In my last CARR blog, I highlighted the rise of the radical right in various parts of the world. In this blog, I tackle key definitions in the literature, including what we mean by the radical right, populism, nativism, and illiberalism respectively. I also offer some interpretations of these terms and underscore some of the… Continue reading ““The Global Rise of Nativism and Illiberalism: A Conversation on the Contemporary Political Pathology.” Part 2 – Defining and Interpreting the New Radical Right”
Tom Watson promoted himself as a leading voice of Southern white supremacy, nostalgically evoking images of the “Old South” that drew legitimacy from its grounding in a combination of Jeffersonian political theory and cultural agrarianism. In 2012, I had the opportunity to spend a few weeks in Georgia, the most southern of the original colonial states.… Continue reading “A Populist’s Path: From Advocate of the People to Inspiration for the KKK”
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”
On November 27 2018, a panel discussion was organized at the Centre for Humanistic Inquiry (CHI), Amherst College, USA with the participation of Maria Alexandrovna Sidorkina, Chip Berlet, Tamir Bar-On and Dwaipayan Sen. After a few words of welcome by CHI director Martha Umphrey, organizer and discussant Andreas Önnerfors, Associate Professor in Intellectual History at… Continue reading “CONFERENCE REPORT – THE GLOBAL RISE OF NATIVISM AND ILLIBERALISM – A CONVERSATION ON THE CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL PATHOLOGY”
On November 27, 2018, I was invited to a panel discussion at Amherst College entitled “The Global Rise of Nativism and Illiberalism: A Conversation on the Contemporary Political Pathology”. Based on my talk and remarks at that panel, I will write three blog entries. The first below discusses my thoughts on the media’s treatment of… Continue reading ““The Global Rise of Nativism and Illiberalism: A Conversation on the Contemporary Political Pathology”. Part One – The Radical Right in the Headlines.”
Since the death of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who ruled from 1939 until his death in 1975, Spain has been a country without a strong radical right-wing presence. In fact, in 2017, Senior Analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute Carmen González-Enríquez declared Spain ‘inoculated’ against radical right-wing populism because of the legacy of… Continue reading “Vox and the Return of the Radical Right in Spain”
Democracy at the beginning of the 21st century has changed considerably. The change is due in no small part to what may be termed the digitization of social interaction. As in so many other areas of daily life, social networks play an increasingly important role in the public representation of politics. It is inarguable that… Continue reading “Populism – a Critique of an Unclear Term”
Is it entirely unreasonable to expect that Italy’s populists in power, though unavoidable, will end up like many governments before them – mugged by harsh reality? One of the most famous clichés in Italian contemporary political historiography is the phrase, lifted from Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa’s novel Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), “For everything to stay… Continue reading “Matteo Salvini – Italy’s salvation?”
Current leader of UKIP, Gerard Batten, announced recently that he would be taking the party in a new, ‘populist’ direction. Batten defines populism (rather simply but also ambiguously) as ‘policies that are popular with voters’. In their latest manifesto, however, the party’s stance on a range of issues – from the NHS to Brexit, immigration, and prisons policy – suggests not… Continue reading “Towards a new ‘populist’ party? UKIP’s interim manifesto and the future of the UK radical right”
Framing far-right populist parties as just an unpopular minority downplays the actual impact the rise of far-right populism has already had on European societies. Images of violent far-right groups marching the streets in Germany and the strong performance of the populist far-right Sweden Democrats (SD) in the recent electionshave sparked fears of a further rise of… Continue reading “Why We Shouldn’t Call the Far Right an Unpopular Minority”