The strategic communication of information is used by extreme right-wing groups inside and outside of the democratic spectrum as a method of addressing potential supporters. Various methods are used to achieve this, with the aim of indoctrinating and gradually convincing potential supporters. As a rule, right-wing groups use realistic, emotionally charged situations as a general starting point. By means of a creeping ideologisation, they lead people towards their goal of convincing people of increasingly radical positions.
In my presentation, I would like to briefly outline this process and use an example group, the “Free Saxons”, to visualise it. They are an extreme right-wing party and see themselves as a collective movement operating in the federal state of Saxony, Germany. They gained media attention at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic with so-called Monday walks, which were in fact disguised demonstrations. Over time, the initial criticism and thematisation of corona restrictions led to the true extreme right-wing content. The central communication medium is the Telegram platform, on which they share posts in the form of texts as well as videos, images or self-created memes, some of which are used as illustrative examples in the presentation.
The findings presented in this context are part of my dissertation, within which I examine right-wing groups, their strategies and developments and focus specifically on Telegram as a communication medium. The data collected covers a period of over 3 ½ years and was analysed using qualitative content analysis according to Mayring (2015).
