Veen and his colleagues marshal an array evidence to show that the Republikaner Party is less (to echo the subtitle) a right-wing menace than a protest catchall. That's not for its lack of trying. The party espouses the classic anti-democratic, nationalistic, and anti-European views of Germany's far right. It is anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and xenophobic. And, of course, it hates the United States: Franz Schoenhuber, the party leader, asserted that he fears "the creeping subversion of European values" by Americans more than he worries about Soviet guns.
But these views don't penetrate the whole of the party; the authors draw a sharp distinction between its leadership, which they deem ideologically sophisticated, and the followers, who are disaffected from politics, fearful of the future, and antagonistic to foreigners. These latter tend overwhelmingly to be male (by a 2-to-1 ratio), poorly educated, rural, southern, and blue-collar workers. To sum up: "Rather than reflecting a radically right mind-sent, the majority of [Republikaner Party] sympathizers display a general dissatisfaction with the political order in Germany." Looking to the future, Veen et al. see the Republikaners lacking "the social foundation and ideological consensus necessary to build a stable core constituency." The Federal Republic, in short, can absorb this challenge. To quote the study's final sentence, united Germany is not Weimar. And the rest of us must pray this isn't wishful thinking.
