ABSTRACT
A bony 20-year-old with a brash attitude, Sebastian 2 belongs to a clique that congregates routinely at a small public square in an East German-era high-rise neighbourhood on the southeastern fringes of Berlin. Living with his mother and subsisting on the remittances of a mandatory welfare-for-work programme, his daily life unfolds largely in his neighbourhood, dubbed the ‘Ghetto’ and blatantly signalling post-reunification socio-economic decline. He and his friends Danny and Klaus take turns at the slot machines as we sit to chat on an August afternoon in Little Istanbul, a local Turkish restaurant-bar. Flipping through his wallet, he exposes an election sticker of the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD, Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands) attached to its inner lining and pauses briefly, as if ascertaining that I perceive the careful provocation. The right extremist NPD and its current ally, the German People’s Union Party (DVU, Deutsche Volksunion), have scored significant electoral gains in recent years, winning a handful of seats in state parliaments and provoking anxious alarm across Germany. Their successes have crucially hinged upon young disaffected men such as Sebastian.
