Hank's world spiraling into radicalization

A few years ago, a number of citizens from two different American cities were put into small groups for an experiment The groups were asked to grapple with three of the most controversial issues of the time: climate change, affirmative action and same-sex partnership.

The cities were Boulder, known for its more left-leaning voters, and Colorado Springs, where the conservative majority votes Citizens were first asked to anonymously write down their views individually.

Then they had to discuss it in the group Finally, each participant was asked to anonymously record what they thought about the topics after the consultation.

The result: As a result of the group discussion, Boulder's already left-leaning citizens have moved further to the left The people of Colorado Springs, on the other hand, were much more conservative.

Both times, people went more to the extreme Before that there was still a great deal of agreement between the respondents from the two cities, but afterwards they became more alienated.

Internal harmony, external polarization People obviously don't like to disagree He adapts to the group, even if there are no new facts that would have made a change in his opinion understandable.

The group harmonises internally, polarizes externally and radicalizes its members - in whatever political direction Why is that? People hunger for validation.

When two agree with each other, both feel more secure If a third party joins, it gets even better.

This is called an acknowledgment cascade "Herd instinct, peer pressure, rigid expectations of loyalty are the same in all countries and societies," writes the American behavioral economist Cass Sunstein, who conducted the experiments in Boulder and Colorado Springs.

Positioning in the euro crisis In the end it can happen that some leave the group because the radicalization of the group goes too far for them This makes the group smaller, but even more radical and cohesive, because only the most loyal ones stay until the end, cheering each other on to the extreme.

I had to think of Cass Sunstein when we read a lot about the tenth anniversary of the founding of the AfD last week Here the experiments from the experiment can be checked using the "real" story.

At the same time, the apparently historically random history of a newly founded party acquires an inner logic Ten years ago, Konrad Adam, an ex-colleague from the feuilleton of the FAZ, appeared in our business editorial department.

He reported that, with his active participation, a new conservative-liberal party would be founded that would position itself against further mutualisation of debt in the euro zone Respected, if not uncontroversial, economics professors - Bernd Lucke from Hamburg, Joachim Starbatty from Tübingen - took part.

The subject was in the air; one was in the middle of the so-called euro crisis Hard bandages for the public That was the founding act of the AfD.

Admittedly there were already anti-immigrant and xenophobic tones at the time, but they were marginalized as minority opinions At the latest during the refugee crisis of 2015, a radicalization process to the extreme right began, during which the founders were finally pushed out of the party.

In view of the respective new leaders, the expellees always appeared as the moderates When they had seized power themselves, they were still the radicals: from Lucke to Petry, from Petry to Meuthen, from Meuthen to Weidel and Chrupalla.

A comparable spiral of radicalization can also be seen on the part of the climate protest movement It started with the school strikes of the "Fridays for Future" students.

It continued with Extinction Rebellion (motto: "There's always something going on here"), which invokes the tradition of civil resistance Preparations for the spring camp in Berlin are currently underway.

This was followed, radicalized once more, by the “Last Generation”, whose “activists” glued themselves to freeways or threw mashed potatoes at works of art to indicate the supposed impending end of the world The actions of the moderate groups wear off.

Friday strikes still take place, but the public doesn't really care anymore The attention economy demands tougher bandages.

Is fear appropriate? Right-wing extremists and climate radical movements tend towards a religious dualism: We are the chosen ones There are the good guys who know that foreign infiltration means the end of the "organic Germans" or that our world will perish in the near future due to global warming.

The others are always the blinded ones Moderate voices in their own camp are stigmatized as apostates, as apostates and muzzled as traitors.

Unlike the dull German AfD supporters, the climate movement loves playing with an aesthetic of suddenness But even this can quickly turn violent, as was shown in Lützerath.

Do we have to deal with fear in view of the radicalization spiral? A little bit Daniel Cohn-Bendit, of all people, gives consolation in a “Zeit” interview.

Cohn-Bendit, 77, who ironically describes himself as a "red grandfather", argues against the "rhetoric of the inevitable" of radical actionists, which wears out over time, but also harbors the germ of further radicalization So I wouldn't bet a damn on the sanity of groups.

But on individual strong natures who resist peer pressure and are heard Cohn-Bendit's biography is itself an example of emancipation from the radicalism of 1968.

The literary scholar Kai Sina, taking up a formulation by Ulrich Herbert, spoke of "liberalization as a learning process" in a large obituary for Hans Magnus Enzensberger in the February issue of "Merkur" Fortunately, the Federal Republic developed in the liberal direction after 1945.

The gradual positive appropriation of Weimar's liberal democracy by individual intellectuals (Thomas Mann, Ernst Troeltsch) also belongs in this little reader of liberal role models, who had the strength to evade the radicalization spiral Anyway.

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