The New Nationalism?

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 28-50
Author(s):  
J. Sterphone

This article examines the Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD) racist, nationalist, and far-right discursive strategies in the lead-up to the 2017 federal election. Rather than taking the approach that this party constitutes a “new nationalism” that is out of touch with mainstream conceptions of German nationhood, the article depicts the ways in which the recognizability of the AfD’s anti-Muslim racism was predicated on mainstream civilizationist discursive repertoires and the rise of the populist-nationalist right. To do so, I compare themes presented by legal experts and mainstream politicians in favor of banning veiling in the mid-2000s to the civilizationist claims made by the AfD between 2015 and 2017. This article thus extends case analyses of contemporary right-wing nationalist and populist movements to Germany. It also emphasizes the antecedents of the “new nationalism” classification applied to such movements.

Author(s):  
Marcin Kosman

Abstract While much research has been done regarding right-wing discourse in modern Europe, the literature of Polish far-right discourse is still insufficient. The present paper discusses the discursive strategies of Grzegorz Braun, one of the leaders of Confederation Liberty and Independence, which were implemented by the politician during the 2019 Gdańsk mayoral campaign. In order to provide a comprehensive analysis of Braun’s discourse, audiovisual materials were included in the study. The findings show that Braun employs positive presentation of the Catholic Church and himself, and negative presentation of his opponents (LGBT activists, immigrants, the European Union, the elites), whom Braun considers to be in an alliance against Poland and its core values under the name of the “Gdańsk Pact”.


2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (6) ◽  
pp. 898-917 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celine-Marie Pascale

The modus operandi of far-right political groups is crafted through strategic and systematic relationships between symbolic and material forms of violence. This article considers the discursive strategies currently deployed by rising far-right movements around the globe by examining the weaponization of language – the rapid acceleration of signifying practices that lay the essential cornerstones of material violence. Authoritarian governments weaponize language to amplify resentments, target scapegoats, and to legitimize injustice. The article provides an overview of the discursive strategies being used to expand and consolidate far-right politics. It focuses on four interlocking components of weaponized language: propaganda, disinformation, censorship, and mundane discourse. The article concludes by considering the unique intellectual space sociological studies of language offer for addressing the communicative and social chaos created by right-wing discursive tactics.


2019 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-82
Author(s):  
Sabine Lehner

Right wing and far right parties have recently succeeded in many elections worldwide. The Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ), one of the most successful right-wing populist parties of Europe, has lately also enjoyed great popularity in regional and national elections. Norbert Hofer, the FPÖ-candidate, even made it to the run-offs of the presidential election in 2016. This paper draws on a discourse-analytical approach and investigates the discursive strategies implemented by the FPÖ during two election campaigns (the 2015 local elections in Vienna and the 2016 presidential elections). Based on various discursive events of both campaigns (speeches, posters, TV-discussions etc.), this contribution examines if recent right-wing populist rhetoric corresponds to well-known patterns or if there have been some shifts.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 496-506 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silke Roth

Brexit and the election of President Trump in the United States are the result of the rise of far-right populist movements which can be observed in Europe, North America, and other regions of the world. Whereas populism itself is one response to neoliberalism, globalization, and austerity measures, the election of Trump, in particular, has caused a new wave of protest. To a far lesser extent, on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the European Union in March 2017, people in the UK and many European countries participated in a March for Europe. These demonstrations represent counter-movements to the growing presence of right-wing, anti-immigrant, racist, nationalist, sexist, homophobic, anti-semitic and anti-Muslim movements throughout Europe and the United States. This rapid response issue surveys right-wing populist and left-liberal counter-movements which represent different responses to neoliberalism, globalization, austerity, and to each other. Social movements reflect and contribute to social change and need to be understood from an intersectional perspective. Networked media play an important role for both populist movements from the right and progressive counter-movements.


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.


Author(s):  
Koen Damhuis

Trump, Wilders, Salvini, Le Pen—during the last decades, radical right-wing leaders and their parties have become important political forces in most Western democracies. Their growing appeal raises an increasingly relevant question: who are the voters that support them and why do they do so? Numerous and variegated answers have been given to this question, inside as well as outside academia. Yet, curiously, despite their quantity and diversity, these existing explanations are often based on a similar assumption: that of homogeneous electorates. Consequently, the idea that different subgroups with different profiles and preferences might coexist within the constituencies of radical right-wing parties has thus far remained underdeveloped, both theoretically and empirically. This ground-breaking book is the first one that systematically investigates the heterogeneity of radical right-wing voters. Theoretically, it introduces the concept of electoral equifinality to come to grips with this diversity. Empirically, it relies on innovative statistical analyses and no less than 125 life-history interviews with voters in France and the Netherlands. Based on this unique material, the study identifies different roads to the radical right and compares them within a cross-national perspective. In addition, through an analysis of almost 1,400 tweets posted by Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen, the book shows how the latter are able to appeal to different groups of voters. Taken together, the book thus provides a host of ground-breaking insights into the heterogeneous phenomenon of radical right support.


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.


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