Our Fractured World: The Rise of the Far-Right in Global Politics (original) (raw)
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The Silent Takeover of Power by the Far-Right
Annals of Social Sciences & Management Studies, 2020
Within the past decade, the world has been experiencing profound changes and complex challenging events such as, for instance, the global financial crisis, human displacement, and mass immigration. In this context, outsider far-right political figures in Brazil, Italy, and the US have emerged to the central political stage and fostered strong nationalistic political discourses on social media which, rather than weaving integration and solidarity amongst peoples, have been encouraging and endorsing further divisionism.
Social Forces, 2024
Scholarship on social movements, racism, and nationalism increasingly falls under the purview of "extremism studies" and its subfield "far-right studies." Prominent extremism scholars have developed generalist theories purportedly explaining far-right politics and power dynamics (or "mainstreaming") across liberal societies. They define "far-right" as "illiberal" politics promoting dehumanization, exclusion, and inequality. Their theory of mainstreaming suggests that "the" far-right is a coherent entity that "enters" mainstream institutions or discourse from the outside. For these scholars, strengthening liberal-civic principles prevents far-right political power (mainstreaming). I call these approaches "grand theory templates," which I critique for simplistic interpretations of power and for overlooking critical theory scholarship showing how liberalism accommodates far-right politics. Using the Canadian nationalist movement as a case study, I show how liberal chauvinism can be crucial to empowering right-wing populist movements. My data include over 40 hours of participant-observation at 20 right-wing events and 35 interviews with 42 current leaders and members of on-the-ground nationalist groups. Right-wing nationalists foregrounded liberal-civic ideas, such as "security," "rights," "objectivity," and "tolerance," to advance anti-Muslim sentiment and populist conspiracism. My findings suggest that far-right movements can gain power by embracing liberalism's ambiguity and contradictions. In other words, mastering liberal messaging can be essential to the growth of far-right movements, challenging any easy dismissal of these politics as "illiberal." Altogether, "top-down" grand theory templates oversimplify political distinctions and power, compromising research design and analysis. I advocate for more granular and "bottom-up" inductive approaches that prioritize sociological traditions over theories recently popularized by extremism scholars.
Trouble on the Far Right. Introductory Remarks (2016)
In Europe, the far right is gaining momentum on the streets and in parliaments. By taking a close look at contemporary practices and strategies of far-right actors, the present volume explores this right-ward shift of European publics and politics. It assembles analyses of changing mobilization patterns and their effects on the local, national and transnational level. International experts scrutinize new forms of coalition building, mainstreaming and transnationalization tendencies as aspects of diversified far-right politics in Europe. More information: http://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-3720-5/trouble-on-the-far-right
The Longue Durée of the Far-Right: An Introduction
Richard Saull, Alexander Anievas, Neil Davidson, and Adam Fabry, ‘The Longue Durée of the Far-Right: An Introduction’, in Richard Saull, Alexander Anievas, Neil Davidson, and Adam Fabry (eds.) The Longue Durée of the Far-Right: An International Historical Sociology (London: Routledge, 2015), 1-20., 2015
Mainstreaming the Extreme: Intersecting Challenges from the Far Right in Europe
This is the first issue of the new journal Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics (EEJSP). As our point of departure, we take a timely subject for European societies: the far-right phenomenon as related to mainstream politics and discourse. Instead of relying exclusively on views of radical developments prevalent in the field of politics, our aim was to bring together insights from sociology, social anthropology, political science and media studies, as well as from discourse and network analysis, and integrate them into a comparative and interdisciplinary study of the phenomenon. As far as the investigated topics are concerned, special attention has been paid to the interplay of media and politics, the discursive aspects of politics, and the role of cultural commodification beyond ideologies on the supply side as well as recent developments explaining increasing interest on the demand side.
The Far-Right in World Politics/World Politics in the Far-Right
Globalizations, 2022
This paper provides an introduction to the special issue: 'The Far-Right in World Politics'. In setting out the special issue, the paper does four things. First, we provide a definition of what we mean by the 'far-right' and identify its core characteristics over the longue durée and across different spatial locales. Secondly, we provide a brief discussion and critique of existing approaches to the study of the far-right and offer an alternative methodological framing centred on 'the international'. Thirdly, we discuss the ambivalent connections between the far-right and liberal international ordersboth today and in the past. Finally, we provide brief summaries of each contribution to the special issue.