Far-right Politicians Research Articles

Far-right cooperation: Gender, political networks, and the cordon sanitaire in the European Parliament

Even as the far-right parties of Western Europe have made broad electoral gains, mainstream parties continue to enact a cordon sanitaire, effectively curtailing their legislative impact. Any potential ability of women far-right politicians to cooperate across party lines would open up important political opportunities not available for them within the far right. This article seeks to address the following question: are women of the far right able to cooperate with members of other political parties in ways that their men colleagues cannot? Using a network analysis of motion co-authorship across three sessions of the European Parliament, I find that there is a double marginalization of far-right women politicians – as women in far-right politics, and as far-right politicians in the European Parliament – which results in women politicians who lack influence within their parties, and within the European Parliament more broadly.

Off the charts: the whiteness of bestsellerdom in French publishing

While much of current scholarship on best-selling novels explains this corpus’s singularity as being found within the text at the level of form, this article postulates that whiteness is a major yet unspoken criterion for inclusion on French betseller lists. In order to make visible the salience of whiteness in French publishing, the article first presents four sets of data on recent French bestseller lists. It then provides a case study of the novelist Douglas Kennedy as evidence of whiteness as the essential ingredient of bestsellerdom. In this article, I analyze Kennedy’s critical reception in order to show how whiteness functions in the French literary field. White authors are given full latitude to write about any topic they want, they are perceived as neutral, even apolitical experts, and do not have to negotiate editorial labels the way non-white writers must. Analysis of Kennedy’s journalism and most recent novel Et c’est ainsi que nous vivrons argues that both set up the white writer as the victim of Black social movements and far-right politicians. Ultimately, the article contends that Kennedy’s writing reifies the often tacit but nonetheless powerful image of the French writer as white.

Marxism and the Critique of Antisemitism

Abstract Antisemitism is an increasingly prevalent aspect of public life in the West, both as a consequence of the growth of the far right across the board and through its mobilisation against Palestinian liberation and Palestine solidarity activism. While synagogues are targeted and far-right politicians revive ideas of Jewish global power, it is the left, Muslims, and Palestinians that are continuously constructed as the source of the current rise in hatred and violence against Jews. If historically the Marxist tradition engaged actively with the so-called Jewish question, in recent decades the subject has receded from focus. This shift took place as other forms of racism – directed at Muslims, Black populations, or migrants – became the basis for reactionary politics in the West. This article argues that while some of the assumptions that underwrote classical Marxist texts on the issue have been found wanting – perhaps most notably the inevitable (or desirable) character of the trend towards assimilation – they remain important starting points for making sense of our present, both by their method and their political commitment to liberation.

Waiting for Today’s Barbarians: How the Fall of the Roman Empire Is Anachronistically Exploited to Serve a Contemporary Discriminatory B/Ordering and Othering Agenda

ABSTRACT In this paper, we analyze the “Colosseum interview” of former U.K. Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, in which he pleads for fierce border control against refugees, “like the Romans did.” His speech act is exemplary of a trend among especially conservative and/or far-right politicians and thinkers who are warning of a possible fall of the E.U., like the Roman Empire, if it does not “control its borders.” Close reading and deconstructing his phantasmagorical claims, we showcase how Johnson follows a worrying populist tradition of selectively and anachronistically glorifying the Roman past to legitimize contemporary antagonistic b/ordering and othering practices. We argue that precisely the normalization of such dog-whistle speech acts, where historical events are farcically tragedized to fit violent political agendas, potentially paves the way for future tragedies to emerge.

Agri-bolsonarism: a movement led by agricultural elites and far-right politicians in Brazil

ABSTRACT As the balance of forces in Brazil shifted toward conservatism in the 2010s, regional agricultural elites and Jair Bolsonaro formed a political-economic movement. This article analyses the constitution and consolidation of this movement, here called agri-bolsonarism, considering its connections with national agricultural associations and transnational agribusiness corporations and its relations with agrarian and climate politics. The research is based on participant observation in business associations, corporate and state archives and interviews with private and political leaders.

Political quarrel overshadows vaccination advocacy: How the vaccine debate on Brazilian Twitter was framed by anti-vaxxers during Bolsonaro administration

Despite Brazil's tradition of successful mass immunization programs, the country has been experiencing alarming declines in vaccination coverage, especially among children. That is aggravated by the growth of anti-vaccine movements and the spread of health misinformation in social media in the last decade, which have worsened during the COVID-19 outbreak. Several reports link populism and far-right politicians to anti-vaccination support worldwide, which was also the case in Brazil during president Jair Bolsonaro's administration. This project aimed to identify the circulating pro and anti-vaccine narratives in Portuguese on Twitter, during a crucial decision-making period regarding childhood vaccination in Brazil, from December 9, 2021, until February 9, 2022. From the over one million tweets and four million retweets collected, we identified two well-defined groups, one in favor and another against vaccination. Within the sample, we selected 1500 influencer tweets with the highest impact (>500 retweets) and conducted content analysis. Although the pro-vaccine influencers were more retweeted than anti-vaxxer ones, we observed that anti-vaccine movements were more succesful in framing discussions on Twitter. The subject of COVID-19 was the target of political polarization embedded in populist, anti-science and anti-traditional media discourses promoted by anti-vaxxers. As a counterpart, the pro-vaccine influencers reacted inarticulately, focusing on criticizing the anti-vaccination actors, attitudes, and policies instead of promoting vaccines. Based on reults, we claim that a well-coordinated network of health communicators from science centers and health institutions, in partnership with properly briefed social media influencers and fact-checking sources, would more efectively pre-tempt the public about vaccine misinformation.

The far-right and anti-vaccine attitudes: lessons from Spain's mass COVID-19 vaccine roll-out.

Far-right politicians in several countries have been vocal opponents of COVID-19 vaccination. But can this threaten vaccine roll-out? We take advantage of repeated cross-sectional surveys with samples of around 3800 individuals across Spain conducted monthly from December 2020 to January 2022 (n = 51 294) to examine any association between far-right politics and vaccine hesitancy through the whole vaccine roll-out. Consistent with prior data, we found that far-right supporters were almost twice as likely to be vaccine-hesitant than the overall population in December 2020, before vaccines became available. However, with a successful vaccine roll out, this difference shrank, reaching non-significance by September 2021. From October 2021, however, vaccine hesitancy rebounded among this group at a time when the leadership of the far-right promoted a 'freedom of choice' discourse common among anti-vax supporters. By the latest month analysed (January 2022), far-right voters had returned to being twice as likely to be vaccine-hesitant and 7 percentage points less likely to be vaccinated than the general population. Our results are consistent with evidence that far-right politicians can encourage vaccine hesitancy. Nonetheless, we show that public attitudes towards vaccination are not immutable. Whereas a rapid and effective vaccine rollout can help to overcome the resistance of far-right voters to get vaccinated, they also seem to be susceptible to their party leader's discourse on vaccines.

Culture wars in Brazil: The far-right and their failure to protect cultural heritage

Far-right politicians in Brazil are attacking and censoring cultural heritage and enacting policies that go far beyond cultural heritage. These politicians are also dismantling the structural frameworks that protect, secure, encourage and enable cultural heritage at a time when it is experiencing serious and systematic crime threats. This is despite legal obligations in the Brazilian Constitution to protect it. In addition, these politicians are missing opportunities in the sector from which they could benefit hugely, as could the Brazilian population and the cultural heritage. Instead of waging ‘culture wars’, politicising security, and failing to adequately protect cultural heritage, a viable alternative is to govern the cultural economy.

Wolf attacks predict far-right voting

Does the return of large carnivores affect voting behavior? We study this question through the lens of wolf attacks on livestock. Sustained environmental conservation has allowed the wolf (Canis lupus) to make an impressive and unforeseen comeback across Central Europe in recent years. While lauded by conservationists, local residents often see the wolf as a threat to economic livelihoods, particularly those of farmers. As populists appear to exploit such sentiments, the wolf’s reemergence is a plausible source for far-right voting behavior. To test this hypothesis, we collect fine-grained spatial data on wolf attacks and construct a municipality-level panel in Germany. Using difference-in-differences models, we find that wolf attacks are accompanied by a significant rise in far-right voting behavior, while the Green party, if anything, suffers electoral losses. We buttress this finding using local-level survey data, which confirms a link between wolf attacks and negative sentiment toward environmental protection. To explore potential mechanisms, we analyze Twitter posts, election manifestos, and Facebook ads to show that far-right politicians frame the wolf as a threat to economic livelihoods.

Telegram and Digital Methods

Telegram and Digital Methods

FROM TOP-DOWN TO BOTTOM-UP: POLITICAL IMAGE MANAGEMENT AND THE PRESERVATION OF WHITE SUPREMACY THROUGH VISUALS AND MEMES ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

Social media platforms play an increasing role in politics, facilitating the circulation of populist texts disseminated by politicians, official campaign media, and user-generated content, all of which contribute to voters’ perceptions of politicians and political issues. The networks and affordances of social media platforms allow for the development of an individualized, affective connection with voters, which is a particularly important strategy for far-right politicians, who are often stigmatized. Furthermore, social media enables the circulation of user-generated materials in a form of digital political participation, allowing citizens to respond in real-time to political developments. While digital political participation ostensibly offers the potential for the expression of marginalized perspectives, digital texts predominantly emphasize and enforce existing hierarchies, particularly the supremacy of whiteness. This panel explores visuals and memes circulated on social media through the lenses of platform studies, whiteness studies, nostalgia, and Critical Discourse Analysis. By examining both “top-down” media disseminated by public figures and “bottom-up” user-generated content, this panel provides an in-depth understanding of the social media ecosystems that work to preserve and extend far-right values and white supremacy. Rachel Winter focuses on the influence of official campaign materials on user-generated content, as well as the impacts of both on candidate image management and the racial hierarchy of the United States. An analysis of representations of race in user-generated Rafael “Ted” Cruz and Robert “Beto” O’Rourke memes reveals an embedded valuation of whiteness and white supremacy to the detriment of other racial demographics. Political memes collected from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Reddit uphold the importance of the white racial identity of candidates and, in so doing, attempt to preserve White American identities from the perceived threat of multiculturalism embodied in racially diverse politicians and their constituents. Julia DeCook examines nostalgia and chronotopes in alt-right memes, contending that the emphasis on “tradition” over “progress” is an attempt to unify the alt-right and preserve white identity and supremacy from threats of globalization and feminism. The alt-right creates virtual nation-states that use consistent linguistic strategies to enable these groups to engage in a form of collective action. Examining white supremacist memes from Reddit and Instagram, Panelist 2 explores the ways that time, memory, and the abstract conception of “the past” are used in digital propaganda to appeal to younger voters and emphasize the myth that whiteness must be protected from the threat of multiculturalism.

Beyond ‘fake news’?

Abstract This article longitudinally analyses how Australian politicians engage with, and attack, journalists and the media more generally on Twitter from 2011–2018. The article finds that attacks on journalists have increased significantly since 2016 when Trump came to power, but this is largely the preserve of populist and far-right politicians. These politicians rarely call the media fake, instead alleging bias or questioning the veracity or standards of reporting and production. Many politicians have a functional relationship with the media, rarely criticising the media. Attacks are largely focused on the national public service broadcaster, the ABC, with limited attacks on commercial media.

Far right alternative news media as ‘indignation mobilization mechanisms’: how the far right opposed the Global Compact for Migration

ABSTRACT The paper analyses the role of alternative far-right media in promoting and organizing mobilization against the Global Compact for Migration – the first intergovernmentally negotiated agreement, prepared under the auspices of the United Nations, covering all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner. Exploring four European alternative far-right media: PI-News in Germany, Il Primato Nazionale in Italy, the UK localization of Breitbart, and the transnational Voice of Europe, we show that these media have gone beyond (dis)informing and have actively mobilized and channeled indignation through petitioning and protest organization. While most research on far-right media practices so far has focused either on social media interactions or exclusively on ‘disinformation’ and ‘fake news’, we analyse web based alternative news media as part of а far-right social movement that has successfully used progressive left-wing protests repertoires and tactics. We argue that alternative far-right news media act as ‘indignation mobilization mechanisms’ that not only fuel the indignation of the public by channeling the messages of far-right politicians but also channel bottom-up indignation through online campaigns, petitions, and offline street protests. This unabashedly biased and mobilization-oriented approach is what distinguishes far-right media from mainstream media and guarantees them a loyal and dedicated supporter base.

Digital Press Criticism: The Symbolic Dimensions of Donald Trump’s Assault on U.S. Journalists as the “Enemy of the People”

Digital press criticism, or the use of non-journalistic platforms as a means for critiquing journalism, is made possible by digital technologies that circumvent traditional media channels. This form of criticism is not marginal, but indeed is increasingly central within the political communication environment. This can be seen in President Donald Trump’s persistent attacks on U.S. journalists. This article examines how journalists responded to two episodes of digital press criticism, in 2017 and 2019, when Trump used Twitter to affix the incendiary label of “enemy of the people” to journalists. This article explores the propensity of the journalistic community to use frames that individualize Trump by promoting his agency as paramount. We argue that this framing obscures and downplays, if not outright ignores, how far-right politicians utilize emergent channels of digital press criticism to undermine journalism’s epistemic legitimacy and raise questions about its social role.

Competing Visions of Peace Amidst Declining Democratization

What is peace? In the age of decreasing global appetite for liberal democracy, how does the notion of peace prefigure in the political discourse of emerging far-right politicians? The concept of peace constitutes one of the most contentious discursive tools in modern politics. Peace is a fuzzy meta-discourse, which means that its discursive invocation in the public sphere facilitates considerable difficulties in distinguishing it from other related but supposedly distinctive concepts such as development, justice, human rights, stability, consolidated regime, strong state, and democratization. By conceiving peace as a fuzzy meta-discourse, its meaning is provisional, contextual, and circumstantial, and therefore, by necessity, its definitional boundaries are malleable and difficult to analytically pin down. The application of the peace concept could vary widely depending on a complex range of factors—such as the user’s agenda, cultural context, temporal milieu, and discursive environment.

Global Nationalism in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic

AbstractThe article outlines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on nationalism around the world. Starting from the premise that nationalism is a global and ubiquitous idea in the contemporary world, it explores whether exclusionary tendencies have been reinforced by the pandemic. The pandemic and government responses will not necessarily trigger the increase in exclusionary nationalism that both far-right politicians and observers have noted. However, there are 4 aspects, examined in the article, that might be shaped by the pandemic. These include the recent trajectory of nationalism and its social relevance prior to the pandemic,the rise of authoritarianism as governments suspend or reduce democratic freedoms and civil liberties, the rise of biases against some groups associated with the pandemic, the rise of borders and deglobalization, and the politics of fear. Thus, while the rise of exclusionary nationalism might not be the inevitable consequence of the pandemic, it risks reinforcing preexisting nationalist dynamics.

Do Far-Right Mayors Increase the Probability of Hate Crimes? Evidence From Italy

In this paper, I investigate whether the election of far-right politicians affects the probability of hate crimes against immigrants. I exploit a unique dataset on hate crimes, and I focus on local mayors in Italy, a country where political support for extreme-right has recently soared. The high number of municipalities allows me to perform a Regression Discontinuity (RD) analysis and establish a causal relationship between the appointment of far-right politicians and hate crimes by focusing on local elections that far-right candidates won or lost with a tiny margin of victory. Results show that in municipalities where extreme-right mayors are in power, the likelihood of a hate crime occurring is significantly higher (around five percentage points). The effect of far-right mayors on hate crimes is particularly strong in the early years of their mandate. Besides, it persists when considering the most severe acts, including physical assaults. I find two mechanisms particularly relevant. First, I demonstrate that the election of a far-right mayor generates an erosion of social norms. This behavioral change does not occur only in the municipalities where the mayors are elected: using a staggered difference-in-differences approach, I prove the existence of spillover effects on hate crimes also in the surrounding municipalities, especially in areas where the extreme-right presence is recent. Second, I explore the role of the Internet, and I show that the results are driven by municipalities with higher broadband penetration.

Феномен растущей популярности партии «Альтернатива для Германии» в современной Европе

The article examines the ascent of the party «Alternative for Germany» (AFD) from its creation in 2012 to a sharp jump in popularity in the parliamentary elections in 2017. Special emphasis is paid to the review of the strengthening of Eurosceptic rhetoric, criticism of modern German politics as a result of the arrival of farright politicians to the leading positions in the party. The article concludes that Euroscepticism has become one of the components of the broad populist platform of the party as the AFD has developed. Moreover, it is established that unexpectedly high support for the AFD by the German electorate and the party’s acquisition of the status of the main opposition force in the Bundestag becomes an important factor for the German establishment in the context of defending its position on further deepening the processes of European integration.

ОПАСНЫЕ СВЯЗИ: РОССИЯ И ПРАВЫЕ РАДИКАЛЫ НА ЗАПАДЕ

Anton Shekhovtsov is a political researcher who deals with far right movements and leaders, mainly in Europe and in post-Soviet countries. This book presents a comprehensive and multifaceted analysis of ties between Russian officials and institutions with Western, predominantly European far-right politicians and intellectuals. Shekhovtsov points out that these ties have strengthened after 2004. He examines in detail the various scenarios and strategies the Russian sides resort to  from simple lobbying-like activity to more sophisticated schemes, such as electoral reports made by “independent” commissions consisting of the representatives of European far right parties and movements. Shekhovtsov gives the historical perspective, showing the interaction with the European far right even in the times of the Soviet Union. He presents the story of pre- and post-war plans to take advantage of the rightwing activists in Europe, mainly in Germany. The book by Anton Shekhovtsov is an interesting contribution both to our knowledge about the foreign policy of authoritarian regimes and to the field of international relations and Russian foreign policy.

Emotional Politics, Islamophobic Tweet. The Hashtags #Brexit and #chiudiamoiporti

Contemporary far-right politicians increasingly diffuse messages through social networks. This article argues that online communication may prove effective for political engagement because it can create reactions against certain groups, in a process that I call emotional antagonism. An example of antagonism is online Islamophobia, which considers Islam as supposedly incompatible with democratic values and tends to conflate Muslims with migrants. Through qualitative observations and textual analyses of tweets, this article explores the following questions: How do certain online exchanges emotionally frame Muslims as the social others in relation to European culture? Why and how does the Internet facilitate the spread of antagonism? What type of political propaganda and participation is connected to affective online Islamophobia? The article analyses two case studies: 1) Islamophobic tweets sent in the aftermath of the British referendum in 2016, with the hashtag #Brexit; 2) Anti-Muslim tweets that contain the hashtag #chiudiamoiporti (close the ports), launched by Italian Vice Prime Minister Matteo Salvini in 2018 to support anti-migration measures. The article shows that exploring antagonism can add complexity to the current understanding of Islamophobic conflicts, of social media platforms' characteristics, and of political participation based on online communication.