Consequently, our concept of 'identity' is based on the assumption that 'identity' requires the drawing of boundaries. As Bernhard Giesen (1999) points out, these boundaries' form depends on the respective 'code': 'Primordial' codes of collective identity define group boundaries as sharply drawn and insurmountable. Radical right terrorism can thus be understood as a form of identity politics attempting to 'defend' not only these imagined boundaries against 'trespassers', but also the primordial principle of their construction against other definitions.
A comparative approach helps identify common traits and differences depending on the historical setting. Therefore, we will compare the German 'National-Socialist Underground' (NSU), a terrorist group responsible for the murder of nine migrant men as well as a female police officer and three bomb attacks against migrants; the Norwegian Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people in Oslo and on Utøya island, most of them young Social Democrats, many with a migrant background; and the US American Dylan Roof, who shot dead nine people in a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, USA.
