The Micropolitics of Far-Right Normalisation: Everyday Narratives of Achievement in Germany

This paper examines the micropolitics of far-right normalisation by analysing how seemingly banal national narratives are mobilised in everyday contexts to produce exclusionary orders of belonging. By micropolitics, I refer to the subtle, routine, and affectively charged processes through which political meanings and normative claims are reproduced in everyday interactions, narratives, and practices. Rather than focusing on organised far-right actors, the paper shifts attention to the everyday social sites in which nationalist ideas become normalised. The analytical focus lies on narratives, emotions, and practices through which the nation is invoked as an ordering category. Empirically, the paper draws on a large-scale qualitative and ethnographic research project on banal nationalism and everyday national narratives in Germany. Conducted between 2018 and 2019, the study involved over 150 group discussions and interviews with more than 350 participants, complemented by ethnographic observations of everyday life. The project created spaces in which participants reflected on their understandings of the nation, its meanings, and their own positioning within it. Following principles of Grounded Theory, the material was analysed with a focus on processes of national identification, claim-making practices, and the narrative production of (non)belonging. The paper centres on what I conceptualise as the narrative of the “Leistungsdeutsche” (the “achieving” or “high-performing German”). This narrative constructs “Germanness” as intrinsically tied to performance, productivity, and willingness to contribute, thereby establishing hierarchical and normative distinctions between “Germans” and “non-Germans”. Often articulated through racialised logics, such narratives reproduce long-standing myths of the nation while appearing pragmatic, meritocratic, and politically neutral. They serve to legitimise exclusion, marginalisation, and, ultimately, racialised violence by framing belonging as something to be earned by performance. Using this narrative as an example, the paper demonstrates how everyday national imaginaries provide continuity with historical forms of nationalist thinking and how their banal articulation contributes to the normalisation of far-right politics today. I argue that these micropolitical processes play a crucial role in creating affective and discursive conditions under which far-right positions can appear reasonable, legitimate, and compatible with everyday common sense.