Right-wing Activists Research Articles

Becoming right-wing citizens in contemporary Japan

ABSTRACTThis article explicates the process through which individuals become right-wing citizens in contemporary Japan. By incorporating insights from the sociology of emotion, this article complements the existing analyses that emphasize the cognitive process that makes individuals resonate with right-wing ideologies and frames. Drawing on original and secondary interview data with 46 right-wing citizens and ethnographic observations of activities by right-wing groups, it explores how such feelings as shock, fear, anger, and affective bonds shape the mechanism of political conversion along with the cognitive process and ideological socialization. In particular, short-run emotions can motivate individuals to take part in political activism through which they learn about how they should (not) feel in particular situations. Participation in right-wing activism re-shapes short-run emotions into long-run emotions that tend to sustain their commitment by justifying symbolic boundaries between “us” and “them.”

What’s hate got to do with it? Right-wing movements and the hate stereotype

‘Hate stereotyping’ occurs when researchers foreground negative emotions, especially hate, as motivating right-wing social movements, epitomized by labels like ‘hate group’. This convention contradicts empirical evidence showing that hateful feelings and ideological prejudices are mostly insignificant for attracting and retaining members in such movements. Using contemporary theories of hate, this article demonstrates the concept’s limits and misuse in studying and theorizing the political Right. For instance, hate’s theoretical and methodological ambiguity sometimes leads scholars to confuse hatred with right-wing ideology and prejudice, which can obfuscate findings and spur dubious generalizations across political groups. Moreover, some researchers accept post-structuralist theories of hate as a substitute for vital data on emotions, motivations and meaning-making among right-wing actors. Hate explanations persist because they appeal to ‘common sense’ about intolerance, not because of their methodological integrity for studying right-wing movements. By foregrounding intolerance, hate stereotyping risks sustaining the dominant narrative that prejudices such as racism are deviant, and that racism is a problem of bad attitudes and fringe ideologies, rather than larger issues of systemic and structural inequality.

The fascist who would be king: Count Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk

ABSTRACTMacklin and Fowlie explore the political life of Count Potocki de Montalk, a poet, pagan and pretender to the Polish throne. Count Potocki is perhaps most famous as a minor cause célèbre among London’s literary intelligentsia after his imprisonment for obscene libel in 1932. Historians, when they consider him at all, often discount him, viewing him as little more than a colourful eccentric, a view reinforced by Stephanie de Montalk’s fascinating biography of the man, which appeared in 2001. Eccentric he most certainly was. However, as this article demonstrates, Potocki also played a key role as an enabler of fascist and extreme right-wing activism through the services he provided myriad groups as a printer of their literature, a career that spanned the interwar and post-war periods. The article examines how his preposterous pursuit of the Polish Crown, coupled with the innate elitism this engendered, led him to reject egalitarianism and democracy and embrace fascism. While the Spanish Civil War saw an outpouring of literature from his literary contemporaries in support of the Spanish Republic, Potocki responded by establishing The Right Review as a mouthpiece for his own personal mélange of monarchism and fascism. Utilizing newly released security service files combined with archival research in the newly deposited Searchlight archive at Northampton University, this article pays closer attention to the political side of Potocki’s activities than has hitherto been the case, particularly his wartime publishing activities. This includes his anti-Soviet pamphlet on the Katyn massacre, which caused great vexation in government circles for fear of the harm Potocki’s (correct) accusations might do to relations with Britain’s crucial wartime ally. The authors conclude with a detailed examination of the role Potocki played in post-war National Socialist networks, for both personal and political ends, not least of which was his continued efforts to further his claim to the Polish throne, which he never ceased to believe was his by divine right.

“Teach Your Girls to Stab, Not Sing”: Right-Wing Activism, Public Knife Distribution, and the Politics of Gendered Self-Defense in Mumbai, India

This ethnographic essay studies the politics of gender that emerged around a women’s self-defense initiative developed by an extremist right-wing party in Mumbai. This campaign involved the public distribution of modified kitchen knives as arms for poor women cadres. Implementing the program in the context of the controversial “India rape crisis,” the party stated that underprivileged women workers, who battled the threat of rape and sexual harassment while negotiating public spaces, must intimidate and stab predators with these knives, which were especially designed for poor women’s moral and physical protection. My interdisciplinary analysis investigates the ways in which this nationalist knife crusade temporarily reconstructed gendered texts on women’s use and access of public space, by placing itself strategically at the intersection of urban and gendered paranoid performances (which I develop here as “urbanoid enactments”). Through an analysis of mythohistorical, material, and moral cultures that are intimately associated with a global urban paranoia about women’s sexual vulnerability to unwanted male migrant bodies in the public sphere, I argue that such nationalist gimmicks inform a contemporary political debate about strategic right-wing endorsements and their proximate relationships with women’s imagination of migration, mobility, and bodily freedoms in the commercial city.

A 'Mixture of Britannia and Boadicea': Dorothy Crisp's Conservatism and the Limits of Right-Wing Women's Political Activism, 1927-48.

Dorothy Crisp is known for being the militant Chairman of the British Housewives League (BHL) after the Second World War, but historians have failed to recognize that her views and actions were the culmination of over twenty years of right-wing journalism and political activism through which she tried to influence the Conservative Party. This article re-evaluates Crisp's Conservatism and her political career. It asks why such a powerful pro-Conservative female activist failed to secure a place within Conservative politics during the 1930s and the 1940s. In doing so, it shows that Crisp was not willing to conform to traditional gender roles inside the Party or the broader Conservative movement and that she was a vocal advocate for gender equality. It was the combination of her attitude towards women's issues and her older brand of imperialist, ultra-patriotic, anti-statist Conservatism that was unusual for a right-wing woman in this period. Crisp's views on women's issues did not fit the domesticity agenda of the BHL or that of the 'Tory women's tradition', which could not provide her with an opportunity to achieve her career goals. The article also explores how the Party handled challenges from independent right-wing activists, especially women, in a period when 'one-nation' Conservatism was dominant. It engages with recent debates about 'Conservative feminism' and argues that Crisp was also an important figure because she kept alive the model of the independent radical female Conservative, which would become the hallmark of Margaret Thatcher's politics a generation later.

Political genderphobia in Europe: accounting for right-wing political-religious alliances against gender-sensitive education reforms since 2012

This paper is concerned with the formation of alliances between religious and political right-wing actors against gender-sensitive policy reforms, specifically within the last five years. Given the Catholic origin of a discourse that considers the notion of gender, as a socio-cultural element of identity, a dangerous and totalitarian ideology, this paper elaborates the concept of political genderphobia in order to explain why these actors ally themselves to campaign against “gender”. Political genderphobia takes a supply-side approach that emphasises the relevance of ideological and strategic tenets shared by religious (here Christian) and political leaders—namely, their shared understanding of gender hierarchy, social inequality and cultural homogeneity, as well as their appropriation of certain populist strategies aimed at politicising the term “gender” as an elite invention and mobilising it as a fundamental threat to “the people”. In order to understand why political genderphobia has become a salient concept just within the past decade and accompanies the rise of the radical right, three demand-side factors are also discussed: the Europeanisation of anti-discrimination policies in the arena of education, individual risk perception fostered by the transformation of patriarchal structures, and the alleged or real alienation of liberal European elites from those who are not able or willing to share the egalitarian and freedom-based principles of the liberal project. This paper contributes to a question currently under discussion in various areas of research—anti-gender research, research on religion and morality politics, as well as research on the radical right—concerning the relevance of “gender” for illiberal politics.

Activity of non-parliamentary opposition communities in social networks in the context of the Russian 2016 parliamentary election

ABSTRACTThis article aims to analyse the connection between the election to the Russian State Duma in September 2016 and the social network activity of members of the two non-parliamentary opposition groups: right-wing radicals and supporters of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny. For this purpose, the Right-Wing Online Activity Index and Navalny Supporters’ Online Activity Index were calculated. Then, using correlation analysis, relationships between the indices and the results of voting for political parties in the election to the State Duma were determined. As a result, the highest values of the Right-Wing and Navalny Supporters’ Online Activity Indices were registered in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Responding to Hate in Contemporary Japan: Fragmenting Factors Obstructing Effective Ethnic Advocacy

Zainichi Koreans, whose ancestral migration resulted from Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula (1910–1945), are a culturally assimilated minority group now showing accelerated structural assimilation through naturalization and intermarriage with the Japanese majority. Nonetheless, since the mid-2000s, internet-mobilized right-wing activists have deployed hate campaigns against Zainichi Koreans or institutions they label as ‘anti-Japanese’. Conventional Zainichi Korean organizations, the pro-Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) Chongryon and the pro-Republic of Korea (ROK) Mindan, have never formally collaborated to respond. Drawing on fieldwork (2011–2016) and secondary sources, this article explores factors that maintain fragmented ethnic advocacy. Focusing on Zainichi organizational responses to three hate incidents in Kyoto and Tokyo, I examine four dimensions: (a) preceding inter-organizational relationship, (b) bureaucratic inertia, (c) discordant framing strategies, and (d) external socio-political conditions. Organizational stances differ not just by pledged allegiance to different Korean nation-states, but also by organizational response to Japanese policy-making and the legislature. While both organizations adopt framing strategies based on the universal norm of human rights, Chongryon emphasizes minority education rights and Mindan problematizes hate speech per se. I argue that the contrasting strategies reflect broader socio-political factors more than organizational characteristics. Heavy reliance on the Japanese majority as the target audience maintains a fragmented Zainichi Korean advocacy.

Fights on the Right: Social Citizenship, Ethnicity, and Postwar Cohorts of the Japanese Activist Right

In the late 2000s, a new wave of xenophobic activism known as the ‘Action Conservative Movement’ (ACM) began to engage in prominent actions against ethnic minorities. Its aggressive use of hate speech confirmed fears of a rightward shift in Japan, echoing the rise of nationalist movements elsewhere around the globe. However, as the ACM moved from online organizing to high-profile public protest, pre-existing factions of rightist activists challenged ACM methods and viewpoints on multiculturalism. These ‘fights on the right’ highlight the diversity of rightist groups that are often treated monolithically in academia and the media. The critique some rightists made of the ACM’s xenophobic activism was based on a view of ethnicity that embraced Japan as a multi-ethnic empire—an iconoclastic view itself, and a reflection of Cold War geopolitics, the dynamics of domestic political polarities, and Japan’s colonial legacy manifested by ethnic minorities. It built as well from the cultivation of a particular form of anti-establishment ethos. Based upon my ethnographic fieldwork since 2005, this article offers a detailed typography of several generations of right-wing activism in Japan and an examination of how their diverse views of social citizenship, activist method, and ideological commitment have come into conflict as they grapple with ethnicity in contemporary Japan.

When right-wing actors take sides with deportees. A typology of anti-deportation protests

Academic research on activism in migration issues has mainly focused on the actions of either left-wing or far-right activists. As a result, less homogeneous, more complex configurations of actors have been overlooked. This article addresses this gap by drawing attention to unusual alliances of right-wing and left-wing actors as co-partners in the group of key protagonists of anti-deportation protests. Drawing on 96 interviews with actors involved in 15 studied protest cases that took place in Austria, Germany and Switzerland (2005–2013), we find two ideal types of protest, which we call personifying and exemplifying. Personifying protests include right-wing actors, strongly focus on the case of a particular migrant, and do not challenge the principle of deportation as such. In contrast, exemplifying protests do not include right-wing actors. They are carried out by actors with activist experience in NGOs, and more generally criticize deportation and restrictive migration policies. We argue that exemplifying protests are embedded in the solidarity movement, whereas personifying protests, lacking claims of social change or reform, resemble contemporary forms of pragmatic altruistic engagement aiming at individual solutions.

‘In Sweden, girls are allowed to kiss girls, and boys are allowed to kiss boys’: Pride Järva and the inclusion of the ‘LGBT other’ in Swedish nationalist discourses

This article discusses Pride Järva, a ‘gay pride’ march organised by right-wing publicist Jan Sjunnesson in Stockholm’s northern suburbs. Analysing the event, and in particular a speech made by Sjunnesson during the parade in July 2016, I argue that it is indicative of the specific ways in which right-wing actors in Europe increasingly enlist LGBT rights in nationalist, xenophobic and racist projects of exclusion. As markers of tolerant and progressive ‘Europeanness’, they are used to construct and reproduce dangerous racialised and Islamic others along lines of sexuality and gender, a narrative that resonates with established notions of Swedish gender exceptionalism as well as homonationalist-orientalist narratives of threat and protection. Despite their history of actively opposing the expansion of LGBT rights, Sjunnesson and his political associates combine these narratives with a conceptualisation of LGBT issues as private and depoliticised to produce themselves as the ‘true’ protectors of LGBT rights in Sweden.

Workers and the Right Wing: the Situation in India

AbstractWhy and how does a right-wing social movement mobilize workers along class lines? The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), the labor wing of the Hindu nationalist movement in India, marshals working-class support by emphasizing workers’ class positions and identities. Following Gramsci, I argue that the BMS represents the Hindu right's recognition of workers’ class power and is thus key to the Hindu Right's efforts to incorporate workers into hegemonic capitalist social relations. The form that right-wing activity takes depends on the histories of working-class mobilization and the class power of workers. Thus, right-wing actors do not exclusively dictate the terms of the engagement with workers, but workers also exercise agency in shaping and contesting this interaction.

Gottfried Feder’s influence on the early NSDAP’s ideas on economic and state policies and Hitler’s Mein Kampf

Gottfried Feder was one of the most influential radical right-wing activists in Bavaria during the first years after the First World War. His slogan “Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft” (“Breaking the Slavery of Interest”) became widespread within the right-wing and anti-Semitic movement in Germany and was at the core of its anti-capitialist agitation. By 1925 Feder had published several articles, booklets and books in which he called for an abolition of interest on war bonds as a first step towards the general abolition of interest. Furthermore, he developed a scheme for a future German state founded on national and social principles. But as Feder was ambivalent in his stance towards the National-Socialist Party and to Hitler he never managed to turn his ideological influence into political agency. While Hitler praised Feder and his economic theses considerably in Mein Kampf, a deeper reading of the text shows that Hitler did not depend on Feder’s ideas as much as is commonly believed.

Pegida

This article analyzes the Pegida movement from Germany, arguing that Pegida has to be seen as a special form of a populist right movement. Besides sharing the basic characteristics of such a movement, it also displays attributes from other forms of right-wing activism. The additional forms of right-wing activism identified as influential for Pegida were autonomous nationalism and ethnopluralism. These forms of activism contributed to the movement on different levels and their combination accounts for the special, hybrid form of Pegida. This analysis builds upon social movement theory and is based upon primary data collected in interviews with participants and from the official Facebook website of the movement.

French activists to the (radical) right and the (radical) left: are they different or similar?

ABSTRACTThis research aims at detecting commonalities and differences between right-wing and left-wing activists. Based on 44 interviews with members of the French National Front (FN) and 88 Attac activists, I find that Attac activists are individuals with high amounts of civic skills that have been politically socialised until the age of 25. Somewhat different, my interview research indicates that the socialisation mechanisms of FN members, as well as their social and educational backgrounds are diverse. Pertaining to the activists’ values, the two groups expose values at the opposite end of the political spectrum. Whereas left-wing activists respond to globalisation and neo-liberalism by highlighting national and international solidarity and participatory democracy, the radical right-wing members respond to the same phenomena by propagating nationalism, authoritarianism and protectionist policies. Finally, I find that left-wing activists are driven by instrumental and ideological considerations, whereas right-wing activists are motivated by ideology as well as identity processes.

Resisting the Right: Countering Right-Wing Extremism in Canada

Recent world events seem to have motivated renewed activity of and public attention to right-wing extremism, not only within a global context but in Canada as well. In a national study involving interviews with Canadian law enforcement officials, community organizations, and right-wing activists, paired with analyses of open source intelligence, we observed that the foundations of right-wing extremism are complex and multifaceted, grounded in both individual and social conditions. This suggests that so too must counter-extremist initiatives be multidimensional, building on the strengths and expertise of diverse sectors: law enforcement, certainly, but also education, social services, public health, youth workers, and victim service providers, to name a few. In this article, we suggest strategies intended to directly exploit identified patterns inherent in right-wing extremist groups and their environments to disrupt the growth and sustainability of those groups.

Taking Far-Right Claims Seriously and Literally: Anthropology and the Study of Right-Wing Radicalism

Departing from an overview of current mass media discourse on the far right, this article suggests why and how social scientists could contribute to a better understanding of current socio-political changes. In presenting an anthropological perspective, it discusses methodological, conceptual, and ethical challenges to conducting research on and with radical right-wing activists and supporters.

Privilege and Marginality: How Group Identification and Personality Predict Right‐ and Left‐Wing Political Activism

AbstractIn two studies, we examine how different processes might underlie the political mobilization of individuals with marginalized versus privileged identities for left‐wing activism (LWA) versus right‐wing activism (RWA). In the first study, with a sample of 244 midlife women, we tested the hypotheses that endorsement of system justification beliefs and social identities were direct predictors of political activism, and that system justification beliefs moderated the mobilization of social identities for activism on both the left and the right. We found that system justification predicted RWA only among those who felt close to privileged groups; the parallel reverse effect did not hold for LWA, though rejection of system‐justifying beliefs was an important direct predictor. In Study 2, we replicated many of these findings with a sample of 113 college students. In addition, we tested and confirmed the hypothesis that LWA is predicted by openness to experience and is unrelated to RWA, but not that openness plays a stronger role among those with marginalized identities. These two studies together support our overall hypothesis that different personality processes are involved with political mobilization of privileged and marginalized individuals on the right and the left.

Passive Revolution in Contemporary Slovenia. From the 2012 Protests to the Migrant Crisis

Two episodes have impacted on the formation of the Slovenian ruling class over the last five years: the protests of 2012-2013 and the refugee crisis of 2015-2016. In both cases, the responses taken by the elites involved changes to their own composition and nuances in their ideological formulation. Central to this dynamic were the role of right-wing actors in the system, the partial integration of new actors, the assimilation of some of their claims, and the introduction of new questions into projected friend-enemy relations that frame the political life of the country. In no case did these variations lead to substantial changes in the formulation of the basic ideas of the post-socialist regime, including Slovenia's role in the process of European integration, its hierarchical position in relation to its southern neighbours, the deregulation of the economy, and the introduction of increasing restrictions within democratic procedures. These continuities went through several electoral processes and the birth and weakening of major political parties. The Gramscian notion of passive revolution offers a framework that explains the reproduction mechanisms of the Slovenian ruling class during that period.

“Welcome culture”: The emergence and transformation of a public debate on migration

This article investigates the emergence and transformation of a debate on “welcome culture”. This concept has developed as part of a wider effort by the German government since 2005 to improve perceptions of immigration. In autumn 2015, the term entered mainstream public discourse when it became a point of reference for political, societal and media actors. These groups sought to promote a pro-refugee policy for humanitarian or economic reasons, or simply out of pragmatism. Eventually, right-wing actors began to dominate the discourse in order to undermine the pro-refugee camp and approach. The discussion therefore reflects the struggles to define whether Germany and Austria are countries of immigration, or should even aspire to this title.