Repression and the Public Sphere: Discursive Opportunities for Repression against the Extreme Right in Germany in the 1990s

Abstract

Argues that recognizing repression as an act of strategic communication in the public sphere is critical for understanding contentious politics in modern democracies. It is contended that political communication is now dependent on the dynamics of public discourse in the mass media. The mediating role of public discourse in shaping the conditions & consequences of repression is described as a set of "discursive opportunities" that explain why some messages are diffused & others are not. It was hypothesized that: 1) repression reacts to violence as portrayed in the media; 2) the extreme right's lack of legitimacy enhances the diffusion of repression; & 3) the problematic nature of immigrants makes diffusion less likely. Theoretical aspects are explored & the argument is empirically tested through an analysis of 11,000 claims of repression against xenophobic & extreme right groups/individuals in Germany that were published in three Frankfurt newspapers in the period 1990-99. The results confirmed all four hypotheses. 1 Table, 1 Figure, 26 References. J. Lindroth