The Alt-Right’s continuation of the ‘cultural war’ in Euro-American societies

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 072551362110059
Author(s):  
Tamir Bar-On
Keyword(s):  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
New Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Antonio Gramsci ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Hearts And Minds

In this paper, I argue that the Alt-Right needs to be taken seriously by the liberal establishment, the general public, and leftist cultural elites for five main reasons: 1) its ‘right-wing Gramscianism’ borrows from the French New Right ( Nouvelle Droite – ND) and the French and pan-European Identitarian movement. This means that it is engaged in the continuation of a larger Euro-American metapolitical struggle to change hearts and minds on issues related to white nationalism, anti-Semitism, and racialism; 2) it is indebted to the metapolitical evolution of sectors of the violent neo-Nazi and earlier white nationalist movements in the USA; 3) this metapolitical orientation uses the mass media, the internet, and social media in general to reach and influence the masses of Americans; 4) the ‘cultural war’ means that the Alt-Right’s spokesman Richard Spencer, French ND leader Alain de Benoist, and other intellectuals see themselves as a type of Leninist vanguard on the radical right, which borrows from left-wing authors such as Antonio Gramsci and their positions in order to win the metapolitical struggle against ‘dominant’ liberal and left-wing political and cultural elites; and 5) this ‘cultural war’ is intellectually and philosophically sophisticated because it understands the crucial role of culture in destabilizing liberal society and makes use of important philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Schmitt, Julius Evola and others in order to give credence to its revolutionary, racialist, and anti-liberal ideals.

scholarly journals Strange fruit: The rise of Brazils new right-wing and the Non-Partisan School Movement

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Romancini ◽  
Fernanda Castilho
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Communication Style ◽  
New Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Network Analyses ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
President Elect ◽  
School Movement

The new right-wing Brazilian Non-Partisan School Movement (in Portuguese, Escola Sem Partido, or ESP) was created in 2004 to denounce indoctrination in schools. It has, however, had greater repercussions via a strong presence on social media. The objective of this article is to analyse these discussions on Twitter. ESPs official discourse and theoretical discussions about the role of social networks supported this study. The content and network analyses of the tweets reveal the following relevant conclusions: the dissemination of content is much stronger than any discussion, on the part of both the new right wing and the left-wing partisans; there is a predominance of ESP supporters in a discussion that has characteristics of an anti-public sphere; communication between these two groups is weak; and the tone of the content spread by ESP supporters resonates with many features of president-elect Jair Bolsonaros communication style.

scholarly journals Elite Cues and Economic Policy Attitudes: The Mediating Role of Economic Hardship

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Cavaillé ◽  
Anja Neundorf
Keyword(s):  
New Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Attitudinal Change ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The One

AbstractDo voters update their attitudes toward economic issues in line with their material self-interest? The consensus among students of public opinion is that material self-interest plays a very limited role and that competing non-material factors, such as partisanship or ideological predispositions, do most of the heavy lifting. This paper moves beyond comparing the role of material and non-material factors. Instead, we examine how these factors combine to shape policy preferences. Specifically, we propose a friendly amendment to Zaller’s influential model according to which attitudinal change results from the interaction between changes in elite messaging on the one hand and individual political predispositions on the other. In Zaller’s model, partisanship and ideological predispositions help explain why some resist and others embrace new elite messaging. We hypothesize that material self-interest also conditions the effect of elite messaging. Using British individual-level panel data collected over more than a decade, we show that material hardship predicts who, among left-wing voters, resist new right-wing partisan cues. Our results highlights the incremental impact of material self-interest on economic attitudes.

Political Orientations and Morality Judgments in the Turkish Context: Considering the Roles of the Needs for Cognition and Recognition

2020 ◽  
pp. 003329411989990
Author(s):  
Burcu Tekeş ◽  
E. Olcay Imamoğlu ◽  
Fatih Özdemir ◽  
Bengi Öner-Özkan
Keyword(s):  
Need For Cognition ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Group Loyalty ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
Collectivistic Culture

The aims of this study were to test: (a) the association of political orientations with morality orientations, specified by moral foundations theory, on a sample of young adults from Turkey, representing a collectivistic culture; and (b) the statistically mediating roles of needs for cognition and recognition in the links between political orientation and morality endorsements. According to the results (a) right-wing orientation and need for recognition were associated with all the three binding foundations (i.e., in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity); (b) right-wing orientation was associated with binding foundations also indirectly via the role of need for recognition; (c) regarding individualizing foundations, left-wing orientation and need for cognition were associated with fairness/reciprocity, whereas only gender was associated with harm/care; and (d) left-wing orientation was associated with fairness dimension also indirectly via the role of need for cognition. The cultural relevance of moral foundations theory as well as the roles of needs for cognition and recognition are discussed.

scholarly journals Rhythm Politics in a Changing Brazil: A Study of the Musical Mobilization of Voters by Bolsonaro and Haddad in the 2018 Election

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kjetil Klette Bøhler
Keyword(s):  
Political Movements ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Awareness ◽  
Public Events ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
The Right ◽  
Musical Rhythms

This article investigates the role of music in presidential election campaigns and political movements inspired by theoretical arguments in Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis, John Dewey ́s pragmatist rethinking of aesthetics and existing scholarship on the politics of music. Specifically, it explores how musical rhythms and melodies enable new forms of political awareness, participation, and critique in an increasingly polarized Brazil through an ethnomusicological exploration of how left-wing and right-wing movements used music to disseminate politics during the 2018 election that culminated in the presidency of Jair Messias Bolsonaro. Three lessons can be learned. First, in Brazil, music breathes life, energy, and affective engagement into politics—sung arguments and joyful rhythms enrich public events and street demonstrations in complex and dynamic ways. Second, music is used by right-wing and left-wing movements in unique ways. For Bolsonaro supporters and right-wing movements, jingles, produced as part of larger election campaigns, were disseminated through massive sound cars in the heart of São Paulo while demonstrators sang the national anthem and waved Brazilian flags. In contrast, leftist musical politics appears to be more spontaneous and bohemian. Third, music has the ability to both humanize and popularize bolsonarismo movements that threaten human rights and the rights of ethnic minorities, among others, in contemporary Brazil. To contest bolsonarismo, Trumpism, and other forms of extreme right-wing populism, we cannot close our ears and listen only to grooves of resistance and songs of freedom performed by leftists. We must also listen to the music of the right.

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.

scholarly journals Populism and Support for Protectionism: The Relevance of Opposition to Trade Openness for Leftist and Rightist Populist Voting in The Netherlands

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 560-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen van der Waal ◽  
Willem de Koster
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Trade Openness ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Representative Survey ◽  
Political Distrust ◽  
The Relationship

Leftist and rightist populist parties in Western Europe both oppose trade openness. Is support for economic protectionism also relevant for their electorates? We assess this in the Netherlands, where both types of populist parties have seats in parliament. Analyses of representative survey data ( n = 1,296) demonstrate that support for protectionism drives voting for such parties, as do the well-established determinants of political distrust (both populist constituencies), economic egalitarianism (leftist populist constituency) and ethnocentrism (rightist populist constituency). Surprisingly, support for protectionism does not mediate the relationship between economic egalitarianism and voting for left-wing populists, or the link between political distrust and voting for either left-wing or right-wing populist parties. In contrast, support for protectionism partly mediates the association between ethnocentrism and voting for right-wing populists. We discuss the largely independent role of protectionism in populist voting in relation to the cultural cleavage in politics and electoral competition, and also provide suggestions for future research.

scholarly journals Drones, Warfare and the Deconstruction of the Enemy

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-256
Author(s):  
Cristiano Mendes ◽  
Karina Junqueira
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Act One

Abstract Based on the theoretical frameworks of Carl Schmitt (hostis and inimicus), Giorgio Agamben (field and homo sacer), and Grégoire Chamayou (hunter-states and kill boxes), and being seen through the theoretical lens of post-structuralism in International Relations, this article aims to analyse the use of drones, especially Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs), in the ‘War on Terror’ led by the USA. In this context, we seek to demonstrate how the use of drones has affected the logic of current warfare scenarios in three different, but related aspects. First of all (Act One), the use of drones makes the construction of political otherness of the enemy impossible, and thus identity construction by counterpoint impracticable. Then (Act Two), this paper demonstrates how there is an attempt to move the enemy to the externality of the International Community, relegating their status to banishment and marginalisation. Finally (Act Three), the authors analyse the role of kill boxes and how the solution given by this phenomenon subverts the traditional notions of sovereignty, challenging the very raison d’être of politics.

scholarly journals INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND AND ITS IMPACT ON IDEOLOGICAL STRUCTURING OF POLITICAL PARTIES

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 251-255
Author(s):  
Roland Lami
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
International Monetary Fund ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
The Right ◽  
The International Monetary Fund

One of the institutions that has played a very important role in the post-communist period in Albania, is the International Monetary Fund (IMF). For pragmatic reasons or for guaranteeing their legitimacy, political parties have found it indispensable to cooperate with this institution. But, if we consider the role of the IMF from ideological perspectives, we would find that regardless of which party was in power (Socialist Party or Democratic Party) the respective government still has to follow its instructions and recommendations of a neoliberal nature.  This behavior has prevented political parties, especially those of the left wing, to get structured from the perspective of ideological profile.  For this reason, the entire discussion is mainly focused on the left-wing political perspective, as the principles of the right wing are closer to the IMF’s neoliberal philosophy, from the ideological standpoint.

scholarly journals Alternative Legacies of Authoritarianism: Pro-dictator Bias in Ideology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Party Strength

How does an authoritarian past shape voters’ left-right orientation? Recent studies investigate “anti-dictator bias” in political ideology, where citizens in a former right-wing (left-wing) dictatorship may display a leftist (rightist) bias in their ideological self-identification. In this paper, I provide evidence for a “pro-dictator bias” where citizens hold ideological positions corresponding to those of the dictator depending on their experiences during and after transition. In countries with negotiated transitions and stronger former ruling parties, these successors could continue mobilizing the popular base of the former dictatorship with inherited advantages from the past and by invoking nostalgia through consistent reference to previous authoritarian achievements. I test this hypothesis with variables measuring successor party strength and the type of regime transition by combining individual-level survey data and country-level data. The findings emphasize the role of post-transition features in shaping alternative legacies on voter attitudes in former authoritarian societies.

scholarly journals Ideological Inconsistencies on the Left and Right as a Product of Coherence of Preferences for Values. The Case of Poland

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Radkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Survey Study ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
General Hypothesis ◽  
Openness To Change ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Ideological Dimension ◽  
Self Transcendence

Abstract The terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ cannot describe two extremes of a single ideological dimension. Instead, a bi-dimensional model including socio-cultural and socio-economic facets of leftism/rightism is postulated. Several studies conducted in the USA and Western Europe show a relative coherence of left-wing and right-wing orientation regarding both dimensions, whereas very diverse patterns can be found in the countries of Eastern Europe. In Poland cultural and economic leftism-rightism seem to be clearly negatively related. The general hypothesis in this paper claims that such ideological inconsistency is a product of coherence at the level of preferences for values, i.e. covariance within individualistic (Openness to change and Self-enhancement) as well as within collectivist values (Conservation and Self-transcendence). Based on a survey study (N = 750) conducted on a representative sample of Poles, it was shown that preferences for values made up two distinct dimensions: Openness to change vs Conservation, and Self-enhancement vs Self-transcendence. They are positively related but have fundamentally different relationships with political self-identification and ideology.

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