Inside, Outside, Upside Down: Power, Positionality, and Limits of Ethnic Identity in the Ethnographies of the Far-Right

2021 ◽  
pp. 089124162110606
Author(s):  
Bhakti Deodhar
Keyword(s):  
Political Party ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Alternative Für Deutschland ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Minority Ethnic Community ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Minority Ethnic ◽  
Gain Access

Methodological literature on ethnographies of the far-right has largely centered around the ethical and political implications of such studies. Discussions on researcher’s positionality with regard to his/her insider–outsider positioning, ethnic-racial characteristics and concomitant power relations in the field remain relatively undertheorized. What occurs, for example, when the researcher studying anti-minority, ethnic nationalist right-wing groups is from a minority ethnic community? To what extent s(he) can gain access and develop rapport with the respondents? In this article, I seek to answer these questions by providing insights from my fieldwork experiences. I reflect upon my own position as a non-White, minority ethnic, and female ethnographer who conducted extensive fieldwork among grassroot activists of “Alternative für Deutschland,” a German right-wing political party. The article demonstrates that even in face of an apparent noncongruence between an immigrant ethnographer and right-wing, pro-majority respondents, researcher’s position is not static but fluid, intersectional and deeply situational. Ethnographer’s long term sustained proximity to the respondents, exposure to the everyday contexts of their lives create zones of congruence for an apparent outsider and can at times undermine the dominant category of ethnicity as primary social signifier.

The functionality of affects: conceptualising far-right populist politics beyond negative emotions

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Leser ◽  
Florian Spissinger
Keyword(s):  
Political Party ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Alternative Für Deutschland ◽  
Negative Affects ◽  
The Us ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Emotional Dynamics

By focusing on negative affects, such as anger, fear and hate, a normative critique of affective politics tends to overlook the ambiguity and situated nature of affective politics. This paper suggests embracing the ambivalences that characterise the emotional dynamics in political arenas; therefore, it emphasises the functionality of affects. The study adopts a post-dualistic understanding of political affects based on the conceptual devices of Sara Ahmed and Kathleen Stewart to analyse the affective practices and performances of the German political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). An ethnographic lens and analytical focus on the affective politics of far-right agents beyond negativity can permit more subtle nuances and highlight potentially overlooked facets of enactment and performance that have contributed to the successes of far-right political organisations in Europe and the US. The paper ultimately argues that the use of ‘ordinary’ affects produces legitimacy, renders far-right politics appealing and contributes to the normalisation of far-right discourse.

Parties versus democracy: Addressing today’s political party threats to democratic rule

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 509-538
Author(s):  
Tom Gerald Daly ◽  
Brian Christopher Jones
Keyword(s):  
Political Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
External Control ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Bharatiya Janata Party ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Political Spectrum

Abstract The growing threat to liberal democracy worldwide is, in many ways, a political party threat. Recent years have witnessed the rise of a range of authoritarian populist, illiberal, far-right, nativist, and extremist parties. Some have entered government in countries including Hungary, Poland, Austria, and Italy. Germany’s Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) is now the main parliamentary opposition. Beyond Europe we see democratic structures threatened or incrementally dismantled through the subversion of an established democratic party by an outsider (e.g. Donald Trump in the United States or Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines) or ascendance of the extremist wing of a right-wing party (e.g. India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)). Parties and party leaders occupying an ill-defined space on the political spectrum—a form of “far-right lite”—today generally present a much greater threat to democratic governance than overtly antidemocratic fringe outfits, such as Germany’s National Democratic Party (NPD). The ambiguity of such parties, their growing size, their entry into government, the subversion of “good” democratic parties by a “bad” leadership, and the rise of the “shadow party” and intensifying external control mean that contemporary political party threats seriously frustrate the possibility of remedial action afforded by existing public law and policy mechanisms. They also require us to reflect anew on crafting novel remedies and to revisit our deep assumptions about parties as creatures of central constitutional importance.

scholarly journals Antypolonizm w prasie NPD po 1990 roku

2015 ◽  
pp. 124-149
Author(s):  
Piotr Andrzejewski
Keyword(s):  
Economic Factors ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
National Party ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Historical Revisionism ◽  
The Third ◽  
Selection Of

In his article, the author investigates the phenomenon of anti-Polish sentiment in Deutsche Stimme, which is the most prominent monthly newspaper of the far right-wing party, Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (German National Party, NPD). Anti-Polish sentiment is described as a mix of attitudes and behaviours that are hostile towards the Polish state, nation, citizens and culture. This definition includes all discriminatory statements, press releases and all other anti-Polish  activities. The anti-Polish sentiment is present in Deutsche Stimme on three levels. The first one touches on the area of historical revisionism. The second one focuses on economic factors and immigration, and the third one is centred around long-term stereotypes that are rooted in history. The article presents different ways of expressing the anti-Polish sentiment and contains a selection of illustrations from the NPD’s monthly.

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.

scholarly journals Parodic satire of NO-DO in «Polònia»: Iconoclasm and visual re-framing of the Spanish (far)right-wing discourse

2021 ◽  
pp. 417-432
Author(s):  
José-Luis Valhondo
Keyword(s):  
Political Party ◽  
Unusual Case ◽  
Social Acceptance ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Media System

As cultural content, Polònia constitutes an unusual case. We are dealing with one of the highest audience-share television programmes in Catalonia in recent years. Moreover, it is uncommon in the Spanish political-media system, where satire does not enjoy such a social acceptance by audiences. The purpose of this study consists of analysing how a parody of a Francoist regime newsreel (NO-DO) serves the purpose of ridiculing and satirising the extreme-rightist discourse of Vox political party. We employ a visual re-framing approach to the topic, examining keyframes of three Polònia pieces related to the formation of the leftist coalition government between the Socialist Party and Unidas Podemos, the dialogue roundtable about the Catalan political conflict and the feminist celebration of the International Women’s Day. The results refer to the re-articulation of the representation of power icons in the Catalan political sphere. Polònia mocks an alleged victimisation of the rightist discourse concerning the Catalan conflict, feminism and immigration. Those topics resonate in the old Francoist discourse of NO-DO. We relate those results to the building of national identities amid a political conflict, in the sense of how Polònia addressed a specific target with cultural and political cues. At the same time, the parodic satire of TV3 Polònia is considered in the context of (post)modern iconoclastic tradition.

Renaissance of the New Right in Germany? A Discussion of New Right Elements in German Right-wing Extremism Today

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 36-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Salzborn
Keyword(s):  
New Right ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Emergence Of Institutions ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Wing Extremism

Right-wing extremism in Germany has recently undergone considerable changes with a new right-wing party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) successfully entering several local state parliaments as well as the European Parliament, “Pegida” demonstrations representing a new type of public action in terms of social movements, and the emergence of institutions like the Library of Conservatism and magazine projects like Sezession. This article considers whether such developments could be seen as a renaissance of the “New Right”, representing a long-term success in its strategies. Since the 1970s, the strategy of the New Right has been based on promoting a culturally conservative metapolitics in the pursuit of “cultural hegemony”, meaning to influence public opinion in the Federal Republic of Germany and shift it to the right— which at first glance might seem to have succeeded in light of recent events. The developments seen in German far-right extremism, however, have been neither monocausal nor monolithic. Therefore, this article will take a closer look at various aspects of the idea that recent changes in Germany’s rightwing extremism might represent a successful implementation of this New Right strategy.

scholarly journals Twitter "Hashjacked": Online Polarisation Strategies of Germany's Political Far-Right

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Darius ◽  
Fabian Stephany
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Direct Consequence ◽  
Communication Strategy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
External Effects ◽  
Media Agenda ◽  
Alternative Für Deutschland ◽  
Potential Use

With a network approach, we examine the case of the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and their potential use of a "hashjacking" strategy - the use of someone else’s hashtag in order to promote one's own social media agenda. Our findings suggest that right-wing politicians (and their supporters/retweeters) actively and effectively polarise the discourse not just by using their own party hashtags, but also by "hashjacking" the political party hashtags of other established parties. The results underline the necessity to understand the success of right-wing parties, online and in elections, not entirely as a result of external effects (e.g. migration), but as a direct consequence of their digital political communication strategy.

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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