Mapping Far-Right Contention Within Civil Society

In recent years, the far right has expanded its structures and activities not only within political institutions but also in civil societies across Europe. However, existing research on far-right contention has focused primarily on protest behavior and neglected the associational side of civil society. Civil society research, on the other hand, has tended to ignore its dark side and focus on positive examples of civic action. This is surprising given that far-right actors and issues frequently challenge individual volunteers, civil society organizations, and entire fields of civic action. Our paper addresses the blind spots in these literatures by theorizing and mapping far-right contention within civil society. We build on the contentious-politics paradigm in social movement studies to conceptualize far-right contention as episodic actions that emanate from far-right actors and/or make far-right claims and thereby break the routines of civil society fields, actors, or their members. We develop a mixed-methods approach combining expert interviews with qualitative and quantitative content analyses of far-right media, newspaper reports, and watchdog documents. We apply this method to map far-right contention in Germany from 2018-2023. Our analysis demonstrates how far-right actors and claims politicize various civil society fields.