By Elisabeth Hell (CROSSROADS Counselling Centre, Violence Prevention Network)

Over the past two years, the number of requests for counselling at the CROSSROADS Counselling Centre on leaving right-wing extremism and the resulting counselling cases have risen significantly. The demand is now so high that we are working well beyond our capacity and must prioritise requests and their processing. Requests come mainly from educational professionals facing significant challenges, especially teachers and social workers, and from desperate relatives, particularly parents, but also siblings who are concerned that a family member is becoming radicalised, sympathises with right-wing extremist groups or is already active in them.

These are often very young people, some as young as 14, including a number of girls and young women, who are joining relatively new right-wing extremist groups such as ‘Jung & Stark’ (Young & Strong) or ‘Deutsche Jugend Voran’ (German Youth Forward). Since 2024, parts of these movements have attracted attention for their successful mobilisation to disrupt and threaten the ‘Christopher Street Days’ in (small) towns in eastern Germany. After several newspapers reported on this, the counselling centre received numerous calls from very concerned parents and teachers who had spotted ‘their young people’ in the photos.

‘Binge drinking and playing Hitler’

The security authorities describe these groups as ‘action-oriented’. And this description is accurate insofar as these groups attract attention by offering communal ‘actions’ with great ‘entertainment value’. These include the aforementioned trips to other eastern German cities and a whole series of demonstrations in Berlin. They also include martial arts training, provocations in public spaces, such as insults and threats, but also physical violence in the form of assaults on people who are perceived as ‘different.’ Niklas Schrader, domestic policy spokesperson for the Left Party, describes these activities as ‘drinking and playing Hitler’. The Berlin Office for the Protection of the Constitution has now classified ‘Deutsche Jugend Voran’ as right-wing extremist. These groups and their sympathisers appear to be rather loosely organised – coordination and recruitment often take place in an almost naive or reckless manner, primarily via social media platforms and messenger services.

Challenges for counselling

Some of the people seeking counselling from this scene are still very young. Instead of being ‘young and strong’, they often turn out to be ‘young and precarious’. Precarious, in the true sense of the definition of the word, ‘[…] in a dangerous state because of not being safe or not being held in place firmly’.

All of this applies to these young people: they are often socio-economically disadvantaged, very distant from education, consume various strong intoxicants at an early age and quickly experience escalating conflicts with those around them outside the scene, especially with their parents and relatives or the youth welfare professionals who look after them. Some of the young people are already involved in youth welfare measures, which are only partially effective. We therefore encounter young people in a life situation that understandably makes it difficult for them to develop a positive vision of the future, because their situation does not actually promise any bright prospects. Accordingly, the right-wing extremist groups described above fulfil classic (youth-specific) needs for belonging, occupation/action, orientation and meaning. Few of them bring a strongly defined ideology with them to counselling, but they do bring a lot of frustration and feelings of hatred towards members of marginalised groups.

As a counselling centre, we rely on committed multipliers who are able to refer these young people to us in the first place. This requires perseverance and patience, because it rarely succeeds at the first attempt. It is important to have good links with the existing support system and to initiate professional assistance for the various problems. There have been many positive developments in this area recently, because many highly committed professionals recognise the problem and see the prevention of radicalisation as part of their professional remit.

Then it is important to carefully consider our own role in counselling. In these cases, the goal is not a classic ‘exit’ from the scene. Ideological debate is not the primary focus here. Rather, it is about encouraging an initial distancing from violence and uncovering the contradictions in the young person’s own situation.

Alternative approaches and networks are urgently needed

Counselling this target group requires low-threshold access and outreach approaches, because who wants to travel halfway across town without a specific destination or motivation? In addition to counselling rooms in the young people’s social environment, resources for mobile counselling work are also needed. This is where we quickly reach the limits of our human and time resources. The counselling setting could also be better tailored in terms of knowledge of easy language and approaches to sports, creative and art therapy. There is a need for more real-life access points and cooperation partners with links to services that offer alternative ‘sensory experiences’ away from right-wing extremist activities. Networks and services are also needed to which we can ‘transfer’ our relationship work after the counselling process has ended. This requires a willingness to continue working with young people with right-wing attitudes in an educational context. Understandably, this is viewed critically by some youth social workers, as there is great concern about a revival of ‘acceptance-oriented youth work’. In view of the developments of a growing violent right-wing extremist youth scene, a professional debate on how to deal with this clientele is therefore urgently needed.

One of the biggest challenges of disengagement work remains that young people return to so-called right-wing ‘cultural spaces’ (or whatever you want to call them) – i.e. districts, neighbourhoods, schools, families or cliques, as well as digital echo chambers where there are both right-wing extremist hegemony and social and political discourses characterised by right to right-wing extremist rhetoric. This is a problem that is visible in all parts of society and makes sustainable disengagement work difficult.

Explanations and causes for these developments

The question of the reasons for the development described above arises regularly. The first thing that comes to mind is the general state of the world. The experience of the climate crisis, the pandemic and wars is not leaving young people unscathed. At the same time, it is obvious that the 14-21 age group is developing its political awareness at a time when right-wing populist and even right-wing extremist narratives have shifted the political discourse to the right, and this is also reflected in the digital spaces where young people spend their time. The influence of social media and the targeted dissemination of disinformation and propaganda by right-wing extremist actors have thus had a decisive impact on the political awakening of this cohort.

The future of young people is therefore (as always) uncertain, and this frightens them. As the developments described above show, right-wing extremist actors are successfully exploiting this situation. It is up to democratically oriented actors, both online and offline, to offer alternatives that create a counterweight. Young people need attention, and they need opportunities that inspire hope, enable self-efficacy and are fun at the same time. This cannot be achieved through distancing efforts alone but is a task for society as a whole.

Elisabeth Hell is a political scientist and head of the Department of Right-wing Extremism at Violence Prevention Network as well as of the CROSSROADS Counselling Centre.