Islamophobia, minaret and burqa bans have become commonplace in Europe. Wearing a burqa or niqab in public spaces became illegal in France and Belgium in 2011; in Latvia it was banned in 2016, although only 3 women wore it in the whole country. In Italy it has been illegal to cover your face since 1931… Continue reading “Burqa Bans and Intolerance: The New Normal”
The Trump Administration’s decision to separate the children of illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers has created a popular uproar. So much so that the President felt compelled to rescind the Attorney General’s April decision within a week of the scenes of young children taken from their parents hitting television screens. The public was clearly aroused in… Continue reading “Children at the Border”
On 28 June 2018, the prime ministers of the EU 27 member-states met in Brussels to discuss the most important current global and transnational challenges. The agenda, it seems however, focused overwhelmingly upon one issue: how to protect the EU from refugees and asylum seekers; that is, how to (re-)build “Fortress Europe”, one in which… Continue reading “The Revival of Numbers and Lists in Radical Right Politics”
‘Hostility towards Muslims and Islamist fundamentalism are closely interlinked. Mobilisation and recruitment strategies mirror each other and there are ideological overlaps as well. This becomes particularly evident in their internet propaganda on social media.’ These are key findings of a new study by the Jena Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (IDZ) in cooperation with… Continue reading “New Research Report: Anti-Muslim Extremism, Radical Islamism and the Spiral of Polarization”
I’m currently (slowly) converting my PhD thesis into a book which will explore how the addition of “right wing extremism” to the scope of the Prevent Strategy impacted on local responses to the English Defence League. A few fellow researchers have asked why I’m bothering to write a book about the anti-Islam street protest movement.… Continue reading “The UK’s anti-Islam English Defence League – Still Yesterday’s news on the UK’s radical right scene?”
History and legacy provide an explanation as to why the radical right has a stronger presence in some parts of the UK. Anyone listening to the news coverage of the 2018 British local elections would have heard a clear narrative around the radical right — that, at least electorally, things were not going well for them.… Continue reading “The British Radical Right’s Connection to the Past”
Queer politics and queer interests occupy different, dynamic, and tense spaces in the radical right. Talk about LGBTQ+ issues have been consistently part of the conversation, sometimes through blatant homophobia, sometimes through accusations of “their” homophobia. The former speaks to the conservative roots of radical right groups, and reflects what is ultimately nostalgia, and a… Continue reading “‘Pinkwashing’ and Homonationalism in the Radical Right”
In my last article for the CARR Blog, I wrote a summary of my book on Auschwitz which was published in April by ibidem-verlag. I thought for this month I would tell you a bit more about my next work, which will cover the Chelmno death camp. This book has been co-written with my late friend and… Continue reading “Chelmno: Hitler’s First Death Camp”
As white supremacist ideologies proliferate globally, an analysis of the racist pseudoscience that fuels their beliefs 1920s eugenics poster the bottom of which says “Check The Seeds Of Hereditary Disease And Unfitness By Eugenics” (Wellcome Library, London) Last May, British journalist and conservative commentator Toby Young attended what he called a “secretive” conference on intelligence… Continue reading “Eugenics: White Nationalists Continue To Turn To The False Theory Of Genetic Supremacy”
In spite of the recent electoral defeats of far right parties in the United Kingdom, nationalism still runs deep. The United Kingdom has often been seen as an exceptional case when it comes to the far right. Most prominently associated with the skinhead movement domestically in the 1960s and then internationally with its spread to North… Continue reading “After The UK 2018 Elections, The Radical Right Looks To The Future With Anger”