Support for far-right ideas and parties continues to be widespread despite significant efforts to curb it. Even in Germany, a country that underwent unusually far-reaching reforms after the Holocaust and the defeat of the Nazi regime, and that is often used as an example for how to deal with a fraught past, the threat of the far right gaining power is looming large and attitudes associated with far-right support continue to be widespread.
This dissertation examines sources of persistence and change with respect to far-right support, using post-WWII Germany as a case. I used a mixed-methods approach, combining statistical analysis of observational data with in-depth qualitative analysis of archival data and an experiment. The three studies highlight the potentials and limits of three avenues for change: the political incorporation of right-leaning voters into mainstream center-right parties, education reforms to overcome far-right ideology, and interventions that inform people about past atrocities and injustices.
Chapter 1 provides an overview of three pathways identified across the social sciences through which the past shapes social and political outcomes in the present: institutional path dependence, political socialization, and collective memory. I explain how these three pathways relate to the issue of far-right support.
Chapter 2 draws on historical and contemporary election data and social statistics as well as secondary sources by historians to examine sources of regional variation in the support for far-right parties in Germany over time. I show how differences in the political incorporation of right-leaning displaced Germans resulted in different regional trajectories of far-right support. Where the center-right party was firmly embedded in the local social milieu and focused on its pre-existing voter base, it remained closed to right-leaning displaced voters, and far-right support persisted. Where the party could not build on a pre-existing voter base and collaborated with other parties on the right, it broadly incorporated conservative constituencies across social differences, resulting in a decline in far-right support.
Chapter 3 is based on the qualitative analysis of 125 school student essays from 1950s West Germany about the German nation and the idea of an integrated Europe. I investigate ideas about belonging and supremacy among the first generation that grew up after WWII and the Holocaust and that was educated following the Allies’ comprehensive re-education efforts. I show how school students defined German-ness and European-ness based on ideas of shared culture, criticizing nationalism and largely embracing a joint European identity. At the same time, this move to cultural, as opposed to racial, conceptions of belonging, as well as the emphasis on Europe as a meaningful, shared category of belonging, did not preclude claims of superiority both within Europe as well as vis-à-vis other parts of the world.
Chapter 4, a co-authored study, uses an original survey experiment to test the effectiveness of confronting people with different forms of factual information about a past atrocity that the national majority group was implicated in, for improving their attitudes towards minoritized groups and mobilizing them for symbolic justice and action against discrimination today. We randomly assigned German participants one of three prototypical representations of the Holocaust or a neutral control condition text. Results indicate that all three conditions are overall effective and that the personal story condition is especially effective for far-right supporters. Chapter 5 concludes with a discussion of implications and limitations, and suggests directions for future research.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:columbia.edu/oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/qvzq-2r53 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Firestone, Berenike Laura |
| Source Sets | Columbia University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Theses |
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