In December 1938, French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet told German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop of a French plan to deport 10,000 Jews to Madagascar, a French colony. After the defeat of France in June 1940, the idea was taken up by the German Foreign Office. On July 3, 1940, Franz Rademacher, an official in… Continue reading “Britain’s Refugee Policy Is a Fantasy of Fear”
Guillaume Faye envisioned a catastrophic collapse of the current society, which would allow his vision of a fascist empire to become a reality. The year 2020 has thrown the world into disarray, with a severe pandemic creating many unforeseen challenges. The COVID-19 plague has so far infected nearly 30 million people worldwide, with the death… Continue reading “Did a French Far-Right Thinker Predict 2020?”
In the run-up to the EU referendum in Britain in June 2016, at a time when the Remain vote was apparently enjoying a modest but clear advantage, one of the numerous opinion polls focused on public attitudes to immigration and on how this might affect the popular vote. When asked to assess the immigrants’s contribution… Continue reading “The ‘silent majority’: populist cliché or warning?”
Do radical-right voters knowingly share the anti-democratic views of the parties they support? Introduction The rise of radical-right parties is considered by many to be one of the largest modern threats to liberal democracy. There is a strong pattern of populist and radical leaders eroding constraints on the executive, diminishing press freedom, and harming the… Continue reading “Radical-Right Voters and Democratic Support”
The far-right AfD party has been trying to exploit Russian-Germans feelings of neglect, nostalgia, and fear. They’re experiencing some success. “We open the borders for migrants, but the doors to Germany are closed for ethnic Germans in crisis regions.” This critical statement on Germany’s recent immigration policy came from Waldemar Herdt, an MP for the Alternative für… Continue reading “The German AfD Makes Appeals To Russian-Germans”
We must not overlook the non-violent strategies serving the hostile ideologies of the far right. In 2018, the far right Lads Society (formerly United Patriots Front group) infiltrated the New South Wales Young Nationals, the youth wing of the National Party in Australia. Together with neo-Nazis in Antipodean Resistance, the new members were successful in… Continue reading “Infiltrating democracy: non-violent strategies serving violent ideologies”
In the modern radical right, there are several parallels between their Islamophobic and anti-Semitic narratives. Anti-Semitism in the West has a long and awful history stretching back centuries. However, although the wholesale anti-Semitic extremism and murderous excesses across Europe during the twelve years of Nazi rule in Germany in the 1930s and 40s may have… Continue reading “The Similarities In Far-Right Islamophobia And Anti-Semitism”
James F. Downes and Nicola Palma argue that Italian Five Star Movement’s (M5S) future as a governing party is uncertain. Drawing on data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (2014, 2017 and 2019 waves), they argue that M5S’s recent electoral decline post–2018 can be explained by a combination of factors, namely: (a) M5S’s ‘ideologically ambiguous’… Continue reading “Ideological Ambiguity, Issue Blurring & Party Dissent: The Electoral Decline of the Populist Italian Five Star Movement”
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?”
