ABSTRACT
Militant right-wing extremism in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) at the mid-point of the 1990s decade has been given an increased dimension when compared with this phenomenon in the FRG of the 1980s. The unification of Germany in 1990 has brought an influx of influences and activism from the former German Democratic Republic, where neo-Nazism existed and survived clandestinely under official notice. Reports by the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) have documented the increase since the 1980s of the numbers of those engaged in various types of neo-Nazi activity; numerous acts of criminality, such as against such targets as asylum-seekers and their residences, have been documented in the BfV’s reports. There was an initial slowness by the Federal government to move against neo-Nazi groups, but, after criticism of this reluctance, in 1992 the government banned three particularly virulent Nazi groups, with further proscriptions in 1993 by regional authorities. Research on members of neo-Nazi movements has shown the tendency of the activist membership to be relatively young and male. A principal explanatory dynamic for this activism has very much been the Modernisierungsverlierer (‘losers from modernization’) argument especially associated with Wilhelm Heitmeyer.
