The "Modern" Left and the Fascist Threat in the 21st Century (original) (raw)
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The Working Class and Support for the Radical Right. A Critical Perspective
Les Cahiers de l'IEP, 2021
Scholarship in political science usually attributes a pivotal, or even exclusive, role to the working class in the progress of the radical right in Europe in recent years. This paper discusses the link between working class and radical right bearing on the case of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) with a focus on its electorate and activists’ support. Using post-electoral survey data and in-depth interviews with activists, it develops two critical arguments. The first is that support for the radical right is interclassist and based on various types of social and political rationales. The second argument is that a significant proportion of the working class does not support the SVP. Consequently class position is not the key determinant of support for the radical right. The paper argues that it is necessary to take into account a plurality of factors liable to bear on political behaviour. These factors can be endogenous (e.g. the political socialization and social trajectories of the actors) or exogenous (such as mobilizing sociability networks, political offer, and context). Studies on the radical right would gain by incorporating these various determinants of political behaviour. This requires going beyond monocausal explanations of support for the radical right, and allows to put into perspective explanations for support of the SVP in terms of frustration and economic deprivation often present in scholarship
‘Fascism… but with an open mind.’Reflections on the Contemporary Far Right in (Western) Europe
Fascism, 2013
The political science community would have us believe that since the 1980s something entirely detached from historical or neo-fascism has emerged in (Western) Europe - a populist radicalization of mainstream concerns - a novel form of ‘radical right-wing populism.’ Yet the concept of ‘radical right-wing populism’ is deeply problematic because it suggests that (Western) Europe’s contemporary far right has become essentially different from forms of right-wing extremism that preceded it, and from forms of right-wing extremism that continue to exist alongside it. Such an approach, as this First Lecture on Fascism argues, fails to appreciate the critical role that neo-fascism has played, and still plays, in adapting Europe’s contemporary far right to the norms and realities of multi-ethnic, liberal-democratic society. Political scientists should fixate less on novelty and the quest for neat typologies, and instead engage far more seriously with (neo) fascism studies.
Why the Left Must Change: Right-Wing Populism in Context
In recent years right-wing populism has risen significantly across the west. In 2017, Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, came very close to winning the French presidential election. She eventually lost out to Emanuel Macron, a man dedicated to maintaining the neoliberal consensus but smart enough to voice the usual progressive liberal platitudes during his election campaign. If this was a victory for liberalism over an increasingly virulent and regressive nationalism, it rang rather hallow. The huge strides made by the National Front under Le Pen, quite clearly, do not augur well for the continuation of liberal values in Europe. However, it seems quite important to ask why a representative of the dominant yet ailing politico-economic order was presented to the electorate as the alternative to the ethnocentric nationalism currently pulling France to the right. Is it feasible that Macron's unmitigated neoliberalism can assuage the anger and anxiety that underpin the new French nationalism? Does the invidious choice between Le Pen and Macron not tell us something about the parlous state of liberal democracy and the chains that have been placed upon our collective political imagination? Might the continued dominance of neoliberal capitalism – which has throughout the west concentrated wealth in the hands of an oligarchic elite and permeated economic insecurity throughout the rest of the population – have in some way influenced the development of this new right-wing populism? Could the current crisis in fact be an outcome of neoliberalism's continued political dominance? And perhaps more to the point, shouldn't we be asking searching questions about why the political right has been the principal beneficiary of post-crash economic insecurity, stagnating wages, declining lifestyles, austerity and the gradual breakup of the west's welfare states? Why has there not been a resurgence of interest in traditional left-wing politics rooted in political economy and committed to advancing the interests of the multi-ethnic working class? Why have we not seen a new generation of strident leftist politicians, keen to control the brutal excesses of market society, bursting onto the stage? There is no doubt that the new right has prospered in the vacuum created by the traditional left's decline. Focusing on 'Brexit Britain', the task we have set ourselves here is to identify why the historical relationship between the working class and left-wing politics has become fragile, strained and at risk of coming to an end altogether.
Radical right-wing movements: Who, when, how and why?
Sociopedia
This article provides an overview of the existing research on the causes of radical right-wing movements, a topic often neglected in the literature in comparison with the academic attention paid to radical right political parties and elections. It illustrates individual, organizational and contextual explanations for the emergence and mobilization (including violence) of right-wing movements in Europe and beyond, providing comparative empirical studies and data as illustration. The article concludes by discussing possible future directions for right-wing movement research. keywords far right ◆ individual, meso-level and macro-level factors ◆ political mobilization ◆ radical right violence ◆ radical right-wing movements
Since the 1990s, the term 'populism' has become increasingly linked to reconstructed radical right parties in Europe such as the French Front National and UKIP. Through its many uses and misuses in mainstream discourse, this association has created a mythology around such parties and their appeal to the 'people'. This development has facilitated the return of nationalism and racism to the forefront of the mainstream political discourse and simultaneously obscured the deeper causes for such a revival. This article explores the ways in which populist hype, based on a skewed understanding of democracy as majority, has divided the 'people' along arbitrary lines, tearing communities apart at the expense of more emancipatory actions. Based predominantly on electoral analysis and discourse theory, with a particular focus on the role of abstention, the aim of this article is to examine the process through which, by way of its involuntary and constructed association with the radical right, the 'people', and the working class in particular, have become essentialised in a nationalist project, moving further away from a narrative of class struggle towards one of race struggle.
2016
Europe is no longer what it used to be. The notion of European unification has been dashed to the ground. The actually existing project of European unification can hardly still be defended, from a left perspective, without lapsing into sheer illusionism. The call for additional consolidation and democratisation of the EU is not illusionary in the sense of being false, but in that of lacking any possibility of implementation under the given circumstances. In the experience of broad sections of the population, what »more EU« has meant so far has simply been more neoliberal reform. Brexit has shown one thing clearly: the European left has lost large parts of the popular classes – both the »endangered middle« and the precariat –, and this is true not just with regard to a European perspective, but with regard to left perspectives as such. According to Owen Jones (2016), the Brexit vote was »a working-class revolt. It may not have been the working-class revolt against the political establishment that many of us favoured, but it is undeniable that this result was achieved off the back of furious, alienated« white working class voters. This state of affairs, which is not specific to the UK, constitutes an existential problem for the left: if left politics degenerates into the lifestyle choice of a well-educated, urban, cosmopolitan class, then the left will be perceived as merely another established political force, with little to distinguish it from other »elites«. It makes no sense to bank on the consolidation of European integration, given the crisis and the deterioration of the European idea. But to conclude from this that we should strive for a left exit, a Lexit, is no less sensible, and as unrealistic as our call for a social Europe, which we have now been articulating for twenty years. Where a Lexit referendum would be formally possible, we could only win it by joining forces with right-wing populists and racists such as Wilders' Party for Freedom or Le Pen's National Front. This would be a poisoned cooperation, not only because it would be extremely difficult for us to set ourselves apart from the right, but also because as a rule, it is the right that benefits from such arrangements, whereas the left is berated and accused, both by middle-class parties and by its own supporters. So what is to be done?
Recent History and Contemporary Challenges of the European Radical Left
This paper briefly reviews the recent history of the European radical left and discusses some of its contemporary challenges. After the end of actually existing socialism in 1989, anti-capitalist forces found their influence being irresistibly squeezed. A phase of reconstruction then began, in which new political formations emerged through the regrouping of anti-capitalist elements. The organizational diversity enabled the traditional forces of the left to open up to the ecological, feminist, and peace movements. New parties, together with the social movements and progressive trade-union forces, contributed to the heightened resistance against neoliberal policies. From the end of the 1990s, many of the European radical left allied themselves with social-democratic forces or supported them. The outcome was a failure. Only after the Great Recession in 2007, the European radical left began to revive against the austerity policy imposed by the antidemocratic technocracy of the Troika. However, the recent failure of SYRIZA illustrates that the European anti-capitalist left still need more resolute transnational campaigns and mobilizations.
Neoliberalism and the Far-Right: A Contradictory Embrace
2016
This article examines the contradictory relationship between neoliberalism and the politics of the far-right. It seeks to identify and explain the divergence of the 'economic' and the social/ cultural spheres under neoliberalism (notably in articulations of race and class and the 'politics of whiteness') and how such developments play out in the politics of the contemporary far-right. We also seek to examine the degree to which the politics of the far-right pose problems for the consolidation and long-term stabilization of neoliberalism, through acting as a populist source of pressure on the conservative-right and tapping into sources of alienation amongst déclassé social layers. Finally, we locate the politics of the far-right within the broader atrophying of political representation and accountability of the neoliberal era with respect to the institutional and legal organization of neoliberalism at the international level, as most obviously highlighted in the ongoing crisis of the EU and Eurozone.