The first-person perspective on the spread of fascism provided in “Rhinoceros” is valuable because it shows how disorienting it is for non-fascists. The playwright Eugene Ionesco spent most of his childhood in France but moved to Bucharest, Romania, as a teenager to study at the prestigious Saint Sava National College. Calling themselves the “young generation,”… Continue reading “When All Your Friends Are Fascists”
Drawing on an original database of party expulsions of radical right parties in Europe across twenty countries from 2000-2020, Felix Wiebrecht, James F. Downes, Edward Chan and Anna Kam devise a theoretical model that groups expulsions into two categories that comprise accountability mechanisms and political purges. They find empirically that within the modern far-right, expulsions… Continue reading “Disunity within the Ranks? Party Expulsions in the European Radical Right: 2000–2020”
‘Greeks for the Fatherland’ seems to be here to fill the gap left by the legal troubles of Golden Dawn. The emergence of a new party was announced by Elias Kasiadiaris one of the main defendants in the ongoing Golden Dawn trial. Nikolaos Michaloliakos, the leader of the party since its emergence in the mid-80s, along… Continue reading “In Greece, a new far right movement is taking the stage”
Over the past decade and a half, counter-narratives – defined as ‘messages that…[demystify], deconstruct or delegitimise extremist narratives’ (Tuck and Silverman 2016: 65) – have become a key part of western efforts to combat terrorism. Placed at the softer end of counter terror (CT) tactics and entering the UK policy discourse in mid-2005, the use… Continue reading “Moving Away from Islamist Extremism: Assessing Counter Narrative Responses to the Far-Right Online”
The terrorist attacks perpetrated by white supremacists in the United States, New Zealand, Germany, and other western countries in the past two years illustrate the transnationalization of the extreme-right.[1] This process occurs online, in discussion rooms on Telegram, Discord servers and other social networks and Internet forums; and offline, in marches,[2] music festivals,[3] and even… Continue reading “The Transnationalization of White Supremacist Discourse: The Hundred-Handers and the It’s Okay To Be White Campaign”
Do radical-right voters knowingly share the anti-democratic views of the parties they support? Introduction The rise of radical-right parties is considered by many to be one of the largest modern threats to liberal democracy. There is a strong pattern of populist and radical leaders eroding constraints on the executive, diminishing press freedom, and harming the… Continue reading “Radical-Right Voters and Democratic Support”
Why a 1972 concept from the sociology of religion could be more important than ever for the study of the contemporary radical right. In 1972, British sociologist Colin Campbell introduced the concept of the “cultic milieu” to describe the social and philosophical environment in which contemporary cultic beliefs and organizations arise. Cultic, in Campbell’s usage,… Continue reading “The Radical Right in the Cultic Milieu”
In early 2019, during ethnographic fieldwork on radical right movements in Australia, I attended a far-right rally against allegedly “African gang crimes” in Melbourne. I spoke to a young man in his 20s about his reasons for taking part in the protest. In response he alluded that the problem was much bigger than the criminal… Continue reading “Alternative epistemologies of the radical right: how grand narratives and the quest for truth offer recognition and a sense of belonging “
Behind the radical right political and media machine is a vast interconnected network of financiers who collaborate to push their democracy-eroding agendas. Financial support for political parties and interests within democracies is not of itself unlawful, and indeed is commonplace across the political spectrum. However, given the radical-right’s objectives and policies that are harmful to… Continue reading “The Dark Money That Fuels Radical Right Ideology”
Over the last two months we have seen an increase in the scale and frequency of street protests across Britain. Those that have taken place under the banner of the Black Lives Matter movement have focussed not only on placing a spotlight on the relationship between the police service (and indeed the wider Criminal Justice… Continue reading “We need to talk about what is driving the Radical Right”
