Right-wing extremist violent offences going as far as to murder are nothing new in Germany. Ideologically legitimated and habitually rooted, there is a close connection of right-wing extremism and violence. Nevertheless, the series of murders by the “Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund” (National Socialist Underground, NSU) in our country means a new quality of right - wing extremist violence because in a previously unprecedented way it combines the characteristics of different kinds of violence. On the one hand, this series of assassinations by an underground movement was systematically planned and carried out, on the other hand this uncommunicated violence aims at the “migrant common man” without any symbolic value.

The fact that the German right-wing terrorist group „NSU“ could operate for over ten years without even being identified shows serious analytical deficiencies, not only in the sphere of security agencies but in the field of academic research. One of the identified failures was an insufficient analysis of specifics and intensities of right-wing extremist violence and hate-driven attitude. The following text tries to fill some of the gaps, by means of comparing two violent right-wing extremist groups that operated in the federal state of Saxony from the end of the 90ies through the first half of the following decade. It elaborates patterns of violence and ideological, hate - driven attitude. The comparison is part of an ongoing HAIT-research project focussing on right-wing militants with intensive violent behaviour and the groups by which they organise themselves.

By way of case examples from the history of right-wing terrorism in post-war Germany the contribution works out terrorism-relevant indicators. The focus is on four dimensions of analysis: Actors, ideologies, reference groups and framework conditions. They serve as projection surfaces for the analysis of possible sub-indicators which might shed light on how dangerous right-wing terrorism is in the sense of it being relevant for terrorism. The contribution focusses on the question of under which conditions and in which constellations one must expect the threshold towards terrorist violence being transgressed. According to the author, right-wing extremist actors showing the described features require particular attention both by security authorities and applied research on extremism.

Starting out from the thesis that in many cases the research on violence misunderstands the significance of ideology for violence within a society, the text pursues the question of how violence and ideology are related to each other. Based on culture-philosophical studies on the nature and effect of myths, the author grasps ideology as a secondary myth, to describe the deeply affective rooting of the ideological narrative in the personality-structures of individual right-wing violent criminals and right-wing groups of criminals. Then these considerations are confronted with the biographies and deeds of three right-wing extremist violent criminals, to finally discuss them accordingly.

In Germany, politically motivated violence shows a broad range of motivations and ways in which it is organized and committed. It is definitely more than just hate criminality based on xenophobia and racism, as it has been in the focus of the public debate for a number of years. For, quantitatively “left-wing” political violence is not a quantité négligeable and – notwithstanding fundamental differ- ences – has important elements in common with “right - wing” political violence. Accordingly, also the former does not at all lack forms of fighting “objective” enemies as they become obvious as “hate violence” when light is shed on the motivations for the relevant criminal acts. In particular confrontational violence deserves our attention. Apart from the well-known constellation left-wing vs. right-wing this is particularly true for the new line of conflict between those being hostile to muslims on the one hand and Islamists / Salafists on the other, which becomes increasingly more important.