One of the most unsettling ways in which postwar Europe used its alleged Christian identity was to normalize modern totalitarianism. Illustratively, by the end of the Second World War active efforts began to be made throughout the continent to prove that Spanish dictator Francisco “Franco was not really a ‘fascist’, but was in fact an… Continue reading ““Christian Europe” and the normalization of the radical right”
The vision of a fascist Europe proved to be a chimera. Today’s watchers of the radical right must hope that things will be no different when the heirs of ‘classic fascism’ meet in Milan next week. It was reported on 5 April that Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s League Party (formerly the Northern League) and the country’s… Continue reading “A pan-European radical right – contradiction in terms?”
Populist parties on both the radical right and left of the political spectrum in Europe have made considerable electoral gains over the last decade, but they have done so using notably different approaches. We draw on recent election data to show the extent to which the radical right has tended to outperform the radical left since the… Continue reading “Why has the populist radical right outperformed the populist radical left in Europe?”
Attacking the symptom (i.e., the populist radical right) is not going to do the trick – not in Spain, not in the rest of (western) Europe. Last week’s parliamentary election marked a turning point in post-Franco Spanish politics. For the first time since Spain’s transition to democracy in the late 1970s, a party clearly… Continue reading “Saviours of the nation? – on the breakthrough of the radical populist right in Spain”
Why a compromise in international politics no longer plays on the side of democracy. And it is democracy that is at stake. Modern racism does not operate with the concepts of ‘race’, but with the concepts of ‘incompatibility of cultures’, ‘protection of indigenous cultural values’, ‘clash of civilizations’ etc., and it considers cultural diversity within… Continue reading “Modern racism”
In 2019, Oswald Mosley’s European vision does not feel so distant, as current affairs increasingly come to resemble the darker parts of history. Euroskepticism is often discussed, particularly in the context of the ongoing Brexit debate, as a right-wing political cause. However, the recent maneuverings of the European authoritarian right ahead of the EU parliamentary… Continue reading “Dark Visions: The Historical Precursor to Europe’s Radical Right”
At the age of twelve, my classics class at the high school devoted an entire week to the ancient war between the Persian Empire and Athens. We were told that the battle of Marathon and Salamis (490 and 480 BCE) represented civilisational encounters between Europe and the ‘barbarians’, west and east. The unlikely victory of… Continue reading “The far right’s weaponisation of history”
The Austrian populist radical right party FPÖ is consistently deciding on policies that are disadvantageous for the working class – yet the party can count on workers’ votes in elections. The same is true across Europe, and has been for a while. How can we explain that workers seem to be inclined to vote… Continue reading “The Radical Right Chewbacca Defence: Why it does not matter if the radical right is lying to the working class that voted them into power”
The political goals of the New Right can largely be summarized by two central concepts: the intellectualization of right-wing extremism through the formulation of an intellectual metapolitics, and the pursuit of a (right-wing) cultural hegemony. Here, metapolitics denotes efforts to take intellectual control of public debates, shaping them on a theoretical meta-level by coining particular… Continue reading “On the Ideology and Strategy of the New Right”
In today’s CARR insights blog, Senior Fellow Professor Ruth Wodak is interviewed by the Another Europe podcast team – looking at Britain’s relationship with Europe. As the extension is granted, but with no end in sight to the parliamentary deadlock, Co-host Luke Cooper is joined by Ruth Wodak, distinguished emeritus professor at the University of… Continue reading “Britain Alone: The self-inflicted darkest hour”