Robin Celikates' Definition of Civil Disobedience. A Theoretical Foundation for the Activism of the Identitäre Bewegung?

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Politics - Basics and General, grade: 1,0, University of Hamburg (Politikwissenschaft), course: Civil Disobedience: Illegitimate Resistance or Justified Law-Breaking, language: English, abstract: The central question of this essay is if the actions performed by the Identitäre Bewegung to communicate an openly racist view of life can be seen as legitimate civil disobedience as defined by Celikates very broad and open take on civil disobedience in general. This will be done by examining certain actions executed by the Identitäre Bewegung and questioning if Celikates´ definition would possibly qualify them as civil disobedience as a political practice. They are young, they present themselves in a well-educated and intellectual way through referring to literature and juristic paragraphs, and they officially distance themselves from right-wing extremism, but mainly they are one thing: confrontational in a very present way. The Identitäre Bewegung is a relatively new movement inspired by a similar development in France. In the increasing immigration of refugees to Germany in 2015 the movement sees the initiation of unjust ruling and measures of the German government. Without regard for its citizens´ safety an unlimited as well as unregulated flood of strangers was granted entrance into the country. In their opinion the only possibility to antagonize the German state's unjust actions are acts of civil disobedience. The Identitäre Bewegung is performing actions which aim at creating as much public attention as possible by being extreme and extraordinary. Examples are climbing the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin or trying to gain access to the German ministry of justice. The theoretical framework viewed in this essay is the radical democratic take on civil disobedience as worded by Robin Celikates. His theoretical approach and definition of civil disobedience will be contemplated in-depth before the Identitäre Bewegung, it's origin and ideological position, will be generally defined.