Tom Watson promoted himself as a leading voice of Southern white supremacy, nostalgically evoking images of the “Old South” that drew legitimacy from its grounding in a combination of Jeffersonian political theory and cultural agrarianism. In 2012, I had the opportunity to spend a few weeks in Georgia, the most southern of the original colonial states.… Continue reading “A Populist’s Path: From Advocate of the People to Inspiration for the KKK”
*This is an excerpt from an essay originally published by CNN Style on January 10, 2019. The full essay can be read here. The enduring image of the racist skinhead, with his signature shaved head, black combat boots and bomber jacket, has all but disappeared. In its place is a fragmented set of mainstream styles… Continue reading “Selling Extremism: Nationalist Streetwear and the Rise of the Far Right”
The year 2019 began quite turbulently for German politics with a politically-charged data leak. One Twitter user published the personal data of politicians, artists and online activists in the fashion of a Christmas calendar, which opened doors every day to reveal private information about its victims. When journalists and security agencies discovered this data leak… Continue reading “The far right in the post-digital condition”
The far right has often been described as a concept that is hard to define. Although there is still controversy around its three basic components, i.e. the intension (number of defining attributes), the extension (number of empirical phenomena), and the term (the label) that best characterizes it, we should not neglect the fact that much… Continue reading “Concept structures and the far right”
On November 27 2018, a panel discussion was organized at the Centre for Humanistic Inquiry (CHI), Amherst College, USA with the participation of Maria Alexandrovna Sidorkina, Chip Berlet, Tamir Bar-On and Dwaipayan Sen. After a few words of welcome by CHI director Martha Umphrey, organizer and discussant Andreas Önnerfors, Associate Professor in Intellectual History at… Continue reading “CONFERENCE REPORT – THE GLOBAL RISE OF NATIVISM AND ILLIBERALISM – A CONVERSATION ON THE CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL PATHOLOGY”
Only time will tell if Vox’s rise is borne of disappointment with the country’s political process, or whether there is a real solidarity with the movement’s ideological principles. In recent years, Spain’s political system has gone through a number of convulsions. The traditional alternation in government between the conservative People’s Party (PP) and the Spanish… Continue reading “Is a New Style of Politics Coming to Spain?”
The 2019 European elections are set to see an unprecedented number of far right parties enter the European Parliament. These parties are for the most part rabidly anti-EU, and widely seen as presenting a danger for its future. However, far right parties have a complex relationship with ‘Europe’ that the label ‘eurosceptic’ does not fully… Continue reading “Pro-Europe and anti-EU? Reviewing the far right’s view of Europe”
While Donald Trump’s brand of white nationalism endures, we must deepen our understanding of the group behavior, mentality, and tactics of right-wing extremists. The United States of America has recently experienced concentrations of right-wing violent extremism particularly with an increase in violent radical right street groups. The US’ expanding catalog of radical right groups emphasizes… Continue reading “The Rise Of Radical Right Extremism In Trump’s America”
On April 2, 2018, Latvian President Raymond Vejonis signed amendments to the Law on Education, which would effectively destroy all Russian schools by 2021. This is a law aimed specifically against Russian schools, rather than against national minority schools, as it does not affect schools with EU languages of education. Even Russian-language private schools are… Continue reading “Latvian government wants to settle the “Russian issue” as soon as possible”
It strikes me as odd that the UK’s Prevent Strategy is regularly called secretive, lacking in transparency and likened to spying. This is because, for some time now, the Home Office has routinely published detailed statistical data relating to individuals referred to and supported by Prevent and Channel. Although open to interpretation and criticism, figures… Continue reading “What do the latest Prevent statistics tell us about the radical right in the UK?”