Research into right-wing extremism and racism

Current and historical dynamics of right-wing extremism and racism

The federal government underlined this with the establishment of the Cabinet Committee on Combating Right-Wing Extremism and Racism in March 2020. In order to understand the causes, modes of operation and dynamics of these phenomena, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding 17 individual and collaborative projects with around 18 million euros at universities and non-university institutions throughout Germany as part of the funding guideline "Current and historical dynamics of right-wing extremism and racism". These projects conduct research on topics such as "racism in the justice system", "racism in the healthcare system", "racism in schools", "the effect of bans on right-wing extremist associations", right-wing extremist effects on civil society, conspiracy ideologies and regional and local manifestations of right-wing extremism. The research results and the recommendations for action derived from them are intended to create a basis for countering right-wing extremism and racism appropriately. The research projects are supported by two knowledge networks, the Wissensnetzwerk Rechtsextremismusforschung (Wi-Rex) and the Wissensnetzwerk Rassismusforschung (WinRa), which carry out networking activities and communicate the research areas to a broad public.

Promotion of junior research groups within the framework of research into right-wing extremism and racism

In addition to the above-mentioned funding guideline, the BMBF will also fund five junior research groups within the framework of research into right-wing extremism and racism at universities with around 10 million euros. In the junior research groups, excellent postdocs will implement their own research project on a question in the field of research into right-wing extremism or racism in their early career phase. The goals of this funding guideline are to further open universities to the topics of these two research areas and sustainably anchor them in universities and other research institutions. The junior research group leaders will be enabled to further develop their own academic profile, acquire leadership skills and thus prepare themselves for a potential professorship in the future.

Data Portal on Right-Wing Extremism (DP-REX)

Another funding measure has been supporting the development of a data portal for research into racism and right-wing extremism (DP-REX) since September 2021. The aim of the collaborative project is to set up and operate a data portal to support research into racism and right-wing extremism. This portal is designed to facilitate the search for and access to existing data pools and to help researchers share their own research data. Another goal is to strengthen the visibility of research data on right-wing extremism and racism. The project is based at the GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and will have three additional partners in 2022. More information can be found here.