News from Sociology of Migration and Education - New article by Dr. Fatih Bahadir Kaya

On February 19, 2020, nine people with a migrant background were murdered in Hanau within six minutes - a paradigmatic case of right-wing extremist terrorism in Germany. This article reconstructs the enemy image formulated in the manifesto of the perpetrator Tobias Rathjen using objective hermeneutics. The analysis uncovers latent structures of meaning that link Rathjen's worldview with the religious right, in particular his ideological proximity to the Christian Templars in the United States. These transatlantic links reinforce his anti-Muslim and racist beliefs and provide a religiously based legitimization for violence against the Muslim Other. By situating Rathjen's manifesto within broader debates about far-right terrorism, religion and symbolic violence, the study argues that the Hanau attack cannot be reduced to psychopathological or 'lone-actor' models. Instead, it illustrates the continued prevalence of conspiratorial medieval imagery in contemporary far-right worldviews. At the same time, it points to the role of security discourses articulated by the religious right, through which these imaginaries are mobilized and stabilized across transnational infrastructures of far-right violence. Link to the publication