Thursday, 7 November 2024

How Can Civil Society Counter the Far Right? Lessons from Poland and Germany

Roundtable with Grzegorz Ekiert, Heike Radvan, and Heike Kleffner

The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has triumphed in recent state elections in Eastern Germany. While the public and scholarly debate often focuses on party strategies and protecting institutional buffers against democratic erosion, the rise of the far right in Germany and other European countries has severe consequences for civil society organizations, initiatives, and engaged citizens committed to a diverse and democratic society. Far-right parties across Europe are proposing to constrain the legal and financial frameworks supporting these actors. Moreover, democratic spaces are shrinking due to the normalization of far-right actors and ideology. Amongst others, counseling centers for victims of right-wing violence report alarming increases in acts of violence against politicians and activists following the AfD's successes in local and European elections this year.

However, civil society is not staying silent. Across Germany, hundreds of thousands have been taking to the streets to defend democracy since the beginning of the year. Examples from countries like Poland also demonstrate that authoritarian and illiberal politics do not spell the end of civic engagement. At the same time, civil society is undergoing structural changes due to the rise of the far right, involving politicization processes within civil society and strong dynamics of mobilization and counter-mobilization. Civil society practitioners and researchers are seeking to understand which strategies work best against the far right and how to protect civil society's power to foster democracy and social cohesion.

On Thursday, November 7th, 2024, Grzegorz Ekiert will kick off the debate with an overview of the situation and lessons learned from Poland. Following his input, Ekiert will engage in a discussion with Heike Kleffner and Heike Radvan, who will reflect on what these lessons might mean for the current situation in (Eastern) Germany.

 

Speakers:

  • Grzegorz Ekiert is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Government at Harvard University. His research and teaching interests focus on comparative politics, regime change and democratization, civil society, social movements, and East European politics and societies.

  • Heike Radvan is a Professor at the newly founded Institut for Research on Far-Right Extremism (IRex) at Tübingen University with a focus on education, gender, community work and the prevention. Her work combines research and preventive efforts against the far right and expands to include marginalized perspectives.

  • Heike Kleffner is a journalist and author, heading the office of the Association of Counseling Centers for Victims of Right-Wing, Racist, and Antisemitic Violence (VBRG). Her expertise on right-wing violence and terror is reflected in various publications on the topic. She is in charge of the long-term research-project "Victims of right-wing violence since 1990" for ZEIT and Tagesspiegel.

 

The event is part of the workshop “Politics within Civil Society. How the rise of new cleavages and the far right transform civil society” on 7./ 8. November 2024 and the Lecture Series Civil Society and Political Conflict.