Hermeneutical injustice is defined as the inability to communicate and/ or understand one’s own social experience, owing to a lack of concepts available in society used to define the experience. For example, before Carmita Wood’s introduction of the concept of sexual harassment, individuals were incapable of understanding and communicating this social experience and the significant… Continue reading “Hermeneutical injustice and the far right?”
The institution of the police may be considered a key indicator in the empirical measurement of democratization processes. The institution that creates and maintains domestic security — and that can ultimately guarantee it during emergencies — is the police. However, a comparative look at the historical development of various political systems shows that, in the… Continue reading “A Healthy Police Force Is a Sign of a Healthy Democracy”
Britain’s far-right undertow turns hostile currents against ethnic and religious minorities into a tsunami of hatred. Pause a moment to register two unloved anniversaries. This spring marks a decade since the first anti-Muslim street movement, the English Defence League (EDL), emerged on British streets. Slowly but surely, the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA), now a… Continue reading “The DFLA: a(nother) new UK far right movement?”
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”
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”
The far right recognizes the value, both in training and in terms of access to arms and equipment, that active and former soldiers bring to its organizations. In early October 2018, a photo emerged that showed former leader of the English Defence League, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) posing with a group of Army Cadets.… Continue reading “The Far Right Has a History of Infiltrating the British Army”
Placating radical right rhetoric will not stop the EDL, Pegida and the rest of the angry acronym brigade. If you want a definition of not being able to see the wood for the trees, look no further than those who are spending their time arguing over whether ‘no Brexit’ or ‘no deal’ would be the… Continue reading “Pandering To The Far Right Is No Way To Counter Them”
The far right has often been described as a concept that is hard to define. Although there is still controversy around its three basic components, i.e. the intension (number of defining attributes), the extension (number of empirical phenomena), and the term (the label) that best characterizes it, we should not neglect the fact that much… Continue reading “Concept structures and the far right”
When analyzing the global collaboration between radical right groups, one needs to look no further than the Trump phenomenon, Brexit, and 20th-century British history. A core component, if not the core component of radical right ideology is nationalism (often described as nativism). Slogans of the radical right, be it ‘Britain first’ or ‘make America great… Continue reading “Right-Wing Nationalism Has Become A Collaborative International Enterprise”
Where left-leaning observers warn of a return of totalitarian nationalism, the far right warns of the return of socialist and communist totalitarian politics. With the rise of populist and far-right politics in Europe and beyond, the fear of the return of totalitarian politics has equally intensified. Comparisons with the rise of fascism in the 1920s… Continue reading “The Far Right Imagines a Totalitarian Other”