2006 07 03 book reviews

contributions apart from those of the first part. Rainer Erb argues that it is time to take the concept of the ‘social movement entrepreneur’ seriously and presents a detailed portrait of Christian Worch, a political veteran who has been organizing neo-nazi parades on a semi-professional basis for the last twenty years. Uta Döring traces the origins of the concept of the so-called ‘national liberated zones’ within the extreme right’s discourse and reflects on its adoption by the quality papers. Her contribution is one of the few that apply quantitative methods and examines at least in brief the cross-national links between right wing groups in Europe. Finally, the chapter by Sonja Kock looks at two small cities in the southwestern Land Baden-Württemberg that were both Republikaner strongholds in the 1990s. While her thesis that political culture must figure prominently in any explanation of the party’s success since one city is prospering while the other has suffered from economic decline for years is interesting and plausible, the evidence is necessarily very limited.

The third part of the volume is labelled ‘Entry into the scene, self- and roleimages’. Christine Wiezorek argues that biographical analysis can help to understand how youths become right wing extremists. As a case in point, she presents excerpts from an interview with ‘Rolf’, a young right-winger, whose need for an identity was fulfilled by joining the scene. A very similar approach is taken by Michaela Köttig in her in-depth study of the biography of ’Svenja’, a young woman who became a right winger at the age of 12. Köttig holds that this can be explained by examining the dynamics of Svenja’s family in general and the construction of gender roles in particular.

Obviously, gender aspects play an important role in Oliver Geden’s analysis of the discourse of manliness within the FPÖ as well. While his argument that the images of manliness which are transported by the FPÖ’s papers are attractive for the young male party activists who feel threatened and confused by the decline of the traditional male role model, it is very difficult to see how the same mechanisms could explain the party’s tremendous electoral success during the 1990s. Lastly, Michael Kohlstruck and Anna Verena Münch try to reconstruct the role of ‘hypermasculine’ images in the particular horrid case of a young man who was tortured and killed by three acquaintances for no other reason than being a ‘sissy’ who could not drink as much as them.

Finally, the editors’ introduction to the volume is of particular interest. Klärner and Kohlstruck provide the reader with something that is rarely found in the literature: an overview of the research on right wing extremism in post war Germany as well as an assessment of the concept’s use a political weapon. However, the introduction thereby points to the one major shortcoming of this volume: the editors do not present a comprehensive approach that would bind the disparate contributions together, nor is there any other obvious connection between the introduction and the volume’s contents. The book as a whole suspiciously resembles Forrest Gump’s chocolate box.