(De)Normalization of Far-Right Contention. Civil Society Between Resistance and Accommodation in Germany

When far-right actors seek cooperation within sports clubs or establish presence in religious organizations, civil society organizations (CSOs) must decide how to respond. Do they resist, accommodate, or even collaborate? This paper develops a conceptual framework for understanding civil society responses that moves beyond binary resistance/non-resistance models and challenges normative assumptions about civil society as inherently democratic. Existing literature often portrays civil society through Tocquevillian lenses as democratically oriented, obscuring how organizations actually navigate far-right contention in practice. Building on recent advances in conceptualizing far-right contention as multi-dimensional (Gunzelmann & Jänicke, 2025) and normalization as operating across discursive, political, civic, economic, and perceptual dimensions (Zajak et al., 2025), this paper conceptualizes civil society responses as ranging across three ideal types: resistance (active counter-normalization), accommodation (passive or strategic non-resistance), and collaboration (active cooperation). This framework reveals responses as contested, dynamic processes shaped by organizational resources and contexts rather than reflecting inherent democratic values. Drawing on comparative case studies across sports and religious sectors in East and West Germany, I use qualitative interviews and organizational documents to analyze how CSOs respond to cooperative forms of far-right contention. The analysis shows that while regional far-right normalization shapes perceptions and conditions, response strategies show surprising cross-regional homogeneity. Internal guidelines, support resources, and external networks prove crucial for boundary-drawing and counter-normalization. This paper contributes a conceptual typology for analyzing civil society responses to far-right normalization and offers methodological insights for comparative research on how democratic actors navigate contested civic spaces. Literature Gunzelmann, H. J., & Jänicke, C. (2025). Far-right contention in civil society: Multiple lenses on action repertoires, actors, and targets. European Societies, 1–41. https://doi.org/10.1162/EUSO.a.75 Zajak, S., Meuth, A.-M., & Best, F. (2025). The Dynamics of (De-)Normalization of the Far Right: Perceptions in the German Population. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-025-09532-6