I am the author of two books about the French nouvelle droite (ND): Where Have All the Fascists Gone? and Rethinking the French New Right: Alternatives to Modernity. In 2014, I published a piece entitled, “The French New Right Neither Right, Nor Left?” in the Journal for the Study of Radicalism. Surprisingly, the French ND leader, Alain de Benoist, responded… Continue reading “Debating the Intellectual Leader of the French New Right”
©Getty Images In the months since white supremacist blogger Andrew Anglin urged his followers to dress in “hip” and “cool” ways at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., far-right fashion has rapidly evolved. The clean-cut aesthetic of the white polo shirts and khakis that drew national attention last August has been supplanted by new brands marketing to and for… Continue reading “The Rise of Fascist Fashion: Clothing helps the Far Right sell their violent message”
In the below guest op-ed at the News Statesman, Senior Fellow, Dr Bharath Ganesh, talks about the exploitation of social media by the extreme right and what practical actions social media platforms (such Facebook) can do in order to stop this. In it, he suggests that: “The rapid growth of hate and extremism on these platforms… Continue reading “The Silicon Valley mantra of ‘move fast and break things’ has fallen miserably short”
In what has been a blow to the gut of many Hungarians, the radical right Fidesz party has won a third term in power. Fidesz-KDNP won by a large plurality of the vote, up to 48.51% from 44.87% in the 2014 national elections. On 14th April, it was announced that Fidesz had kept their two-thirds… Continue reading “Hungary’s Fidesz secure another term with two-thirds majority”
Britain’s radical right is at a worrying crossroads. ‘[P]olitically marginalised, fractured, leaderless and increasingly violent’, Britain’s radical-right is now more ‘isolated and in retreat’ than at any point over the past twenty years – ‘becoming more extreme and violent’ in the process. Despite popular outbursts of nationalism and xenophobia after the 2016 EU referendum, it… Continue reading “A Peculiar Turn for Britain’s Radical Right? ‘Islamisation’, Vigilantism and Britain First”
On 12th April, academics, researchers, teachers and other practitioners came together at the University of Northampton to discuss how to teach about the extreme right. We wanted to find out what had changed when engaging with people on this issue over the past few years, and how to impart knowledge about the extreme right in… Continue reading “Teaching on the Extreme Right Workshop Report: New Challenges, Fresh Approaches (12/04/2018)”
During the 2016-17 Home Affairs Select Committee on Radicalisation, Google claimed that, in 2014, they had removed over 14 million videos relating to different forms of abuse, including content that promoted violent extremism. They have now announced they will be employing an additional 10,000 staff as human moderators to take down videos and comments that… Continue reading “Corpus Linguistics and the Problem of Non-Violent Extremism”
Democracy is presently in a recession. Freedom House’s (an independent research institute) annual report for 2018 indicates that for the 10th consecutive year the world’s citizens, taken in the aggregate, are less free (meaning enjoy less political rights and civil liberties) than was true in earlier years. Some countries included in the report as ‘free’… Continue reading “Mood Swings: Freedom, Democracy and the Latest Right-Wing Populist Upsurge”
It is hard to deny Brexit’s important place within recent radical right discourse and activity. Recently, Paul Stocker’s excellent book English Uprising has captured this part of that debate. The radical right had a significant impact in dictating the tone and trajectory of the Leave campaign, especially away from the official Vote Leave platform. Equally,… Continue reading “Back to the Future? Comparing Radical Right Referendum Results, 1975 and 2016”
How different was the world in 1997? That was the year when the Runnymede Trust published its landmark report on Islamophobia, drawing attention to the then growing threat of anti-Muslim prejudice, discrimination, and violence in western societies. The late-1990s was the time of peak-liberal illusions about the capacity of the new world system to guarantee… Continue reading “Islamophobia, racism and the far-right … and the right … and the left …”