scholarly journals Urban conditions for the rise of the far right in the global city of Frankfurt: From austerity urbanism, post-democracy and gentrification to regressive collectivity

Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Mullis
Keyword(s):  
Driving Forces ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Frankfurt Am Main ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
First Results ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Urban Conditions

In Germany, the electoral success of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is one of the most obvious signs of the rise of the far right. In public debates this tends to be associated with Eastern Germany and rural regions. What is neglected is the fact that the party was also remarkably successful in less privileged urban districts across Germany. In this paper I focus on the urban conditions for the rise of the far right. I do so by presenting first results of ethnographic research in two neighbourhoods of Frankfurt am Main. Both – Riederwald and Nied – are marginalised and the AfD gained considerable support there in the 2017 general elections. In the accounts given in 14 expert interviews I identify three crucial urban processes: austerity urbanism, post-democracy and gentrification. Relating them to findings of long-term studies on right-wing attitudes as well as to the concept of ‘downward mobility’, I argue that these processes increase the competition for resources and strengthen feelings of being left behind as well as experiences of being abandoned by political representatives – which are driving forces for the rise of the far right. And yet these experiences alone do not provide sufficient reason to explain the rise of the far right. They are general processes in the neighbourhoods. However, it seems that intersections with existing group-focused enmities drive a shift from social to regressive collectivity, which raises the potential for far-right political subjectification.

scholarly journals Digital Ecosystems of Ideology: Linked Media as Rhetoric in Spanish Political Tweets

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512092663
Author(s):  
Vanessa Ceia
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
General Elections ◽  
External Sources ◽  
Popular Party

That Twitter is a major form of political mobilization and influence has been well documented. But what is the role of linked media—references to newspapers, photos, videos, and other external sources via URLs—in political Twitter messaging? How are linked references employed as campaign tools and rhetorical devices in messages published by political parties on Twitter? Is there a quantifiable relationship between a party’s ideology and linked media in tweets? With the spread of fake news, threats to a free press, and questioning of the legitimacy of political messaging on the rise globally, the sources on which parties draw to convince voters of their online messaging deserve critical attention. To explore the above questions, this article examines uses of linked media in tweets generated by the official accounts of Spain’s top five political parties during, in the lead-up, and in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish General Elections held on April 28, 2019. Grounded in a corpus of 10,038 tweets collected between March 1 and May 15, 2019, this study quantifies, compares, and critiques how linked media are integrated and remixed into tweets published by the left-leaning Spanish Workers’ Socialist Party (@PSOE), right-wing Popular Party (@populares), left-wing Podemos (@ahorapodemos), neoliberal Citizens (@CiudadanosCs), and far-right Vox (@vox_es) parties. Evidence reveals that each party links to media from somewhat homophilic groups of news outlets, journalists, and public figures, an analysis of which can shed light on how parties construct their digital self-representations, ideological networks of information, and attempt to sway voters.

A Model for Right-Wing Populist Electoral Success?

Populism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Muno ◽  
Daniel Stockemer
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Important Variable ◽  
Typical Case ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
High Government ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Immigration Attitudes

Abstract This article adds to the large literature on right-wing populist parties (RWPP), explaining how anti-immigrant sentiments become salient for vote choice. Within the large literature on RWPP, anti-immigration attitudes are the most important variable to explain the vote share of RWPP. Yet, recent research shows that there is not always an empirical effect between having anti-immigrant attitudes and voting for the RWPP. In this article, we develop a theoretical model that explains the conditions under which anti-immigration attitudes matter. We then test this model based on the case of the AfD in Germany, a typical case for a right-wing populist party exploiting anti-immigrant sentiment. Focusing on the AfD in Germany, we illustrate that the refugee crisis in 2015 in combination with a perception of high government unresponsiveness to stop the crisis provided the structural conditions necessary to activate latent anti-immigration sentiment among large parts of the population. Using a structural analysis and individual panel data for Germany’s general elections in 2013 and 2017, we find that immigration critical attitudes were already present among parts of the population in 2013 but immigration was a secondary topic in the 2013 election, even among AfD voters. Due to the immigration crisis in 2015, immigration became a salient topic. The combination of a perceived external crisis or shock combined with a perceived government’s unresponsiveness quickly offered a winning formula for the AfD. A probability probe for two other countries (Sweden and Italy) with different contexts also show salience for the model.

scholarly journals Interacting with the ordinary people: How populist messages and styles communicated by politicians trigger users’ behaviour on social media in a comparative context

2020 ◽  
pp. 026732312097872
Author(s):  
Michael Hameleers ◽  
Desirée Schmuck ◽  
Lieke Bos ◽  
Sarah Ecklebe
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Actual Content ◽  
Online Behaviour ◽  
Comparative Content

Populist politicians’ social media activity has often been associated with their electoral success. Yet, research on the driving forces of engagement on social media is scarce. Are populist politicians triggering more interaction than mainstream politicians, or is it rather the populist ideology they convey? To disentangle these different factors, we conducted a comparative content analysis of Twitter and Facebook communication of 13 leading candidates in Austria and the Netherlands during an election campaign. Findings show that it is rather styles conductive to populism (i.e. emotionality, first-person references) than the actual content of populist communication that trigger online behaviour. Importantly, irrespective of the content they convey, right-wing populist politicians are more successful in spreading their message via social media than mainstream politicians. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the role of online communication for populist politicians’ success in spreading their viewpoints across networked societies.

scholarly journals Nordic dog whistles. Analyzing discriminatory discourses in the parlance of the Scandinavian radical right parties

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-40
Author(s):  
Luiza-Maria Filimon
Keyword(s):  
Radical Right ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
People's Party ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Case Basis

The Nordic states had an active radical right presence long before the economic and refugee crises that swept the shores of the European Union (EU) left in their wake a reinvigorated right-wing contingent. The radical right parties (RRPs) have not only registered various degrees of electoral success, but have also made inroads into the political mainstream. The three defining characteristics that set these parties apart from the more traditional far-right ones are: 1) the repudiation of hardcore extremism; 2) the search for political viability; and 3) the acquisition of mainstream recognition. The present article argues that as these parties compete for legitimacy, they are forced to alter their discriminatory rhetoric by switching tonal registers. One of the political strategies that enables them to put the outright “overt” in the “covert” is the recourse to dog whistle politics. How well can they overcome the stigma associated with their more extreme reflexes depends on a case by case basis. This article examines whether the four most prominent examples of Nordic radicalism (the Danish People’s Party, Finns Party, Sweden Democrats, and Norway’s Progress Party) have integrated dog whistles in their political messaging and tracks how these coded appeals change from one country to another. In analyzing the response to the 2015 refugee crisis, the study finds that to a certain extent, the rhetoric utilized falls into the coded register or at the very least purposefully attempts to veer away from the radical excesses which are marginalizing and self-exclusionary.

scholarly journals Demographic polarization and the rise of the far right: Brazil’s 2018 presidential election

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 205316802199020
Author(s):  
Matthew L. Layton ◽  
Amy Erica Smith ◽  
Mason W. Moseley ◽  
Mollie J. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Race And Religion ◽  
Presidential Election Campaign

Does the recent electoral success of far-right populists represent a mere rejection of the political and economic status quo, or has it revealed deeper cultural divides? Historically, demographic cleavages have been poor predictors of vote choice and partisanship in Latin America. However, during Brazil’s 2018 presidential election campaign, right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro fomented conflict across lines of gender, race, and religion. We argue that his candidacy activated latent, previously unexploited grievances in the electorate. Using survey data from an original five-wave online panel conducted between July 2018 and January 2019, we examine the effect of demographic cleavages on presidential vote choice. In stark contrast to prior elections, we find clear evidence of demographic divides in 2018, partially mediated by issue positions. Bolsonaro’s campaign and subsequent election thus appear to have created new identity-based alignments in Brazil’s electorate. Our findings shed further light on the global resurgence of the far right, suggesting that far-right candidates can attract new bases of support through demographic polarization, exploiting differences in values and issue preferences by gender, race, ethnicity, and religion.

scholarly journals How Right-Wing Populists Engage with Cross-Cutting News on Online Message Boards: The Case of ForoCoches and Vox in Spain

2022 ◽  
pp. 194016122110726
Author(s):  
Clara Juarez Miro ◽  
Benjamin Toff
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Message Board ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Message Boards ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Online Message Boards ◽  
Political Talk

Anecdotal evidence suggests a link between online message boards and the rise of far-right movements, which have achieved growing electoral success globally. Press accounts and scholarship have suggested these message boards help to radicalize like-minded users through exposure to shared media insulated from cross-cutting viewpoints (e.g., Hine et al. 2017 ; Palmer 2019). To better understand what role online message boards might play for supporters of right-wing populist movements, we focus on the Spanish political party Vox and its supporters’ use of the message board ForoCoches, a fan site for car enthusiasts, which became an important platform for the party. Using more than 120,000 messages collected from threads mentioning the party between 2013–2019, we examine the URLs shared to show how mainstream news media events shape the conversation online and how users not only were exposed but deeply engaged with cross-cutting news sources. We argue that the use of sites such as ForoCoches should be viewed in the context of a broader increasingly hybrid political and media landscape where activity online and offline cannot be understood separate from one another. Moreover, our findings suggest that the online political discussions that take place in Vox-related threads on ForoCoches resemble normatively positive deliberative spaces—albeit in this case in support of illiberal political positions. In other words, our findings complicate conventional notions about the benefits of political talk, especially online, as a democratically desirable end in and of itself.

The Far Right

2020 ◽  
pp. 240-255
Author(s):  
Vasiliki Georgiadou
Keyword(s):  
Second Phase ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Political Performance ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
The Will ◽  
Two Phases

The chapter outlines the trajectory of the Far Right’s identity, political performance, and electoral evolution in Greece since the 2000s. The course of the Greek far Right comprises two phases: in the first phase the Far Right was at the margins of the political arena, whereas the second phase corresponds to its breakthrough in the earthquake elections of 2012 that signifies a period of fluidity and simultaneous rise of right-wing and left-wing radicalization. The chapter examines the conditions under which the onset and electoral success of far Right parties occurred. In particular, the focus is on the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) which is classified among the populist radical right parties, and the People’s Association—Golden Dawn that is a pro-violence extremist right-wing party. It is explained what makes each party typical of the two major variants of the European far Right. Concentrating on relevant theories that are divided into ‘demand-side’ and ‘supply-side’ accounts, the chapter identifies factors originated in grievances—socio-economic or cultural—as well as political opportunities that offer possible explanations for the rise of the far Right in Greece. The final part is devoted to the militia-like organizational structure of Golden Dawn and the profile of its voters who equate parliamentary democracy with a ‘camouflaged authoritarian regime’, express the need for a strong leader, and the will to take justice into their own hands.

Magic and Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Sabina Magliocco
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North America ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Spirit World

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.

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