Susanne Pickel: RiRa aims to capture a spiral of radicalization. We start at the level of feelings of threat, which can then escalate to violence via mutual prejudice, discrimination, and exclusion processes. The end result is a withdrawal from democratic processes. We try to come closer to understanding these radicalization dynamics. At the same time, we would like to develop collective preventive measures to counteract these processes, so that we can also promote exits from this spiral.
Susanne Pickel: My own focus is political culture research. I look at attitudes toward political objects. In other words, I ask myself specifically: Is democracy in Germany perceived as worthy of recognition and do people accept it as the best system for our society? Is there a basic trust in parties and politicians? What about satisfaction with democracy, i.e., the effectiveness of the government? We observe, for example, that a large proportion of AfD voters no longer identify with democracy at all. This suggests that radicalization is accompanied by a withdrawal from democracy. In my subproject, I investigate how, in the progress of the radicalization spiral, this withdrawal becomes more and more pronounced. I ask why that is and want to find out how to counteract it.
Riem Spielhaus: In my subproject, we are looking at Islam-related contents of school textbooks in four subject clusters - geography, history, politics and social studies. Our Leipzig colleagues look at the textbooks on religion and worldviews. Together, we take stock of certain patterns and trends. We pay special attention to how frequently and in what contexts and frames Islam is addressed. So far, for example, we have been able to determine that the thematization of Islam in political textbooks has increased dramatically between 2011 and 2019.
Gert Pickel: We focus on feelings of threat. Specifically, we investigate radicalization tendencies that can be observed in right-wing extremism in relation to Muslims. The fundamental factor is a perceived threat from Muslims or Islam.
These feelings of threat can also provide key explanations for radicalization from right-wing populism to right-wing extremism. Particularly, however, we are researching how radicalization processes take place, especially among young people.
Susanne Pickel: My subproject integrates a science-practice tandem that works very closely with schools and wants to establish a democracy class there. This class should be co-designed by as many teachers and students as possible and carried on after the end of the project. The goal is a sustainable introduction to democratic processes and conveying democracy in schools. To develop this format, we have initiated different types of interviews. We talk to dropouts from the radical scene and to people who are perhaps in the process of becoming radicalized. But we also talk to ordinary students. Through several discussions, we want to understand why students become radicalized - or why they do not.
We are also working with a representative survey, which we are conducting in cooperation with the Leipzig Authoritarianism Study.
Riem Spielhaus: From our previous collaboration with the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin, we were able to offer workshops on Islam for editors, publishers, and authors working in textbook publishing. During this year, we focused on images of Islam and on Islam in visual representations. This allowed us to discuss stereotypes and ideational ideas about Islam. As a result, we are faced with the task of determining what the challenges are for education, the media, and publishers with regard to the portrayal of Islam and how these can be addressed. At the same time, we also want to raise awareness of the impact of images in order to show the extent to which they sometimes convey problematic content.
Gert Pickel: In the preparatory work for my project, we evaluated secondary analyses, including the Leipzig Authoritarianism Study of 2020. By doing so, we wanted to gather ideas and initial results that we will now examine in more detail. Currently, we are constructing a new questionnaire. The goal of it is to conduct a survey among Muslims to see what their threat perceptions are and whether they feel threatened by right-wing extremists and right-wing discourses or discourses in general.
Susanne Pickel: Corona pretty much messed up the timeline of our interviews. We had originally planned to conduct the interviews before the summer break in North Rhine-Westphalia. We had to postpone that until the fall.
Especially with students, interviews cannot be conducted via Zoom if we want to offer them further experience and achieve authentic results.
Riem Spielhaus: Getting to know each other in such a big project was not easy for us. It's obviously more exhausting sitting in front of the screen. You can't fully get to know each other's personalities, but it was still possible to work together effectively. It's good that we can now meet again in person, but I think we might even keep certain formats and continue to do some things online.
Gert Pickel: For researchers, who are partly desk jockeys, many things were still practicable during the pandemic. But surveys in particular took place under special conditions during the Corona period. It is very difficult to find out whether there is a Corona effect or not. This question will continue to concern us in the coming year.