Right-wing extremist attitudes among juveniles - results from a representative survey in Germany

• In Event: 3451 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 5. Far-Right Movements

Abstract

Changed migration flows have affected political attitudes among citizens in Germany in recent years. Hate crime offenses with a right-wing extremist motivation have reached a record level in 2016 (with 23,505 cases of which 1,600 cases have been violent hate crimes). In this paper, we report results of a representative survey conducted among 4,107 juveniles in Lower Saxony in 2017. Experiences of victimisation and criminality as well as their contributing factors are examined. The items used to measure right-wing attitudes include xenophobia, anti-Semitism, chauvinism, support of authoritarian dictatorship as well as social Darwinism. Xenophobic attitudes were found among 14.1% of the participants with a lower appearance of chauvinism (6.3%) and social Darwinism (5.7%). Results showed that the prevalence of right-wing attitudes stands in a relation upon the type of school that is visited and the gender of the participant. Right-wing attitudes were found more often among pupils attending low-performing schools than pupils attending better school systems. Boys more often showed critical attitudes than girls. An interesting result is, that the relationship between attitudes and political motivated, dissocial behaviours was not as strong as expected, which indicates that not all of the juveniles who committed political motivated hate crimes showed extreme attitudes.

Authors

• Sören Kliem, Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony

• Dominic Kudlacek, Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony