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Article
The Rise of Femi‐Nazis?: Female Participation in Right‐extremist Movements in Unified Germany
German Politics (1996)
  • Joyce Marie Mushaben, University of Missouri–St. Louis
Abstract
German feminist scholars have recently come to argue that female involvement in right‐extremist causes is grounded in gender‐specific motives. They have also begun to uncover a troubling link between new patterns of female political engagement (ranging from electoral mobilisation to violent streetfighting) and their own efforts to promote an independent women's consciousness since the 1960s. This article develops a typology of New Right women, characterised here as Femi‐Nazis, evincing different levels of sympathy for, identification with, and participation in radical and extremist movements. It then explores five issue orientations distinguishing New Right women of the 1990s from the Old and New Right men of the 1940s and 1990s, suggesting that these women have developed an independent, self‐assertive political consciousness without internalising feminism's broader aims of diversity and inclusion. The article concludes with reflections on the interplay of ‘feminist’ consciousness and ultra‐nationalist qua xenophobic attitudes, and on the dilemmas Femi‐Nazi thinking poses for feminist identity in united Germany.
Publication Date
January 8, 1996
DOI
10.1080/09644009608404440
Citation Information
Joyce Marie Mushaben. "The Rise of Femi‐Nazis?: Female Participation in Right‐extremist Movements in Unified Germany" German Politics Vol. 5 Iss. 2 (1996) p. 240 - 261
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/joyce-mushaben/34/