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For electoral purposes, Germany’s far-right AfD party masks its xenophobia and anti-migration policies by portraying itself as a guardian of Holocaust remembrance and defender of the State of Israel. Now with a seat in the Bundestag, it is forcing the other parties to join its positions by anticipating them.

After the Second World War, most former Nazis were certain that they (and their Führer) would have won the war if there had not been a national-conservative opposition among the traditional elites, i. e. diplomats, bureaucrats, and the officer corps. It took the West German political mainstream years to adopt the notion of resistance to Hitler as part of a positive tradition. By 1990, however, it had become received wisdom that men like Colonel Claus Graf Stauffenberg were positive examples of how some, albeit very few, had stood up against injustice and repression. Only on the extreme right fringe could authors still defame the resisters as traitors. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), started in 2013 as a Eurosceptic party, was soon hijacked by elements of the far Right. One example is the New Right’s discussion of the resistance. While some proclaim that “Stauffenberg was a traitor”, others claim the 1944 opposition for their own heritage. By harnessing it for their cause, the memory of the conspiracy and its generally positive connotations in German public opinion, the German New Right is attempting to attract centre or centre-right voters who are disappointed with Angela Merkel’s pro-European policies.

The article is dedicated to the question of how health and disease discourses are linked to the migration discourse in AfD election programs. For this purpose, twenty election programs of the party from the years 2016 to 2021 are evaluated in terms of content, which were adopted for the elections to the state parliaments, the Bundestag and the European Parliament. Based on the evaluation, seven different sub-discourses can be identified in which health or disease-related topics are linked to the migration discourse. The focus here is on the portrayal of migrants as carriers of diseases, as a danger to the health of the population and in particular of health care workers, and on the exploitation and thus endangerment of the German health care system by migrants. Statistical analysis shows that references to these motifs occur continuously in the programs studied. A significantly stronger access to these discourses can be demonstrated in election programs from the new German states. In general, migrants are directly or indirectly portrayed as a threat to the health of the population in all sub-discourses. Overall, it can be shown that references to health and illness discourses are integrated by the AfD into its xenophobic program in order to generate feelings of threat and fear among voters. Overall, the AfD is thus less concerned with the issues of health and illness than with reinforcing xenophobic emotions among the population.

In diesem Beitrag untersuchen wir, welchen spezifischen Einfluss Faktoren der politischen Raumkultur auf die regionalen Unterschiede in den Corona Inzidenzverläufen in den beiden Expansionsphasen der Pandemie im Frühjahr 2020 sowie im Herbst/Winter 2020 hatten. Ausgehend von der Annahme, dass in Regionen mit hohem Zuspruch zu Parteien der radikalen Rechten eine höhere Skepsis bzw. Distanz zu demokratischen Institutionen und damit einhergehend eine geringere Akzeptanz der Schutzmaßnahmen vorherrscht, prüfen wir, inwiefern sich diese Unterschiede in der politischen Raumkultur auf die Inzidenzentwicklungen auswirken. Wir nutzen neben Daten zum Infektionsgeschehen die Wahlergebnisse und Nichtwählendenanteile vergangener Bundestagswahlen und zahlreiche soziostrukturelle Variablen für die 401 Kreise und kreisfreien Städte. Zur Modellierung der dynamischen An- und Abstiegsphasen greifen wir auf latente Wachstumsmodelle zurück. Die Ergebnisse zeigen hohe signifikante Effekte der AfD-Zweitstimmenanteile auf die Anstiege der Infektionszahlen in beiden Wellen – sowohl in Ost- als auch in Westdeutschland. Für andere im Bundestag vertretene Parteien lassen sich keine systematischen Effekte auf die Anstiegsphase beider Wellen finden. Dazu kann gezeigt werden, dass auch die Zweitstimmenanteile rechtsextremer Kleinparteien und die Nichtwählendenanteile zu den Bundestagswahlen 2005 und 2013 positive Effekte auf die Inzidenzentwicklungen haben; das weist auf eine hohe Persistenz politischer und demokratischer Distanz in Teilen dieser Regionen hin.

In den letzten Jahren hat die Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) das Thema Wohnen zunehmend in ihren Wahlprogrammen aufgegriffen und für die eigene politische Profilierung genutzt. Der Beitrag zeigt, inwiefern die Thematisierung des Wohnens bei der AfD so formuliert ist, dass es erhebliche Anknüpfungspunkte an rechtes Gedankengut herstellt. Der Beitrag thematisiert die damit verbundenen Herausforderungen für eine kritische Stadtforschung sowie für progressive soziale Bewegungen. Er plädiert dafür, sich der Gefahr der rechten Vereinnahmung des Themas Wohnen bewusst zu sein und sich deutlich von den rechten Übernahmeversuchen abzugrenzen sowie Gegenstrategien zu entwickeln.

This article analyses the formal and lived organisation of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD, Alternative for Germany). We show that the party is exceptional among what is usually understood as the populist radical right (PRR) party family, at least from an organisational perspective: The AfD sharply contradicts the “standard model” of PRR party organisation, which emphasises “charismatic” leadership and the centralisation of power as key features. Instead, studying the AfD’s efforts to adopt some elements of a mass-party organisation and its relatively decentralised decision-making underlines the importance of “movement-party” strategy, collective leadership, and internal democracy—concepts that are usually associated with Green and left-wing parties. Our analysis shows how the party’s organisation is essential for understanding its development more broadly as it reflects and reinforces sharp intra-party conflict. From this perspective, the case of the AfD sheds new light on the relationship between PRR party organisation and electoral success, indicating the importance of strong ties to parts of society over effective internal management as long as demand for anti-immigration parties is high. We conclude that even though AfD quickly built up a relatively inclusive organisational structure, the role of both its leadership and its rank-and-file is still a matter of controversy.

Abstract Aim We investigated the value of serial cardiac 18F-FDG PET-MRI in Anderson–Fabry disease (AFD) and the potential relationship of imaging results with FASTEX score. Methods and results Thirteen AFD patients underwent cardiac 18F-FDG PET-MRI at baseline and follow-up. Coefficient of variation (COV) of FDG uptake and FASTEX score were assessed. At baseline, 9 patients were enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) naïve and 4 patients were under treatment. Two patients presented a FASTEX score of 0 indicating stable disease and did not show any imaging abnormality at baseline and follow-up PET-MRI. Eleven patients had a FASTEX score > 20% indicating disease worsening. Four of these patients without late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) and with normal COV at baseline and follow-up had a FASTEX score of 35%. Three patients without LGE and with abnormal COV at baseline and follow-up had a FASTEX score ranging from 30 to 70%. Three patients with LGE and abnormal COV at baseline and follow-up had a FASTEX score between 35 and 75%. Finally, one patient with LGE and normal COV had a FASTEX score of 100%. Of the 12 patients on ERT at follow-up, FASTEX score was significantly higher in those 4 showing irreversible cardiac injury at baseline compared to 8 with negative LGE (66 ± 24 vs. 32 ± 21, p = 0.03). Conclusion 18F-FDG PET-MRI may be effective to monitor cardiac involvement in AFD.

Der Beitrag untersucht medienbezogene Einstellungen und das Ausmaß des Verschwörungsglaubens von Menschen mit AfD-Wahlpräferenz. Er greift die Debatte über Kampfbegriffe wie „Lügenpresse“ und „Systemmedien“ auf und erweitert die Radikalisierungsforschung um einen kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Zugang. Dafür verwendet er das Konzept des „Medienzynismus“. Es bezeichnet ein Einstellungsmuster mit verschwörungsideologischen Zügen: Journalist*innen werden als Lügner und System-Kollaborateure betrachtet. Der Beitrag analysiert auch die Mediennutzung von Menschen mit AfD-Präferenz sowie ihre Einstellungen zu Gewalt. Die Basis bilden vier Bevölkerungsumfragen aus den Jahren 2016 bis 2019. Die Daten wurden in Regressionsanalysen und mit einem Strukturgleichungsmodell ausgewertet. Dabei zeigt sich die Radikalität der AfD-Gruppe: Bei ihr sind Medienzynismus und Verschwörungsglaube stark ausgeprägt. Dies geht mit einer überdurchschnittlichen Nutzung „alternativer“ Medien und einem höheren Verständnis für die Anwendung von Gewalt einher. Die Studie findet keine eindeutigen Hinweise für eine sich verschärfende Radikalisierung im Zeitverlauf, aber auch keine Abschwächung. Die Befunde stützen Befürchtungen, dass der Verschwörungsglaube mit einer Affinität zu Gewalt verbunden und die Radikalisierung durch eine spezifische Mediennutzung gefördert werden kann.

The repair performance of the so-called self-healing polymer systems has been extensively studied in recent works. However, the characterization methodology carried out to analyze the repair performance of these materials has not been widely discussed. Herein, a study of the influence of the characterization parameters on the self-healing capabilities of a 2-Aminophenyl disulfide (AFD)/epoxy system via convective heating is carried out. Results show a decrease in the self-healing efficiency proportional to the damage depth. Finally, increasing the healing temperature and time does not significantly affect the repair performance, obtaining similar self-healing efficiency values (>>95%) in all cases.

Right-wing populists are on the rise in Europe in the last decade. Their populism undermines one of the central pillars of democracy, the political discourse. Populism affects the quality of political debates in parliaments. With the emergence of the “Alternative für Deutschland” (AfD) a populist party became relevant nationally for the first time in over sixty years. By applying the concept of Cognitive Complexity as an instrument to measure deliberative quality, we analyze to what extend the discourse quality in the German Bundestag in debates on immigration policies varied over the 18th legislative period. Cognitive Complexity is measured quantitatively by applying a linguistic approach based on the LIWC dictionary. Despite our initial expectations, there are no trends detectable and the rise of the populist AfD does not alter the discourse quality so far. Nonetheless, there exist major differences in discourse quality between the parties, most notably opposition parties have a lower discourse quality in their statements than governing parties. In addition, individual characteristics of the speaker such as gender, age or electoral type do not render any differences. However, there seem to be differences depending on the federal state in which the speaker’s electoral district lies.

2010 yılının sonlarından itibaren başlayan Arap Baharı ile birlikte Afrika ve Asya kıtalarındaki Müslüman ülkelerden Avrupa Birliği üyesi ülkelere yönelik büyük bir göç dalgası yaşanmıştır. Almanya bu göç dalgasından en çok etkilenen ülkelerin başında yer almaktadır. Bu süreçte, Almanya için Alternatif (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) adında göçmen karşıtı politikaları ile ön plana çıkan aşırı sağ eğilimli bir parti 2013 yılında Almanya’da kuruldu. 2017 yılının Eylül ayında yapılan Alman Federal Seçimleri’nde AfD, İkinci Dünya Savaşı’ndan sonra Almanya’da aşırı sağ eğilimli siyasi partilerin hiç birinin elde edemediği %12,6’lık oy oranı ile seçimde üçüncü parti olmayı başardı. Bu çalışmada, kuruluşunun dördüncü yılında seçimlerde Almanya’nın en büyük üçüncü partisi olan AfD’nin başarısında, uyguladığı propaganda faaliyetlerinin rolü açıklanmaya çalışılmıştır. Çalışmada amaçlı örneklem metodu kullanılarak belirlenen AFD’nin 2017 Alman Federal Seçimleri’nde kullandığı göçmen karşıtı üç propaganda afişi ünlü İsviçreli Dil Bilimci Ferdinand de Saussure’ün Göstergeler Sistemi temelinde nitel araştırma yöntemlerinden göstergebilimsel analiz yöntemi kullanılarak incelenmiştir. Çalışma kapsamında incelenen propaganda afişleri AfD’nin resmi web sitesinden elde edilmiştir. Elde edilen bulgular çerçevesinde, propaganda posterlerinde AfD’nin, Saussure’ün gösterilen boyutunda, Almanya’nın göçmenlere ihtiyaç duymadığı ve gelecek olan göçmenlerin Almanya’daki mevcut düzeni yıkmaya çalışacağı algıları üzerinden propaganda faaliyetini yürüttüğü gözlemlenmiştir.

The spectacular extension of the European populism is permanently put forward on the occasion of the domestic elections within the Member States. Meanwhile, because it was almost rigidly reflected by politicians or media, the insight of this political phenomenon is not still well percieved. The current article tryied to focus on the primarly issues affecting populism than proceeding to its detailed assesment in different countries. The article emphasized the fact that the Union’s disfunctionalities has largely contributed to the acceleration of the internal anti-European project trend. In the author’s opinion, the populist voting effects didn’t receive adequate answers from the EU. The European construction could enter in a blockge if the Union does not strongly reaffirms its traditional values and principles.

Ausgehend von der Kontroverse zwischen klassen- und identitätspolitischen Erklärungsmustern für den gesellschaftlichen Rechtsruck umreißt der Beitrag die Bedeutung raumbezogener Differenzierungen für die Ausbildung und Stabilisierung rechter Orientierungen. Damit einher geht die Klärung der im Gebrauch befindlichen Begriffe Extremismus, Rechtspopulismus, Konservatismus und neue Rechte. Auf urbane Räume bezogene Analysen werden darüber hinaus kritisch gegen Einwände diskutiert, etwa jene dass in den Städten eher ‘links’ gewählt werde oder dass rechte Strömungen grundsätzlich großstadtfeindlich seien. Schließlich gibt der Beitrag einen Überblick zu den Texten im Themenschwerpunkt des Heftes.

Im Beitrag entwickeln wir einen kritischen Blick auf die Geographie der Wahlergebnisse der Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) bei den Bundestagswahlen 2017. Wir hinterfragen Erklärungsmuster, die in einem starren Stadt-Land-Gegensatz verhaftet bleiben und die komplexe Prozesshaftigkeit der Urbanisierung ignorieren. Dagegen gehen wir mit Henri Lefebvre und Theodor W. Adorno vom Urbanen und Ruralen als sozialen Verhältnissen aus, die sich im übergeordneten Prozess der Urbanisierung in dialektischer Weise scheiden sowie räumlich im Spannungsverhältnis von Zentrum und Peripherie materialisieren. Beispielhaft illustrieren wir diesen Prozess in der Diskussion von drei unterschiedlichen Orten, an denen die AfD bei den Bundestagswahlen besonders erfolgreich war: dem Landkreis Vorpommern-Greifswald als Fall einer umfassenden Peripherisierung, dem Quartier Pforzheim-Haidach als peripheres Zentrum und dem Stadtteil Mannheim-Schönau als zentrale Peripherie. Der Beitrag versucht damit eine räumliche Perspektive auf aktuelle Erfolge des Rechtspopulismus zu entwickeln wie auch Stadt-Land-Verhältnisse konzeptionell neu zu erfassen.

Das Interview mit einem Aktivisten einer Berliner Antifa-Gruppe thematisiert die Gegebenheiten vor Ort (Berliner Nordosten) und ihre Bedeutung für autoritäre und rechte Bewegungen als auch für antifaschistischen Protest. Geschichte, Sozialstruktur und Veränderungen (des Straßenbilds, der Nachbarschaften etc.) im Großbezirk Pankow werden als Ausdruck, aber auch als Bedingung rechter Hegemoniebestrebungen erkennbar. Im Feld der rechten Bewegungen und Parteien hat sich die AfD als maßgeblicher Akteur etabliert. Der Interviewpartner gibt Auskunft über Strategien und Forderungen, mit denen sich die AfD in lokale Auseinandersetzungen um Sicherheit, Wohnungen oder Großprojekte einbringt und wie sie in der Bezirksverordnetenversammlung auftritt. Einen weiteren Schwerpunkt des Interviews dreht sich um das Verhältnis von antifaschistischer und wohnungspolitischer sozialer Bewegung und in diesem Zusammenhang die sozialpolitischen Ursachen des gegenwärtigen Rechtsrucks.

Mass media is playing a significant role in influencing people’s mind and determining the vote’s preference of each single individual. Nowadays, mass media has become an essential part in setting up the public’s agenda. We are living in a social media era that is being governed by Facebook and Twitter. Facebook had played a key role in Germany’s society in the last year, since September 2015, by helping to increase public awareness or to collect opinions and information, and also to influence the attitude of the people towards electing the Eurosceptic political party, Alternative for Germany (AfD). The results of the regional elections in Germany from March 2016 had been strongly influenced by the party’s intense activities on Facebook. It may be said that the electoral campaign of AfD had completely taken place on Facebook, a social media channel where people and the party itself dare to speak up their mind without being afraid that their opinion could be censorship. This article is about to describe the role that the social media channel, Facebook, had had in choosing AfD as main winner of the German regional elections.

Considering that networks based on New Radio (NR) technology are oriented to provide services of desired quality (QoS), it becomes questionable how to model and predict targeted QoS values, especially if the physical channel is dynamically changing. In order to overcome mobility issues, we aim to support the evaluation of second-order statistics of signal, namely level-crossing rate (LCR) and average fade duration (AFD) that is missing in general channel 5G models. Presenting results from our symbolic encapsulation point 5G (SEP5G) additional tool, we fill this gap and motivate further extensions on current general channel 5G. As a matter of contribution, we clearly propose: (i) anadditional tool for encapsulating different mobile 5G modeling approaches; (ii) extended, wideband, LCR, and AFD evaluation for optimal radio resource allocation modeling; and (iii) lower computational complexity and simulation time regarding analytical expression simulations in related scenario-specific 5G channel models. Using our deterministic channel model for selected scenarios and comparing it with stochastic models, we show steps towards higherlevel finite state Markov chain (FSMC) modeling, where mentioned QoS parameters become more feasible, placing symbolic encapsulation at the center of cross-layer design. Furthermore, we generate values within a specified 5G passband, indicating how it can be used for provisioningoptimal radio resource allocation.

In the last decades, a number of Diffusion Weighted Imaging (DWI) based techniques have been developed to study non-invasively human brain tissues, especially white matter (WM). In this context, Constrained Spherical Deconvolution (CSD) is recognized as being able to accurately characterize water molecules displacement, as they emerge from the observation of MR diffusion weighted (MR-DW) images. CSD is suggested to be applied on MR-DW datasets consisting of b-values around 3,000 s/mm2 and at least 45 unique diffusion weighting directions. Below such technical requirements, Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DT) remains the most widely accepted model. Unlike CSD, DTI is unable to resolve complex fiber geometries within the brain, thus affecting related tissues quantification. In addition, thanks to CSD, an index called Apparent Fiber Density (AFD) can be measured to estimate intra-axonal volume fraction within WM. In standard clinical settings, diffusion based acquisitions are well below such technical requirements. Therefore, in this study we wanted to extensively compare CSD and DTI model outcomes on really low demanding MR-DW datasets, i.e., consisting of a single shell (b-value = 1,000 s/mm2) and only 30 unique diffusion encoding directions. To this end, we performed deterministic and probabilistic tractographic reconstruction of two major WM pathways, namely the Corticospinal Tract and the Arcuate Fasciculus. We estimated and analyzed tensor based features as well as, for the first time, AFD interpretability in our data. By performing multivariate statistics and tract-based ROI analysis, we demonstrate that WM quantification is affected by both the diffusion model and threshold applied to noisy tractographic maps. Consistently with existing literature, we showed that CSD outperforms DTI even in our scenario. Most importantly, for the first time we address the problem of accuracy and interpretation of AFD in a low-demanding DW setup, and show that it is still a biological meaningful measure for the analysis of intra-axonal volume even in clinical settings.

The Brexit referendum and the last presidential election in the USA are just two examples of recent vote results that have been wrongly predicted. This research paper aims to identify the formation of voting behaviour to revaluate the necessary factors and variables in the correct and scientific prediction and analysis of voting behaviour. More specifically, this paper chose anti-European voting behaviour in Germany, which is also a current European-wide societal phenomenon, to analyse and explain the formation of general voting behaviour in detail. Many researchers, including Goodwin and Heath (2016), analysed the quality of existing polling methodology to explain the incorrect prediction of the Brexit result. This research forms a new approach towards the identification of voting behaviour by including more variables than usual. In collaboration with YouGov Deutschland GmbH, a strategic sample of the German population of 993 participants was formed. Participants were asked questions relating to individual differences, political ideology, attitudes towards daily political topics and socio-demographic factors. Voters who voted for the AfD, the main anti-European party in Germany, were more likely to be in some form of relationship, were more likely to be male, and over-represented the age group 40–49. Finally, voters voted for the AfD because the party engaged with political topics in a way that no other party did. This research is somewhat limited because the questionnaire focused on voters voting for the AfD. Furthermore, quantitative research can only identify and analyse individual human behaviour to a certain extent, whereas qualitative data, which this research lacks, can potentially help to identify voting behaviour. Relevant and important factors such as political ideology and individual differences, which are included here, but are usually not part of political research, must play a role in the future identification of voting behaviour.

he paper explores the existence and the stability of Phillips curve for North Cyprus, a small developing economy, using time series data. ADF unit root test is employed to check for stationarity. ARDL and DOLS approaches to cointegration have been used to explore the long run relation and ECM to understand short run dynamics. The predictive properties DOLS are better than those of the conventional methods. The estimates point to the existence of Phillips curve both in the long and the short run. CUSUM and CUSUMsq tests confirm a stable relation.