ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the left and then at the right radical parties, with particular attention to right-wing Republicans, whose sudden electoral successes in the late 1980s created fear in Germany and other states of a re-emerging Nazism. Citizens' political views in a democratic polity span the spectrum from left to right, with a strong cluster in the middle. Those on the left and right extremes are dissatisfied with the status quo and yearn for different radical or Utopian solutions to their economic and social problems. From 1945 to 1990, numerous other smaller radical and independent communist parties, such as the Communist Party of Germany/Marxist-Leninist and the Communist League of West Germany, were active on the left fringe of the political spectrum. Minor left and right radical parties in West Germany from 1945 to 1990 had a checkered record of emerging and vanishing and of squabbling internally and splintering.
