Locals in the Greek island of Lesbos went from being nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for welcoming refugees five years ago to hurling racist slurs today. On March 1st, a video made its appearance on the media. The location: the village of Thermi, in the Greek island of Lesbos. In the video, one can clearly observe… Continue reading “How Greece Went From Welcoming To Demonizing Refugees”
Center-right parties recognized the 2008 economic crisis as a time of greater voter volatility when the populist radical right sought to secure more support through appeals over immigration. The 2008 economic crisis hit a number of European Union countries like a storm, with widespread patterns of electoral volatility and bad news for governing parties on… Continue reading “What Drives the Center Right’s Electoral Success?”
Demographic conspiracies should not be seen as fringe enterprises restricted to gullible extremists – they have an increasingly mainstream appeal. Enoch Powell’s 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech has infamously seared itself into the British public’s mind for its apocalyptic hyperbole and guttural prejudice but less so for its conspiratorial nature. Powell warned of the demographic… Continue reading “The great replacement theory: a historical perspective”
Right-wing white nationalists are co-opting the language used by left-wing anti-corporate activists in order to expand their racist movement. ‘Corporate America doesn’t need to be destroyed, but just shown that they are on the wrong side of history. That if they don’t bend, they will break.’ These are the alleged words of the shooter in… Continue reading “The Radical Right Seeks To Recruit Among Anti-Corporate Activists”
The Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has recently announced his resignation after 14 months of the so-called Government of change. This political crisis offers us the opportunity to turn our attention towards the parties forming ‘the first populist government of Western Europe’ – the Five Star Movement (5SM) and the (Northern) League (NL) – and,… Continue reading “Populism in Power: The Italian Case”
To prevent such developments, mainstream parties need to shape political discourse, instead of being shaped by it. In August 2017, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alexander Gauland proposed to ‘dispatch’ the then Federal Commissioner for Immigration, Refugees and Integration, Aydan Özoğuz (SPD), back to Anatolia. Some weeks later, the AfD party entered the German… Continue reading “Merkel’s dilemma: Germany’s polarising ‘Turkish issue’ returns”
Last month saw more than 900 million eligible voters at the ballot box in the world’s largest democracy. India’s national election once again resulted in the landslide victory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). When visiting the UK last year, Modi stated that Brexit offers opportunities to increase… Continue reading “Why are British Indians more likely than other ethnic minority group to support Brexit?”
Introduction The radical right has been an integrated part of the Danish party system since the 1970s and has been allowed to set the agenda especially on immigration. The mainstream has often depended on their support in government. More recently, the Danish People’s Party (DF) has supported the liberal party in the last period in… Continue reading “Disastrous result for the radical right Danish People’s Party in latest elections”
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?”
Countering five common myths promoted by the radical right, from anti-semitic conspiracy theories to political correctness. Britain, as a liberal democracy, clearly has free speech. Yet, there is a distinction between people using free speech to express themselves and inciting hatred and violence to others. The latter is something which governments have every right to… Continue reading “Radical-right narratives and how to counter them”