Abstract
Taking an analysis of relevant statements and campaigns of the right-wing extremist group ‘Identitarian Movement’ in German-speaking countries as a starting point, this article will reconstruct their key narratives with regard to gender policy, and identify the discourses and forms of organization that are used to integrate women into the Identitarian context. An overview of the origins and characteristics of the Identitarians is followed by a classification of Identitarian gender policy into three phases: its beginning (2012–2015), its peak (2016–2018) and its demise (2019–2020). As can be seen, during the first years it had been necessary to negotiate fundamental questions of the group's gender concepts, whereas during the peak years the focus shifted to threat scenarios involving ‘our women’. At the same time, female activists started to find their own projects. Since 2019, however, the group has started to fall apart, women's issues have lost their appeal and women activists have been leaving. Notwithstanding this decline, the question still remains of what to make of the gender-political commitment of Identitarian women in the context of feminist debates.
Quite a number of media articles about women within the Identitarians 1 and about individual female activists have been published in recent years. Despite the decades of research on the subject, the media coverage has been characterized mainly by astonishment and attempts to scandalize the political activism of right-wing women. Research on women in right-wing extremism started at around the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. It had initially focused on images of femininity and the quantity and importance of right-wing women while aiming to explain their commitment. 2 In the last two decades, the field of research has expanded, where more recent studies also deal with gender politics, policies and ideologies of right-wing parties, groups and organizations. Other analyses examine the constructions of masculinity within the extreme right, anti-feminism, LGBTQIA + hostility and anti-gender politics on the extreme right, as well as the instrumentalization of gender-related topics such as women's rights. 3 While most of these larger studies and anthologies focus either on country-specific case studies or adopt a comparative approach to analyse right-wing organizations in different countries, only a few publications look at the transnational dimension of right-wing organizations from a gender-reflective perspective. Other research, in turn, continues to explore the role of women within the extreme right. In addition, further studies carry on with the examination of the number of women in the various areas of right-wing extremism, ranging from leaders to voters. 4 Quantitative studies in particular, however, do not always succeed in capturing the different ideological facets of right-wing extremism with regard to gender and sexuality-related issues. Precisely because even in the right-wing extremist spectrum different positions on gender issues may be found and right-wing groups cannot be classified as an ‘ideologically homogeneous block’, 5 there is a need for further research. For example, Sarah De Lange and Liza M. Mügge suggest to distinguish between modern, modern-traditional and traditional or neo-traditional positions of right-wing actors with respect to gender or sexuality-related topics. As regards this categorization, it will be shown that the Identitarians can be classified as a modern-traditional group since their ideology is based on a combination of traditional views and ‘modern elements such as promoting a combination of work and raising children, and advocating equal pay for equal work’. 6 This approach enables them to resolve obvious contradictions between traditional and modern women's roles. However, even critical appraisals of the Identitarians have thus far drawn a rather undifferentiated picture and usually do not go beyond the accusation that the Identitarians were notable for their sexism and anti-feminism and their instrumentalization of women and of gender policy. The fact that the involvement of women in Identitarian circles also brought with it a potential of self-empowerment often remains overlooked, as is the modernization of gender perceptions in the extreme right with its numerous contradictions.
This article thus wants to fill this gap by examining the gender-political identification models that are available to women in Identitarian structures, and it will ask how women are integrated into the Identitarian context. As a first step, I will outline the origins and characteristics of the Identitarian group in German-speaking countries, and subsequently, evaluate their policies on gender. Taking an analysis of relevant video blogs (vlogs) of leading cadres and Identitarian women, statements as well as the commitment of individual female activists and campaigns as a starting point, I will show that Identitarian gender policy can be categorized into three phases: (1) The beginning years (2012–2015) when mainly the ideological cadres detailed fundamental questions of Identitarian gender concepts and thus set the ideological direction; (2) the peak years (2016–2018) of women's and gender policy where not only (the threats towards our) women were at the core of Identitarian policies but where female activists also started their own projects, and (3) the demise (2019–2020), which can be characterized by the general failure of the Identitarians, the abandonment of women's topics and the retreat of women from the group. In a short digression, I will also analyse the role of men within the Identitarian group. I will show that masculinity is always imagined as being under threat, thus leading Identitarians to employ a number of strategies for remasculinization. To conclude, I will examine the question of what to make of the gender-political commitment of Identitarian women in the context of feminist debates.
Since the Identitarians in German-speaking countries were founded less than ten years ago, it is obvious that their history is very contemporary. Nevertheless, a (contemporary) historical study of the group makes sense for several reasons. So far, the scientific engagement with the phenomenon of ‘research on right-wing extremism’ has mainly been explored from a social and political science perspective, and sometimes from an educational science approach. Due to this focus, historical continuities, periodizations of the phenomenon as well as caesuras have been neglected. These gaps and neglects can be supplemented and enriched by contemporary historical considerations and analyses, which also include contemporary history. For this reason the Zeithistorischer Arbeitskreis Extreme Rechte (working group on the contemporary history of the extreme right) in Germany, for example, endeavours to establish contemporary historical research on right-wing extremism. In this sense, contemporary historian Yves Müller states: The strength of contemporary historical research on right-wing extremism could thus lie in a broadened perspective that does not take the historical development of the extreme right as a post-history of National Socialism but as a prehistory of the present. Instead, historiographically guided approaches may help to locate the extreme right and to relate it to social development processes.
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In this respect, this paper can also be seen in the context of and as a contribution to the establishment of this young field of research. In addition, a historical overview of the history of gender within right-wing movements in Europe should also raise the question of contemporary appropriations, continuities as well as modernizations of historically grown (right-wing extremist) gender constructions.
By looking at the almost ten-year history of the Identitarians, this paper will show that gender images and gender politics have not remained the same but were subject of processes of change and focus shifts; this observation already allows for the identification of different periods. Furthermore, the gender constructions of the Identitarians also have to be analysed as being historically contoured. Identitarian cadres as well as activists cite historical models and try to maintain traditions, values and foundations of meaning through historical references in the present.
Methodology
The analysis is based on Critical Discourse Analysis as developed by Siegfried Jäger and the Viennese approach to Critical Discourse Analysis as elaborated by Ruth Wodak and Martin Reisigl. 8 As a first step, I identified the relevant discourses and discourse positions. These consist of (1) official statements (texts published on Identitarian websites); (2) ideological positions expressed by individual cadres and activists in video blogs (vlogs) as well as posts on social media; (3) messages conveyed by political actions and campaigns; (4) statements in the context of their reception in the media and (5) controversial statements of former female activists who have left the group. The material chosen had to fulfil two requirements: it had to contain statements or comments that were relevant for the topic of gender policy, and the speaker had to be a person with an important position within the group. Taking this as a starting point, I mapped out the gender-political statements that could be considered representative for the Identitarians, and the discourses and discourse positions to which they could be attributed. Taking the classification by Jäger as a basis, I was able to take three aspects into account: the internal function within the discourse, the discourse's context and its homogeneity. Following on from Reisigl, the macro-analysis focused mainly on ‘determining the contours of discourse and its segmentation into phases’, ‘clarifying the discourse's relationship with the areas of social action where it is situated’, ‘clarifying the discourse's relationship with other discourses’ as well as ‘determining patterns of linguistic action and of functional segments of text’. 9 The micro-analysis concentrated on the lines of argument and on the question of ‘which arguments were used in order to justify or challenge the theses introduced into the discourse (which contain e.g. predications)’. 10 Rhetorical means such as reinforcements or diminishments were likewise taken into consideration, as was the female speakers’ perspectivation.
A patriotic youth movement
In Austria as well as Germany, the Identitarians were founded in 2012 after their French role model Génération identitaire, the youth section of the nationalist Bloc identitaire. Since then, the group has become an important player in extra-parliamentary right-wing extremism in both countries. Offshoots of the group are also active in other European countries including Italy, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Denmark. 11 In addition, contacts have existed with the alt-right movement in the United States. In the past, they had excellent contacts with far-right parties such as the AfD in Germany and the FPÖ in Austria, numerous regional divisions and received significant media and public attention due to regular, attention-grabbing actions.
Branding themselves as part of a New Right, these activists try to establish a supposed distance from National Socialism while presenting themselves as no longer adhering to right-wing extremism. This has the aim of ‘portraying the Identitarians to the outside world as a group that is not racist, not even right-wing or nationalist anymore’. 12 In reality, however, the Identitarians are typical right-wing extremists 13 – their völkisch conception of the world, their misogynist ideology, their anti-Semitism and their deeply racist ideas show that this classification is entirely warranted. By using less tainted terms (e.g. ‘ethnopluralism’ for a classic right-wing blood-and-soil-ideology) they hope to appear different and more harmless.
Another difference between the Identitarians and classic neo-Nazis is their appearance. They portray themselves as a hip and patriotic youth movement and try to attract especially young people with spectacular actions and trendy fashion. They present themselves as the ‘last generation’ that is able to prevent the ‘Great Replacement of cultures’ – a conservative stronghold against the decadence of modernity and the decay of European society. This is based on the imagination of immigration destroying their own European identity. By evoking the downfall of Europe, they project all problems of a capitalist society to the outside and find an easy culprit: immigrants.
Negotiations of gender policy on the basis of ideology
After their founding in the German-speaking countries in 2012, the first task of the Identitarians was to develop their political profile. In the course of this process, among other aspects, the concept of gender, the analysis of gender relations as well as the roles of men and women within the group were clarified. It can be noted that these parts of the political agenda were not prioritized at first. This can be seen from the fact that important vlogs of the Austrian cadre, Martin Sellner, where he touches upon his perception of gender, were created only in 2013 and 2014. These were, for example, ‘Vlog Identitär 8 – Gleichheit versus Gleichwertigkeit’ (‘Equality vs. Equivalence’) 14 and ‘Vlog22 – Gabalier und Genderwahn’ (‘Gabalier and Gender Madness’) 15 . Another significant source in this context is the programmatic essay ‘Die identitäre Generation’ (‘The Identitarian Generation’) by Markus Willinger, an Identitarian pioneer, who has disappeared from the scene in the meantime and thus lost relevance. 16 Based on his criticism of the generation of 1968, he also touches on the issue of gender relations.
Identitarian concepts of gender
Boundaries play an important role in Identitarian thinking not only with regard to the calls for the closing of national borders, the defence of the European Union's external borders and the maintaining of the dividing lines within the völkisch society, but also with respect to the concept of gender. This concept is based on a deeply-rooted pair of opposites: on the construed dichotomy of man and woman. The gender dualism, which glorifies only two (authentic) genders as the permissible norm, follows a biologistic reasoning and is constructed in a complementary and hierarchical manner. This means that the concepts of man and woman are thought of as being (naturally) separable and identical with themselves; they are presented as the only legitimate life plan and option for identification.
This is also the take of the co-founder of the Austrian Identitarians, the former head of the group and probably the internationally most well-known and important leader from this spectrum, Martin Sellner, in his vlog ‘Gabalier and Gender Madness’.
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He says: ‘We say it out loud, there is something like a gender identity which is not merely a social construct’. He makes partial concessions, for example stating that ‘men's and women's roles have always changed because there is a dynamic’, and that it was ‘impossible to go back to the traditional family structures of 50 years ago due to today's working environment and economic system’. These concessions, however, do not prevent him from continuing in an almost esoteric manner: There is something like an essence, that is the attraction of the two opposites, man and woman, and the creation of life out of the union of these opposites. This polarity, this fertile difference […] is larger and more deeply rooted than within mankind, it goes further.
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This statement clearly shows that Identitarian thinking is mainly focused on invoking an alleged essence, that is, an imagined essential and natural character of gender that does not require any further evidence or argument. This duality of gender, Sellner continues, was linked by a ‘deeply sexual attraction between polarities’, which in turn was the origin of all life. Perceived adversaries of this concept are leftism, feminism, gender theories as well as homosexuality and transsexuality. In this context, multiculturalism and feminism – continually gaining in significance – seem to have replaced old enemies like communism. In a manner that recalls conspiration theories, these approaches are accused of wanting to abolish the allegedly natural duality of gender or, as Martin Sellner put it in his vlog, ‘they not only disgrace themselves, without any style, embarrassing and ridiculous, but they eventually destroy everything that has grown organically’. The ‘harmonious concepts of marriage and family […] as a timeless promise of happiness’ are thus ‘presented as being threatened by modern times’ 19 and used as contrasting images to the political ideas of their perceived adversaries.
This concept of two interdependent poles was also expressed by Martin Sellner in an early vlog posting on the topic of ‘Equality versus Equivalence’. 20 It is based on the idea that human beings, cultures and peoples might be of equal value but never of an equal kind. Thus it is argued that man and woman, but also various peoples, need different treatment due to their difference in nature. The ideal of being diverse and at the same time enjoying equality in dignity, rights and every other aspect is reversed by Sellner in a way that is typical for Identitarians. In this train of thought, justice is brought about not by equal but by unequal treatment as only this could do justice to the ‘specific abilities’ and the ‘nature’ 21 of human beings. ‘If the unequal is treated equally injustice entails, that is, things that are of equal value but not of equal nature need to be treated unequally. Here it is necessary to differentiate, to discriminate […]’. 22 Sellner continues by referring to a ‘sick ideology of equality’ that, as he puts it, does not differentiate between equivalence and equality or between equality and justice and thus tries to ‘standardize’ 23 humankind. The horrific result of such a policy would be the ‘levelled-down standard person’. 24
For Sellner, this would mean that there were ‘no more real men and real women’. 25 Women were ‘becoming increasingly masculine and men increasingly feminine, basically [everything] is melting together, as Julius Evola put it, melting into an androgynous standard person without any form or type’. 26 The notions of sexuality, masculinity and femininity that are transported by this kind of thinking are then taken as the basis for an associated hierarchy of gender. Although the (gender) concepts of Identitarian thinking are normative throughout, this intention is projected onto their adversaries – the leftists and the ‘devilish basic concept of universalism and egalitarianism’ 27 – who, according to Sellner, are bent on standardization and opposed to acknowledging diversity. Hence, the perceptions of diversity and of being able and allowed to be different are reduced to supposedly natural differences, with Identitarians as their saviours who valiantly defend their continuing existence. Diversity is not only excluded by the ‘standardization madness and compulsion of identity’ so virulent in Identitarian circles but becomes ‘a hateful object that evokes unbridled anger […]’. 28 These ideologies were vividly enacted, for example, in Sellner's wedding with the US-American Alt-right activist Brittany Pettibone, where they seemingly presented themselves as a perfectly complimentary husband–wife on social media.
Therefore, the boundaries described above create gender identity and at the same time differentiate it by attributing its binary opposite aspects to the respective other. The corresponding idea of purity rejects a ‘blurring’ and ‘mixing’ with regard to gender, ‘ethnic groups’ and ‘cultures’. Not only does it reflect the need for a strict order that provides orientation in an ever-changing world; it also shows the fear of contradictions, ambivalences and ambiguities. Echoing Max Horkheimer, sociologist Karin Stögner emphasizes the objective of this paradigm of exclusion that is characterized by stereotypes and dualisms: it serves the need for a ‘radical reduction of complexity’ that ‘facilitates orientation in a world, which is perceived as increasingly chaotic due to its unresolved antagonisms and contradictions’. 29 Accordingly, the rigid gender dualism serves a protective purpose of keeping individuals safe from the impositions that pluralization and ambiguities might place on them.
Thus, the analysis of the chosen source material shows that the ideological cadres formulated fundamental aspects of gender concepts, particularly during the Identitarians’ beginning years (2012–2015), and thereby defined the ideological agenda. The end of this phase and the beginning of the next stage is marked by the establishment of women-only groups within Identitarian structures and by an increasingly strong focus on issues of women's and gender policy within the political agenda.
Identitarian images of women, women’s policy and women’s groups
The second, peak phase of Identitarian women's and gender policy is firstly marked by the negotiation of identification offers for women within the group, which are not restricted to the role of a mother but, as we will see, are much more diverse. Secondly, this phase is characterized by the founding of women's affiliations within existing structures and by a shift of the political agenda in the direction of ‘our women's protection’, which will play a bigger and bigger role. 30 As the Identitarians carried out numerous actions with ‘women's protection’ as their central theme during the last years, I will give a few examples.
The source material relevant for this phase comes from texts published on the Identitarians’ websites, social media accounts of Identitarian women's groups and YouTube videos such as ‘Eine Botschaft an die Frauen’ (‘A Message to Women’) 31 and the video for the #120db campaign. 32
Identitarian images of women
One of Identitarians’ images of women is the image of the mother. Motherliness is not only assumed as the seemingly natural destination of women but also as an important means of women to prevent the ‘Great Replacement’ by bearing children. Its opposite is the sexualized and thus objectifying portrayal of women. The second image serves a double purpose: on the one hand, these women have become a metaphor for ‘the beauty of one's own’. The numerous images of young women conforming to common norms of beauty, however, also have another function: the sexualized representation is an incentive for male sympathizers to join the group and thus gain access to such women. However, the role of women within the Identitarians is not limited to those two concepts: their duties and responsibilities are also being discussed within the group itself. In one episode of the podcast ‘Leuchtfeuer’ (‘Beacon’) of the Identitarians Berlin-Brandenburg of August 2016, Walter Spatz and Timo Beil discuss a third possible role model – and they find it in the ‘female comrade’, especially in those Germanic women who cheered on their men on the battlefield. 33 This of course means that the comrade also remains the trailing attachment of a man. A partnership of equals seems unthinkable even with a complete commitment to the ‘preservation of one's own’.
In a conclusion, it can be stated that Identitarian images of women are located on the opposite poles of ‘preservation of one's own’ (mother) and ‘beauty of one's own’ (sexualized object); as their synthesis, the ideal of a ‘fight for one's own’ (comrade) is pursued.
Identitarian women’s and gender policy and the campaign against the great replacement
One look at the Identitarians’ political agenda quickly reveals the dominance of two topic blocks: migration and population policy. The imagined ‘replacement of populations’ 34 and the purported fact that ‘we Austrians’ will become extinct 35 are given a racist spin and traced back to immigration; at the same time, there is the claim that ‘we have too few children’. ‘Conjuring up a “demographic apocalypse” thus serves the purpose of re-establishing a conservative concept of family and of pushing through reactionary practices of population policy’. 36 This doomsday mood resulting from the fantasy of the destruction of their ‘own people’ offers another advantage: it presents the Identitarians with the opportunity of portraying themselves as both victims and heroic saviours at the same time. It is a framing narrative that can integrate numerous political topics and which plays a significant role for the Identitarian world view as such. Within the discourses around the ‘Great Replacement’, women play an important role on three different levels. Firstly, the alleged process is seen as a threat to our women. In this scenario, men marked as foreign are portrayed as trying to undermine the rights of women and posing a threat due to their tendency to commit (sexualized) violence. On the other hand, however, women are blamed for the ‘Great Replacement’. In this train of thought, women are enabling the ‘Great Replacement’ in the first place as their voting choices and their altruism bring political parties to power whose policy is refugee-friendly. This suggests that women can blame themselves for potential restrictions of their own rights and for the threat of (sexualized) violence (which is projected to migrant men only) – after all, it had been the women who brought these men into the country.
Finally, on a third level, the responsibility for preventing the Great Replacement by bearing many children is placed on women's shoulders (or rather, their wombs). Hence, only ‘a child- and family-friendly policy’ could safeguard that ‘our people will continue to exist in the future’. 37
From the beginning, representation of women within Identitarian structures has been significantly low, and all leading functions continue to be carried out by men in German-speaking countries. Nevertheless, there have been recurrent attempts by Identitarians to promote women's activism, for example, Mädelgruppe Edelweiß (Maidens Group Edelweiss), founded at the beginning of 2015, and later the group Identitäre Mädels und Frauen (Identitarian Maidens and Women), which has been deleted by Facebook in the meantime. When taking a closer look, however, it becomes apparent that these women's affiliations did not pursue their own political agendas, especially at the beginning, but that they joined and supported the campaigns and topics of their respective national or regional groups. At that time, criticism of the (men within the) group from a perspective of women's policy was not part of their activities, nor was the production of texts more theoretical or substantial than postings on social media. Instead, the majority of all (at that time, numerous) political actions appealed to combative masculinity to protect ‘our women’, for example, when leaflets appealed to ‘Protect Our Women’ or when stating to ‘give victims of imported violence a voice’. 38 In November 2016, a banner with the text ‘You have long forgotten our women’ 39 was unfolded at the federal headquarters of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen with the words ‘Women's Rights’ crossed out and ‘Multiculturalism and Mass Immigration’ highlighted. In February 2016, shortly after the New Year's Eve assaults in Cologne, the Viennese branch of the organization distributed pepper sprays at Praterstern, a lively interchange station in Vienna, along with the demand ‘Protect Women – Close Borders!’. 40 This action was later repeated in a number of German cities (e.g. March 2016 in Paderborn, October 2016 in Rostock, May 2017 in Potsdam and July 2017 in Cottbus). This example also shows that the Identitarians try to stage themselves as defenders of women's rights. In all these instances, women were thus treated as objects or associated with a merely passive role.
Nevertheless, there were two Identitarian projects that did not portray women as protection-worthy objects but put them as active subjects in the foreground, quite to the contrary of the usually male-dominated agitation of the group: The campaign #120db and the blog radikalfeminin. 41 Radikalfeminin was an anti-feminist blog that has since disappeared from the internet. Two female activists with the pseudonyms Franziska (her real name is Annika Stahn) and Marja told the story of ‘how they had escaped the trap of feminism’ via a rather smallish collection of texts. As feminism was not able ‘to solve the problems of our society’ but was ‘one of them itself’, they tried not only to mobilize against the so-called ‘gender madness’ but also – with little success – to rehabilitate traditional roles of men and women. For some time, they used the means of vlogs instead of written blog postings but seem to have given up on these as well in the meantime. For some time, there has not been any activity (as of March 2020). The same is true for their Facebook page, which still exists but has been idle since the beginning of 2018. Franziska's last major appearance was a vlog talk with Martin Sellner (2018) where they discussed a video clip about transgender and intersex identities. On that occasion, they made fun of a supposed ‘dictatorship of opinions’, of ‘indoctrination’ and ‘propaganda’ promoting a portrayed ‘unnaturalness’ of the ‘amalgamation and blurring’ of the genders.
The widest recognition of Identitarian women, however, was attracted by a campaign that also used the same racist narratives described above. At the beginning of 2018, a video was published on the internet under the title of #120db. Several women stated their names – ‘My name is Mia, my name is Maria, my name is Ebba … ’ – and talked about their fear of sexualized violence perpetrated by men defined as migrants due to the then-current acts of violence against women. As they could not feel safe anymore, they said, Identitarian women always had to carry a 120-decibel pocket alarm with them, which explains the name of the campaign. Although the group's corporate identity symbols were not present in the video or on the accompanying campaign website (which are usually placed very prominently), it became clear quite quickly where this project came from: some women in the video were known activists, the owner of the campaign website was Martin Sellner, then-leader of the Austrian Identitarians, and the website's legal information named the leader of the German federal organization, Daniel Fiß, as the publisher. It seems obvious that project's strategy was to reach a greater audience and to create an Identitarian #Aufschrei (yelp, a German hashtag that was used to raise awareness about sexism in 2013) or a right-wing #metoo campaign where experiences with sexual assaults by migrant men could be published on social media. Nevertheless, the project found resonance mainly in far-right circles, thanks to an English version that was also accessible on an international level. The few female publicists from the milieu of the Identitarians, such as Caroline Sommerfeld or Ellen Kositza, also supported the campaign by introducing #120db through articles on the topic in relevant right-wing publications such as Sezession to a broader audience and defending the campaign against criticism. 42
To sum up this phase, it can be said that women gained visibility in the Identitarian context mainly through gender-specific topics including ‘female topics’ such as motherhood and conservative perceptions of gender roles and partnership. On the other hand, it became clear that the Identitarians used their supposed commitment for ‘women's rights’ mainly to convey topics that could be communicated with a racist spin, or to popularize the image of the vulnerable woman needy of protection. One example was a manifestation of Identitarians in Berlin in 2017 when Paula Winterfeldt took the stage and talked from an authentic perspective about the (racist) concerns of women. As she put it, she remembered ‘very well a time […] when Europe was not beset by the scourge of terror and mass rape. A time when we had deodorants in our handbags and not pepper spray’. These times, she continued, had changed as by now ‘hordes of men’ were attacking defenceless women; she was even considering ‘secretly getting a headscarf in order to pass through the city at night more securely’, Winterfeldt added. 43 As this speech was not only heard at the manifestation but also quoted by numerous media, it became noticed by a wider public. When the march took off, there were mainly women to be seen in the first rows. This created an image that was widely used in the media coverage: many media illustrated their texts with pictures of these women and explicitly discussed their high visibility. One example is the title ‘Rechte Schwestern ganz vorn’ (‘Right-wing sisters right in the front’) 44 of a report by Maria Fiedler in the daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.
Not very surprisingly, journalists have continued to show great interest in this topic as they feel that they have found a ‘novelty’ of right-wing extremist policy. However, this neglects the fact that the extreme right has been trying for quite some time now to project the threat of sexualized violence onto men defined as migrants while negating it within their own ‘collective’. What can be considered as ‘new’, though, is the success that several right-wing and far-right groups have been able to score by bringing these scenarios of fear into the public discourse. Accordingly, this topic has widened the potential of mobilization beyond the extreme right, and it has seemingly helped them to be perceived as part of the political centre: after all, sexualized violence, assaults and abuse are not specifically right-wing topics, and the fear of a threat (to ‘our women’) is also deeply rooted in the supposed centre of society. On top of that, these narratives have provided the activists with an opportunity to present themselves as alleged forces of Enlightenment and as defenders of Western values like women's rights. This ‘trend’ was used by the Identitarians as well, as could be seen in their campaigns and actions. The end of this peak phase was marked by the failure of the #120db campaign (because it had not been able to attract enough supporters) and of the Identitarians as a whole during the last years – but also by the drop-out of committed female activists from the group and their publicly stated criticism.
Excursus: The role of men, threatened masculinity and strategies of re-masculinization
In contrast to the Identitarian images of femininity, explicit statements on the group's perceptions of men and masculinity are relatively scarce, although one might presume otherwise. This is surprising given that there is an internal debate about the crisis and meaning of masculinity within right-wing extremism. This which can be seen, for example, in the anti-feminist justifications of right-wing terrorist attacks such as in Christchurch, Halle and El Paso, as well as in the publications of authors such as Jack Donovan. Masculinity (and thus also the ability to defend the nation and the Volk) is usually seen as endangered, whereas feminism, as one of the core enemy images, is held responsible for corresponding developments. These debates mostly aim at a re-polarization and re-naturalization of sex (against gender), both of which also have an impact on the (complementary) Identitarian discourse about femininity.
One look at their political offers reveals that Identitarians try to call on men (by means of various political articulations) to take on their seemingly natural duty – the defence of the fatherland, of the German Volk and of women – to strike back on their behalf or at least to become combative again. The Identitarians’ frequent appeals to a soldierly, virile masculinity are not least due to the fact that they consider it threatened or even believe it to be lost. In the Identitarians’ point of view, already the generation of 68 – whom they see as a ‘turning point in Europe's way to a self-hating, decadent society’
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and thus as the reason of many, if not all social grievances – was responsible for ‘taking away masculinity from men’. ‘Family, culture, homeland, tradition, gender and a thousand other things you did destroy’, writes Markus Willinger in his pamphlet ‘The Identitarian Generation. A Declaration of War on the Generation of 68’.
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Among the many allegations, he accuses them on the one hand of having shaken the fundamental concepts of existing orders, and on the other, of making it impossible to be a ‘real man’ or a ‘real woman’, which seems to be the real tragedy. In his chapter ‘Of the Genders’, he expresses this conviction in the following way: ‘Of all the fights you have fought, the fight against the genders has been the most disgusting. […] YOU have taken masculinity away from men. You have brought them up to be weakly cuddly bears who lack any vigour, any courage for strength, in one sentence: any will to power’.
47
French neo-fascist and Identitarian mastermind, Guillaume Faye, also lamented in his text ‘Why we fight. Manifesto of the European Resistance’ the ‘castration of the European man which the alien colonizers […] themselves are not affected by’. 48 In this train of thought, the horror scenario of the loss of ‘real’ men and of masculinity itself is linked to the loss of national, ethnic and/or völkisch sovereignty, valour and strength. ‘The masculinity of a people, however, is prerequisite for its continuing existence throughout history’. 49 This picture is painted in even more menacing colours as the imagined ‘demise’ and ‘Great Replacement’ of the Volk is presented as having already begun. Furthermore, the men perceived as invaders and defined as aliens are portrayed as quite virile and hence would easily take over society. This means that masculinity is delimited in three directions: not only against women but also against feminized, weak men on the one hand and against migrant men on the other.
Responsibility for this ‘de-masculinization’ 50 is attributed to the anti-authoritarian upbringing by the generation of 68, by a decline or even loss of values due to decadence, liberalism, feminism and a cult of homosexuality, by the decline in birth rates among the native population, and finally, by the welcoming culture towards migrants. Faye is not alone in his complaints that men too rarely need to prove themselves in combat. The same is stated by another Identitarian role model: Jack Donovan. In his book The Way of Men, 51 the ‘author and bodybuilder’ proposed a tribal organization of men where they would determine among them the strongest who would then become their leader. One year later, in his book Becoming a Barbarian, 52 he gave advice on how men could become barbarians and thus valiant again. ‘Becoming a barbarian means to swap the universalistic morality – which benefits the ‘Empire’ – for a specific morality that benefits a specific people and that values the demands of this people more highly than the demands of any outsiders’. 53 This shows, as Winkler puts it, that ‘ideologies of collective identity with their highly influential categories of culture, gender and nation […] provide a quasi-pre-political and seemingly natural basis of identity able to justify socio-political rights and privileges through the exclusion of all “others”’. 54
Re-masculinization: The last generation
Even though the Identitarians have gone to great lengths to present themselves as ‘non-violent activists’ 55 since their founding in 2012, their activist practice has often shown a different picture. Numerous documented attacks on political adversaries speak a different language than that of a patriotic NGO. However, the Identitarians’ propensity to violence is not only reflected in their (figurative) language, which is characterized by the frequent use of metaphors of combat and war, related imagery as well as pop-cultural references (‘300’, ‘Fight Club’ etc.), but also in their perceptions of combative masculinity. As Donovan and others have stated, it is ultimately violence that not only reinstates masculinity but also asserts dominance towards persons who have been defined as foreign and/or different. Violence, he says, is a means of defending their own identity against ‘the others’, thus making obsolete the question of ‘[whether] the use of force against people who were not his people was good or bad’. The only question was whether this course of action was a promising option. It is only through this way, Donovan carries on, that a ‘culture of strength’ can be created – after all, ‘everyone needs to get hit in the face every now and then’. 56 Through this lens, there is a direct link between the use of force and (gender) identity, leading to the conclusion that one is impossible without the other, and violence is a necessary requirement for re-masculinization.
The Identitarians’ ideology, too, presents (male) violence as the seemingly ultimate solution for ‘the last generation to stop the Great Replacement’. They also share this affinity for violence with neo-Nazi groups and those who actually support violent confrontations as part of their political practice. In their worldview, the imagined demise is about to commence as ‘the Great Replacement’ has long begun; in such an apocalyptic mood, any means to stop it seems right and acceptable. The readiness to put up a fight in case of an ‘emergency’ and to strike a blow is not only established on a verbal level but also practised in martial arts camps. In this logic, forcibly fighting the problem of an ‘imposed blending’ easily turns into supposedly legitimate self-defence. The gunman of the Christchurch mosque shootings in March 2019 also believed in the conspirational plan of a ‘replacement of populations’, 57 which had been popularized largely by Identitarians; he saw it as a legitimate reason for brutally murdering 51 people based on racist motives. Therefore, it was no coincidence that his manifesto carried the same title as the Identitarian campaign: there is an extensive overlapping not only with Identitarian ideology, but also with the extreme right as a whole, that goes way beyond the wording of the title. Like the Identitarians, the attacker evoked the racist concept of ethnopluralism. It proposes to safeguard the ‘ethnic survival’ by means of a global apartheid where all ‘peoples’ are to live in clear separation from each other. Another thing they have in common are the reasons that are associated with the imagined threat of demise: low birth rates of the autochthonous population and the lack of combativeness in men. These convictions can also be found in other right-wing terrorists. The assailant perpetrating the attacks in El Paso, where 22 people were murdered, and in Halle, Germany, where two persons were shot, also referred to this conspirational narrative and gave similarly racist, anti-feminist and, in the case of Halle, genuinely anti-Semitic reasons for their actions. These cases exemplify how ‘the war of words’ and the ‘clash of cultures’ can lead to action, and how perceptions of masculinity (of the extreme right) are inextricably linked with violence.
The demise: Failure and disappointment of Identitarian projects
The third and last phase since 2017 has been characterized by massive setbacks for the Identitarians in the German-speaking countries, where their political relevance has been greatly reduced and where they hardly attract any medial or political attention. Their last campaigns flopped, and their marches (Spielfeld (Styria), Vienna 2016, Berlin 2017) were successfully blocked by antifascists. The low turnout at their rallies and events (such as in Dresden 2017) showed that they had lost their capacity for mobilization; they were far from really having become a movement. This trend was further strengthened by their lack of new ideas of how to gain more attention. New projects such as the Identitarian dating app Patriot Peer have been announced repeatedly but look like they will be a long time coming. In times where right-wing extremist parties form part of the government (as was the case in Austria 2017–2019) or are at least successful in parliamentary elections (as is the case in Germany), the need for an extra-parliamentary extreme right seems to have decreased. Moreover, mention should be made of the organizational difficulties that Identitarians have been facing in the past years, among them cancellations of bank accounts, discussions of dissolving the associations, ejections of Identitarian centres, house searches, investigations into tax evasions, and the formation of a criminal association.
In the wake of the right-wing terror attack in Christchurch, the group had returned to the centre of attention due to the ideological proximity of the attacker and his donation to the leader of the Austrian section. The events caused large-scale distanciation in the right-wing camp: first, the Austrian political party FPÖ discontinued their contact (under pressure) with the Identitarians, and then towards the end of 2019 the far-right publisher, Götz Kubitschek, announced that the Identitarians’ brand had been ‘contaminated to untouchability’. 58 Despite repeatedly surfacing scandals that have been triggered by personnel overlaps between party officials and Identitarian activists, the German AfD has also adopted a widely distanced attitude.
Failure of #120db
#120db, the last significant Identitarian campaign, did not turn out to be very successful. This can be attributed to, amongst other things, the fact that at least part of the media had learned and did not fall for the group's media strategy of attracting (uncritical, uncommented) attention through supposed scandals and breaches of taboo. On the contrary, a number of journalists had devoted time to do some research and written detailed background articles on the ‘pseudo-feminist campaign’ (Jungle World), the ‘wrong feminism’ (ze.tt), and the ‘feminism from the far-right’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung). All in all, as Jäger et al. show, only 19 articles regarding #120db were published between January and May 2018, most of them in left-liberal daily newspapers and only a few in bourgeois/conservative media. 59 Given the fact-resistant reproduction of known stereotypes in the 2018 video and the refusal to mention White men as perpetrators of sexualized violence even in passing, this was no hard decision to make at all. Two things became clear in the far-right reception of #120db: ‘… neither does misogynist violence by native men play a role, nor is it of any interest once they are perceived as migrants and not German or, at least, European’. 60
Furthermore, as violent crimes (against women) by perpetrators marked as migrants are generally covered quite widely in the reporting media, the right-wing strategy of presenting a breach of taboo did not work out. Another reason for the lack of success might be found in the fact that the campaign was neither original nor new – after all, far-right groups have been using the topic for quite some time, as mentioned above, and hence did not differentiate the Identitarians at all. This might explain why the turnout of great masses who were asked to share their experiences with men marked as migrants under the hashtag on social media or on the campaign website remained limited. Apart from the right-wing extremist bubble and the anti-fascist public, the campaign did not gain much prominence. The disruption of a discussion event during the Berlinale film festival of 2018, the distribution of stickers and leaflets, and other symbolic actions in several German cities could not help to turn the tide.
Internal failure
While some female Identitarian activists in the German-speaking countries, including Melanie Schmitz, Alina Wychera and Ingrid Weiß, withdrew to find a family and have children, others such as Lisa Licentia ended their activities in the Identitarian context for different reasons. Licentia had shortly been the new female rising star in far-right circles and, according to her own statements, one of the leading women of the #120db campaign. In April 2019, she had started her own YouTube channel 61 that was recommended by such leading Identitarians as Sellner and thus reached a large audience. The topics of her videos are in line with the classical subjects of the extreme right in German-speaking countries: racist criticism of Islam, agitation against migrants and political opponents, accusations against mainstream media of silencing important information, as well as coverage of right-wing and also leftist events. After only a short while, she had gained more than 35,000 followers. It did not take long, however, for her to leave the Identitarians. In June 2019, she announced her departure from the group on YouTube and Twitter, citing as a reason the fact that Identitarian men including the German federal leader, Daniel Fiß, had ‘erased’ the women's group and that #120db had been terminated on his request. Subsequently, the social media accounts related to #120db were deleted shortly after and no new content was produced anymore. 62 Lisa Licentia herself posted a few more times, such as on Twitter where she concluded that the Identitarians’ main activists were ‘worse misogynists than some Islamists’. In an interview with an Austrian right-wing magazine with some proximity to the FPÖ in December 2019, she talked about never really having been accepted, being a single mother of three. On top of that, she added that several leading cadres had never liked the idea of her being the daughter of a Muslim migrant. 63 Further criticism concentrated on the increasingly commercial use of the Identitarian brand, the cadres’ elitist habitus and the instrumentalization of women so that the groups’ men could get out of the critical public's focus. However, the example of Lisa Licentia also shows that leaving the group does not necessarily mean turning one's back on their ideology. It is no surprise that in the meantime, several other groups have formed in the German-speaking countries that criticize sexualized violence under similarly racist auspices. One of them is the ‘Homeland Collective’ (‘Heimatkollektiv’) and the women's initiative ‘Lukreta’ that attribute a ‘new kind of violence against women […] to the beginning of the “asylum crisis” of 2015’ und demand action against ‘misogyny and imported sexual violence’. 64 Lisa Licentia has also been continuing her activities as a right-wing YouTuber and blogger.
To conclude, it can be said that Lisa Licentia's main reason for leaving the group had been the sexism with which she had been confronted. Although she is the Identitarians’ only former female activist to have spoken publically about this, it seems plausible that other (former) activists might share her disappointment and have thus turned away from the group as well. Consequently, it can be said for this third phase that topics of women's and gender policy have been pushed into the background of the group's political agitation, especially with the latest failure of the #120db campaign, even though they still play a role within the framework narrative of the Great Replacement. Women's associations within the Identitarians have also lost significance even if they did not terminate their activities completely (or became terminated). For example, the Twitter accounts of the IBFrauen (IB women) and the campaign #120db were deleted and the Facebook group Identitäre Mädels und Frauen (Identitarian Girls and Women) fell under the ban of identitarian accounts from social media platforms and no longer exist since then. While the YouTube videos of #120db and radikalfeminin were deleted, the Facebook pages of these two attempts to organize themselves as women within the Identitarians are still online (as of July 2020). It can only be speculated as to why the radikalfeminin and #120db websites are now offline, so it is possible that license contracts with regard to radikalfeminin have expired or that they have been deliberately deleted because no new content has been produced for a long time and the campaign #120db had been stopped. Currently, new social media accounts of identitarian groups of women cannot be found in German-speaking countries, while only a few (former) activists are still active on the Internet with their private accounts. In mid-July 2020, several identitarian accounts were also banned from YouTube, Twitter and Tiktok due to violations of corporate guidelines.
Identitarians in Austria have increasingly been distancing themselves from their brand since the end of 2019 or the beginning of 2020 as they try to establish a ‘citizens movement’ called Die Österreicher (The Austrians); in Germany, the buzz about Identitarians has also quieted down, a few smaller scandals around connections between AfD politicians and Identitarians notwithstanding. The media as well as experts of right-wing extremism do not assume a significant future role for the Identitarians, who could soon be confined to the history books.
Conclusion: Identitarian feminists?
One final question remains: where to place the activism of Identitarian women or the Identitarian women's and gender policy within the context of feminist debates. In the virtual as in the real world, the commitment of Identitarian women was characterized by numerous contradictions and ambivalences. On the one hand, they received visibility, attention, recognition and opportunities of participation. As political activists, they tried to make use of existing platforms for creative political action, carry their concerns to the public and influence discourses and events within society. Especially because they were seen and heard by the public, their commitment could be seen as effective and meaningful, which can be experienced as empowering. On the other hand, women had purposefully been pushed to the foreground for special occasions such as marches and the articulation of political concerns including sexualized violence when perpetrated by men defined as migrants. This strategic visibility used to be valuable for the group because it helped to formulate a modern and more harmless image of the Identitarians or to appeal to the combativeness of certain men with a threat to ‘our women’. Accordingly, the described opportunities for participation have been limited by gender-stereotypical ideas regarding the division of roles within right-wing political struggles, and also by the group's men themselves.
When examining the way in which feminism is discussed and referred to in Identitarian circles, it also seems too easy to simply brush them off as ‘anti-feminist’. Instead, at least three different approaches can be observed. First of all, feminism is depicted as part of the demonized modern era and the ‘levelling-down left’, and has thus become one of the central focal points of hostility. A second way that Identitarians challenge feminism is their search for some kind of ‘völkisch feminism’ as they deliberately adopt biologist rhetoric. On the one hand, they try to maintain the supposedly natural roles of men and women in order to ensure the continued existence of the Volksgemeinschaft (national community), but, on the other, they are committed to increasing the value of women and to equate them in recognition of their diversity. The third approach involves a reinterpretation of anti-feminism. This strategy is employed mainly whenever Identitarians present themselves as the defenders of women's rights. 65 Since 2016, a video has been present on YouTube where Identitarian women speak of several acts of violence that were perpetrated by migrant men against women. This video and other similar publications usually refer to the sexual assaults during the New Year's Eve celebrations in Cologne in 2015. The central point, however, is not the condemnation of violence against women as such – the topic is only brought to the foreground in order to propagate the group's racist worldview. Violence against women perpetrated by German men is completely ignored and the issue is completely projected onto asylum seekers. This pattern was also used by the Identitarian campaign, #120db.
In the course of this ‘ethnic association’ of sexualized violence, leftists and feminists have been accused of having betrayed women with their refugee-friendly policy. With hostility towards women thus projected to persons defined as migrants on the one hand and to the political left on the other, it was hence possible for the Identitarians to portray themselves as the ‘defenders of women's rights’. Gender equality is not only presented as ‘our value’ but also contrasted with the ‘gender battles’ that allegedly destroy the ‘natural’ relationship between men and women.
Again and again, the racist as well as sexist charging of such argumentation becomes obvious: hostility towards women in mainstream society and within their own group is negated, and the legitimacy of universal equality or of calling out inequality and discrimination is undermined. This discursive reversal tries to establish those who take a stand against discrimination and oppression as traitors of women's causes, whereas Identitarian sexists and anti-feminists become ‘women's rights campaigners’. At the same time, it becomes clear that the argument does not centre around open sexism but uses a recognition of equal rights on the basis of gender dualism. This in turn presents an opportunity to rant against a supposed egalitarianism and a ‘levelling down’ of all supposedly natural differences. Aftenberger supports this analysis: ‘Authors of the New Right usually stress the importance of equal rights but at the same time criticize a levelling-down egalitarianism that allegedly does not take into account womanly values’. 66 Similar to the reasoning pattern of ethnopluralism and neo-racism, which gave racist attitudes a modern face, the gender-related statements also serve the purpose of modernization; one might very well speak of neo-antifeminism. As noted above, the Identitarians advocate equal rights but oppose the concept of an equality in nature. The parallels to ethnopluralism are obvious: just like the ‘diversity of peoples’, there is a difference between the (two) genders that needs to be honoured by different treatment. In this context, as Aftenberger supports, they use ‘the term of diversity – similar to the neo-racist discourse – for yet another biologization of social conditions and the distribution of tasks. With their cry for real equality, they basically demand the continuation of the status quo’. 67
