Religious Language in the Texts of Reich Citizens
Georg SchuppenerThis article examines using the Internet whether or not, the extent to which, and in what form Reich citizens use religious language in their texts. To this end, the article will first define religious language in more detail. On the basis of current constitutional protection reports in the Federal Republic of Germany and an evaluation of sources of known Reich citizens, the article has identified a total of 34 Internet domains that will serve as the basis for the investigation. The pilot investigation first examined four lexemes in terms of their distributions in the texts of these domains and showed the religious lexises in a third of the investigated domains to obviously be of no or only secondary importance. This group of domains was not reconsidered in the further investigation with regard to the use of religious language. Another third of the texts showed the religious lexises to be relevant, while the remaining third revealed the religious lexis to even be highly common. The in-depth analysis then proved the frequency of a broader spectrum of religious lexises. The article then exemplified the specific contexts of their uses. With regard to religious argumentation, the article lastly examined the three domains with high frequency religious lexises in more detail. This revealed very different concepts of how religious topics are used to legitimize the ideology of Reich citizens, namely as a justification for völkisch [ethnic] concepts, as higher knowledge, and even as part of Reich citizens’ identity. In the latter case, God-like qualities were attributed to the founder of a specific group of Reich citizens.
Religiöse Sprache in reichsbürgerlichen Texten
Georg SchuppenerDer Beitrag untersucht, ob, in welchem Maße und in welcher Form Reichsbürger in Texten im Internet religiöse Sprache verwenden. Dazu wird zunächst religiöse Sprache näher bestimmt. Auf der Basis der aktuellen Verfassungsschutzberichte in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und einer Auswertung bekannter reichsbürgerlicher Quellen werden insgesamt 34 Internet-Domänen identifiziert, die als Grundlage für die Untersuchung dienen. Mit einer Pilot-Untersuchung werden als erster Schritt vier Lexeme auf ihre Verbreitung in den Texten jener Domänen hin betrachtet. Dabei zeigt sich, dass bei einem Drittel der untersuchten Domänen religiöse Lexik offenkundig keine oder nur untergeordnete Bedeutung besitzt. Diese Domänen werden bei der weiteren Untersuchung im Hinblick auf die Verwendung religiöser Sprache nicht mehr berücksichtigt. Bei einem weiteren Drittel ist religiöse Lexik relevant und im restlichen Drittel sogar hoch frequent vorkommend. Die vertiefte Analyse belegt dann die Häufigkeit eines breiteren Spektrums religiöser Lexik. Die spezifischen Verwendungskontexte werden nachfolgend exemplarisch dargestellt. Mit Blick auf religiöse Argumentationen werden schließlich drei Domänen mit hoch frequenter religiöser Lexik eingehender betrachtet. Dabei zeigen sich ganz unterschiedliche Konzepte, wie Religiöses für die Legitimation reichsbürgerlicher Ideologie verwendet wird, und zwar als Rechtfertigung für völkische Konzepte, als höheres Wissen oder auch als Teil der reichsbürgerlichen Identität, wobei im letzteren Fall dem Gründer der betreffenden Reichsbürgergruppe gottähnliche Eigenschaften zugeschrieben werden.
For about a decade, the Reichsbürgerbewegung [Reich citizens’ movement] has increasingly been the focus of public attention, even though the roots of this political phenomenon go back many decades. This political current negates the legitimacy of the state order of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, this movement is ideologically nonuniform and extremely nonhomogeneous in terms of ideology. Some Reich citizen organizations bear esoteric or religiously motivated names. In addition, some religious fundamentalist influences are known to have occurred on the movement. However, research on this aspect of the Reich citizens movement has not yet been conducted, just as research on Reich citizens as a whole remains deficient. Against this background, this article therefore examines whether Reich citizens use religious language in texts on the Internet, and if so, to what extent and in what form. To this end, the article first defines religious language in more detail. Given the breadth of the spectrum of religious language, the study is based on original Christian lexises. On the basis of current reports regarding the protection of the constitution (Verfassungsschutz) in the Federal Republic of Germany and an evaluation of sources on known Reich citizens, a total of 34 Internet domains have been identified that will serve as the basis for the investigation. Numerous other domains operated by Reich citizens are still present on the Internet but have not been updated in recent years and have therefore been excluded from the study. Moreover, due to the dynamics of the political movement, some of the groups mentioned in the reports regarding the protection of the constitution have already been dissolved again today and thus are no longer detectable on the Internet. The pilot investigation first examined four lexemes with regard to their distributions in the texts of these domains and showed that in one third of the investigated domains, religious lexis clearly had no or only secondary importance. Another third of the domains’ religious lexis were clearly relevant, and the remaining third are seen to contain religious lexises quite frequently. The in-depth analysis then proves the frequency of a broader spectrum of religious lexises. For this purpose, the article used corpus analysis programs to determine the distribution of these lexemes then exemplified the specific contexts of use. Religious lexises are integrated into Reich citizens’ typical discourses and narratives. Finally, with regard to religious argumentation, three domains with highly frequent religious lexises were examined in greater detail. This revealed very different concepts of how religious argumentation is used to legitimize Reich citizens’ ideology (i.e., justification for völkisch [ethnic] concepts) as higher knowledge or even as part of their identity, this latter case also being seen to attribute god-like qualities to the founder of the Reich citizens movement. Due to the texts from Reich citizens often also being characterized by pseudolegal argumentation, one can assume in parallel that both legal and religious argumentation is intended to serve as the ultimate justification and thus legitimization of Reich citizens’ ideology.
