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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 May 2018
Since the 1960s in Italy and Germany the notion has prevailed that ‘the state’ has given support to right-wing terrorism. This article challenges such views by examining the internal dynamics of right-wing terrorism in both countries with reference to Ehud Sprinzak's theory of ‘split delegitimisation’. To explain the different scale of Italian and West German terrorism one must analyse personnel continuities, the nature of the perceived ‘communist threat’, as well as the national political culture. Thus, without neglecting state support for the far right, this article emphasises how the internal dynamics of terrorist groups respond to political and social frameworks. Only if we acknowledge that right-wing terrorist groups possess their own agency can we fully understand their development. This is even more urgent in a time when – once again – the far right is on the rise in Europe.
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3 Even today, violent right-wing groups such as the National Socialist Underground (Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund; NSU) draw on the Nazi ideology. The NSU is responsible for murdering at least ten people – mostly Turkish immigrants – in Germany in the early 2000s. Several of their activists have been on trial since 2013.
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32 Backes and Jesse, Politischer Extremismus, Vol. 2, 61–2.
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35 Backes and Jesse, Politischer Extremismus, Vol. 2, 67–70 and 76.
36 Ibid., 72; Braunthal, Right-Wing Extremism, 24; Fabian Virchow, ‘Faschistische Tatgemeinschaft oder weltanschauliche Kaderschmiede? Systemoppositionelle Strategien der bundesdeutschen Rechten nach 1969’, in Livi, Schmidt and Sturm, eds., Die 1970er Jahre, 229–48, here 230.
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38 Hof, ‘Rechtsextremer Terrorismus’, 228.
39 I draw on the definition of terrorism by Weinberg, Pedahzur and Hirsch-Hoefler: ‘Terrorism is a politically motivated tactic involving the threat or use of force or violence in which the pursuit of publicity plays a significant role’. (Weinberg, Leonard B, Pedahzur, Ami and Hirsch-Hoefler, Sivan, ‘The Challenge of Conceptualizing Terrorism’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 16, 4 (2004), 777–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 786).
40 Cited in Backes and Jesse, Politischer Extremismus, Vol. 2, 81 (translation by author).
41 Ibid.
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