Those who campaign against right-wing extremism and for the strengthening of democracy are often exposed to smear campaigns, hate mail or other threats. Civil society initiatives are intimidated, harassed and their work hindered. The mental strain is sometimes so severe that those involved feel compelled to quit.

A team of researchers from the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences wants to find out how often organizations are targeted, what they were specifically confronted with, and how they deal with it. The Social Concepts (SO.CON) Institute, which is based there, wants to do one thing above all: help people deal with threatening situations and strengthen participants. Based on an analysis, a comprehensive action plan with recommendations for affected employees and initiatives is to be developed. The team also wants to find out what framework conditions are needed to protect democracy work.

To this end, voluntary and full-time participants will be surveyed in order to develop strategies for action together with cooperation partners and to communicate them to the public.

"Although there is specialist literature on the subject and individual handouts on dealing with hate mail, for example, there is not yet a comprehensive concept that is preventive in nature," says Beate Küpper, vice director of the SO.CON Institute.

The university is not alone in this: The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is adding around 270,000 euros to the project, entitled "Beware - Arming Democracy Projects and Making Them Resilient," as part of the funding guideline "Current and Historical Dynamics of Right-Wing Extremism and Racism."

In the same funding guideline, the BMBF is also supporting the Knowledge Network on Right-Wing Extremism (WI-REX), which bundles and analyzes knowledge and findings from research and practice and networks participants from the various disciplines in science and practice. According to Küpper, this is because a separate, interdisciplinary networking structure has been lacking until now. "The goal is to establish an independent research field on right-wing extremism."

SO.CON will take on one of three subprojects in this regard over the next five years with the "Platform Transfer - Communication with Civil Society, Communities and Political Education." The knowledge available there about the phenomenon of right-wing extremism is to be systematized and fed into science. The Institute for Democracy and Civil Society, as a cooperation partner, conversely pursues the transfer of science into practice.

This includes roundtable discussions with experts and regular surveys. The federal government is providing a further 430,000 euros in funding for this sub-project.