Far-right Movements Research Articles

Talking with racists: insights from discourse and communication studies on the containment of far-right movements

The rise of the far right is threatening the antifascist consensus that helped rebuild Europe and the world following World War II. Discourse studies have done much to further the understanding of the success as well as the fallacies of the discourses of far-right movements and have provided the means by which to comprehend right-wing communicative strategies. However, it has also been said that the reactions of the democratic majority and the mainstream media have contributed—mainly involuntarily—to the success of right-wing politics. The role of the reactions of society, the democratic majority and the mainstream media in trying to counter right-wing discourses is widely underexplored. The aim of this contribution is to understand the diverse material and symbolic effects of certain practices of political contestation. It aims to help elaborate counterstrategies against the threat of the far right and to present communicative strategies against hate. With the help of such diverse authors as Foucault, Goffman or Habermas, we will show how democratic positions seem to be in an ideological dilemma in which the speech acts that try to counter far-right discourses very often produce the opposite effect. The article can help to overcome the pitfalls and performative contradictions of some discursive practices especially in public communications.

The war in Ukraine through far-right and jihadist lenses

This article examines the most widespread stances on the war in Ukraine taken within the far-right and the jihadist milieux. Within these contexts, positions are far from unified and the different narratives exploited on the topic reflect the heterogeneity of the radical postures. Far-right movements and supporters express views ranging from open hostility to Russia and President Vladimir Putin to complete mistrust of NATO and the West. This makes it possible to find these groups on both sides of the battlefield. However, it is necessary to emphasize here that the narrative about Ukraine being run by fascists is no more than Russian propaganda, designed to discredit Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself against Russia’s aggression and weaken international solidarity toward Kyiv. Similarly, a number of jihadist groups and ideologues urge their followers to join the conflict regardless of the side in order to harm unbelievers or, on the contrary, to stay away from it as this would imply giving assistance to the impious. The Russian war against Ukraine is having significant implications for both far-right and jihadi networks, both of which might be able to capitalise on events in organisational, political and communicative terms.

Allegiance in Exchange for Benefits: The Romanian First World War Veterans’ Movement between Democracy and Authoritarianism, 1930–1937

This article proposes that, between the two World Wars, the political loyalties of numerous Romanian First World War veterans were significantly affected by these ex-servicemen's sense of entitlement from military service. Having fought to protect their nation in the course of the conflict, many ex-combatants believed they deserved to be granted a variety of economic and symbolic rewards by the Romanian kingdom, in many cases allying themselves with political forces which promised to award them these benefits. To see their rights recognized, they also created a social movement, through which they lobbied state institutions. As, in the early 1930s, state veterans' policies experienced several shortcomings as the result of the Great Depression, sizeable segments of the former soldiers' movement began supporting a plethora of far-right movements and associations. Importantly, these extremist organizations secured the backing of various ex-servicemen mainly by promising to protect and increase the latter's benefits. Notably, in developing ties to discontented ex-combatants, the right was inspired in some instances by foreign authoritarian political models. However, in the middle of the decade, as governments managed to some extent to restore and even improve the ex-servicemen's special economic status, fascist and radical-right groups ceased to expand their reach within the ex-combatants' movement. Consequently, old soldiers did not play a significant role in the eventual collapse of Romanian democracy. By indicating that the former fighters’ sense of entitlement acted as a prominent radicalizing influence over many of them, this article provides an innovative perspective on the extremist political trends which affected numerous ex-servicemen in interwar Europe. Furthermore, by highlighting that Romanian radical veterans were at times inspired by developments occurring beyond their country's borders, the article helps confirm that transnational factors played a role in the anti-parliamentary activism of European former soldiers.

Online and Offline Coordination in Australia’s Far-Right: A Study of True Blue Crew

Far-right extremism transpires in virtual and physical space. In this study, we examine how the Australian far-right extremist group ‘True Blue Crew’ attempted to coordinate their offline activities with their social media activism. To this end, we conducted a thematic content analysis of administrator posts and user comments present on the group’s Facebook page prior to and following an organised street rally in June 2017. This online analysis was partnered with ethnographic field work to gauge the perceptions of group members and supporters during the rally in Melbourne, Victoria. The results highlight the multi-dimensional and intimate manner in which online and offline contexts are coordinated to support far-right activism and mobilisation. This study offers an empirical account of how far-right attitudes, activism, and mobilisation transpired in Australia in the years prior to an Australian committing the Christchurch terror attack. It reveals a growing frustration within the broader far-right movement, leading to later strategic adaptation that can be interpreted as an early warning sign of an environment increasingly conducive to violence. This provides a more nuanced understanding of the context from which far-right terrorism emerges, and speaks to the importance of maintaining a level of analysis that transverses the social and the individual, as well as the online and the offline spaces. Implications for security and government agencies responses are discussed.

Why are political discussions with fascists impossible? Reflections on the far-right politics of silence

This paper argues that twentieth-century fascist political theory is characterised by the systematic attempt to abolish communication from the public realm. By offering a novel reading of one the most systematic fascist thinkers, Carl Schmitt, who is compared with Søren Kierkegaard, Aristotle, Hannah Arendt, and Walter Benjamin as well as with the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, it is argued that Schmitt's Weimar era thought offers a many-sided challenge to the Western tradition of political thought. Against the Aristotelian notion of politics as rhetorical persuasion and speech, Schmitt mobilises the anti-Aristotelian political theorist, Thomas Hobbes, and an array of other thinkers for his own purposes in order to redefine “the political” as a realm of silence. For Schmitt, and for fascists more generally, the realm of the political appears as an arena in which absolute and non-negotiable existential truths collide—truths, which every political community must necessarily embody in both its constitution and spirit. Reinterpreting Schmitt's central works by relying on a broad array of rare materials, I maintain that Schmitt's famous criterion of the “the political” discloses the crucial moment in which communicative speech becomes impossible. It is argued that understanding the internal mechanics of twentieth century fascist political thought can be highly useful for grasping the momentum that especially far-right movements are experiencing today.

What is Fascism Without a State?: Countering Claims of Bataille’s Left Fascism

ABSTRACT The recent increased prominence of far-right movements and nationalism has led to a renewed focus on the political thought of the early twentieth century. This era is defined by large strands of anti-liberalism, fascism, communism, and other political inclinations and practices that have largely fallen out of favour. Nevertheless, there are a multitude of thinkers that occupy unique niches that avoid these classifications but are associated with these movements to categorise and minimise their heterogeneous thoughts. This paper counters arguments that claim that Georges Bataille is a fascist or left-fascist thinker. Specifically, these arguments claim that his “anarchism” is founded on a valorisation of violence and reckless usage of social effectivities. However, these arguments often misinterpret his writings or force his thought into easily understandable categories in which it does not fit.

Mainstream media use for far-right mobilisation on the alt-tech online platform Gab

Far-right movements tend to have an ambivalent relationship with mainstream media. On the one hand, they often express animosity towards traditional media, accusing them of spreading ‘fake news’ and being part of a hostile conspiracy against ordinary (white) people. On the other hand, this often antagonist perception of the media does not stop far-right actors from using mainstream reporting for their ideological online messaging. This contradictory relationship is situated in a broader societal context shaped by, among other factors, widespread mistrust towards the media, an increasingly polarised media landscape and the recent proliferation of a hyper-partisan online media ecosystem at the far-right fringes. Against this contextual backdrop, this multimethod study analyses over 45,000 posts from Australian users of the far-right alt-tech online platform Gab to examine the use of mainstream media sources for their ideological messaging. This is complemented by a qualitative in-depth analysis of 298 posts that share mainstream media content, identifying posting patterns of incorporating or reframing mainstream media outputs that seek to communicate far-right ideologies within the ideologically charged online community on Gab.

Politicized celebrities against far-right on Twitter. Political preferences and activity of users retweeting Rosalia’s anti Vox tweet after the 2019 general elections in Spain

Politicized celebrities may assume the role of leaders to counter politicians’ monopoly of political representation and to bring social awareness to specific causes (Street, 2004; Wheeler, 2013). This paper analyzes the impact of politicized celebrities in Twitter among politicized and non-politicized audiences. We focus on the case of the Catalan singer Rosalia, who published a short explicit tweet against the Spanish far-right populist party Vox with the text ‘Fuck vox’ the day after the Spanish general elections in November 2019. We measure the political preferences and activity of Rosalia’s followers, Fuck vox post’s retweeters, and users who retweeted the singer before and after the tweet. The results show that Rosalia had a great impact among left-wing and Catalan separatist parties, and among those users with no political preferences or political activity. In addition, we found that Rosalia’s followers were less likely to be politically active (Loader, Vromen & Xenos, 2016). This study sheds light on the potential of politicized celebrities to mobilize their non-politicized audiences to counter far-right movements in social networks.

Not Your Grandma’s Fascism: Fame, Femininity, and Race in Far-Right Postcolonial India and Brazil

AbstractMuch scholarship on the far right focuses on Europe and North America, whereas case studies outside of these regions are often neglected or not recognized as constituting the same phenomenon. In this article, we compare two democracies in the Global South—India and Brazil—to showcase far-right movements within these countries. We situate the “postcolonial neoliberal nationalism” that has shaped the basis of far-right claims in India and Brazil. To illuminate this, we explore female social media influencers within these far-right milieus, and their role in the reproduction of gender, class, and racial hierarchies. Combined with this are insights from media studies on influencer culture as a means of analyzing the performativity of far-right women to advance exclusionary agendas. Overall, we highlight the inherent contradictions and complexity of how far-right female influencers in the Global South are promoting local expressions of gendered indigeneity while also contributing to global far-right narratives.

Far-right populism in Canada

On March 17, 2022, Mr. Evan Balgord, Executive Director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, presented Far-Right Populism in Canada: From M103 to the Ottawa Occupation at the March Digital Roundtable event, hosted by the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS)-Vancouver. The key points of discussion included the connections between different far-right movements in Canada and how grievances and beliefs on conspiracy theories can serve as the groundwork for radicalization and participation in far-right movements. Mr. Balgord’s presentation was followed by a question-and-answer period with questions from the audience and CASIS-Vancouver executives.

How Right-Wing Populists Engage with Cross-Cutting News on Online Message Boards: The Case of ForoCoches and Vox in Spain

Anecdotal evidence suggests a link between online message boards and the rise of far-right movements, which have achieved growing electoral success globally. Press accounts and scholarship have suggested these message boards help to radicalize like-minded users through exposure to shared media insulated from cross-cutting viewpoints (e.g., Hine et al. 2017 ; Palmer 2019). To better understand what role online message boards might play for supporters of right-wing populist movements, we focus on the Spanish political party Vox and its supporters’ use of the message board ForoCoches, a fan site for car enthusiasts, which became an important platform for the party. Using more than 120,000 messages collected from threads mentioning the party between 2013–2019, we examine the URLs shared to show how mainstream news media events shape the conversation online and how users not only were exposed but deeply engaged with cross-cutting news sources. We argue that the use of sites such as ForoCoches should be viewed in the context of a broader increasingly hybrid political and media landscape where activity online and offline cannot be understood separate from one another. Moreover, our findings suggest that the online political discussions that take place in Vox-related threads on ForoCoches resemble normatively positive deliberative spaces—albeit in this case in support of illiberal political positions. In other words, our findings complicate conventional notions about the benefits of political talk, especially online, as a democratically desirable end in and of itself.

Mourning and memorializing in the COVID-19 era

ABSTRACT This short essay engages the efforts of artists, activists, and mourners to memorialize those who have died during the COVID-19 pandemic. These commemorative sites provide needed correctives to the physical absences, political opportunism, and statistical abstractions that have tended to personify the pandemic. As with the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the tropes of individualism and tactility materialize frequently in conversations about these displays. Despite the generative impulses of these memorials, it is imperative that these creations move beyond performative gestures of sentimentality to ensure that the civic agony inflicted by anti-science and far-right movements is not repeated.

Gender, Climate Breakdown and Resistance: The Future of Human Rights in the Shadow of Authoritarianism

ABSTRACT In this article we examine the future of human rights by looking at how ‘authoritarianism’, in its multifaceted forms and manifestations, intersects with existing discourses on climate change, environmental protection, populism and ‘gender deviance’. By adopting an intersectional lens, we interrogate the emergence of the right to a healthy environment and reflect on whether it will help against the double challenge faced by human rights: of climate breakdown and rising authoritarianism. We study the link between authoritarianism and populism, focusing on far-right populism and the creeping authoritarian features that we can associate with far-right groups, both movements and parties. We also consider how certain understandings of nature and the environment are put forward by authoritarian regimes. This leads us to consider so-called ‘ecologism’ and the ways in which far-right movements draw upon green thought on the natural environment to further a gendered agenda based on conceptions of nature as a ‘national treasure’. These conceptions, as we demonstrate, go hand in hand with policies that promote national identity and directly undermine the rights of migrants, ethnic minorities, women and LGBT+ groups.

The Fascist Foreign Policy: Some considerations of Mussolini’s Fascist Ideology

The current article tries to explain the origins of Mussolini’s Fascism and his foreign policy doctrine, by examining the political and ideological contexts of pre-Fascist Italy. This approach offers a wider analysis of the general conditions which enabled the surge of Mussolini’s Far-right movement, such as the political instability, the fear of Communism among Italian elites, and above all, a growing imperialist outlook of the Italian public opinion of that period. Thus, Italian society was characterized by a profound process of atomization, a necessary precondition for a totalitarian takeover, according to Hannah Arendt. The article tries to uncover the particularities of Mussolini’s Fascist, to point out the ideological differences between this doctrine and other Far-right political orientations, such as Hitler’s national socialism by stressing some of the differences, explaining why Mussolini’s Fascist régime was perceived as a moderate one by Western governments for a long period. Mussolini was held in high regard by important American diplomats, like State Secretary Henry Stimson, who labeled Mussolini as a reasonable gentleman in his Post-war memoirs. Also, President Roosevelt expressed often his admiration for Mussolini and his policies, like many of the U.S. ambassadors to Rome.

“Tomorrow belongs to us”: Pathways to Activism in Italian Far-Right Youth Communities

AbstractBased on long-term ethnographic research, this article contributes to the growing scholarship on far-right social movements by presenting an in-depth account of the Italian far-right scene. In presenting personal accounts of three activists and situating them within the milieus in which they are active, it sheds light on a variety of factors that push youth to engage in far-right militancy. Many researchers of far-right extremism have asserted the need to provide more in-depth knowledge on far-right militants, yet there remain important gaps that this article strives to address. First, it demonstrates the value of the ethnographic approach in the study of far right, which offers unique insights into the motivations for involvement and the relations between ideas, beliefs, and practices. Second, it shows the importance of situating present-day activism in a historical context, not only by looking for long-term patterns but also by paying attention to the ways studied actors engage with historical comparisons. Third, in engaging critically with some commonsensical approaches to far-right activists, the paper suggests that ethnographic studies of far-right activism can give us fresh perspectives on broader social phenomena beyond the far right per se.

An Alternative Model for the Operationalization of Discourse Theory of Laclau and Mouffe

The present article provides an alternative model for qualitative studies based on the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, with special emphasis on computer-based analysis. The model may be used for empirical research and analysis of large data corpora. The model offers a mixed-method approach of operationalization, an alternative to existing approaches, combining a quantitative coding stage and a qualitative interpretation stage. First, a list of key signifiers is obtained from open coding of the existing secondary literature on the topic. Second, the key signifiers compose a case research matrix, which includes the list of key signifiers, the word cloud (thesaurus), and subcodes. The case research matrix establishes frameworks for the computer-assisted analysis of the data corpus. Third, the use of the key signifiers in the data corpus is structured using the conceptual framework of Laclau and Mouffe. If the need arises, the case research matrix is updated with the secondary codes and the previous steps are repeated. Fourth, the interpretation process occurs hermeneutically, with emphasis on contextualized self-interpretations. The provided model should fill the gзp in the variety of operationalization approaches designed for qualitative studies in which, for methodological reasons, lexicometric analysis cannot be applied. The application of the model is presented on the example of a case from the field of historical sociology studying the ideological alignment of far-right movements in interwar Switzerland. Article in English

Extrema-direita, xeno-populismo e colonialidade: discursos de ódio e colonização do imaginário no presente

The expansion of far-right movements constitutes a global phenomenon that has translated into the emergence and strengthening of numerous organizations, parties, and especially into the conquest of power in many countries in Europe, North America, and Latin America. In this article we will try to account for this phenomenon, first by presenting and reflecting on the different theoretical conceptions that have been held about it, namely the different related concepts used by academia, such as populism, fascism, extreme right or authoritarian neoliberalism. On a second level, we will focus our attention on Poland and Portugal. In the case of Poland, for its admittedly populist conjunctural character, ruled since2015 by the Law and Justice Party. In the case of Portugal, for its opposite character, under the management of the Socialist Party, recently reelected with 60% of the votes, but which also experiences the strengthening of extreme right-wing movements. Respecting the sociocultural and historical particularities of each, in both countries these movements are expressed both in civil society and in political society. These experiences reveal counterfaces that, despite their differences, signal approximations with the xeno-populist perspective and can shed light on the understanding of these processes. In the Polish scenario, the adoption of institutional policies and legislation against migrants, LGBTQIA+ and other minorities are notable, as well as growing manifestations of far-right movements, both based on hate speech. On the other hand, the Portuguese context, although governed by an opposite political spectrum, also experiences recent processes of strengthening of the far right. In fact, the far-right "Chega" party won third place in a recent election marked by tensions involving hate speech, xenophobia and nationalist perspectives

A Posture of Protest? The Search for Christian Identity in A Post-Secular Society: Between Secularised Eschatology and A Sacralisation of History

This article theorises ideations of “the people” in a comparative reflection on Latin-Christian theologies and typologies of time and secularised appropriations thereof in right-wing as well as far-right movements in Europe and the United States of America. Understanding the world in grand narratives of “good” and “evil” emerges from Christian eschatological hope: the hope of the restoration and renewal of the cosmos and the final defeat of evil prophesised in association with the return of Christ. However, this language of good and evil becomes detached from the wider corpus of Christian belief and theology. In its secular expression, it may attach the good to an abstract and normative account of “the people”, who are defined in contrast to a range of others, both internal and external to the nation. Secular iterations might further echo the stratification of present, past and future through a sacralisation of the past and a dramatization of the future. The context of contemporary right-wing and far-right movements poses a series of questions about the relationship between belief and belonging, the acceptability of the secularization of Christian traditions and theologies, and the extent to which Christian communities can legitimately associate with right-wing movements.

Política e Cultura na América Latina

The main section of this and future editions will be thematic. We seek to publish articles from different methodologies and approaches on the same topic, thus creating a brief and succinct Dossier. The inaugural theme of this section is Politics and Culture in Latin America. Current discussions such as the situation of democracy in Venezuela during the Chavista era, and the current situation of far-right movements, mainly integralists, or even a reflection on the role of NGOs in Latin America are exposed concomitantly with classic themes from social sciences such as a historical analysis of the Comintern's interference in pecebist thought. However, we still maintain a space dedicated to discussions that belong to or dialogue with the four lines of our postgraduate program. This is the central feature of the Miscellaneous section. We also opened a Special section dedicated to the publication of unpublished or difficult-to-access texts, or even transcriptions of conferences, lectures, etc. of renowned intellectuals in the social sciences, as long as the legal norms for reproduction and publication of such texts are respected. In view of this, no matter how hard we work, this section will not always appear in our Journal.

Telling Holocaust Jokes on German Public Television

Since 2015, Israeli-born German artist Shahak Shapira has initiated several satirical campaigns targeting antisemitism and racism in Germany and the country’s relation to the Holocaust. These interventions set Shapira’s career in motion, and in 2019 he landed a slot on the ZDF public broadcasting channel for the talk show Shapira Shapira. The show mocked antisemitism and far-right movements in Germany and reminded the viewers of the country’s history with Jews. His jokes about concentration camps and their contemporary perceptions proved to be especially effective. This article shows how Shahak Shapira and his show challenged the official narratives about Jews, antisemitism and the Holocaust. It argues that Shapira’s jokes might empower Jews and foster Holocaust awareness among the general public in Germany.