Identity and the Far-Right: People Talking About ‘The People’

2021 ◽  
pp. 75-91
Author(s):  
Tim Kucharzewski ◽  
Silvia Nicola
Keyword(s):  
Far Right ◽  
The People

The Toolkit of Nationalist Populism in Contemporary Hungary: Symbols, Objects, and Modalities of Circulation

2021 ◽  
pp. 088832542095081
Author(s):  
Virág Molnár
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Online Data ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
The People ◽  
Consumer Markets ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Material Circulation

This article belongs to the special cluster, “National, European, Transnational: Far-right activism in the 20th and 21st centuries”, guest edited by Agnieszka Pasieka. Research on populism attributes great significance to mapping the distinctive discursive logic of populist reasoning (e.g., the trope of pitting corrupt elites against the people). This article aims to move beyond the primary focus on discursive structures to stress the role of symbols, objects, and different modalities of circulation in the political communication of populist ideas, using the case of Hungary. By tracing the history of one of the key symbols of nationalist populism—the image of “Greater Hungary”—from its emergence in the interwar period to its present-day use, the article shows how the meanings and material forms this symbol assumed in political communication that evolved under different political regimes. The analysis builds on extensive archival, ethnographic, and online data to highlight how the diversity of material forms and the conduits through which this image circulated have contributed to its endurance as a key political symbol. Symbols, like the Greater Hungary image, condense complex historical narratives into a powerful sign that can be easily objectified, reproduced, and diffused. Today’s differentiated consumer markets provide convenient conduits for this kind of material circulation. These symbols carry meaning in and of themselves as signs, and once they are turned into everyday objects, they facilitate the normalization of radical politics by increasing their salience and broad visibility.

Social policy and populism: welfare nationalism as the new narrative of social citizenship

2018 ◽  
pp. 161-180
Author(s):  
Markus Ketola ◽  
Johan Nordensvard
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
The People ◽  
Policy Narratives ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter investigates the relationship between far-right populism and social policy. The chapter argues that an approach anchored in framing and policy narratives will yield new understandings of how far-right populist discourses have come to challenge social democratic and neoliberal welfare narratives. The new narrative challenges and denigrates the economic and political elite as self-serving and corrupt, claiming to represent the interest of the ‘people’ instead. In defining ‘people’, the interests of certain societal groups are prioritised on the bases of culture or ethnicity. Importantly for social policy, this chapter argues, in this universal social rights and social citizenship are reframed in ethno-nationalist and welfare chauvinist terms. The chapter draws upon the case of Sweden in order to briefly exemplify the discursive strategies at play.

scholarly journals The contradictions of populism: reasserting adult education for democracy

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Crowther
Keyword(s):  
Adult Education ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The People ◽  
The Us ◽  
Current Context ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Capitalist Democracies

The context for this paper is the rise of populism across the UK, Europe and the US, a trend which is sweeping western liberal capitalist democracies in particular but also beyond in countries such as Turkey. Populism is used primarily as a derogatory label to demean the poor, working class groups and people with low educational attainment, as not having the experience or capacity to make wise decisions. In the UK this has led to demands for a second referendum on leaving Europe because the ‘will of the people’ was manipulated. It is also claimed that Parliament is sovereign so the decision to exit Europe should be made by its members who are better informed and can legitimately overturn the referendum decision. On the other hand, demagogues of the far right who led campaigns of disinformation and thinly veiled racist vocabulary to sway the Brexit result champion the ‘will of the people’ in disingenuous ways. If we widen our lens, there are also examples of progressive populist politics in Europe, such as Podemos in Spain, which are indicative of a counter-trend to the neoliberal model of globalization. Whilst populism is mainly used as a derogatory label, it can also be framed progressively as a response of the powerless, the poor and the ignored reacting to the limits of liberal democratic institutions in the current context. The election of Trump in the US and the Brexit result in the UK can be understood in these terms too. The repressed, overlooked or denigrated by the political and media elite, have responded at the only opportunity available to them. At the same time, the kind of social purpose adult education which aimed to engage with people in communities, on their own terms, has withered as neoliberal forms of lifelong learning and citizenship transform educational practices into ‘remoralising’ citizens to take care of themselves. In this context adult education and democracy are in crises. However, both crises can be turned towards generating productive synergies which adult educators need to connect with. This presentation seeks to explore and stimulate this debate.

scholarly journals Populist, Radical and Extremist Political Parties in Visegrad countries vis à vis the migration crisis. In the name of the people and the nation in Central Europe

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Věra Stojarová
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The People ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
Visegrád Countries ◽  
The Eu

AbstractThe paper looks at the political party scene in Visegrad countries before and after the influx of refugees and compares how much the negative reactions were instrumentalised not only by the extremist and radical right parties but by the newly emerged populist formations as well as the well-established mainstream parties across the whole political spectra. Until the “migration crisis”, the far right parties focused mainly on Roma issue, anti-Semitism, anti-communism, anti-establishment and used anti-NATO, anti-EU, anti-German, anti-Czech, anti-Slovak or anti-Hungarian card. Since 2015, the parties re-oriented against immigrants, more precisely against the Muslims presenting them as a threat and also increased their criticism on the EU. However, the mainstream parties also accepted far right topics and actively promoted them. The result is then mainstreaming of xenophobia, nationalism and marginalization of far right parties as their flexible voters move to the populist subjects.

scholarly journals The “New Normal” and “Pandemic Populism”: The COVID-19 Crisis and Anti-Hygienic Mobilisation of the Far-Right

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 165
Author(s):  
Ulrike M. Vieten
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Far Right ◽  
New Normal ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The People ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Structural Inequalities

The paper is meant as a timely intervention into current debates on the impact of the global pandemic on the rise of global far-right populism and contributes to scholarly thinking about the normalisation of the global far-right. While approaching the tension between national political elites and (far-right) populist narratives of representing “the people”, the paper focuses on the populist effects of the “new normal” in spatial national governance. Though some aspects of public normality of our 21st century urban, cosmopolitan and consumer lifestyle have been disrupted with the pandemic curfew, the underlying gendered, racialised and classed structural inequalities and violence have been kept in place: they are not contested by the so-called “hygienic demonstrations”. A digital pandemic populism during lockdown might have pushed further the mobilisation of the far right, also on the streets.

scholarly journals From ‘Brexhaustion’ to ‘Covidiots’: the UK United Kingdom and the Populist Future

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Foster ◽  
Matthew Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Conservative Party ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Far Right ◽  
New Politics ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Right

Boris Johnson’s electoral victory and the 2020 culmination of Brexit are accelerating Britain’s shift towards the right and towards open criticism of technocracy in the UK and EU. Since 2016 the UK’s political atmosphere has polarised into hostile extremes. The continuation of this toxicity beyond Brexit, the dominance of nationalist narratives as Britain’s new ‘politics of everything’ (Valluvan 2019). While the Conservative Party remains traditionally centre-right and the Brexit Party has ceased to be relevant, the UK continues to witness the growth of the far right and what is called here the ‘Radical Right’, which have been accelerating since 2016, rapidly gaining influence (Norris and Inglehart 2019: 443-472), and ‘mainstreaming’ (Miller-Idriss 2017) in the Conservative majority elected in December 2019. The past four years have seen growing British contempt for technocracy in London and Brussels, while the Leave vote has been represented as a “Will of the People” antithetical to a Remain/Revoke/Second Referendum position, often portrayed as an anti-democratic scheme by “the elite” to frustrate the will of “the people”. This ‘us and them’ populist narrative is deepening as the UK’s volatile political environment moves away from the political procedures and economic values by which the UK has operated since 1945. Since early 2020, this narrative has been significantly accelerated by Covid-19 countermeasures, with anti-EU parties and narratives on the left and right becoming anti-lockdown or anti-vaccine parties and narratives. This paper approaches the radical right as emblematic of British politics’ shift from centrism towards polarised factions defined not by party but by support or contempt for technical governance. In this paper we propose a new explanatory basis for studying the populist radical right not as a temporary phenomenon in response to specific political events and conditions, but as a fluid, amorphous, and heterogeneous set of groups, parties, and narratives whose strategies, appeal, and narratives make them extremely adaptable, and significant as a force with substantial influence of politics into the future.

scholarly journals A Posture of Protest? The Search for Christian Identity in A Post-Secular Society: Between Secularised Eschatology and A Sacralisation of History

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariëtta Van der Tol ◽  
Matthew Rowley
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Relationship

This article theorises ideations of “the people” in a comparative reflection on Latin-Christian theologies and typologies of time and secularised appropriations thereof in right-wing as well as far-right movements in Europe and the United States of America. Understanding the world in grand narratives of “good” and “evil” emerges from Christian eschatological hope: the hope of the restoration and renewal of the cosmos and the final defeat of evil prophesised in association with the return of Christ. However, this language of good and evil becomes detached from the wider corpus of Christian belief and theology. In its secular expression, it may attach the good to an abstract and normative account of “the people”, who are defined in contrast to a range of others, both internal and external to the nation. Secular iterations might further echo the stratification of present, past and future through a sacralisation of the past and a dramatization of the future. The context of contemporary right-wing and far-right movements poses a series of questions about the relationship between belief and belonging, the acceptability of the secularization of Christian traditions and theologies, and the extent to which Christian communities can legitimately associate with right-wing movements.

scholarly journals Historical Memory in the Process of Formation and Reproduction of Modern National Identity: the French Experience (Part 1)

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-52
Author(s):  
O. Shmorhun
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
French History ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
National Memory ◽  
The People ◽  
The Status

The article is devoted to the study of the role of historical tradition and national memory in the formation of modern types of ethno-national identity and mechanisms of consolidation of citizens at the stage of formation of the French state of the modern type. In this regard, various versions of French history were analyzed by representatives of historical and historiographical schools, which still compete with each other for the status of creators of a generally accepted interpretation of important historical events. It was found that consistently patriotic motivation, which ensures the formation and realization of the innovative potential of the people and social activity of this creative core of the nation, aimed at overcoming any crisis challenges, is formed only on the basis of maximum meaningful synthesis of existing interpretations of French history. In particular, the effectiveness of memory policy is ensured by the fact that symbols, traditions and historical monuments that positively influence the dynamics of national-patriotic motivations and feelings are inevitably (and often, quite consciously) filled with qualitatively new meanings and values. The complete failure of neoliberal and left-wing radical critiques of Holism's theory and practice has been proved, the conservative elements of which, in particular the appeal to the heroic past, are not at all identical with medieval archaism and almost neo-Nazi political preferences. On the contrary, the typological similarity of Bonapartism and Hollism is due precisely to their ability to effectively oppose reactionary and revolutionary extremism, which is equally destructive to the nation-state. In this regard, the exceptional relevance of the use of historical memory to form their own traditionalist and authoritarian charisma (in their relationship) by the creator and first president of the Fifth Republic Charles de Gaulle in the process of his opposition to anti-national provocations of far-right and far-left.

scholarly journals The hydroxychloroquine alliance: how far-right leaders and alt-science preachers came together to promote a miracle drug

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-214
Author(s):  
Guilherme Casarões ◽  
David Magalhães
Keyword(s):  
Policy Implications ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
The People ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Knowledge Claims

Abstract Soon after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world saw far-right leaders uniting to promote hydroxychloroquine despite controversial results. Why have some leaders actively promoted the drug since then, contradicting recommendations made by their own government’s health authorities? Our argument is twofold. First, hydroxychloroquine has been an integral tool of medical populist performance in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We adopt Lasco & Curato’s (2018) definition of medical populism as a political style based on performances of public health crises that pit ‘the people’ against ‘the establishment’ using alternative knowledge claims to cast doubt on the credibility of doctors, scientists, and technocrats. Second, rather than being an individual endeavor, medical populism addressing the coronavirus crisis has led populists to build an alt-science network. We define it as a loose movement of alleged truth-seekers who publicly advance scientific claims at a crossroads between partial evidence, pseudo-science, and conspiracy theories. It comprises scientists, businesspeople and celebrities united by their distrust of governments and mainstream science. In this article, we look at how the hydroxychloroquine alliance was formed, as well as its political and policy implications. To this end, we compare why and how Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro have appealed to medical populist performances when addressing the health crisis. By mobilizing the concepts of medical populism and alt-science, this paper aims to contribute to the scholarship on the relationship between populist politics and policy-making.

Multiculturalism backlash and anti-establishment politics

2020 ◽  
pp. 120-143
Author(s):  
Donatella della Porta ◽  
Pietro Castelli Gattinara ◽  
Konstantinos Eleftheriadis ◽  
Andrea Felicetti
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The People ◽  
Collective Actors ◽  
The Will ◽  
The One ◽  
The Empirical Analysis ◽  
Collective Actor ◽  
Charlie Hebdo

Chapter 6 focuses on a collective actor that has played a crucial role in migration and identity politics across Europe, at least since the early 1990s: the contemporary far right. Relying on frame analysis of web portals, social media pages, blogs, and websites of far-right collective actors in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, we investigate the narrative they constructed on Charlie Hebdo and uncover the patterns of interaction existing between them and other actors, within and across national settings. The empirical analysis shows that the European far right effectively mobilized as a collective actor in the shadow of the January attacks. On the one hand, the Charlie Hebdo juncture brought forth issues that are deeply intertwined with far-right politics, and highly embedded in their agendas. On the other, the far right recognized itself in the collective struggle of opposing multiculturalism and Islamization, and of representing the will of the people against corrupt political elites, at the national and transnational levels.

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