On the 28th of August SHN Core member Annelotte Janse will defend her PhD Dissertation The Pursuit of “White Security”: Transnational entanglements between West German and American right-wing extremists, 1961-1980 at Utrecht University.
Annelotte Janse
Annelotte Janse is a Post-Doctoral researcher at TerInfo, Utrecht University. In 2019 she completed her RMA Modern History at Utrecht University and in 2022 she received the Hofvijverkring Fellowshipfor doing additional archival research for her dissertation.
The Pursuit of “White Security”
In The Pursuit of “White Security”, Annelotte Janse examined the transnational links between West German and American right-wing extremists in the period 1961-1980. Previously, little attention was paid to the question how similar and shared enemy and threat perceptions forged international connections between different right-wing extremist groups and how connections subsequently influenced the radicalisation of these groups and individuals. The interactions between these extremists and the networks that emerged from them created more mutual solidarity, strategic innovations, material support, and inspired violence.
For her research, Janse made use of hitherto unused archival material, which includes private correspondences of right-wing extremists and reports from the national police and security services. Various archives from many countries were consulted for this purpose, including those in the United States, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.
With her research into these right-wing extremist collaborations, Janse provides three new historiographical insights. Through her research, she was able to show that more transnational contacts existed between American and West German right-wing extremists than previously assumed. These connections rested on similar threat perceptions of Jews, communists and migrants. The extremists’ interactions strengthened the West German right-wing extremist movement, helping the latter to strategically innovate its practices and propaganda, but also unintendedly led to intra-movement strife and competition.
As such, these transnational contacts also impacted the process of radicalisation of West German extremists. Early in the 1960s, for example, they were inspired by the American-based World Union of National Socialists (WUNS) to prepare bomb attacks on judges and institutions related to the West German process of ‘working through the past’. Whereas the German movement at this point in time was still characterised by its isolation and weakness, Janse argues that the transnational interactions helped revive the movement, up to the point of terrorist violence.
Finally, Janse argues that the years between 1961 and 1980 were a crucial period in the development of right-wing extremism in Germany. This period constituted a transition period between the activism of the “old Nazis” of the late 1940s and early 1950s to the contemporary anti-migration rhetoric employed by right-wing extremists. These two decades reshaped transnational far-right networks, national groups, and patterns of violence. They thereby ushered in a broader and contemporary trend of transnational far-right convergence and connectivity of an otherwise seemingly disparate movement.
See also: Annelotte Janse, Manfred Roeder at the Klan’s ‘World National Congress’ and racial terrorism against ‘foreigners’
The Security History Network 
One thought on “PhD Defence Annelotte Janse”
Comments are closed.