Extreme Right-wing Research Articles

White supremacy and the racial logic of the global preventing and countering violent extremism agenda

This article analyses what the disavowal of abject forms of white supremacy reveals about the racial logic of the global preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) agenda. We argue that the global P/CVE agenda is built on racialised concepts such as prevention, radicalisation and community – concepts that render it incommensurate with the newly identified problem of white supremacist violent extremism or domestic terrorism. Through analysis of interviews with experts and practitioners working within the broad field of P/CVE, we discursively analyse how the enmeshment of the agenda within the development and peacebuilding space exposes the agenda’s primary intent to manage presumably ungovernable populations in or from the so-called Global South. Taking the theoretical insights culled from textual analysis of practitioner interviews, we then consider the inclusion of right-wing extremism, and specifically white supremacy, within Western states’ domestic P/CVE agendas, primarily in the US. Our argument – that the move to consider far-right extremism within domestic CVE policy reveals rather than disrupts the P/CVE agenda’s racist foundations and intentions – contributes to a growing body of research that insists on attending to race, racialisation and racism within security studies and international relations, and which includes an emphasis on whiteness as an organising principle.

Far-Right Extremism, Elections and Hate Crime: A Temporal Evaluation of Bias-Motivated Violence in Slovakia

Abstract The present study provides an initial attempt to assess the impact of extremist right electoral support on racially motivated and extremist violent crime rates across Slovak regions. We transcend previous research by examining associations between national and regional elections, immigration rates, vote-shares, and violent hate crime rates utilizing temporal statistics on racially motivated and extremist violent crimes, which are linked with data on support for nationalist parties and on indicators of socio-economic development. Results illustrate that extreme right parties matter, such that the higher their electoral vote-shares, the higher the violent hate crime incidence and victimization rates. We, also, find that high immigration rates strengthen the effect of electoral vote-shares on bias crime in Slovakia.

Populist conspiracy myths in far-right terrorist manifestos: A transnational perspective

In recent years, there has been a notable rise in the electoral success of far-right populist movements in various Western countries, coinciding with an alarming increase in far-right terrorist attacks. While far-right populists seek to attain power through democratic means, their rhetoric has inadvertently fostered an environment conducive to the growth of extremist ideologies. This article delves into the manifestos published by far-right extremists from the United States, Germany, Norway, and Australia, illuminating how these manifestos mirror and amplify the narratives espoused by far-right populists. Beyond sharing common conspiracy myths, these terrorists often reference one another and populist politicians in their manifestos, further showing the entanglement between far-right populism and extremism. This paper undertakes a discourse analysis of these terrorist manifestos, probing into how right-wing extremists make use of conspiracy myths promoted by the populist right-wing. As far-right terrorism increasingly threatens peaceful coexistence, it becomes imperative to conduct new research that assesses the role of conspiracy myths in fueling terrorism and devises strategies to avert further radicalization.

Far-right extremist narratives in Canadian and Swedish COVID-19 protests: a comparative case study of the Freedom Movement and Freedom Convoy

ABSTRACT This comparative case study of the Freedom Movement in Sweden and the Freedom Convoy in Canada provides insights into the processes of transnationalization involved in the (re)production of far-right narratives around the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on the online media of these protest movements we explore the extent to which the political and cultural context shaped far-right meta narratives and more universal concerns around the pandemic. The study finds significant similarities in how protest narratives in the two countries were constructed and appropriated to intersect with far-right extremism and anti-establishment ideas but also that these narratives were repurposed to make sense in two national contexts characterized by stark differences in the level of restrictions imposed and curtailment of civic rights. Unpacking the local/global intricacies of these narratives helps us understand the ubiquity of contemporary anti-government and anti-establishment discourse propelled by the far-right but also its malleability and flexibility in terms of how it is made to fit different political contexts and scenarios across liberal democracies.

Measuring political radicalism and extremism in surveys: Three new scales.

This paper introduces three new scales to measure left- and right-wing radical as well as general extremist attitudes that can be applied across Western European countries. We therefore propose a thorough conceptualization of extremist attitudes that consists of two dimensions: general extremism, by which we understand attitudes that oppose the constitutional democratic state, and another dimension that differentiates between right- and left-wing radicalism by which we understand people who take far-reaching but often one-sided positions on political issues (e.g., on nationalism or anti-imperialism) by advocating fundamental socio-political change. Based on data from Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands (n = 6,201) we created short indices for general extremism and left- and right-wing radicalism. We check for convergence validity by assessing the psychometric properties of the extracted indices, i.e. their internal coherence and the degree to which a scale is able to distinguish strongly extremist and non-extremist individuals. Finally, we correlate the scales with various constructs that are likely related to extremist attitudes in order to assure external or construct validity. The results indicate that the three scales are highly valid and applicable across three Western European countries. Overall, we find that about two to four percent of citizens in each country hold left-wing or right-wing extremist attitudes.

Examining Online Behaviors of Violent and Non-Violent Right-Wing Extremists During Peak Posting Days

Despite the ongoing need for practitioners to identify violent extremists online before their engagement in violence offline, little is empirically known about their digital footprints generally or differences in their posting behaviors compared to their non-violent counterparts particularly – especially on high-frequency posting days. Content analysis was used to examine postings from a unique sample of violent and non-violent right-wing extremists as well as from a sample of postings within a sub-forum of the largest white supremacy forum during peak and non-peak posting days for comparison purposes. Several noteworthy posting behaviors were identified that may assist in identifying credible threats online.

Environmentalism on the American Extreme Right

American right-wing extremists have rarely explicitly stated environmental policies. However, they have exhibited implicit environmentalism. It has resulted from a fusion of three factors: an intense distaste for cities; a belief in the supremacy of small social and governmental units; and the self-sufficiency known as survivalism. These result in a romantic nostalgia for an agrarian, pre-industrial past when current environmental problems did not exist. The most extreme extension of this mode of thinking is the radical right’s belief in the creation of a ‘white homeland’ in the Pacific Northwest. Religion does not affect the character of the implicit environmentalism surveyed here but is evident in extremists’ millenarian or utopian ideas about the future.

“Nazis Aren’t Welcome Here”: Selling Democracy in the Age of Far-Right Extremism

This article critically examines the communicative and policy-framing response of Australia’s Victorian government to the state’s growing crisis of far-right extremism. Through a critical discourse analysis of the Victorian Andrews and Allan Labor governments’ political communication from 2021 to 2023, we explain how the government discursively responded to the rise of far-right extremism. We found the Andrews and Allan governments employed a range of communicative, discursive, and legitimisation strategies to both legitimise the government’s policy to ban Nazi symbols and gestures and to (re)establish Victoria’s reputation as an inclusive and multicultural liberal democracy. The findings of this article broaden our empirical understanding of the central role of political and crisis communication in responding to extremism and may provide a template for other governments to respond to the global crisis of far-right extremism.

‘Outsourcing patriarchy’ in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE)

In recent years, many Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) programs, formed to counter radicalisation into ‘jihadist’ extremism, have begun to address far-right extremism. In this paper, we critically assess this expansion through a focus on masculinities. We conduct an in-depth intersectional analysis of representations of masculinities in 87 publications by ten influential organisations working in transnational P/CVE. We explore how these representations intersect with identity markers of race, age, class and geographic location and how they are connected to notions about gendered and political violence as systemic or aberrant. We relate this to an underlying dynamic which Inderpal Grewal has termed ‘outsourcing patriarchy’, a move which aligns patriarchal and misogynist ideas with the Non-West. Our analysis shows that despite efforts to overcome both gender-blindness and the singular focus on ‘jihadist’ extremism, P/CVE programs still tend to be based on notions of masculinities that perpetuate patriarchal and colonial legacies.

Hindutva Civilizationism in India: Unravelling the Human-Ecological Conditions

India’s Hindutva movement, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, has risen to power in the world’s largest democracy and second-most populous country. Various scholars have examined how Hindu nationalism is rooted in civilizational themes; others have examined how ancient Hindu elements are employed in BJP environmental politics. Yet a comprehensive and interdisciplinary conceptualization of civilizationism that places it, firstly, at the heart of Hindutva and, secondly, confronts it as not solely a discursive or thematic tool but as the manifesting of physical control over citizens’ relationships to their material environment is lacking. This means approaching ‘civilization’ in the far right as a human-ecological structure and not only a historical bedrock of ethno-territorial and theocratic power. In order to conceptualize Hindutva civilizationism, I re-examine two well-known cases of Sangh Parivar environmental politics: (1) Hindutva geography and spatial violence; and (2) anti-meat and cow vigilante politics. Beyond serving as a discourse that ignites violence and far-right extremism, I showcase how the sounding board of ‘civilization’ encapsulates the relationship between sociopolitical and environmental far-right objectives, highlighting the ways that far-right civilizationism seeks to define human relationships with natural and built environments. Conceptualizing civilizationism in this way strengthens understandings of how the racial, ethno-national, and religious features of far-right politics are rooted in ecological doctrine that is often based on the social-material features of past ‘civilization’. This supports the primordial significance of civilizationism in far-right ideology beyond only the white supremacist far-right and ‘Western Civilization’.

La contre-histoire comme méthode et genre de recherche

In June of 2013, my youngest daughter, Grace, and I crossed the border into Canada from the United States, our applications for work and living permits in hand. We were directed by border agents to the immigration centre, and when our turn came to speak with an agent, as she completed our paperwork, she asked Grace what she most looked forward to about becoming Canadian. Grace said confidently, “Tim Horton’s!” This produced laughter among every agent close enough to hear. As our agent returned our documentation, she told us we would find a Tim Horton’s at the first exit after the border and welcomed us to Canada. The relief I felt was palpable. I had already promised my family that I would never uproot them to change jobs again. But more than this, I felt the anguish of living in a nation now adrift on rising tides of white supremacy and racism, now sinking in a sea of right-wing extremism and protofascism receding. Some time would pass before I allowed myself to see, to hear, to know that not all border crossings were as easy, as welcoming as ours.

Violence as method: the “white replacement”, “white genocide”, and “Eurabia” conspiracy theories and the biopolitics of networked violence

ABSTRACT In this paper, I consider the “white replacement”, “white genocide”, and “Eurabia” conspiracy theories and the cycles of violence they have inspired, including mass murders in Norway, New Zealand, and the United States. Working from Foucault’s theories of biopolitics and “race struggle”, I investigate how these events enact a form of “networked violence” that combines offline and online actions to enact a distributed strategy of biopolitical control in an effort to discipline and control the bodies of people of colour, migrants, and in particular Muslims. Based in historical and ideological analysis of the three theories and their network logics, the paper aims to extend Foucault’s theories of “race struggle” and governmentality by demonstrating how right-wing extremist strategies of biopolitical control are now digitally networked and use online platforms to predicate and enact alternative systems of governmentality based in race.

Cas Mudde: “O termo populismo não é apenas um eufemismo. Falta-lhe clareza e temos termos melhores para descrever o mesmo fenômeno”

n this interview, Cas Mudde, one of the most influential political scientists in the United States and an international reference in the study of populism and right-wing extremism, criticizes the concept of populism and emphasizes why his current work is focused on the concept of far-right. Mudde also compares the far-right in the Global South and the Global North and explains what he understands by mainstreaming and normalization. Finally, the political scientist warns about the threats to liberal democracy.

Proud Boys on Telegram

Utilizing an original data set of public Telegram channels affiliated with a right-wing extremist group, the Proud Boys, we conduct an exploratory analysis of the structure and nature of the group’s presence on the platform. Our study considers the group’s growth, organizational structure, connectedness with other far-right and/or fringe factions, and the range of topics discussed on this alternative social media platform. The findings show that the Proud Boys have a notable presence on Telegram, with a discernable spike in activity coinciding with Facebook’s and Instagram’s 2018 deplatforming of associated pages and profiles with this and other extremist groups. Another sharp increase in activity is then precipitated by the attack on the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. By February 2022, we identified 92 public Telegram channels explicitly affiliated with the Proud Boys, which constitute the core of a well-connected network with 131,953 subscribers. These channels, primarily from the United States, also include international presences in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, and Germany. Our data reveals substantial interaction between the Proud Boys and other fringe and/or far-right communities on Telegram, including MAGA Trumpists, QAnon, COVID-19-related misinformation, and white-supremacist communities. Content analyses of this network highlights several prominent and recurring themes, including opposition to feminism and liberals, skepticism toward official information sources, and propagation of various conspiracy beliefs. This study offers the first systematic examination of the Proud Boys on Telegram, illuminating how a far-right extremist group leverages the latitude afforded by a relatively unregulated alternative social media platform.

Testing a probabilistic model of desistance from online posting in a right-wing extremist forum: distinguishing between violent and non-violent users

ABSTRACT Little is known about online behaviours of violent extremists generally or differences compared to non-violent extremists who share ideological beliefs. Even less is known about desistance from posting behaviour. A sample of 99 violent and non-violent right-wing extremists to compare their online patterns of desistance within a sub-forum of the largest white supremacy web-forum was analysed. A probabilistic model of desistance was tested to determine the validity of criteria set for users reaching posting desistance. Findings indicated that the criteria predicted “true” desistance, with 5% misidentification. Each consecutive month without posting in the sub-forum resulted in a 7.6% increase in odds of posting desistance. There were no significant differences in effects for violent versus non-violent users, though statistical power was low.

Foreign fighters from the far right and extreme left in the Russia–Ukraine conflict

ABSTARCT This study analyzes the phenomenon of Italian foreign fighters of different ideological backgrounds on the Ukrainian front. Right-wing extremists on opposite sides of the front and right-wing extremists fighting alongside left-wing extremists. An ideologically intricate situation that needs to be understood in the light of the political and geopolitical dynamics of the present but also of the history of right-wing movements since the Second World War. On the one hand, the foreign fighters from CasaPound Italia (CPI) aligned with Ukraine and NATO and on the other those of Forza Nuova (FN) and other movements aligned with pro-Russian militias and united in combat with far-left fighters. This study reconstructs the reasons for the fracture taking place on the right and those at the base of a rapprochement between a part of the far right and the extreme left, the so-called Red-Brown cocktail.

Kaala, a counter-narrative to Hindutva from an Ambedkarite perspective

ABSTRACT The right-wing extremists, BJP and RSS, have a long-term mission to construct a Hindu nation bound by Ramrajya, a political model derived from the epic Ramayana. In its nationalistic project, the Hindutva desires to incorporate Dalits. For achieving the same, it usurps Dalits by appropriating Ambedkar – through strategically eroding his radicalism. Additionally, it uses Ramayana as a cultural tool to de-ideologize Dalits. It promotes Ramayana as an egalitarian epic to Dalits – for subsuming them within the Ramrajya politics. Dalits are losing political consciousness and they are disoriented by the Hindutva. In this article, I explore how a Tamil film named Kaala, directed by Pa. Ranjith, has countered these efforts of the Hindutva in the popular culture. In Kaala, Ranjith challenges the Hindutva’s appropriation of Dalits by re-creating Ambedkar’s radical legacy on the big screens. In the film, he re-narrates the epic from an Ambedkarite perspective to counter the Hindutva’s efforts in de-ideologizing Dalits. Ranjith is a radical director who makes various transformations in Tamil cinema. His vision is to carry forward Ambedkarite politics in the popular culture. In this article, I explore how he effectively counters the Hindutva. To accomplish the objectives of the study, I use Ambedkarite framework as an analytical tool.

Ungrateful Refugees: North Korean Refugees in South Korea

Abstract: Despite South Korea's support for their transition, North Korean defectors in South Korea suffer from social isolation and financial difficulties. Moreover, they cannot speak about their problems for fear of being blamed as "ungrateful." This paper will problematize their human rights issues in the South by discussing two documentary films: Mrs. B., a North Korean Woman (2016) and Shadow Flowers (2019). Both films are about North Korean refugee women who have obtained South Korean citizenship but are unhappy and want to return home. Watched and controlled by the authorities, their right to freedom of mobility takes the back seat for concerns over national security. They are also supposed to stay silent to avoid being labeled as ungrateful refugees and targeted by far-right extremists and anti-communists. Considering Mrs. B. and Ryun-hee's cases, the paper will show how their harsh reality is stuck in the unhappy resettlement in the South. By adopting a critical refugee studies approach, the paper will identify their ungrateful character, being in line with its depiction of the grateful refugee as a constructed character. Thus, it will explore how South Korean society can accommodate the different voices of those ungrateful North Korean defectors without dismissing or demonizing them.

REFLECTIONS ON STUDYING RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Looking back on my thirty years of research about right-wing extremism in the United States, I offer several principles to guide how our field approaches conservative activism in these perilous times. First, I discuss how the causes of right-wing movements are different from other movements. Their goals center on preserving privileges that are slipping away, rather than fighting for privileges historically denied to constituents. This key difference forces us to reconsider the causal role of grievances in the emergence of collective action. Second, rightwing movements are about power. Power is most effective in maintaining dominance when it is not visible. Right-wing mobilization signals a failure to maintain dominance in ways that conceal exploitative relationships. Third, power devaluation theory provides guidance on specifying ways that threats and grievances lead to right-wing mobilization. Finally, the status component of Weber’s class-status-power trinity is especially relevant for understanding the rise of rightwing movements. My current research considers how socially constructed status hierarchies of race, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, citizenship, and religion shape the contours of political divisions in American politics. Apropos of the last point, findings demonstrate the importance of status-preservation goals in structuring political behavior. In the near future it seems that such goals will continue to animate right-wing extremism and pose a threat to democratic governance and efforts to generate equality and a more peaceful world.

Far-right Extremism in the USA

The author of the article examines the current state of far-right extremism in the USA. The article points out several features typical of such movements in the political realia of the Unites States at the beginning of the 2020s. Among those are: decentralization, the metamorphosis of the idea of ‘white supremacy’, contacts with like-minded individuals and movements abroad, the unifying role of D. Trump, as well as the growing popularity of far-right views among American voters. The author concludes that far-right extremism is still a force with which one has to reckon and which may play an essential role in the upcoming presidential election of 2024.