Young East German men attacked foreigners to display nationalism against socialist ideology

Evidence

Attacks on foreigners became a way especially for young men to tout their ‘unsocialist’ nationalism and their anger at the GDR’s economic and political failings. Racism against Africans was especially prevalent. Drawing upon stereotypes drawn from the Imperial Germany’s pre-World War I overseas empire, East Germans described them as little as better than ‘bushmen’. With the SED’s disintegration in 1989 and merger with West Germany the following year, the depth of antagonism toward foreigners became even more apparent. — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 203

Categorization

• QUESTION: Interesting puzzle for the reader’s project: professed official ideology (socialist fraternalism/egalitarianism) did not predict actual behavior toward outsiders; symbolic nationalism contradicted official state values. Suppressed nationalism exploded onto foreign scapegoats when the state order collapsed — a case of threat removal unmasking latent hostility.
• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s research question about whether professed conviction predicts actual measured bias. Also resonates with the conviction-vs-measured-bias divergence theme in their notes.