Explaining and legitimising

In addition to explaining these incidents or developments, they often serve to legitimise political or ideological actions. But the phenomenon and the instrumentalisation for a political purpose is not new. During National Socialism, conspiracy narratives served to establish victim and enemy narratives, whilst Anti-Semitic conspiracy narratives played a decisive role in National Socialism. The narrative of a Jewish world conspiracy became the basis of argumentation for their cruel and eliminatory anti-Semitism. The core of this kind of anti-Semitism was, and is, that there is an inferior culture due to resources and framework conditions, which is opposed to an economically and structurally superior power. In the thinking of the right-wing extremism conspiracy ideology, it was, and is, Judaism. In doing so, National Socialism, as well as the current right-wing extremism, ties in with the claim, widespread in the early 20th century, that the Jews were striving for world domination. “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” were used as “proof”. Even this contrived evidence turned out to be false, as it was satire, like Joly’s work “The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu” and other fictional narratives. This illustrates very clearly how incoherent information is constructed into a system and explanation. Nevertheless, these “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” still serve today as ‘proof’ of a Jewish world conspiracy. Although they have already been proven several times to be a fake, they unfolded a terrible effect. In this way, they use constructions of the concept of the enemy to legitimise violence or, in principle, the struggle of supporters against the declared enemy and deligitimise politics or defined systems and values.

Thinking and acting

Changing social developments have meant that the conspiracy narratives within violent right-wing extremism have also changed, as well as the overall appearance of right-wing extremism. At the centre of these ideologies today are geopolitical or socio- political narratives of “The Great Replacement“, “The Great Reset“, migration as a weapon, anti-modernism or anti-feminism. It is not the modes of operation that have changed or modernised, but rather the narratives and images used. The murderous effect of complexity reduction, deligitimisation, steering, and individual as well as group-related exaggeration is made clear not least by the terrible acts of perpetrators. For the adherents of these narratives, the perception of having recognised the truth and being confronted with an overpowering opponent legitimises self-empowerment. In this perception, self-empowerment also legitimises violence, as it is a logical consequence for the perpetrator in terms of self-defence. As the last few years have shown in a frightening way, they refer to anti-Semitic conspiracy narratives and legitimise their actions with them, with tragic examples seen Utøya, Halle and elsewhere.

For more: The RAN papers consolidate RAN’s expertise and knowledge on radicalisation and violent extremism into an accessible format, providing up-to-date information.