The CSU’s position is weak – but unfortunately, not weak enough to not bring down Angela Merkel. Earlier this year, Angela Merkel finally managed to put together a grand coalition between Germany’s traditional mainstream parties: the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU); and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD). It is a coalition already living on borrowed time.… Continue reading “Endgames in Germany: bringing down Merkel”
On the afternoon of 9 June 2004, a nail bomb exploded on vibrant Keupstrasse in Cologne, Germany, a business centre for the city’s Turkish community. 22 people were injured, some of them severely; purely by luck, no one was killed. In the hours afterwards, it was widely discussed in the German media whether this could… Continue reading “Could the Copeland case have helped to track down the NSU terrorists?”
Gale Cengage’s Political Extremism Archive is important, as it is a major step forward in how people like me can teach, and research, the history of fascism. But why do we need to study this history? Why should universities invest in teaching students about fascism? I want to set out five key reasons why I… Continue reading “Dr Paul Jackson Shares His Five Reasons to Study the History of Fascism”
It was born of the dark web amongst the Swedish radical right – a meme naming the tiny city of Finspång, in the province of Ostrogothia, as the place where in the fictional future ‘national traitors’ would be executed in large sways once fascists took power. Images have circulated of people hanged on street-lamps and… Continue reading “’Finspång’ – An Execution Meme of the Swedish Radical Right Ignites the Political Discourse”
Extremist publications in Germany defy the belief that print is dead, and that radical-right innovation happens online. Recent years have repeatedly seen debates over the radical right’s use of online spaces, especially social media platforms, to spread ideas, to connect and to mobilize. Indeed, the (no longer so new) visibility of the radical right on… Continue reading “Print Is Dead: Not For Germany’s Radical Right”
“Data mining” is a catch-all term for using techniques from computer science, information retrieval, and statistics to help extract knowledge from large amounts of raw data. Data mining techniques can be used to make predictions and find hidden patterns that might not be readily apparent to a human analyst. I have several decades of experience… Continue reading “Data Mining the Radical Right: Using Social Network Analysis Online”
Whilst investigations into the British far right have continued to boom over recent years, one aspect which has been underexamined – in contrast to the numerous studies of Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists – is neo-Nazism. Through his study of Colin Jordan, easily Britain’s most influential and longest-serving neo-Nazi, Paul Jackson has… Continue reading “Book Review: Colin Jordan and Britain’s Neo-Nazi Movement: Hitler’s Echo by Paul Jackson”
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”