Unless you spent the last couple of days under a rock, you will have heard about the terrible series of (at least) ten neo-Nazi murders that has stunned Germany. In my view, three things are particularly remarkable about this crime.

First, the mainstream media including the public broadcasters and the left-liberal press refer to the series as ‘Dönermorde’, i.e. ‘Kebab Killings’, because most of the victims were small businessmen of Turkish origin. This is impious at any rate, and not exactly sensitive in the context of ethnically motivated violence.

Continue reading “Random thoughts on right-wing terrorism in Germany” »

I’ve just finished a review of Tim Spier’s new book on the electorates of the Western European populist right for a yearbook. Since the yearbook is not due to appear before September, here’s the text for your edification (in German)

Continue reading “Review of Tim Spier’s “Modernisierungsverlierer”: Die Wählerschaft rechtspopulistischer Parteien in Westeuropa (in German)” »

Here is the (almost) finalised program for the our section on the Radical Right in Perspective, organised under the auspices of the ECPR’s 5th General Conference (Potsdam, September 10-12), boasting about 50 papers. Continue reading “The Radical Right in Perspective: Program (ECPR conference 2009)” »

Colleagues Andrea Römmele and Thorsten Faas have set up a new blog that will cover the many German elections of 2009 (seats in the federal parliament, several state parliaments, local councils as well as the presidency are all up for grabs) and asked me to contribute. How could I resist them? “Wahlen nach Zahlen” (voting by numbers) is not yet public, but since it is already indexed by Google et al., why not spill the beans? There are already four posts (in German), and the list of (potential) contributors looks pretty good. And here is my inaugural post on right-wing extremism amongst German youngsters.