Racist Parties Research Articles

A contradiction in terms? migrant activists in the Sweden Democrats party

ABSTRACTRight-wing, xenophobic and racist parties have enjoyed immense successes in Europe in recent decades. In Sweden, the third-largest party in Parliament is the Sweden Democrats (SD), with 13% in the 2014 general election. Sympathy for the SD among foreign-born Swedish citizens, both women and men, is far lower than among Sweden-born men, but an increasing number of Swedish citizens with migrant backgrounds support the party. The aim of this article is to explore the subject positions open for citizens with migrant background in the Swedish public space with special focus on the identities and worldviews developed by migrant activists who have joined the SD party and are, to differing degrees, racialised and perceived as non-Swedish. Using the concept of migrant respectability, this research is intended to understand why and under what circumstances migrants chose to join and represent a xenophobic and racist party.

Conservadorismo e extrema-direita na Europa e no Brasil

Resumo: Temos assistido, na Europa dos últimos anos, a um espetacular ascenso político e eleitoral de forças de extrema-direita, racistas, xenófobas, fascistas ou semifascistas. Um fenômeno que não pode ser unicamente explicado pela crise econômica, já que em dois dos países mais atingidos por ela, Portugal e Espanha, a extrema-direita é pouco presente no cenário político, enquanto tem um papel muito significativo em países que pouco sofreram com essa crise (Suíça, Áustria). No Brasil não temos partidos racistas, a extrema-direita se manifesta no chamado a um golpe militar.

Racist dreams and municipal budgets: women representing a culturally racist party in local politics

The welfare and migration regime of Sweden are undergoing substantial changes, as neo-liberal restructuring is rapidly increasing inequalities, and multicultural policies are in retreat as neo-assimilationist policies are growing. In 2014, the Sweden Democrats, a party conceptualised as culturally racist, was re-elected with 13% of the votes, with a presence in almost all municipalities. While scholarship on this and similar parties has expanded, the role that gender and gender equality has for the culturally racist articulation of their agenda remains unexplored. The experience of women organised in the Sweden Democrats is the focus of this article, the experience of these women engaged in local politics, working to include the Sweden Democrats' culturally racist agenda at the municipality level. The article draws upon in-depths interviews with women activists of the Sweden Democrats. Central to the article is an analysis of forms of inclusion and normalisation of the Sweden Democrats' worldviews but also of the forms of resistance towards their presence at the municipality level. Unlike mainstream research, which downplays the cultural racism of extreme right-wing parties, and rarely employ a gendered analysis, we see (cultural) racism and anti-feminism as central for their agenda.

European Public Health News * President's Column * EUPHA office column * Message from the Who Regional Director for Europe: Preparedness and Response to Health Threats * 8th European Public Health Conference--'Health in Europe--from global to local policies, methods and practices'

In this European public health news, all authors reflect on potential threats and an unstable Europe (McKee, Jakab) and the impact this has on public health. All agree that a comprehensive (Jakab), collaborative (Zeegers) and global (McKee) approach is necessary to make sure that public health in Europe and in the world remains a strong partner to combat the potential threats and overcome the crisis. # President's Column {#article-title-2} As I write my first column as the newly appointed President of EUPHA, I am reflecting on several things. The first is the exceptionally high standard that my predecessor, Walter Ricciardi, has set. Elsewhere in this edition I pay tribute to his enormous contribution to public health and beyond. I commit to doing everything possible to live up to his standards. The second is the worrying state of Europe today. Once more we see armed conflict breaking out in our continent, in Eastern Ukraine, and in our neighbouring countries in the Middle East. We have yet to recover from a prolonged economic crisis and seem to have done nothing to address the problems in the financial sector that created it. The recent elections to the European Parliament saw a frightening increase in support for racist and neo-fascist parties. In the global arena, we face threats from international agreements that place trade above health. And we search in vain for the political leaders, at regional, national and European levels, who have the vision, charisma and ability to lead us out of this situation. Even if our political leaders lack a vision, we in EUPHA have one, set out in our recently adopted strategy for the years 2014–20. Our vision is one of improved health and reduced health inequalities for all Europeans. Our contribution to achieving this vision will be to add value to the efforts of …

Three phases of hegemonic whiteness: understanding racial temporalities in Sweden

After the election in Sweden in 2010, the racist Sweden Democrats party entered parliament. Post-election reactions and discussions were largely preoccupied with the issue of how the presence of a racist party in the Swedish parliament disturbs the country's exceptionalist image and privileged position – both in the West and in the non-Western world – as humanity's avant-garde and beacon for antiracism. This article aims to understand the current situation in Sweden from a critical race and whiteness studies perspective. We regard contemporary Sweden as a ‘white nation in crisis’, and diagnose Swedish society as suffering from a ‘white melancholia’. In order to disentangle and shed light upon what is perceived to be mourned and what is seen as being lost for the future, the article offers an historicised account of three principal phases, stages and moments of Swedish nation-building and whiteness; ‘white purity’ (1905–1968); ‘white solidarity’ (1968–2001); and ‘white melancholy’, from 2001 onwards. The analysis also takes into account how these three nation-building projects and hegemonic whiteness and racial grammar regimes are interrelated, and intersect with the different gender and class relations; racial formations; minority discourses; and various political ideologies and affective structures characterising these three periods.

Une tentative de propagande raciste dans la France de 1943. Darquier de Pellepoix et l’union française pour la défense de la race

Up until May 1942 when Louis Darquier de Pellepoix was appointed Head of the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs, Vichy’s anti-Semitic propaganda was limited to several radio programs and a few publications. As the leader of the anti-Jewish party in France during the late 1930s, Darquier de Pellepoix accomplished his ambition to found a large popular racist party and named it The French Union for the Defense of the Race (UFDR). After a troublesome beginning, the UFDR was launched in January 1943 and made 5 minute bi-weekly broadcasts on Mondays and Fridays at 12 p.m. on the national radio waves. However, all its other initiatives failed and the number of its followers was meager total of 469 subscribers. In October 1943 the Union was disbanded by orders of the occupying authorities. This failure can be attributed to several factors including the organization’s own history, its disjointed ambitions and the rivalries which existed among Darquier de Pellepoix, his opponents and members of the German Embassy in Paris.The discovery of an unpublished archival fund, sealed immediately after the Second World War and containing documents of the UFDC, allows us to trace the history of this association which represented the only attempt to create a national “racist” movement financed by the French state under Nazi occupation.

We are Sweden Democrats because we care for others: Exploring racisms in the Swedish extreme right

During the last decades there has been an upsurge in research on xenophobic populist parties, mirroring their political successes. In the Swedish context, characterised by neoliberal restructuring, issues of ‘race’, citizenship and belonging have been important elements of the public debate. These issues have unfolded in parallel with the presence of a neo-Nazi social movement and the emergence of two new parliamentary parties in which cultural racism has been central. Research has especially focused on the xenophobic content and how to relate these parties to the wider research on party politics in western liberal democracies. While there have been some studies focusing on gendered differences in voting and activism highlighting the peripheral role of women, there are still very few studies analysing the worldview of women active in these parties, and the role of gender as metaphor, identity and policy within these parties. Inspired by feminist, postcolonial and Marxist research, the authors of this article are interested in analysing the worldview of women activists. The material is composed of 20 in-depth interviews with female Sweden Democrat politicians complemented by party texts and participant observation. The aim of the article is to explore how women within a Swedish version of these parties, the Sweden Democrats, name and reflect upon their experiences, especially focusing on how a care rhetoric is used in their narratives. These women have chosen to represent a racist party (although they do not see themselves or the party as racist). What inspires them? What visions of gender evolve from their worldview?

Electoral Epidemic: The Political Cost of Economic Crisis in Southern Europe, 2010–11

This article introduces a collection of essays on the elections of 2010–11 in Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Cyprus and the Turkish Cypriot community. It examines the impact of the European sovereign debt crisis on electoral trends in the era of the Greek and Portuguese bailouts. After briefly examining the crisis economies, it investigates patterns of abstention, incumbent punishment and opposition success, including the rise of regional, anti-party, far-right and racist parties. The article concludes, following Krastev (Journal of Democracy, vol. 13, no. 3, 2002, pp. 39–53), that the crisis is creating ‘democracy without choices’ in Southern Europe with potentially destabilising consequences throughout the region.

Revitalizing the City in an Anti‐Urban Context: Extreme Right and the Rise of Urban Policies in Flanders, Belgium

The article presents information on the rise of urban policies in Flanders, Belgium. Since 1988, Flanders has been hit by so-called Black Sundays, a series of election victories for the extreme right and racist party Vlaams Blok. The rise of the Vlaams Blok has historical roots in the anti-urban nature of housing, mobility and planning policies since the foundation of the country. The immediate causes are the decreasing legitimacy of politics during the unstable 1980s, and the worsening of material circumstances, especially of vulnerable people in the large cities. In 1982, the first local elections in which the party participated, the Vlaams Blok obtained 27,600 votes in Flanders. The Vlaams Blok relative score systematically increases with urban density. The present day urban problems in Flanders have historical roots, which can be summarized as non or anti-urbanism. Although the geographical outcome of this industrialization wave was more regional than urban, it became clear how industrialization and the spatial concentration of workers were accompanied by secularization and the growth of the socialist labour movement.

Migration between States and Markets

Liège has always been a city of passage, of migration, of intercultural encounters. Due to its location at the core of Europe and to its economic and industrial structure, Liège has for decades attracted immigrants. In the nineteenth century, migrants were coming mainly from Flanders, which at the time was an underdeveloped rural area. In the interwar period, many migrants from Poland and other Eastern European countries settled in the region. Right after the Second World War, the mining industry needed an additional labor force. It came from Italy and later from Morocco and other countries. Nowadays, refugees and asylum-seekers from Africa and Asia live in the city and in the region. Liège is a multicultural, multiethnic and multiracial society with a long tradition of integration and toleration. Of course, Liège is no paradise. In this changing city, there are serious social and economic problems that sometimes find an expression in the field of ethnicity. But, contrary to other Belgian cities, racist and fascist political parties do not play a significant role in local politics.

The ‘Fourth Way’ of the Ultra Right: Austria, Europe, and the End of Neo-Corporatism

WHEN IN EARLY FEBRUARY 2000 Austria's conservative People's Party (ÖVP) announced that it would build a coalition with the ultra-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) shockwaves spread through the media worldwide. Undoubtedly, this constituted a historic event in the European political landscape. For the first time a party of the extreme xenophobic Right was allowed to enter government and as a result, for the first time in their history, the member states of the European Union decided to put one member state under diplomatic quarantine and to reduce bi-lateral relations to a technical level.1 Now, as the diplomatic boycott—the so-called ‘sanctions’—has been lifted it becomes clear that it has achieved the very opposite of what was intended. Contrary to widely circulated opinion, though, it was not the boycott itself which was unjustified but the lifting of the boycott. Questions of hypocrisy aside, in reality the boycott proved to be the first purely political decision taken by the EU: not the usual bureaucratic compromise solution but a decision over political principles by which a line of demarcation was drawn vis-à-vis ultra-right populism (Marchart 2000). For a few months it seemed that the EU-member states were not prepared to accept racist parties in government. Of course, this turned out to be a rather short-lived form of heroism when Austrian ministers threatened to use their power of veto at EU-conferences in order to fight the sanctions by any means.

Reactions Toward the New Minorities of Western Europe

Millions of ex-colonials, “guest workers,” refugees, and other immigrants have settled in western Europe during recent decades. Extensive research on this phenomenon broadens sociology's understanding of intergroup relations in industrial societies. Unlike African Americans, these new Europeans are often viewed as not “belonging,” and gaining citizenship can be difficult. The chapter discusses four major reactions to the new minorities: prejudice, discrimination, political opposition, and violence. Both blatant and subtle forms of prejudice predict anti-immigrant attitudes. And between 1988 and 1991, a hardening took place in these attitudes. Similarly, direct and indirect discrimination against the new minorities is pervasive. Moreover, anti-discrimination efforts have been largely ineffective. Far-right, anti-immigration political parties have formed to exploit this situation. These openly racist parties have succeeded in shifting the political spectrum on the issue to the right. In addition, violence against third-world immigrants has increased in recent years, especially in nations such as Britain and Germany where far-right parties are weakest. The chapter concludes that these phenomena are remarkably consistent across western Europe. Furthermore, the European research on these topics supports and extends North American research in intergroup relations.

Some Conceptual Issues and Problems in the Comparison of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe

In this article it is argued that the conceptualization of anti-immigrant parties has been inadequate. Starting from the non-theoretical concept of anti-immigrant parties, three main concepts are discussed and defined: protest parties, racist parties and extreme-right parties. Each of these concepts has its own emphasis and highlights a specific feature of a political family in statu nascendi. Protest parties are non-revolutionary anti-system parties; racist parties are single-issue parties, while extreme-right parties are revolutionary anti-system parties. The article develops a typology of anti-immigrant parties that runs from the general and diffuse (protest parties) to the specific (racist) and ideologically articulate (extreme right). The concepts are not nested but are overlapping, yet they allow us to differentiate between different types of anti-immigrant parties in Western Europe. Protest parties are primarily a product of political alienation, racist parties arise from misgivings about national immigration policy, while extreme-right parties implicitly or explicitly present a political tradition that reacts against the spirit of international capitalism. Researchers who concentrate on electorates tend to use the concept of protest party, those who study militants tend towards the concept of racist parties while those who analyse party programmes and ideology often use the label extreme right.

A Test of the Approaches of Adorno et al., Lederer and Altemeyer of Authoritarianism in Belgian Flanders: A Research Note

A main theoretical and empirical question in the field of authoritarianism and modem political racism research was answered in a large survey of 900 Flemish high school students. This research question was, Which of the authoritarianism concepts and scales performs better in a theoretical and empirical sense: that of Adorno et al. (1950), Lederer (1983) or Altemeyer (1988)? The results show, contrary to what has been suggested by some authors, that the various operationalizations of authoritarianism have no superiority over one another: the scales have similar relations with the main variables they are supposed to predict, like antiminorities ethnocentrism, national ingroup favoritism. anti-Semitism, antifeminism, pro-Apartheid attitudes, submissive behavior, social punitiveness, trust in authorities, and sympathy and voting preference for a racist party, and no relation with directiveness. This is not really a surprise as the various F scales are relatively highly intercorrelated. The results also support the existence of an attitudinal and behavioral syndrome of authoritarianism.

Explaining the rise of racist and extreme right violence in Western Europe: Grievances or opportunities?

AbstractThis paper investigates the causes of the recent rise in extreme right and racist violence in Western Europe. In the first part, the available data on extreme right and racist violence in eight Western European countries ‐ Germany, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway ‐ are discussed. Contrary to the image presented in the media, Germany is no 'Sonderfall’ as regards the level of violence. Germany belongs to the countries with the highest levels of violence, but Switzerland and Great Britain are roughly comparable in this regard. The second part of the paper attempts to explain cross‐national differences by applying two theoretical perspectives from the social movement literature. The grievance model, which sees the causes of violence in grievances related to the main target groups of the extreme right (foreigners and asylum seekers) and more general feelings of anomie among the socially marginal, finds little support in the data. The opportunity model, which emphasizes the role of political elites in shaping mobilization opportunities for social movements, finds support in an analysis of the relation between the development of extreme right and racist violence and the political debate around asylum legislation in Germany. Moreover, cross‐national comparison shows that the amount of violence also depends on the prior strength of extreme right and racist parties. Contrary to common wisdom, but in line with the expectations derived from the opportunity model, the level of violence tends to be low where extreme right and racist parties are strong and vice versa.

Authoritarianism and the Revival of Political Racism: Reassessments in the Netherlands of the Reliability and Validity of the Concept of Authoritarianism by Adorno et al.

The supporters of a right-wing extremist and racist party which held a seat in the Dutch Parliament, have been shown to be highly authoritarian and ethnocentric. Research among a large number of high school students in The Netherlands proves that the concepts and instruments of Adorno et al. are reliable and valid. Authoritarianism is related to ethnocentrism, right-wing extremism, conservatism, and anti-feminism. This was demonstrated using scaling methods and in-depth interviews. It was concluded that authoritarianism is not only related to potential fascism but also to actual fascism.