Mock, Slow Down, Intimidate: the Micropolitical Approach of the Far Right Towards German Local Administrations

Talking about de-democratization, populism, and the rise of far-right forces all around the globe, discussions often revolve around the big shifts in public discourses, threats to the national rule of law, structural manipulation tactics in social media, scandalous extremist statements by leading far-right actors asf. In Germany, it is especially the rise and a possible ban of the party AfD („Alternative for Germany“) that is widely discussed in that regard. A recent secret service report, for example, categorizing the party as „confirmedly right-wing extremist“, is based on extremist and inhumane public statements of party members and officials. This follows a long-standing approach of investigating far-right strategies according to the renown concept of „metapolitics“, of the normalization of far-right speech and ideas within large-scale discourses. What gets much less attention is, however, how actors from the whole far-right spectrum (including, but not limited to members of the AfD) are using micropolitical strategies to erode, weaken, and coopt the functioning of democratic institutions, on the local level. This includes, for example, practices of taking or marking physical space, creating climates of insecurity amongst local administration officials, pushing democratic legislations and abusing rule of law principles for slowing down democratic processes, and more. These practices follow a logic of long-term, small-framed action, which makes them hard to trace and out of sight for more event-based news value media reporting. Based upon political ethnographic interviewing and process-tracing, the study exemplifies the significance and impact of such strategies for local, daily life experiences with democracy.