Extreme and Far Right

To contribute to studies of contemporary anti-fascism, the goal of this chapter is to provide an overview of the governmental, corporate and activist institutions and tactics that aim to resist the far-right mobilization and recruitment processes. Focusing on the United States, this chapter highlights efforts by actors within the political sphere (e.g. the American State’s repressive and judicial apparatuses), the economic sphere (e.g. the corporate news, entertainment and high-tech industries) and civic sphere (e.g. Left anti-fascist activism) to resist the far right. While efforts by State and corporate actors to take on and take down white supremacist individuals and hate groups are positive and needed, it is important to consider the political possibilities and limits of these challenges to the far right.Racial capitalism and a largely white ruling class persists in the United States, and so the institutional sources and practices of far-right resistance must be critically examined with regard to that social context (Burden-Stelly 2020; Issar 2020; Rahman 2020; Roediger 2017, 2019; Taylor 2016; Virdee 2019). To this end, the first section contextualizes American racial capitalism, the role of the State and political parties in propping up this system and the enduring power of a mostly white and male American ruling class. Following this, the second and third sections identify some U.S. State and corporate sources of opposition to the white supremacist far right, and assess the politics of these within a country whose ‘mainstream’ political and economic institutions have long been enmeshed with the system of racial capitalism and white supremacy. For a potentially emancipatory source of resistance to the far right and to the system of racial capitalism that emboldens it, the third section looks to broad-based left anti-fascist activism.

Following the signing of the Prespa Agreement in June 2018, the Macedonian name issue became the most prominent topic on the Greek political agenda, catalysing an exceptional political confrontation and contributing to the realignment of political parties and eventually to government change. Analysing the political discourse and public debate on the issue from January 2018 until the July 2019 national elections, as well as opinion polls and electoral results, the paper explores the conditions leading to the escalation of political polarisation on the left/right axis, at the expense of smaller centrist parties. It is argued that political antagonism was built on the previous political cleavage (although the populist/anti-populism axis was now reversed). However, by mobilising the public’s emotions around an alleged ‘national threat’, the polarisation around the Macedonian name issue proved to be far more successful for the Greek right than for the left.

Right-wing hate groups do not cause prejudice in the United States--they exploit it. What we clearly see as objectionable bigotry surfacing in Extreme Right movements, is actually the magnified form of oppressions that swim silently in the familiar yet obscured eddies of "mainstream" society.  Racism, sexism, heterosexism, and antisemitism are the major forms of supremacy that create oppression and defend and expand inequitable power and privilege; but there are others based on class, age, ability, language, ethnicity, immigrant status, size, religion, and more.  These oppressions exist independent of the Extreme Right in U.S. society.

The rise of far-right parties in many parts of the world threatens the work of human rights and social justice NGOs. That far-right messaging and movements are polarizing political debates is clear; there is less clarity about the affective appeals and cognitive frames deployed to engineer this polarization. This report was commissioned to examine the ways in which varying narratives and tropes of masculinity and femininity have both shaped and been used by the far-right in its mobilization of support and polarization of debate. It follows the academic literature in identifying ethnonationalism as the unifying ideology of a heterogeneous political tendency that can be collectively referred to as the “far- right”. The use of the descriptor “far-right” also serves to designate those parties and formations which have engineered the entry of extremism into the mainstream, by rejecting both the traditional center-right establishment in politics and the violent extremism of openly anti-democratic groups and individuals. The nativism and authoritarianism of the far-right should be regarded as a “pathological normalcy” and a “radicalisation of mainstream values.” The analyses and recommendations presented in this report are based on a review of the available a​n​g​l​o​p​h​o​n​e literature on the far-right, as referred to above. This was supplemented with a review of recent documentation of Oxfam’s work on gender justice and its programming with men and boys in particular, and key informant interviews with Oxfam staff involved with gender programming to identify their concerns about the rise of the far-right, and what this might mean for Oxfam’s work on issues of masculinities.

This study analyzes controversies and public attitudes concerning the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)
and Stepan Bandera in Ukraine. The research question is: Which factors affect attitudes toward the OUN-B, the UPA and Bandera in contemporary Ukraine? This article employs comparative and regression analyses of surveys commissioned by the author and conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in 2009 and 2013 to determine the effects of regional and other factors on attitudes toward these organizations and the OUN-B leader. The study shows that regional factors and perceptions of these organizations' involvement in mass murder were the strongest predictors of the views concerning the OUN-B, the UPA and Bandera. Their public support is strongest in Galicia and weakest in the East and the South, in particular, in Donbas and Crimea, two major conflict areas since the “Euromaidan.”

From the very beginning, the armed conflict that broke out in the Donbass in the spring of 2014 drew in right-wing radicals, on the Ukrainian as well as on the Russian side. Organised ultra-nationalist groups and individual activists established their own units of volunteers or joined existing ones.

The ideology, political traditions and general track record of these right-wing extremists meant that it was both natural and inevitable that they would take an active part in the conflict. Yet the role of right-wing radicals on both sides has on the whole been exaggerated in the media and in public discussion. This article demonstrates that Russia’s use of right-wing radicals on the side of the “separatists” in Donetsk and Lugansk provinces had greater military and political repercussions than the involvement of Ukrainian far-right groups in the “anti-terrorist operation”. The general course of the conflict, meanwhile, caused the importance of far right-groups on both sides to decline.

The idea that there has been some kind of “esoteric” National Socialism has spread far and wide, particularly since the 1960s, becoming a significant topos in contemporary religious and political discourse. Not only the mainstream and academic press, but far-right and neo-Nazi circles maintain that there has been an “esoteric SS” still operating under the sign of the so-called “Black Sun,” combatting the “forces of evil.” The symbol of the Black Sun has become particularly popular since the 1990s, and other central topoi of “esoteric neo-Nazism” have become recognizable in popular culture today. This article will re-construct the genealogy of esoteric neo-Nazism and investigate the question of the alleged “esoteric” qualities of National Socialism. It will be shown that the “esoteric” content of National Socialism is to be regarded as a later, postwar invention without a historical foundation in the Third Reich.

The massacre of almost 50 Maidan protesters on February 20, 2014 was a turning point in Ukrainian politics and a tipping point in the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. This mass killing of the protesters and the mass shooting of the police that preceded it led to the overthrow of the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych and gave a start to a civil war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. A conclusion promoted by the post-Yanukovych governments and the media in Ukraine that the massacre was perpetrated by government snipers and special police units on a Yanukovych order has been nearly universally accepted by the Western governments, the media, and many scholars. The Ukrainian government investigation identified members of the special company of Berkut as responsible for killings of the absolute majority of the protesters, but did not release any evidence in support, with the exception of videos of the massacre.
              The question is which side organized the “snipers’ massacre.” This paper is the first academic study of this crucial case of the mass killing. It uses a theory of rational choice and a Weberian theory of instrumental rationality to examine actions of major actors both from the Yanukovych government, specifically various police and security forces, and the Maidan opposition, specifically its far right and oligarchic elements, during the massacre.
          The paper analyzes a large amount of evidence from different publicly available sources concerning this massacre and killings of specifics protesters. Qualitative content analysis includes the following data: about 1,500 videos and recordings of live internet and TV broadcasts from mass media and social media in different countries(some 150 gigabytes), news reports and social media posts by more than 100 journalists covering the massacre from Kyiv, some 5,000 photos, and nearly 30 gigabytes of publicly available radio intercepts of snipers and commanders from the special Alfa unit of the Security Service of Ukraine and Internal Troops, and Maidan massacre trial recordings. This study also employs field research on site of the massacre, eyewitness reports by both Maidan protesters and government special units commanders, statements by both former and current government officials, estimates of approximate ballistic trajectories, bullets and weapons used, and types of wounds among both protesters and the police. This study establishes a precise timeline for various events of the massacre, the locations of both the shooters and the government snipers, and the specific timeline and locations of nearly 50 protesters’ deaths. It also briefly analyzes other major cases of violence during and after the “Euromaidan.” This study includes two video appendixes.
            This academic investigation concludes that the massacre was a false flag operation, which was rationally planned and carried out with a goal of the overthrow of the government and seizure of power. It found various evidence of the involvement of an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland. Concealed shooters and spotters were located in at least 20 Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. The various evidence that the protesters were killed from these locations include some 70 testimonies, primarily by Maidan protesters, several videos of “snipers” targeting protesters from these buildings, comparisons of positions of the specific protesters at the time of their killing and their entry wounds, and bullet impact signs. The study uncovered various videos and photos of armed Maidan “snipers” and spotters in many of these buildings. The paper presents implications of these findings for understanding the nature of the change of the government in Ukraine, the civil war in Donbas, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine.

United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), on January 20, 2022, adopted a resolution regarding the Holocaust denial and rejected and condemned "without any reservation any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part." It reaffirms the exercise of the right to freedom of expression. The resolution reaffirms that the Holocaust resulted in the murder of nearly 6 million Jews, 1.5 million of whom were children, comprising one-third of the Jewish people, and draws attention to the international legal basis of the Nuremberg Tribunal judgments regarding the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust as follows: "Reiterating the principles of international law recognized by the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal, and taking note with appreciation of their codification by the International Law Commission in 1950." In this regard, the term "genocide," in the international law context, is a legal term that found its place in the legal terminology through the Genocide Convention. Thus, the Genocide Convention, which is the only and fundamental legally binding treaty in the context of international law on the establishment of the existence and punishment of genocide is, in any event, can not be applied retrospectively. It is mentioned in the reports that the resolution was adopted at the 80th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, when Nazi leaders met at a villa on the shores of Berlin's Wannsee lake to discuss the systematic murder of up to 11 million Jews in Europe. According to a press release of the German Permanent Mission to the U.N., with this resolution, "for the first time in a U.N. resolution, a definition of what constitutes Holocaust denial could be included." In our various AVİM analyzes, we have drawn attention to developments such as the rise of the extreme right in German society and the rise of Islamophobia, which can also be described as anti-Muslim racism. In this context, it should be noted that there are justifiable reasons for German Generation Z to make anology between past developments and the urgent problems facing German society today, such as racism and discrimination, as stated above. In this context, we gave detailed information in our analysis about the neo-Nazi Nationalist Socialist Underground (NSU) terrorist organization that murdered ten people between 2000 and 2007, eight of whom were members of the Turkish community living in Germany. It is an apparent development that apart from the rise in Holocaust denial, racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia are on the rise in Germany and most Western European countries.

Vox, the Spanish radical right-wing
party, has in the social network Twitter one
of the fundamental pillars of its political
communication strategy. In this paper, we
review the idea of Europe projected by this
political formation in its messages on the
campaign for the 2019 European elections,
when it obtained for the first time representation
in the European Parliament. Through
the critical discourse analysis applied
on a sample of representative tweets, it is
discovered that the subtle meanings in these
messages replicate the virulence of Vox’s
more obvious national approaches, although
under a form of greater political correctness
that cannot avoid ideological perseverance.

La nascita (e l’affermazione elettorale)
in tutta Europa di partiti radicali e
populisti – di estrema destra e di estrema
sinistra – è da mettere in connessione
con la crisi e le trasformazioni che
hanno di recente investito la democrazia
rappresentativa classica, sino a
determinare nuove linee di divisione e di
aggregazione politico-ideologica. Siamo
in presenza di realtà ed esperienze che
ancora non definiscono una “famiglia” o
“tradizione” politica unitaria e dai tratti
(culturali e sociali) ben definiti. Ma il
cambiamento che si sta producendo
nei sistemi di partito delle democrazie
contemporanee, e negli equilibri che li
hanno governati, sembra in ogni caso
profondo e probabilmente irreversibile,
anche in considerazione del ritardo e della
debolezza con cui i partiti mainstream (in
particolare quelli di estrazione socialista-riformista
e cristiano-popolare) hanno sin
qui reagito alla sfida posta loro da quelli
definibili in senso lato populisti.

Môj príspevok v zborníku (od str. 12) z konferencie na tému:
Vychovávajú dezinformačné a konšpiračné médiá Kotlebových voličov?

Od zvolenia 14 poslancov za stranu Kotleba – Ľudová strana Naše Slovensko do NR SR v marci 2016 sa v odbornej verejnosti i medzi laikmi viedli diskusie o príčinách a dôvodoch vzostupu popularity tejto kontroverznej strany a jej hlavného predstaviteľa. Niektorí uvádzali
ako hlavný dôvod teóriu tzv. frustrovaného voliča, iní krízu tradičných politických strán či úspešnú prácu v teréne a mobilizáciu stúpencov tejto strany.

Viacerí analytici zaznamenali nadpriemerne vysokú aktivitu a viditeľnosť tejto strany v sociálnych médiách, kde je ich mediálny výtlak rádovo vyšší než miera skutočných sympatií voličov. Pomerne málo pozornosti však bolo venované fenoménu prepojení a vzájomných sympatií
a kontaktov medzi tzv. dezinformačnými médiami (často nesprávne nazývanými alternatívne médiá) a extrémistickými politickými subjektmi.

Recently a number of internationally recognized scholars and public intellectuals signed a letter in full support of Euromaidan protests, backing ‘Ukrainian society’ against ‘Ukrainian government’. Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck, Craig Calhoun, Claus Offe, Saskia Sassen, Charles Taylor, Michel Wieviorka, Slavoj Žižek and many others celebrated the ‘legal’ and ‘peaceful’ protests embodying, as they claimed, ‘the best European values’, demanded a ‘Marshall-like plan’ for Ukraine, and expressed the hope that, if welcomed to EU, Ukrainians would help to build ‘a new Europe and a fairer world’.

Unfortunately, the letter shows an unacceptable level of understanding, simplification and misrepresentation of very contradictory Ukrainian protests containing very dangerous trends which will be only legitimized more if unrecognized by such esteemed academics.

The recent electoral tide of the Far Right in Europe and the US has revived the old debate on working-class susceptibility to nationalism and exclusivism. Political analysts and mass media invoked an empirical, but theoretically uninformed concept of class, open to misuses in the framework of hegemonic discursive practices that nurture stereotypes and simplistic interpretations of class manifestations. The present paper lays out a cultural materialist research agenda for the study of the nexus between class and far right vote from a multidisciplinary and multi-scale perspective (local, national and transnational level of analysis). The aim is to provide a synthetic view that will enable a critical reformulation of the argument of the inherent working-class backwardness with the aspiration of contributing to a better understanding of its conditionality.

Over 5.5 million Syrian refugees were forcibly displaced worldwide according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR, 2017), fleeing an inhumane war in their country. Many of them are now facing a different kind of war: they are being accused of being terrorists, parasites and rapists, through a powerful and almost unstoppable hate speech propaganda on social media. Throughout this study I posit that host society youth are key players in the integration and the inclusion of these refugees. However, programs in educational settings are ill-designed to equip youth and empower them to face racism and to withstand the online flux of disinformation, let alone to play a leadership role in counterbalancing social media propaganda and manipulation.
The objective of my study was twofold: First I wanted to understand how this youth viewed their role in the integration and the inclusion of refugees in their societies, in a context where the image of refugees was deeply influenced by social media, especially after terror attacks. Second, I wanted to discover the knowledge and the skills they developed through the process of learning about themselves, more specifically through identifying the construct systems they used when facing digital propaganda targeting sensitive and controversial issues such as the Syrian refugee crisis. To meet this objective, I conducted 66 in-depth interviews with 22 youth between 18 and 24 years old from Canada. The instruments I used stemmed from Personal Construct Psychology because this theory considers experiences to be at the core of how construals about concepts are formed. During the first meetings, the participants were convinced that despite the fact that they were able to withstand the digital propaganda against the refugees, they were helpless when it came to helping others recognize the signs of manipulation. Through the in-depth discussions, however, the participants had an “aha” moment. They suddenly realized that not only they could control how social media influenced them, but also that they could and should shape the online image that was shared online of the refugee presence in Canada. Their bystander stance was by itself an act against the resettlement of refugees, and this act had to stop.  They started questioning their own answers, reflecting on their own behaviours online, trying to make sense of their decisions and of what made them think that they were different than other Canadians.  Their empathy towards refugees increased and another developed towards the groups who rejected refugees. They identified factors that could lead to islamophobia, racism and fear and developed strategies to counterbalance them and to help host societies make informed choices.  The results of this study provide a concrete model, tools and strategies to be adopted by educators, civic educators, social workers, curriculum developers, policy makers and parents to help youth learn about themselves, as a first step to cease being manipulated by the media, and to become ready to confront hate speech, to act as influential agents of change, and to voice their concerns and ideas in the matters that affect their lives.

The following article intends to investigate the growth of far-right movements in Europe and the radicalization of political thought, trying to develop synthetic forms the historical process occurred in France. We can observe that the constitution of the ideology of the extreme right goes through several transformations over the past two centuries, logging advances in popularity in some moments, but also presenting several times a setback in projects prepared by radical movements that led to the failure itself and destruction. The aim of the paper is to make a historiographical survey of the process of formation and consolidation of the extreme right in France, whereas today the country has one of the biggest parties of the extreme right Front National, led by Marine Le Pen.

[English follows]
Ce chapitre pose la question du degré de rupture ou de continuité entre les mouvements de l'extrême droite contemporaine et le fascisme historique. Pour ce faire, nous commençons par retracer la matrice idéologique d'un groupe d'extrême droite québécois -- la Fédération des Québécois de souche -- à partir de l'analyse des principales catégories d'acteurs prises pour cibles dans les articles du magazine Le Harfang, publié par l'organisation depuis 2012. Nous analysons ensuite la manière dont ces catégories s'articulent ensemble pour former un cadre qui structure une certaine vision du monde  et motive l'action politique (ce que nous appelons la « matrice idéologique »). Cet exercice nous permet, dans une troisième partie, d'établir des liens clairs entre la matrice idéologique de l'extrême droite contemporaine et celle de groupes ultra-nationalistes et ultra-conservateurs, proches du fascisme, actifs au Québec dans les années 1930. En somme, nous constatons qu'en tant que mouvement et système de pensée, l’extrême droite contemporaine  présente davantage de points communs avec l’extrême droite historique que ce qu'on pourrait parfois être amené à penser.
Lien vers l'ouvrage complet: http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/helly_denise/Retablir_l_ordre_peur_mefiance_haine/Retablir_l_ordre.html

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This chapter raises the question of the degree of rupture or continuity between movements of the contemporary far right and historical fascism. To do this, we begin by retracing the ideological matrix of an extreme right group - the Fédération des Québécois de souche - through the analysis of the main categories of actors targeted in the pages of their magazine. We then analyze how these categories articulate together to constitue a framework that sustain a certain ontology that motivates political action (what we call the "ideological matrix" ). This exercise allows us, in a third part, to establish clear links between the ideological matrix of the contemporary far right and that of ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative groups, close to fascism, active in Quebec in the 1930s. In short, we find that as a movement and system of thought, the contemporary far right may have more in common with historic fascism than we might sometimes be led to believe.
Follow the link for the full version of the book: http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/helly_denise/Retablir_l_ordre_peur_mefiance_haine/Retablir_l_ordre.html

In the week I took writing this review, Beirut, Paris and Bamako were attacked by terrorists claiming to act in the name of Islam. In the days following the attacks, a mosque was burnt down in Canada and multiple European countries recorded a spike in hate crime against Muslims, as far-right organizations continued to mobilize crowds across the continent. Radicalization has become a central issue...

Different political parties, from the left or the right, hold a Eurosceptic position. But extreme right parties (ERPs) have so far benefited the most from Eurosceptic attitudes among the electorate. They have multiplied and surprisingly grown in popularity in many countries. They have recently run the second round in presidential elections in countries like Austria and France. And they can be key actors in government formation in some political systems, turning into junior partners in a number of governing coalitions. Studies show that issues directly or indirectly related to the EU are central to explain voting for extreme right parties. This goes from critics to the functioning, institutions and the elites of the EU, to the way this supranational institution deals with immigration, or threatens national sovereignty. Furthermore, scholars argue that a new cultural cleavage has gained prominence on the electoral competition. One of the main components of this cleavage concerns a general idea of cultural openness/defense of cosmopolitanism, opposed to closeness/strong nationalism. As nationalism is the main feature of the extreme right's ideology, issues related to the EU are inevitably present in their political discourse, and they are often culturally framed, instead of driven by economic concerns. However, a clear common position towards the EU hasn't been identified within this party family yet. Some extreme right parties (ERPs) oppose specific elements of the EU, while others are completely against the principle of the integration process itself. Exploring comparative data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (1999-2014), this paper will focus on two objectives. First, it will develop a descriptive analysis of extreme right parties' positions regarding the EU. What is the position of this party family regarding Europe? Is this a distinguishable feature of ERPs? Secondly, I will address the question of whether the salience of EU issues has increased in electoral competition. If so, could this dynamic be explained by the electoral performance of extreme right parties, which would be pushing mainstream parties towards more radical positions on EU issues?