Right-wing Social Movements Research Articles

The road to European parliament mandate for populist radical-right parties: Selecting the ‘perfect’ AfD candidate

With growing public distrust toward European institutions, Eurosceptic populist radical-right parties make up almost a third of MEPs in the current European Parliament. As part of the larger scholarly debate on populist parties’ success, this article examines intra-party selection logic for the ‘perfect’ populist radical-right MEP candidate. Using original data from participant observation and interviews with Alternative for Germany delegates during the 2018/2019 European Election Assembly, this study suggests that party members were more likely to be selected as candidates if they (1) possessed extensive network with right-wing social movements to strengthen their electoral mobilization; (2) and showed strong commitment to party cohesion and good reputation to fend off accusations of racism and Nazism.

Corrigendum to: Thinking Beyond Extremism: A Critique of Counterterrorism Research on Right-Wing Nationalist and Far-Right Social Movements

Corrigendum to: Thinking Beyond Extremism: A Critique of Counterterrorism Research on Right-Wing Nationalist and Far-Right Social Movements

No Surrender. No Challenge. No Protest Paradigm: A Content Analysis of the Canadian News Media Coverage of the "Yellow Vest Movement" and the "United We Roll Convoy".

This study's exhaustive content analysis (N = 538) examines how Canada's mainstream news media covered the nascent yellow vest movement from the first Canadian protests in December 2018 culminating in the February 2019 cross-country United We Roll convoy. We demonstrate that Protest Paradigm scholarship does not offer a useful analytic for understanding the coverage of this right-wing social movement whose tactics were banal and law abiding. Furthermore, we argue that Canadian news media coverage of the protest movement was largely uncritical and decidedly hegemonic, raising questions about normative watchdog conceptions of the news media in Canadian democracy.

Why and when do citizens support populist right-wing social movements? Development and test of an integrative theoretical model

ABSTRACT What are the microlevel mechanisms that explain citizens’ support of populist social movements? We address this question by focusing on the ‘PEGIDA’ (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident) protest groups in Germany, which became particularly prominent by attracting large numbers of attendees in street protests during the years 2015/16. We develop and test an integrative theoretical model that points to the key roles of anti-immigrant attitudes and political dissatisfaction as mediators linking subjective socioeconomic deprivation with citizens’ support of the ‘Pegida’-movement. Equally important, this model holds that citizens’ political dissatisfaction moderates the nexus between anti-immigrant attitudes and support for ‘Pegida’. The results based on data from seven cross-sectional general population surveys provide clear support for these predictions. Combined, these efforts help to advance scholarly understanding of not only why, but also how and under what conditions non-activist citizens support anti-immigrant collective action as exemplified by the ‘Pegida’ movement.

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.

Research in a Minefield: Relating with Tea Party Activists

Based on a doctoral research project on Tea Party groups in Pennsylvania, this article deals both with the various pitfalls I had to learn to avoid and the significant impact that being a young, white French woman had on the way activists interacted with me. In addition, I reflect upon the general ramifications of studying a right-wing social movement while not aligning with it politically. The automatic distance—and presumed ensuing objectivity that this viewpoint initially seems to afford—is much more fragile and complicated than apparent at first glance.

As bases da nova direita: estudo de caso do Movimento Brasil Livre na cidade de São Paulo

O presente artigo é o resultado de pesquisas bibliográficas e de observação de campo realizada durante as manifestações em favor do impedimento de Dilma Rousseff. A finalidade deste artigo é compreender a formação de um movimento social de direita no Brasil, analisando os processos e as mudanças estruturais que impulsionaram a atuação do que veio a ser denominado como “nova direita”. Para tal, utilizaremos os conceitos de repertório e performance de Charles Tilly. Entendemos que o que caracteriza esta nova direita hoje é a inovação em sua ação política, passando a assimilar novas táticas ao seu repertório patriota, como protestos de rua. Estudaremos especificamente o Movimento Brasil Livre (MBL), grupo que se destacou durante os protestos pró-impeachment, investigando sua atuação entre 2013 a 2016, resgatando o cenário em qual surgiu e se fortaleceu.

The Global Right in the World Revolutions of 1917 and 20xx

Abstract An understanding of the contemporary constellation of right-wing national and transnational social movements needs to compare the recent movements and the global context with what happened in the first half of the twentieth century to figure out the similarities and differences, and to gain insights about what could be the consequences of the reemergence of populist nationalism and fascist movements. This article uses the comparative evolutionary world-systems perspective to study the global right from 1900 to the present. The point is to develop a better understanding of twenty-first century fascism, populist nationalism, and authoritarian practices and to help construct a praxis for the New Global Left.1

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.

A reluctant right-wing social movement: On the ‘good sense’ of Swedish hunters

In recent years, hunting and agrarian communities have increasingly risen in opposition to nature conservation policy that is perceived to infringe on their traditional ways of life. They charge ‘conservationists’ with having a disproportionate influence on policy and maintain that the state system now disenfranchises their needs and interests. In this paper, we suggest this particular brand of resistance can be illuminated by neo-Marxist social movement framework (Cox and Nilsen, 2014) on the dialectic of movements-from-below and movements-from-above, competing for hegemony in the context of an organic crisis of the system.Our paper examines the role of Swedish hunters' activation of a counter-hegemonic ‘good sense’ to oppose the hegemonic common sense established by wolf conservationists in the state system. The case of Swedish hunters rising in resistance toward the newfound hegemony of wolf conservation is hence resolved as the rise of a right-wing movement from below, mobilized on the basis of defensive, conservative and agrarian values. The novel contribution of this paper lies in its examination of the (often) self-professed limits of hunters' distinctively agrarian good sense, in light of their own reluctance as an oppositional social movement from below.Not only do hunters exhibit considerable reluctance in regard to their own ‘movement’ identity and ambivalence in regard to hegemony. But we argue that from a conceptual perspective the empowerment of a counter-hegemonic good sense as in traditional resistance studies can, at best, result in a dialectical reversal of movement positions with conservationists, without appropriate mediation or compromise. This leads us to some brief recommendations from democratic theory to mediate between the below and above movements of hunters and conservationists.

The Rational Basis of Irrational Politics

Right-wing social movements in the United States have been underexplored in the sociological literature. This article examines how right-wing social movements have been able to capture a foothold in the Texas state Republican Party, and maintain political support even as their policies and politics have grown increasingly partisan and increasingly extreme. Through in-depth analysis of the state Republican Party’s internal battles over the past twenty years, coupled with a fixed-effects regression analysis of statewide election results 1994–2012, the article uses the context of statewide battles over equalization of education finance to explain how right-wing movements in Texas have maintained durable support for radical, right-wing candidates and policies. The article demonstrates the role played by material and symbolic “threats” in maintaining and increasing support for the Republican Party, even among previously moderate populations.

Spaces of Right-Wing Populism and Anti-Muslim Racism in Austria. Identitarian Movement, Civil Initiatives and the Fight against ‘Islamisation’

This article argues that the current right-wing social movements in Austria are taking part in a right-wing populist hegemonic project relying on anti-Muslim racism, anti-immigration sentiment and xeno-racism (Fekete 2001). Analysing texts and interviews of two right-wing populist social movements, the Identitarian Movement and the Civil initiatives against the building of mosques, with a critical frame analysis approach, the paper identifies their spaces of political action with the aim of under- standing their success. We argue that, rather than competing with the Austrian Freedom Party in the space of national (party) politics, these movements have established their own niches in the Austrian political space. This strategy not only enables them to co-exist with the main right-wing populist actor, the Freedom Party, in a mutually supportive environment, but it also broadens the right-wing populist discursive strategy of constructing a double antagonism between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (the Elite) and ‘the others’. Hence, while the Identitarian Movement is concerned with meta-politics on the level of the ‘supra-regional’ space which is understood to shape European culture and ‘ethnic identity’, the civil initiatives’ niche is located on the local level and is presented as the space where conflicts between ‘us’ and ‘the other’ are experienced. In our approach of analysing spaces of political action, we argue that recent right-wing populism is successful because it manages to ‘diversify’ spaces of action and to colonize all levels of social life with its idea of antagonistic politics.

Xenophobia in Action

This article investigates the use of online communication and social media in connection with the recently emerged right-wing, xenophobic movement in contemporary Japan. Since the early 2000s there has been a surge in xenophobic and racist discourse on the Internet, tied to numerous attacks on Koreans and other ethnic minorities in Japan. The result is that a new nationalist and xenophobic movement, generally referred to as the Action Conservative Movement, has emerged in Japan. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviewing of the people involved with and impacted by the movement, this article explores the significance of the Internet — especially online video sharing, streaming service, and social media — in the formation of this contemporary right-wing social movement. With the proliferation of online live streaming, the Internet has become an even more effective tool, permeating every aspect of the group's activism and everyday life, creating a realm of communication for supporters and critics.

Rallying for repression: police terror, “law-and-order” politics, and the decline of Maine’s prisoners’ rights movement

This essay analyzes right-wing activism in Maine’s law enforcement community in relation to the state’s prisoners’ rights movement during the early 1970s. Viewing violent political repression as central to the decline of the radical prisoners’ rights organization, Statewide Correctional Alliance for Reform (SCAR), I argue that vigilante activity and police attacks on prison activists, including Portland Police Officer Edward Foster’s botched attempt to organize a police “death squad” to assassinate local ex-convicts during the summer of 1974, should be understood as the work of a right-wing social movement in 1970s Maine that included activist prison guards, police officers, law enforcement officials, and their supporters. Although most Maine law enforcement agents would never have publicly condoned politically motivated arrests or vigilantism, the above were united in their embrace of a conservative ideology associated with Nixon-era law-and-order politics. Whether acting legally as grassroots community organizers or extralegally as vigilantes, these activists justified their deeds as necessary remedies to a criminal justice system they perceived as “soft on crime.” This right-wing activism was successful. The destruction of the local prisoners’ rights movement left conservatives and law enforcement agents virtually uncontested in their ability to set the terms of public discussion regarding the role of prisons in Maine and U.S. society. Thus, in Maine and beyond, state and paramilitary violence were central to the rise of law-and-order politics and the prison-industrial complex, and today’s widespread acceptance of mass incarceration as “an inevitable and permanent feature” of America’s social landscape.

The rise of the Ku Klux Klan: right-wing movements and national politics

In 1915, forty years after the original Ku Klux Klan disbanded, a former farmer, circuit preacher, and university lecturer named Colonel William Joseph Simmons revived the secret society. By the early 1920s the KKK had been transformed into a national movement with millions of dues-paying members and chapters in all of the nation's forty-eight states. And unlike the Reconstruction-era society, the 1920s-era Klan exerted its influence far beyond the South. In The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan, Rory McVeigh provides a revealing analysis of the broad social agenda of 1920s-era KKK, showing that although the organization continued to promote white supremacy, it also addressed a surprisingly wide range of social and economic issues, targeting immigrants and, particularly, Catholics, as well as African Americans, as dangers to American society. In sharp contrast to earlier studies of the KKK, which focus on the local or regional level, McVeigh treats the Klan as it saw itself-as a national organization concerned with national issues. Drawing on extensive research into the Klan's national publication, the Imperial Night-Hawk, he traces the ways in which Klan leaders interpreted national issues and how they attempted-and finally failed-to influence national politics. More broadly, in detailing the Klan's expansion in the early 1920s and its collapse by the end of the decade, McVeigh ultimately sheds light on the dynamics that fuel contemporary right-wing social movements that similarly blur the line between race, religion, and values.

Gendered Islam and Modernity in the Nation-Space: Women's Modernism in the Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan

Feminist scholarship on women in religious and right-wing social and political movements has moved from a reductive focus on causal or motivational factors to more sophisticated analyses explicating processes of agency and subject formation. With the aim of expanding and deepening this conceptual space, I will discuss some of my interactions with a group of women in the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan, as we attempted to explore the complex meanings of ‘the modern’ that informed the self-understanding of my interviewees. My work corroborates some of the contemporary scholarship on what is referred to as Political Islam in arguing that Islamist movements in Muslim societies are also the catalysts of modernization, rather than simply its interlocutors. This article argues that these processes of social and political organizing entail particular interrogations and the reconstituting of identities in ways that blur the line between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’. On the one hand, we need to understand Jamaat women's self-construction as religious or pious women; on the other hand, we must grasp the specificity of their claims to act as modern subjects situated in the time of political and cultural modernity.

Travels with Marty: Seymour Martin Lipset as a mentor

Seymour Martin Lipset was Whitmanesque in his amplitude?in physical and social stature, in the breadth of his vision, and in his passion for America. He was "born in the U.S.A." just like Bruce Springsteen. The virtues, paradoxes, and contradictions of America are a key to his persona and work. Reminiscent of his mentor Robert King Merton, Marty wrote, "we are the worst as well as the best. ..." The good and the bad are closely linked to values "which make for achievement and independence " There are no easy answers, which is all the more reason to seek them in a tolerant, tentative, and open minded spirit of inquiry. I first met him in the Fall of 1961 at Berkeley through his fellow Columbia Lazarsfeldians Charles Glock and Hannan Selvin, my teachers in the required 201A-B methods class. I had a strong interest in, and indignation over, what was then called "prejudice" (racism had not yet become fashionable as a concept). I was highly moti vated and increasingly self-confident after a successful year of graduate study. The gate to the highway had opened a crack, but it was still a dark and foggy (although not cold) morning and the path could barely be seen. Ever the comparative thinker and on the prowl for ideas and data, Marty had discov ered some long-forgotten 1938 American Institute of Public Opinion surveys that had questions on Father Coughlin, the pioneering mass-media anti-Semitic radio priest who was eventually silenced by the Church. Marty was extending his interest from left to right-wing social movements. With the deep reservoir of exploitable public anger and fear in the depression, had Huey Long not been assassinated, this Louisiana politician could have (with the support of demagogues such as Coughlin) been elected President in 1936.

The Christian Right in American politics: marching to the millennium

From first rumblings of Moral Majority over twenty years ago, Christian Right has been marshalling its forces and maneuvering its troops in an effort to re-shape landscape of American It has fascinated social scientists and journalists as first right-wing social movement in postwar America to achieve significant political and popular support, and it has repeatedly defied those who would step up to write its obituary. In 2000, while many touted demise of Christian Coalition, broader undercurrents of movement were instrumental in helping George W. Bush win GOP nomination and White House. Bush repaid that swell of support by choosing Senator John Ashcroft, once movement's favored presidential candidate, as attorney general. The Christian Right in American Politics, under direction of three of nation's leading scholars in field of religion and politics, recognizing movement as a force still to be reckoned with, undertakes important task of making an historical analysis of Christian Right in state politics during its heyday, 1980 to millennium. Its twelve chapters, written by outstanding scholars, review impact and influence of Christian Right in those states where it has had its most significant presence: South Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Florida, Michigan, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Maine, and Oregon and Washington. Since 1980, scholars have learned a good deal about social characteristics, religious doctrine, and political beliefs of activists in and supporters of Christian Right in these states, and each contribution is based on rigorous, dispassionate scholarship. The writers explore gains and losses of movement as it attempts to re-shape political landscapes. More precisely, they provide in-depth descriptions of resources, organizations, and group ecologies in which Christian Right operates-the distinct elements that drove movement forward. As editors state, the Christian Right has been engaged in a long and torturous 'march toward millennium,' from outsider status into thick of American politics. Those formative years, 1980-2000, are essential for any understanding of this uniquely American social movement. This rigorous analysis over many states and many elections provides clearest picture yet of goals, tactics, and hopes of Christian Right in America.

The Politicization of Marriage in Contemporary American Public Policy: The Defense of Marriage Act and the Personal Responsibility Act

The sexuality politics terrain in the United States is currently marked by a complex and contradictory set of developments‐non-traditional family structures are becoming more common, popular opinion is moving in a more tolerant direction, and the lesbian and gay rights movement has enjoyed some victories, but conservative family values and patriarchal heterosexual marriage have been vigorously promoted by influential right-wing social movements and more deeply institutionalized through important public policy initiatives and court decisions. This article considers the theoretical implications of these developments with respect to the conceptual approaches to citizenship and sexuality. It then analyses two major pieces of federal legislation in depth: the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and the Personal Responsibility Act (PRA). DOMA effectively encourages the states to ban same-sex marriages. The PRA is generally considered as a welfare 'reform' law that imposes compulsory 'workfare' schemes and time limits for benefit recipients. It nevertheless has a significant sexual regulation dimension. Both the religious right's campaign against same-sex marriage and the welfare reformers' attack on the rights of single mothers contribute to a reactionary politicization of marriage. In conclusion, the article contends that it is only insofar as lesbian and gay rights issues are understood more broadly as but one aspect of sexual regulation and citizenship rights struggles that we can develop more effective ways of advancing the sexual liberation movement as a whole.

Global Change, Local Angst: Class and the American Patriot Movement

In this paper I examine the Patriot Movement, a broad, right-wing social movement in the USA that emerged in response to the economic insecurities of globalization. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the movement's class-based concerns are articulated through discourses of local sovereignty and patriotism. Because patriots' class interests are articulated through the patriot category rather than through traditional class categories, I use identity theory to analyze the movement. The movement, with its legacy of violence and its calls for local control, illustrates that the submersion of class (as a category that crosses scale) can lead to militant and particularistic responses. The couching of local power within discourses of patriotism demonstrates that such politics continue to rely on larger scales for legitimization. Reference to patriotism is, however, mostly symbolic. As such patriots ironically are unable to conceive of class positioning or their responses to it as cross local. As a case study I examine the movement in central Kentucky, and an issue around which patriots there have galvanized—calls to legalize industrial hemp. The paper concludes by arguing that the Patriot Movement illustrates the need to actively create progressive discourses to address working-class concerns.