What can we learn from the rise and fall of the Golden Dawn party in Greece? Golden Dawn began as an ideological movement that managed throughout the years to evolve into a political movement and a political party, which successfully entered the national parliament and emerged as the third largest party in Greece. However, recently,… Continue reading “The dusk after the dawn: fall of a Greek Neo-Nazi party”
With radical right extremism on the rise globally, here are 5 ways that we should think about combating it based on policy lessons from the United Kingdom. In a year that has proven especially deadly, policymakers are increasingly turning their attention to the (not so) new phenomenon of extreme right-wing violence. Yet, it does still… Continue reading “5 Ways Policymakers Should Combat The Radical Right In 2020”
What appeared as a harmless series of lectures for journalism students, soon turned out to be one of the first Swedish cases of the issue of ‘academic freedom’ as a battlefield of radical right mobilization. During fall of 2019, the Department of Media, Journalism and Communication at the University of Gothenburg arranged a lecture series… Continue reading “Sweden heading towards ‘academic freedom’ as battlefield of the radical right”
While racism has always been an integral part of radical-right ideology, the West German radical right scene started with extensive racist activities in the late 1970s. Since then, agitation against migration has become a more central theme of radical right activism. Migration was certainly never a “new” phenomenon to the German society: (mainly labour) migration… Continue reading “Racist violence in West Germany before 1990”
More than 25 years have passed since the tragedy, yet a web of conspiracy theories that has been spun around the disaster has fueled the Swedish radical right’s imagination. On the night of September 27-28, 1994, the ferry MS Estonia, carrying 989 passengers between Tallinn and Stockholm, sank in the Baltic Sea, hit by hard weather and… Continue reading “The Sinking of MS Estonia: The Swedish Radical Right’s Favorite Conspiracy”
Today, generations often mark difference in ethics, politics and expectations for the future. “Historical generations are not born; they are made. They are a device by which people conceptualize society and seek to transform it,” argued historian Robert Wohl in “The Generation of 1914,” his classic analysis of the young men who grew up around… Continue reading “OK, Boomer: Understanding Today’s Generational Divide”
One. Every second article written about fascism starts by complaining that there is no consensus about what fascism is, then agrees with Roger Griffin’s definition of fascism as an ideology of national regeneration before going on to prove, once again, that fascism involved an ideology of national regeneration. Two. Scholars stubbornly refuse to separate… Continue reading “Ten Things I Hate About Fascism Studies”
Mass shootings like that of El Paso show the grave consequences dangerous narratives circulating on the Chanosphere can be. The imageboard 8chan shut down after the El Paso shooting, but its users did not lose hope that it would reappear. Rumours were rife on Twitter that 8chan would be reincarnated as 8kun. The Qanon conspiracy theory… Continue reading “Endchan: narratives of the Chanosphere”
From Marine Le Pen to Donald Trump, a common claim among right-wing populists is that they represent true democracy. This is based on the idea that an allegedly corrupt elite, usually the established government, does not justly represent “the people”. More often than not, “the people” is defined in narrow ethnic terms, making such populist… Continue reading “When Ethnic Minorities Vote For Right-Wing Populism”
A descriptive and benign term, “family” has been turned into the primary frontier of social wars by the radical right. In March 2019, the World Congress of Families (WCF), in collaboration with the International Organization for the Family (IOF), organized its 13th conference, “The Wind of Change: Europe and the Global Pro-Family Movement,” in Verona, Italy.… Continue reading “Turning Family Into a Political Weapon”