Reactionary Movements Research Articles

Between the Religious and the Secular: Latin American Neo-Pentecostalism in a Context of Multiple Modernities

This article seeks to understand neo-Pentecostalism in Latin America as a religious and political movement within the framework of multiple modernities, based on an ethnographic study in evangelical churches in Chile and Mexico. The study focuses on two main axes: the discourse of the “Kingdom of God” and the experience of the Holy Spirit. The former explores the conception of public space, while the latter examines the experiential dimensions, both individual and collective, that confer meaning and legitimacy to this religious movement. Neo-Pentecostalism emerges as a complex phenomenon where religion and politics intertwine in novel ways, responding to the intricacies of the region. Contrary to the notion of a monolithic and reactionary movement, this article demonstrates how neo-Pentecostalism is a movement that navigates the interstices between the religious and the secular.

La renovación conceptual de la conciencia de clase, la revolución y la violencia: reflexiones a propósito de la actualidad de la obra de Georg Lukács

One hundred years after the publication of History and Class Consciousness, it is imperative to revisit the classic work of Georg Lukács to discuss the relevance of his ideas in a world where the capitalist mode of production does not cease to show its devastating effects. To do so, we divide the article into two sections. In the first part, we place Lukács’ work in dialogue with that of Hegel and Marx in order to clarify the status of violence as an ontological condition of history, allowing us to determine the theoretical-practical framework from which social revolution can be conceptualized. In the second section, we analyze Lukács’ notion of class consciousness not as a historical fatality but as an act of self-determination of the proletariat. We compare this proposal with the current situation of gentrification of the proletariat which, far from invalidating the Hungarian author’s proposal, constitutes its reversal and the platform for its actualization. Ultimately, it is about the proletarian still today taking control and becoming, through class consciousness, the subject-object of history. We conclude by reinterpreting Lukács’ terms in a practice that counters a reactionary position in order to combat both the reactionary movements and the hedonistic immobilism of the proletariat.

British Colonial Education in the Indian Subcontinent (1757-1858): Attitude of Muslims

This article investigates the British colonial education imparted in the Indian Subcontinent during the priod 1757-1858, keeping in view the Muslim perspective. The objective is to comprehend the complex and diverse ways in which Muslims responded to British education throughout the colonial era, which were influenced by revolutionary and reactionary movements ignited by British domination. Muslims developed a complicated relationship with colonial education as a result of tensions heightened by the repression of indigenous concerns and the disregard for the acquisition of Islamic values. This study aims to comprehend the purpose of British education in the Indian subcontinent, analyses competing Muslim ideologies surrounding colonial education, uncovers factors influencing Muslim attitudes toward education during the British rule, and also analyses the differences in how different groups of Muslims responded to British education throughout British colonialism. For this purpose, this study uses a qualitative research methodology to investigate historical sources and determine the factors contributing to the hostile and defensive views of Indian Muslims regarding colonial education. The findings demonstrate the complex effects of British colonial policies, underlining the conflicts brought about by the disregard for Islamic knowledge and the fallout from the Sepoy Revolution. The study depicts varying responses to western education and competing ideologies among Muslims in India and underscores the significance of placing Muslim views in the larger sociopolitical context of colonial India. It also emphasises how critical it is to comprehend Muslim viewpoints on colonial education to dispel myths and promote a nuanced awareness of the historical legacies that continue to influence educational practices in post-colonial cultures.

Status threat: The core of reactionary politics

AbstractIn recent years, reactionary movements have overtaken the politics of western democracies and developing countries alike. Using the United States is a case in point, we offer a theory of what motivates reactionary movements. While controlling for conventional individual‐level accounts of reactionary psychological dispositions, we offer a fresh explanation: status threat. We argue that status threat, a reaction to rapid sociocultural change on the part of dominant groups, pushes some members of these groups into joining and supporting reactionary movements and parties, respectively. We first outline the social psychology of the group (White, Christian, patriarchal, native born, heteronormative) that animates a movement (MAGA) that, in turn, has taken over a party (the GOP). We then test a wide range of hypotheses using two original data sets, finding robust evidence to support our claim: status threat is a major source of the increasing fractionalization of American society and politics, one that threatens American democracy.

Othering, peaking, populism and moral panics: The reactionary strategies of organised transphobia

This article shows that organised transphobia is promoted using similar strategies and politics as the wider reactionary movement which has become increasingly mainstream. In particular, we outline the transphobic process of ‘othering’ based on moral panics, which seeks to construct, homogenise and exaggerate a threat and to naturalise it in the bodies and existence of the ‘Other’. Reactionary politics rely on authoritarian tendencies and strategies which aim to remove the rights of certain communities, and as such threaten wider demands for equal rights. They claim to speak on behalf of ‘the people’, in this case often (certain) women, against an elite which seeks to grant unfair rights and privileges to a mostly silent and silenced minority, even though said rights are precarious and limited, and power is rarely on their side. Rather than a bottom-up movement in defence of women, what we refer to as ‘organised transphobia’ is a top-down movement that relies on prominent platforms and privileged access to shaping public discourse to divert attention away from the real struggle most women and LGBTQ+ people are facing conjointly.

Do conspiracy beliefs fuel support for reactionary social movements? Effects of misbeliefs on actions to oppose lockdown and to "stop the steal".

Pundits have speculated that the spread of conspiracies and misinformation (termed "misbeliefs") is leading to a resurgence of right-wing, reactionary movements. However, the current empirical picture regarding the relationship between misbeliefs and collective action is mixed. We help clarify these associations by using two waves of data collected during the COVID-19 Pandemic (in Australia, N = 519, and the United States, N = 510) and democratic elections (in New Zealand N = 603, and the United States N = 609) to examine the effects of misbeliefs on support for reactionary movements (e.g., anti-lockdown protests, Study 1; anti-election protests, Study 2). Results reveal that within-person changes in misbeliefs correlate positively with support for reactionary collective action both directly (Studies 1-2) and indirectly by shaping the legitimacy of the authority (Study 1b). The relationship between misbelief and legitimacy is, however, conditioned by the stance of the authority in question: the association is positive when authorities endorse misbeliefs (Study 1a) and negative when they do not (Study 1b). Thus, the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and action hinges upon the alignment of the content of the conspiracy and the goals of the collective action.

Movements and Countermovements in Contemporary Brazil: Repression, Confrontation, and the Fight for Land

Abstract How can we make sense of the current rise and strength of the far right in Brazil? This article aims to address this question by providing an analysis of Brazilian politics in recent years, exploring both its institutional aspects and factors exceeding this framework. It examines the past decade of protests beginning with those in June 2013, and the strained relationship between the leftist government and the communities involved in these demonstrations. Furthermore, the article seeks to understand the resurgence of the far right within its historical context as a reactionary movement. It highlights how the events of 2013 foreshadowed unresolved issues pertaining to justice and consequently, approaches to political struggle in Brazil.

MOVIMENTOS REACIONÁRIOS À TEORIA FREIREANA: UM ESTUDO A PARTIR DA ANÁLISE DE PROJETOS DE LEI PROPOSTOS ENTRE 2015 E 2020

Education, Paulo Freire, one of the greatest thinkers in global pedagogy, to be viewed unfavorably by a significant portion of Brazilians. It is necessary, then, to comprehend how reactionary movements are currently forming and how they influence the attack on Freirean thinking. We analyze the intersections between reactionary movements, Paulo Freire, and the "Escola Sem Partido" (School Without Party) movement, which gained significant prominence in 2015 when its first bill was proposed in the National Congress. In the analysis of the bills that deal with the removal of Paulo Freire as the patron of Brazilian education, we observe the repeated use of the argument that Freire is to blame for the low quality of Brazilian education. Additionally, there is a production of discourse asserting that Freire is a left-wing indoctrinator who uses his theory to propagate his political views, as well as claims that he encourages disorder and insubordination. In this way, the attacks against Freire fall within a political opposition, in which these conservative and neo-fascist movements serve neoliberalism and seek to limit the content taught in Brazilian schools, using Freire as a starting point to undermine his work and the model of critical and progressive education that he represents.

When Puppies start to hate: the revanchist nostalgia of the Hugo Awards’ PuppyGate controversy

ABSTRACT In 2015, two groups of right-wing authors and fans – the Sad and Rabid Puppies – flooded the Hugo Awards with literature they deemed “popular” and anti-“message fiction.” These reactionaries mobilized the affects of melancholy, anger, and hatred against the increasing diversification of speculative fiction. Through analyzing the affective economy of “PuppyGate,” this article demonstrates the key role of nostalgia in the affective economies of reactionary movements, paying particular attention to the tension between restorative nostalgia, with its aim to return to an imagined past, and revanchist nostalgia, which strives to destroy the present and punish those who made that destruction necessary.

Fertile Ground

Fears of immigration and demographic change have fueled nativist, pro-natalist movements that support the reproductive, heteronormative family as a vital political project shaping their rhetoric and politics. This paper argues that right-wing populist movements can be situated within heteroactivsm, as reactionary movements positioning themselves against challenges to the heteronormative family. I suggest that understanding the populist character of these movements can help theorize why so many right-wing populists echo specific claims about gender and race. By situating their political claims in biological claims about sex, gender and race, these movements contrast themselves with abstract ideals of universal human rights, neoliberal rationality, and cosmopolitan globalism, embracing the traditional family, gender norms, and heterosexual reproduction. They encourage normative family promoted through state policy of rewarding proper families and punishing improper social reproduction—whether literal reproduction or the cultural reproduction of values. Tracing the broad outlines of a political project anchored in the reproductive bodies of women, I argue for greater attention to the ways the heteroactivist project is central to right-wing populism and its multi-scalar manifestations.

THE ROLE OF JADIDS IN DEVELOPING THE PERIODIC PRINTING IN CENTRAL ASIA

The paper examines the national press activities of Jadids that marked a turning point in the enlightenment process. Then, the role of printing culture and press in raising awareness and national consciousness among the Central Asian people is analysed. Following this, the political movement of Jadidism is examined, and concludes by arguing that Jadidism was formed not only as a cultural and political movement, but also as a religious-cultural and anti-colonial movement resisting against the Soviet regime. Furthermore, this research argues that if the Jadids had not awoken the mass people by enlightenment, reform and national press, independence or national identity would not have been attained. This thesis argues that Jadidism emerged as a reactionary movement against Soviet exploitation, freedom from which, Jadids believed, could be achieved via education and national consciousness. Throughout the research, the considerable efforts of Jadids in enlightening the people through new-method learning, press activities, and a political liberation movement will be demonstrated. Then this research will conclude by reviewing the main arguments of the work conducted, emphasising the limitations and presenting some recommendations for future research.

‘Our Own People’: The Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association in Interwar Britain and Ireland

The Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association (SILRA) was originally founded in London in 1922 to aid ‘refugees’ in Britain. It also had an Irish sub-committee, and soon focussed its attention almost exclusively on those loyalists who remained in the Irish Free State (IFS). Populated by diehard Conservatives and Irish unionists, SILRA demonstrates the longevity of the afterlife of the Irish Revolution for both of these groups – though both had experienced it very differently. As a non-violent reactionary movement that spanned Britain, Ireland, and the dominions, SILRA offers a useful transnational case-study of interwar counter-revolution in a British context. Moreover, SILRA's Irish committee highlights some of the ways in which the sternest southern loyalists and unionists – who found themselves among the ‘losers’ of the Irish Revolution – preserved allegiances and social solidarity in the IFS.

Witnesses to the Living God: Three Paradigms for Approaching the Politics of Nouvelle Théologie*

Witnesses to the Living God: Three Paradigms for Approaching the Politics of <i>Nouvelle Théologie</i>*

Visual-verbal journals, literature, and literacies of well-becoming

ABSTRACT Critically-oriented teacher education has been under assault in the United States (U.S.), England, and Australia through policies that have had a chilling effect on teaching critical race theory, gender, and sexuality. We are concerned that these reactionary movements will further distort the histories, lives, and humanity of minoritized groups while reinforcing the single storylines of dominant groups. Our post-qualitative inquiry demonstrates how four literacy teacher education instructors and four preservice literacy teachers from various regions of the U.S. used visual-verbal journals (VVJs) and quality literature in critically-oriented, artful pedagogy to disrupt normative forces in teacher education. Data analyses were informed by the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, particularly the concepts of becoming and health, which have explanatory power over affective encounters across the four different sites. We focus on encounters that produced literacies of well-becoming, which are reading, composing, and thinking processes that multiply the ways learners: 1) encounter self and other; 2) relate to histories and sociopolitical forces; and 3) circulate life-affirming practices. This article provides affirmative examples of how affects can produce health, which for Deleuze involves distributed capacities to break out of well-worn grooves of habit by connecting to the world in new ways.

A West German Civil Movement in the 1970s: Opposition to the kooperative Schule in Nordrhein-Westfalen

Abstract This study examines the popular petition of 1978 against the introduction of the kooperative Schule in Nordrhein-Westfalen. As a result of this campaign, reforms initiated by the SPD were halted. The reforms had been directed at the eventual introduction of a comprehensive school system, which would have replaced Germany’s traditional three-track school system. Previous studies have usually presented the popular petition as either a reactionary movement against the reform or a victory for conservatives, including the CDU. However, the opposition movement represented a wide range of public opinion, with supporters of the SPD also participating in the movement. Furthermore, when the introduction of the kooperative Schule was abandoned, no positive impact was seen on the CDU’s election results. The event marked a change in the political culture of West Germany, as a sign of a new trend. With greater democratization and modernization in the 1960s and 1970s, civil society became more politically active. Such a pattern promoted the political participation of the public in West German society. In addition, the change was linked to the development of Western civil movements characterized by autonomy and non-partisanship.

Protesting for stability or change? Definitional and conceptual issues in the study of reactionary, conservative, and progressive collective actions

AbstractOver the last quarter of a century, social psychological research on collective action has grown exponentially and progressed through four distinct phases. While the first phase showed that identity, efficacy, and injustice motivate the aggrieved to protest on behalf of their ingroup, the second phase acknowledged that protests could involve collaborations between the disadvantaged and their advantaged allies. The third phase of research examined reactionary movements by integrating ideology and acknowledging that advantaged groups can protest to protect or expand their privileged status. The research showcased in this special issue highlights a fourth phase of collective action by illustrating its dialectical nature and recognising the opposing agendas advanced by structurally disadvantaged and advantaged groups. We also advance a two‐dimensional taxonomy differentiating between the goals (Inclusive vs. Exclusive) and societal implications (Challenge vs. Defend the Status Quo) of collective action. In doing so, we provide some of the necessary conceptual and definitional foundations for the next generation of research on collective action and social change.

Understanding identity processes in support for reactionary and progressive social movements among advantaged and disadvantaged groups: The role of collective narcissism and secure ingroup identity

AbstractAcross five studies (two representative, one pre‐registered, total N = 4962), we examined the role of collective narcissism and secure identity in support for reactionary (Alt‐Right and nationalist) and progressive (Black Lives Matter and Women's Strike) social movements among advantaged (White Americans and Polish national majority) versus disadvantaged (Black Americans) groups. Among advantaged groups, collective narcissism, more so than secure identity, was related to more support for reactionary movements (Studies 1–4) and less support for progressive movements (Studies 1–3). Studies 3a, 3b and 4 directly compared members of advantaged and disadvantaged ethnic groups in the US and suggested that both collective narcissism and secure identity were positively associated with support for progressive movements among disadvantaged groups. This research contributes to understanding the identity processes involved in reactionary and progressive movements. It highlights the importance of distinguishing secure and defensive (i.e., narcissistic) identities, particularly when investigating support for reactionary movements among advantaged groups.

Mobilizing the Past in Revolutionary Times: Memory, Counter‐Memory, and Nostalgia During the Lebanese Uprising

Social movement studies have addressed the issue of nostalgia within two perspectives, focusing, respectively, on emotions and on memory. Our contribution looks at nostalgia in social movements by building upon the combination of these two streams in social movement studies. Going beyond a stereotypical vision of reactionary movements as backward looking and progressive ones as forward looking, we will suggest that while both types of movements look at some aspects of the past with nostalgia, they do it in a very different combination of emotions and memory. To compare how different movements perform their emotional and memory work, we focused on the recent uprising in Lebanon as a critical case in which mobilizations and counter‐mobilizations have been carried out by different actors at the same time. In both cases, nostalgia was strategically developed for different moments of Lebanon's history through the movements' choices of the very spaces for the performance of contentious acts, but also the symbolic meaning attributed to them and the emotional work performed around the protest events. By developing a “tick description” of some main contentious moments where nostalgia emerged in the Lebanon uprisings, we aim to understand the ways in which nostalgia intervenes in the social construction of memories and counter‐memories, in an emotionally dense environment.

Johane Masowe Chishanu Church Theology and Spirituality: A Transition from the Written Bible to Holy Spirit Utterances

This article was written at a time when decoloniality was generating a heated debate at most African universities. The point of departure of the debate is that, since Africans were born into a valid and legitimate religious knowledge system that predates the arrival of Western missionaries on the land, can African Initiated Churches (AICs) acknowledge these valid and legitimate indigenous knowledge systems and still retain the tag “African Christian churches?” These legitimate indigenous religious knowledge systems include, but are not limited to, Africans’ way of accessing the divine through oral transmission without reading books and by shunning temples, as they appropriate African traditional shrines for worship. This is so because the dawn and unfolding of Eurocentric modernity, through colonialism and European missionaries, introduced particular ways of accessing the divine through the reading of books (the Bible) and temple gatherings. These, among other factors, gave rise to the emergence of the Johane Masowe Chishanu Church (JMC Church) in Zimbabwe. Since its emergence in the 1930s, the JMC Church has developed a theology that tries to liberate Africans from colonial hegemony by distancing its theology from White missionary inventions such as worshipping in temples and the reading of the Bible in church, as this church prefers open space worship and the utterances of the Holy Spirit (tsanangudzo dzewmeya), among other things. Thus, the JMC Church, like many other AICs, is a reactionary movement that questioned the White man’s innovation, Western epistemologies and European cultural imperialism in a bid to romanticise the past. Accordingly, this article discusses the JMC Church as disregarding the Bible with regard to its spirituality in an attempt to free its theology from Eurocentric hegemony. Thus, the main question raised in this article is: Does the written Scripture matter for theology within AICs in the post-colonial period? Or, does this movement retain the tag “an African Christian church” after disregarding the Bible for theology?

Identity, Social Character, and the Clash of Social Movements

At this moment in time, the very future of democracy in America has become a serious question. Many journalists and commentators have raised questions of crisis of White, Christian, male authority that impel an ‘illiberal democracy’, one-party rule, and/or a new civil War. The wave of progressive movements in the 1960s, resurgent in the 21st century, and challenging traditional, essentialist, identities and values were experienced by many as threats and dangers, fostering fears, anxieties, and grievances that elicited backlashes engendering various reactionary movements that are now a powerful force. These ‘authoritarian populisms’, racialized nationalisms, gendered ethnoreligious nationalisms, neo-fascisms, and indeed some clearly fascist movements extolling racial, gender, or Christian supremacy are mobilizing to preserve the culture and country of the ‘real people’ who feel victimized, challenged, and face demise. A basic fault of modern political economies has been the fundamental conflict between political democracy, majority rule, and/or rules of law and the economic anarchy, which privileges a few while many face duress; these conditions lead to the irrationality and scapegoating, especially racism, sexism, and ethnocentrism flourish to foster a variety of authoritarian, reactionary mobilizations across the globe.