In Germany, the electoral success of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is one of the most obvious signs of the rise of the far right. In public debates this tends to be associated with Eastern Germany and rural regions. What is neglected is the fact that the party was also remarkably successful in less privileged urban districts across Germany. In this paper I focus on the urban conditions for the rise of the far right. I do so by presenting first results of ethnographic research in two neighbourhoods of Frankfurt am Main. Both – Riederwald and Nied – are marginalised and the AfD gained considerable support there in the 2017 general elections. In the accounts given in 14 expert interviews I identify three crucial urban processes: austerity urbanism, post-democracy and gentrification. Relating them to findings of long-term studies on right-wing attitudes as well as to the concept of ‘downward mobility’, I argue that these processes increase the competition for resources and strengthen feelings of being left behind as well as experiences of being abandoned by political representatives – which are driving forces for the rise of the far right. And yet these experiences alone do not provide sufficient reason to explain the rise of the far right. They are general processes in the neighbourhoods. However, it seems that intersections with existing group-focused enmities drive a shift from social to regressive collectivity, which raises the potential for far-right political subjectification.
Abstract. For the first time since 1945, with the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) a far-right party has now
consolidated itself in Germany on all political scales. In the political
sciences as well as sociology, but not so much in human geography, there is
much debate on the funding reasons. The debate is polarized and unfolds
between two positions: on the one hand economic factors are marked as
principal forces, on the other a cultural backlash. Electoral analyses have
focused on the spatial division of the AfD's success between urban and rural
areas as well as West and East Germany. By contrast, we focus on urban
divisions. We examine the AfD's results in the general election of 2017 on
the scale of districts in the largest city of each federal state by
analyzing the correlation of the share of AfD votes with social data. In
contrast to the polarized debate in the social sciences we choose a
multidimensional perspective and analyze social data related to class,
migration, acceptance of democracy and age. First, the resulting picture is
heterogeneous across the cities and does not show a pronounced East-West
polarization. Second, economic factors as well as factors related to
migration correlate with the share of the AfD, whereby the former are
pronounced somewhat stronger. Third, lack of trust in democracy is the most
uniform indicator for a strong showing of the AfD in our sample; and fourth,
in all cities there are districts which run counter to the generalized
picture. We can show that in urban settings it is primarily, but not
exclusively, in marginalized districts that the AfD has its strongholds. But
this does not mean that all marginalized districts are dominated by the
far-right party. In order to better understand the spatially highly
fragmented social processes, in particular more qualitative research is
needed.
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