scholarly journals Corrigendum to: Thinking Beyond Extremism: A Critique of Counterterrorism Research on Right-Wing Nationalist and Far-Right Social Movements

Author(s):  
Justin Everett Cobain Tetrault
Author(s):  
Cynthia Miller-Idriss

This introductory chapter discusses the emergence of the extremist commercial market and how it has coincided with one of the most significant waves of far right popularity in Europe in recent memory. The past several years have witnessed a steady increase in far right wing politics and social movements across Europe. Such protests and violent episodes exist in a context in which far right, nationalist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and racist rhetoric and discourse has risen across Europe. These developments pose significant challenges for countries that have spent decades rebuilding democratic societies in the post-World War II era and have firmly committed to policies and practices that protect pluralistic communities. Academics and policy makers have struggled to understand the diverse causes and dynamics that have made the far right so appealing for so many people—that appear, in other words, to have made the extreme more mainstream.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Flesher Fominaya

Forthcoming in American Behavioral ScientistCristina Flesher FominayaPolitical scholars express concern for the continued resilience of democracy in the face of multiple crises. In times of crisis, social movements articulate grievances and make demands of political leaders and policymakers. In contrast to the wave of pro-democracy movements following the 2008 global financial crash where protesters demanded accountability from elites, mobilization during the COVID-19 pandemic has defied expectations in several key ways. First, the expectation for protesters to mobilize primarily online in the face of the restrictions and risk associated with large gatherings has not been upheld. Instead, we have witnessed widespread “offline” mass protests. Second, despite high mortality rates and significant disparities in the effectiveness of national public health responses, we have not witnessed widespread mobilizations demanding governments do better to protect citizens from the virus. Instead, we have seen two radically different responses: At one extreme, veterans of “pro-democracy” movements have “pivoted”, using their skills and experience to either make-up for weak government responses to COVID-19 (Hong Kong) or to reinforce government efforts to contain it (Taiwan). At the other extreme, "anti-democratic" and predominantly far right-wing movements have mobilized against public health measures, circulating COVID negationist and conspiracy messages. Indeed, the political weaponization of disinformation has been a notable feature of pandemic mobilization. I analyze these contrasting trends, highlighting the challenges they pose for the effective handling of the pandemic, and their broader implications for democratic legitimacy and resilience. In so doing, I call attention to the ways that mobilization during the pandemic challenges scholars to revisit some of our assumptions about the dynamics of social movements in times of crisis, and how they can foster or erode democracy. The analysis also suggests that scholars analyzing the impact of information disorders on democracy need to pay careful attention to offline protest as well as online transmission.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Sabina Magliocco

This essay introduces a special issue of Nova Religio on magic and politics in the United States in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. The articles in this issue address a gap in the literature examining intersections of religion, magic, and politics in contemporary North America. They approach political magic as an essentially religious phenomenon, in that it deals with the spirit world and attempts to motivate human behavior through the use of symbols. Covering a range of practices from the far right to the far left, the articles argue against prevailing scholarly treatments of the use of esoteric technologies as a predominantly right-wing phenomenon, showing how they have also been operationalized by the left in recent history. They showcase the creativity of magic as a form of human cultural expression, and demonstrate how magic coexists with rationality in contemporary western settings.


2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-362
Author(s):  
Myungji Yang

Through the case of the New Right movement in South Korea in the early 2000s, this article explores how history has become a battleground on which the Right tried to regain its political legitimacy in the postauthoritarian context. Analyzing disputes over historiography in recent decades, this article argues that conservative intellectuals—academics, journalists, and writers—play a pivotal role in constructing conservative historical narratives and building an identity for right-wing movements. By contesting what they viewed as “distorted” leftist views and promoting national pride, New Right intellectuals positioned themselves as the guardians of “liberal democracy” in the Republic of Korea. Existing studies of the Far Right pay little attention to intellectual circles and their engagement in civil society. By examining how right-wing intellectuals appropriated the past and shaped triumphalist national imagery, this study aims to better understand the dynamics of ideational contestation and knowledge production in Far Right activism.


Thesis Eleven ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 072551362110086
Author(s):  
Imogen Richards ◽  
Maria Rae ◽  
Matteo Vergani ◽  
Callum Jones

A 21st-century growth in prevalence of extreme right-wing nationalism and social conservatism in Australia, Europe, and America, in certain respects belies the positive impacts of online, new, and alternative forms of global media. Cross-national forms of ‘far-right activism’ are unconfined to their host nations; individuals and organisations campaign on the basis of ethno-cultural separatism, while capitalising on internet-based affordances for communication and ideological cross-fertilisation. Right-wing revolutionary ideas disseminated in this media, to this end, embody politico-cultural aims that can only be understood with attention to their philosophical underpinnings. Drawing on a dataset of articles from the pseudo-news websites, XYZ and The Unshackled, this paper investigates the representation of different rightist political philosophical traditions in contemporary Australia-based far-right media. A critical discourse and content analysis reveal XYZ and TU’s engagement with various traditions, from Nietzsche and the Conservative Revolution, to the European New Right and neo-Nazism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 97 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-363
Author(s):  
Feliciano De Sá Guimarães ◽  
Irma Dutra De Oliveira E Silva

Abstract In the last two decades, far-right populists have formed governments all over the world. However, systematic analyses on how far-right leaders recreate their countries' foreign policy identity are still underdeveloped. In this article, we analyse how far-right populist leaders use their conservative identity-set to align with other right-wing governments and how they use the same conservative repertoire to deal with ideological rivals. More precisely, we argue that these leaders tend to overemphasize a deep conservative identity-set towards other far-right populist governments, something we call ‘thick conservative identity’. This profoundly conservative identity-set is composed of three national role conceptions: anti-globalism, nationalism and anti-foe. However, they do not repeat this identity-set towards ideological rivals, preferring to use a more nuanced and contradictory one, something we call ‘thin conservative identity’. The trigger of such difference is the anticipated mutual expectation of conservatism between Ego and Alter, in which Ego mimics Alter's deep conservatism. We use Jair Bolsonaro's alignment with Donald Trump and Bolsonaro's relationship with China as illustrative cases. We use the main concepts of role theory to understand both how conservative alignments are created and how far-right governments deal with ideological rivals.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-209
Author(s):  
Leanne C. Serbulo

Abstract With the rise of right-wing populist ideologies and ensuing social polarization, political violence has become more widespread. Between 2017 and 2019, far-right extremists and anti-fascists engaged in more than twenty violent protest clashes in Portland, Oregon, USA. Through a protest event analysis of those clashes supplemented with a case study of the protest wave, this paper explores how the mechanisms of radicalization and de-radicalization operate when two violent protest movements collide and interact with state security forces. The three-way interaction among a movement, counter-movement, and the police can produce unanticipated outcomes. For example, rather than de-escalating the situation, police underbidding resulted in an increase in violence between the two movements. Understanding how the mechanisms of radicalization and de-radicalization function in a movement/counter-movement protest cycle can provide insight into the ways in which a movement’s strategy and their adversaries’ responses to it can increase or decrease levels of violence.


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