scholarly journals A New Political Scarecrow? The Political Program and Activity of the ”Serbian Right“

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-26
Author(s):  
Srđan Mladenov Jovanović

The organization known as Srpska desnica (SD; the Serbian Right Wing) during 2019 become increasingly seen in the Serbian media, as well as receiving augmented visibility on posters throughout the country. With their recent electoral success in the town of Medveđa, as well as their announcement that they are turning into an official party that would enter the 2020 parliamentary elections, coupled with the troublesome past of their leader, Miša Vacić, the situation calls for investigation. In this article, we are putting Miša Vacić’s public and political engagement under a magnifying glass, positioning him within the broader nationalist political spectrum of the country, engaging his official political program. We shall furthermore define the concept of the political scarecrow, a political party or figure that serves primarily to frighten, as shall be clear from the case study that this is the role of his organization.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Régis Ebeling ◽  
Carlos Córdova Sáenz ◽  
Jeferson Campos Nobre ◽  
Karin Becker

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has struck people’s lives overnight. With an alarming contagious rate and no effective treatments or vaccines, it has evoked all sorts of reactions. In this paper, we propose a framework to analyze how political polarization affects groups’ behavior with opposed stances, using the Brazilian COVID polarized scenario as a case study. Two Twitter groups represent the pro/against social isolation stances referred to as Chloroquiners and Quarenteners. The framework encompasses: a) techniques to automatically infer from users political orientation, b) topic modeling to discover the homogeneity of concerns expressed by each group; c) network analysis and community detection to characterize their behavior as a social network group and d) analysis of linguistic characteristics to identify psychological aspects. Our main findings confirm that Cloroquiners are right-wing partisans, whereas Quarenteners are more related to the left-wing. The political polarization of Chloroquiners and Quarenteners influence the arguments of economy and life, and support/opposition to the president. As a group, the network of Chloroquiners is more closed and connected, and Quarenteners have a more diverse political engagement. In terms of psychological aspects, polarized groups come together on cognitive issues and negative emotions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. e160722
Author(s):  
Charles Klein ◽  
Milena Mateuzi Carmo ◽  
Alessandra Tavares

This article examines political subjectivities, community engagements and voting practices among residents of São Paulo’s Zona Sul peripheries in the three years preceding Brazil’s 2018 presidential election. Building on a 398-person household survey, 46 in-depth interviews, and extensive participation observation over the course of a four-year study, we argue that although most residents of our study communities across the political spectrum are disenchanted with institutional politics, many maintain political engagement through their everyday lives, including activism centered on intersectional identities and state-sponsored violence/genocide. Our discussion combines statistical analysis and auto-ethnographic inflected vignettes and is in dialogue with two common themes present in recent analyses of the Brazilian political landscape: the role of urban periphery voters in the election of Bolsonaro, and the complex connections between moralities and political subjectivities. In conclusion, we reflect on opportunities and challenges for progressive political engagement in the (post)Bolsonaro era.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 100
Author(s):  
Onvara Vadhanavisala

Radical right-wing politics and ultra-nationalism have always been important issue across Europe's political spectrum. However, the recent flourishing of right-wing and populist parties in Europe in the past couple years were provoked by the European migrants and refugee crisis. The European institutions fail to solve the crisis. We witnessed various terrorist attacks occurred in major cities in Europe such as Paris, Berlin, and Italy etc. This had led not only the European people but all over the world to grow more suspicious of the EU institutions and their capabilities to manage the incident. As a consequence, the radical right-wing nationalist and right-wing political parties in Europe have taken this opportunity to claim and run their campaigns on a strong anti-refugees and immigrants. As a result, right-wing politicians and parties tend to gain more popularity among voters and achieved electoral success in many European countries such as Marine Le Pen in France, Andrej Babiš in Czech Republic, the Freedom Party (FPÖ) in Austria, Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party in Hungary and elsewhere in Europe. These right-wing nationalists and political parties represent themselves as a defender of European Christian values, the protector of Europe, the savior of Christianity. They are working in every way to prevent the land of Europe from Muslims. This kind of rhetoric is spreading across Europe and developed as an anti-refugee/immigrant campaign which can be seen in both online and offline media especially in the case of Hungary. It has signified as a backlash against the political establishment and a wave of discontent. Furthermore, the rise of right-wing politics has created concerns over human rights, national identity, refugee and migrant issues.


Author(s):  
Matteo CM Casiraghi

This article focuses on discourses on populism, presenting a case study on the United Kingdom. Analysing all references to populism in the British Parliament from 1970 to 2018, this article provides a framework to think about rhetoric and populism, a method to investigate political attitudes, and insights about the debate on populism in the United Kingdom. Results show that from the 1970s to the 1990s politicians interpret populism in demagogical terms and most often refer to the category of the political role of ‘the people’. More recently, negative references and personal attacks increase, and politicians refer to different categories. Moreover, the analysis shows how British politicians employ epideictic and forensic rhetorical strategies more often when debating about populism, whereas deliberative strategies rarely emerge. Finally, the investigation over the 2015–2018 period shows that government membership, a distant election, and a right-wing party membership increase the likelihood of rhetorical positive interpretations of populism.


2021 ◽  
pp. 80-108
Author(s):  
Peter Anderson

This chapter traces the growth of juvenile courts in Spain and the support they attracted from across the political spectrum. Under the surface of this support lay conflict between Catholic, liberals, and socialists over the degree to which secular principles and practices should govern the courts. With the support of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, the Catholic viewpoint proved ascendant and did not come under serious threat after the democratic Second Republic arrived in 1931. The chapter studies the personnel and practices adopted by the largely Catholic-dominated courts. It also offers a case study of social conditions in Madrid and explores the vulnerability of poor families to removal, the role of support networks, and the agency of poor families who turned to the courts to take children into care as a stop-gap measure while they put their lives in order.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 100
Author(s):  
Onvara Vadhanavisala

Radical right-wing politics and ultra-nationalism have always been important issue across Europe's political spectrum. However, the recent flourishing of right-wing and populist parties in Europe in the past couple years were provoked by the European migrants and refugee crisis. The European institutions fail to solve the crisis. We witnessed various terrorist attacks occurred in major cities in Europe such as Paris, Berlin, and Italy etc. This had led not only the European people but all over the world to grow more suspicious of the EU institutions and their capabilities to manage the incident. As a consequence, the radical right-wing nationalist and right-wing political parties in Europe have taken this opportunity to claim and run their campaigns on a strong anti-refugees and immigrants. As a result, right-wing politicians and parties tend to gain more popularity among voters and achieved electoral success in many European countries such as Marine Le Pen in France, Andrej Babiš in Czech Republic, the Freedom Party (FPÖ) in Austria, Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party in Hungary and elsewhere in Europe. These right-wing nationalists and political parties represent themselves as a defender of European Christian values, the protector of Europe, the savior of Christianity. They are working in every way to prevent the land of Europe from Muslims. This kind of rhetoric is spreading across Europe and developed as an anti-refugee/immigrant campaign which can be seen in both online and offline media especially in the case of Hungary. It has signified as a backlash against the political establishment and a wave of discontent. Furthermore, the rise of right-wing politics has created concerns over human rights, national identity, refugee and migrant issues.


1962 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 430-439
Author(s):  
José M. Sánchez

Few subjects in recent history have lent themselves to such heated polemical writing and debate as that concerning the Spanish Church and its relationship to the abortive Spanish revolution of 1931–1939. Throughout this tragic era and especially during the Civil War, it was commonplace to find the Church labelled as reactionary, completely and unalterably opposed to progress, and out of touch with the political realities of the twentieth century.1 In the minds of many whose views were colored by the highly partisan reports of events in Spain during the nineteen thirties, the Church has been pictured as an integral member of the Unholy Triumvirate— Bishops, Landlords, and enerals—which has always conspired to impede Spanish progress. Recent historical scholarship has begun to dispel some of the notions about the right-wing groups,2 but there has been little research on the role of the clergy. Even more important, there has been little understanding of the Church's response to the radical revolutionary movements in Spain.


Politics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 510-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavel Maškarinec

In the 2017 Czech parliamentary election, the Czech Pirate Party (Pirates) gained 10.79% of the votes – an unprecedented success, compared to most of the pirate parties across Europe. However, as their electoral gain varies widely across the Czech Republic’s territory, this article analyses all (more than 6000) Czech municipalities in the elections of 2010, 2013, and 2017 to explain this variation. Overall, the success of the Pirates was driven especially by obtaining much more support in larger municipalities with younger populations (although not only those aged 18–24 but also older ones), lower unemployment, higher turnout, and lower support for leftist parties. Thus, from a spatial perspective, the patterns of Pirate voting largely resembled long-term spatial support for Czech rightist parties and we can conclude that the Pirates made considerable inroads to regions which had historically been strongholds of the Civic Democratic Party, as the former main party of the right, but also strongholds of minor right-wing (‘liberal centre’) parties of the 1990s and early 2000s. Success of the Pirates thus was based especially on votes from municipalities located in more developed areas, where the Pirates received many more votes than in structurally disadvantaged regions.


Politics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitry Chernobrov

Accusations of treason and disloyalty have been increasingly visible in both western and international politics in recent years, from Russia and Turkey, to Brexit and the 2016 US presidential election. This article explores ‘traitor’ accusations in modern politics, with evidence from British and American newspapers for 2011–2016. Besides British and American politics, results reveal reported ‘fifth column’ accusations in over 40 countries. I identify three dominant patterns: authoritarian states describing opposition movements as a ‘fifth column’; suspicion of western Muslim populations as potential terrorists; and the use of traitor language to denote party dissent in western politics. Employed across the political spectrum, and not only by right-wing or populist movements, accusations of treason and betrayal point at a deeper breakdown of social trust and communicate collective securitizing responses to perceived threats.


2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariel Malka ◽  
Christopher J. Soto

AbstractWe argue that the political effects of negativity bias are narrower than Hibbing et al. suggest. Negativity bias reliably predicts social, but not economic, conservatism, and its political effects often vary across levels of political engagement. Thus the role of negativity bias in broad ideological conflict depends on the strategic packaging of economic and social attitudes by political elites.


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