileadmin/veroeffentlichungen_beschluesse/2015/2015_10_08-Darstellung-kultureller-Vielfalt.pdf

Kultusministerkonferenz. (2018). Demokratie als Ziel, Gegenstand und Praxis historisch-politischer Bildung und Erziehung in der Schule.
https://www.kmk.org/fileadmin/veroeffentlichungen_beschluesse/2009/2009_03_06-Staerkung_Demokratieerziehung.pdf

Lakhani, S., & James, N. (2021). “Prevent duty”: Empirical reflections on the challenges of addressing far-right extremism within secondary schools and colleges in the UK. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 14(1), 67–89.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2021.1876550

Laurence, J. (2014). Reconciling the contact and threat hypotheses: Does ethnic diversity strengthen or weaken community inter-ethnic relations? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 37(8), 1328–1349.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2013.788727

Lynch, I., Schwartz, S., & Issacs, D. (2017). Anti-racist moral education: A review of approaches, impact and theoretical underpinnings from 2000 to 2015. Journal of Moral Education, 46, 129–144.
https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2016.1273825

Matejskova, T., & Leitner, H. (2011). Urban encounters with difference: The contact hypothesis and immigrant integration projects in Eastern Berlin. Social & Cultural Geography, 12, 717–741.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2011.610234

Mayer, N. (2020). The political science approaches to the far right. In S. D. Ashe, J. Busher, G. Macklin, & A. Winter (Eds.), Researching the far right: Theory, method and practice (pp. 17–31). Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315304670-1

Mecheril, P. (2016). Migrationspädagogik – ein Projekt. In P. Mecheril (Ed.), Handbuch Migrationspädagogik (pp. 8–30). J. Beltz.

Meseth, W., & Proske, M. (2015). Mind the gap: Holocaust education in Germany, between pedagogical intentions and classroom interactions. In Z. Gross & E. D. Stevick (Eds.), As the witnesses fall silent: 21st century holocaust education in curriculum, policy and practice (pp. 159–182). Springer International.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15419-0_10

Miller-Idriss, C. (2017). The extreme gone mainstream: Commercialization and far right youth culture in Germany. Princeton University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400888931

Miller-Idriss, C. (2018). Youth and the radical right. In J. Rydgren (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of the radical right (pp. 348–365). Oxford University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190274559.013.18

Miller-Idriss, C. (2020). Hate in the homeland: The new global far right. Princeton University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691205892

Miller-Idriss, C., & Graefe-Geusch, A. (2020). Studying the peripheries: Iconography and embodiment in far-right youth culture. In S. D. Ashe, J. Busher, G. Macklin, & A. Winter (Eds.), Researching the far right: Theory, method and practice (pp. 323–335). Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315304670-20

Miller-Idriss, C., & Graefe-Geusch, A. (2024). Fitting in, standing out: Far-right youth style and commercialization in Germany. In M. Weisskircher (Ed.), Contemporary Germany and the fourth wave of far-right politics: From the streets to parliament (pp. 76–90). Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003120049-6

Miller-Idriss, C., & Pilkington, H. (2017). In search of the missing link: Gender, education and the radical right. Gender and Education, 29(2), 133–146.
https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2017.1274116

Mondon, A., & Winter, A. (2020). Reactionary democracy: How racism and the populist far right became mainstream. Verso.

Mudde, C. (2007). Populist radical right parties in Europe. Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492037

Mudde, C. (Ed.). (2014). Youth and the extreme right. IDebate.

Mudde, C. (2019). The far right today. Polity Press.

Mxw. (2020, November 3). Zahlen aus Sachsen: Zahl der Rechtsextremisten steigt auf höchsten Stand seit 1993. Der Spiegel.
https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/sachsen-zahl-der-rechtsextremisten-steigt-auf-hoechsten-stand-seit-1993-a-f6d86b1f-4260-4ff2-b1c3-9bd37f33d2be

Oeser, A. (2019). When will we talk about Hitler?: German students and the Nazi past. Berghahn Books.
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1850hhp

Ortloff, D. H. (2015). “They think it is funny to call us Nazis”: Holocaust education and multicultural education in diverse Germany. In Z. Gross & E. D. Stevick (Eds.), As the witnesses fall silent: 21st century holocaust education in curriculum, policy and practice (pp. 209–223). Springer International.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15419-0_12

Pauli, R. (2023, July 16). Noch mehr Hitlergrüße im Unterricht. Taz.
https://taz.de/Rechtsextremismus-an-Schulen/!5944792/

Pels, T., & de Ruyter, D. J. (2012). The influence of education and socialization on radicalization: An exploration of theoretical presumptions and empirical research. Child Youth Care Forum, 41, 311–325.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-011-9155-5

Pettigrew, T. (1998). Intergroup contact theory: Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 65–85.
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.49.1.65

Pettigrew, T., & Tropp, L. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 751–783.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.90.5.751

Pfeifer, H. (2024, June 10). AfD: How Germany’s far right won over young voters. Deutsche Welle.
https://www.dw.com/en/afd-how-germanys-far-right-won-over-young-voters/a-69324954

Rees, J. H., Rees, Y. P. M., Hellmann, J. H., & Zick, A. (2019). Climate of hate: Similar correlates of far right electoral support and right-wing hate crimes in Germany. Frontiers in Psychology, 10.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02328

Rydgren, J. (2018). The radical right: An introduction. In J. Rydgren (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of the radical right (pp. 1–15). Oxford University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190274559.013.1

Schönwälder, K., Petermann, S., Hüttermann, J., Vertovec, S., Hewstone, M., Stolle, D., Schmid, K., & Schmitt, T. (2016). Diversity and contact: Immigration and social interaction in German cities. Palgrave Macmillan.
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58603-2

Tajfel, H. (1970). Experiments in intergroup discrimination. Scientific American, 22(3), 96–102.
https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1170-96

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Brooks/Cole.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. (2016). A teachers guide on the prevention of violent extremism. UNESCO.

Virchow, F., & Häusler, A. (2020). Pandemie-Leugnung und extreme Rechte in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen.

Vitale, M., & Clothey, R. (2019). Holocaust education in Germany: Ensuring relevance and meaning in an increasingly diverse community. FIRE: Forum for International Research in Education, 5(1), 44–62.
https://doi.org/10.32865/fire201951139

Waller, C. (2020). Preventing and countering violent extremism through education initiatives: Assessing the evidence base. Royal United Service Institute for Defense and Security Studies (RUSI).

Weisskircher, M. (2020). The strength of far-right AfD in Eastern Germany: The East-West divide and the multiple causes behind ‘populism.’ The Political Quarterly, 91(3), 614–622.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.12859

Wodak, R. (2020). The politics of fear: The shameless normalization of far-right discourse. SAGE.
https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529739664

Yurdakul, G. (2024). Postmigrant thinking: Definitions, critiques and a new offer. International Migration, 62, 120–123.
https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.13269

Zick, A., Küpper, B., & Berghan, W. (2019). Verlorene Mitte – Feindselige Zustände: Rechtsextreme Einstellungen in Deutschland 2018/19. Verlag J.H.W. Dietz Nachf. GmbH.

Zick, A., Küpper, B., & Mokros, N. (2023). Die distanzierte Mitte: Rechtsextreme und demokratiegefährdende Einstellungen in Deutschland 2022/23. Verlag J.H.W. Dietz Nachf. GmbH.

 

Recommended Citation

Gräfe-Geusch, A. (2024). Educational practice in Germany between racism and far-right ideologies. On Education. Journal for Research and Debate, 7(20).
https://doi.org/10.17899/on_ed.2024.20.6

Do you want to comment on this article? Please send your reply to editors@oneducation.net. Replies will be processed like invited contributions. This means they will be assessed according to standard criteria of quality, relevance, and civility. Please make sure to follow editorial policies and formatting guidelines.