In interrogating the far right’s persistent obsession with southern Africa, we can better understand what people like Trump, Hopkins, and terrorists like Roof, mean when they invoke it today. In 2018, the President of the United States Donald Trump posted a rather enigmatic tweet about“farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers”… Continue reading “Why Is the Radical Right Obsessed With Southern Africa?”
The pattern of leadership squabbles, purges, and brutal attempts to crush dissent dominates the history of the radical right. Such episodes are extremely instructive in the week following UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson’s, expulsion of 21 Conservative MPs. The question this therefore begs is: why right-wing leaders so consistently felt the need to expel troublesome… Continue reading “Purifying the Party: Lessons from 20th Century Radical Right Parties”
In this post, I discuss how the concept of “difference” is a surprising link between postmodern thought and the New Right. In New Culture, New Right: Anti-Liberalism in Postmodern Europe, Michael O’Meara (2004) lays out a searing critique of postmodernism in the process of defending the rise of a revolutionary New Right that arrived in… Continue reading “Not the Same Difference: How the New Right hijacked an essential postmodern concept”
What does the latest data say about the prevalence of hate crimes across Canada and online? On July 22, Statistics Canada, the agency tasked with producing statistics to help better understand all aspects of Canadian life ranging from population growth to resources to culture, released the new national crime data for 2018. The study, which… Continue reading “Putting Canada’s Hate Crime Data in Context”
Has the Norwegian police learned anything from its failure in the 2011 Breivik attacks? A recent terror attack at a mosque near Oslo raises important questions about the extent and range of radical right extremism and the Norwegian state response to it. On the 10th of August 2019, the young radical right extremist Philip… Continue reading “Behind Norway’s terrorist attack that was luckily thwarted”
Flags are one of the most recognisable cultural artefacts that identify any community since they confer social cohesion to the group (Reichl 2004, Knowlton 2012,Leone 2018). The semiotic relevance of flags is evident, as they become an expression of a collective experience therefore constructing communities and eliciting multiple emotional and pragmatic responses. Flags construct a… Continue reading “On inclusive and exclusive flags”
Much has been made of President Donald Trump’s recent announcement about purchasing Greenland from Denmark. Although at first the statement was ridiculed and treated with amazement, it was soon pointed out that the United States had historically expanded much of its land area by way of purchase. Alaska, Louisiana, Florida and the Gadsden Purchase are… Continue reading “Connecting Trump in Greenland with Germany’s Second and Third Reich”
Women must not be underestimated in their function as active participants in radical right terrorist groups. When the German radical right terrorist group “Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund” (“National Socialist Underground”) (NSU) was revealed in 2011, one aspect particularly intrigued the media and the general public: A woman, Beate Zschäpe, had been a key member of the group.… Continue reading “Germany: the role of women in radical right terrorism”
Introduction It was recently announced that Lord Carlile of Berriew would be leading the independent review of the U.K.’s Prevent Strategy, which is expected to start within the next month. I’ve been asked recently what I’d want to see in this review and have covered these points on my YouTube Channel. However, I wanted to… Continue reading “What I’d like to see in the upcoming independent review of the Prevent Strategy”
Even after hosting companies refuse to keep extremist sites like 8chan online, they find other ways to communicate on the dark web. How do we combat this? In the wake of the El Paso shooting, attention turned once again towards imageboards such as 8chan, and their role in radicalization and the spread of terrorist propaganda.… Continue reading “The Radical Right Is Finding New Ways To Communicate Online”