Anti-capitalism in the name of ethno-nationalism: ideological shifts on the German extreme right

ABSTRACT

Sommer examines the (re-)emergence of anti-capitalist and anti-globalization themes within the ideology and discourses of the German extreme right. He argues that it would be short-sighted to interpret this development simply as another opportunistic attempt by the extreme right to incorporate Zeitgeist issues into its political agenda in order to appeal to a broader spectrum of supporters. An analysis of the latest campaigns of the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD)—the most successful extreme-right party in recent years—as well as the activities of groups that exist within the larger German extreme-right milieu, the so-called freie Kameradschaften, reveals that the taking up of social questions as well as anti-capitalist and anti-globalization themes marks a deeper shift within the political agenda of the extreme right in Germany. However, the analysis shows that racist and antisemitic issues do not disappear with this shift, but are linked with and incorporated into anti-capitalist and anti-globalization discourses.     

Holocaust inversion,anti-Zionism and British neo-fascism: the Israel–Palestine conflict and the extreme right in post-war Britain

ABSTRACT

The British extreme right has always struggled to distance itself from the crimes of the Third Reich, not helped by the high level of Holocaust consciousness in Britain and by the importance of antisemitic conspiracy theory to British neo-fascist ideology. Bland’s article charts attempts by British neo-fascist actors to use Holocaust inversion and—by extension—anti-Zionism as a mask for their Nazi sympathies. It shall, first of all, demonstrate how the Israel–Palestine conflict was incorporated into British neo-fascist antisemitic discourse in the 1960s. It shall then use the 1980s National Front as a case study, to illustrate the manner in which the extreme right can use anti-Zionist activism as a tactic aimed at legitimizing its politics and gaining new supporters. The article therefore contributes to the historiographies of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in Britain, as well as to scholarly understandings of neo-fascism.     

The Counterrevolutionary Campus: Herbert Marcuse and the Suppression of Student Protest Movements

Abstract

With the recent surge of college protests against various forms of economic, political, social, and racial injustice, there have been persistent and pernicious reactions from other students, administrators and public figures that function to undermine the emancipatory impulses animating these demonstrations. The reactions are often justified under the banners of tolerance, chastising students to listen instead of protest. This article, focusing on Marcuse’s concepts of repressive toleration and counterrevolution, evaluates the reactionary responses to these events, as well as the critical potential of this fledgling student sensibility, a burgeoning refusal represented by protest events at American universities. We maintain that many of the calls for tolerance are actually demands for silence and belong to a wider counterrevolutionary phase of late capitalism observed by Marcuse. Bedrock liberties are dialectically inverted whereby speech and toleration are repressively deployed against demands for justice. This article concludes by arguing that it is crucial to the success of this resurgent sensibility for justice—and progress toward a radical socialist movement that coincides with the emancipatory vision of Herbert Marcuse—that the counterrevolutionary character of the responses are demystified.     

How to stay populist? The Front National and the changing French party system

Abstract

The main aim of this contribution is to assess the relevance of the notion of ‘exclusionary populism’ for the characterisation of the Front National (FN) in France. Since its emergence in the 1970s, several categories or notions have been applied to this political party. Once considered as the resurgence of a traditional extreme right, it has since been classified as a case of a new European right-wing extremism, or as one of the neo-populist parties that obtained electoral successes in the 1990s. The recent evolution of the party has also been described as a sort of ‘normalisation’. Is therefore ‘exclusionary populism’ still a category that can grasp the evolution of the party, as well as its present position in the French party system? To answer this question, this article examines political discourses and various electoral platforms of the Front National to gather some empirical evidence. The argument is twofold: The Front National, despite its ‘dédiabolisation’ strategy, is still a classic populist party characterised by exclusionary populism and a sort of ‘catch-all populism’; its evolution is, however, dependent on the recent evolution of the French party system.     

Embodying ‘the Nordic race’: imaginaries of Viking heritage in the online communications of the Nordic Resistance Movement

ABSTRACT

Kølvraa’s article focuses on the cultural imaginary of the Scandinavian extreme right by analysing the online presence of the so-called Nordic Resistance Movement. He seeks to show how the cultural imaginaries of this National Socialist organization make use of the Scandinavian Viking heritage in three distinct ways. First, to produce a distinctly Nordic form of National Socialism and thus potentially make this ideology palatable to Nordic publics. Second, to differentiate their racially oriented political project from a wider far-right or populist right concern with the defence of European Christian heritage and/or civilization against Islam. And, third, to thematize and perform a certain hyper-masculine identity, especially in the context of martial and sporting competitions arranged by the organization.     

The French secular hypocrisy: the extreme right,the Republic and the battle for hegemony

ABSTRACT

The success of the extreme right in France in the past two decades has not been limited to its electoral rise. A more long-lasting victory has taken place in the ideological field, where the discourse of the extreme right now occupies a prominent place in the mainstream liberal democratic agenda. Increasingly, its ideas are seen in the media and in the platforms of mainstream parties as ‘common sense’ or at least acceptable. The growing acceptance of this ‘common sense’ is the result of very carefully crafted strategies put in place by extreme-right thinkers since the 1980s. For over three decades now, in order to change perceptions and renew extreme right-wing ideology, New Right think tanks such as the French GRECE believed it was necessary to borrow the tactics of the left and, more specifically, the Gramscian concept of hegemony: cultural power must precede political power. With the use of contemporary examples, Mondon's article demonstrates the continuing impact these ideas have had on the Front national and French politics and society, and how this change originated in the association of populist rhetoric with the neo-racist stigmatization of the Other.     

Ability to Face Threats of Cyberterrorism: Factors Associated with Organizational Competence

ABSTRACT

Acts of cyberterrorism represent potential, significant negative effects to property, infrastructure systems, security, and an overall way of life. These disruptions garner significant attention from government and the public. Managers concerned by threats of cyberterrorism should understand the components that enhance organizational competence so that doubt and fear do not overtake organizational members when faced with such extreme events. Although organizational competence is important in everyday organizational behaviors, the presence of confidence in organizational abilities is especially critical when operating in the midst of the ambiguity and destructive disruptions associated with cyberterrorist threats. We empirically assess three factors associated with competence for organizations facing simulated cyberterror attacks. Our results support the relationship between two of these factors—organizational identification and deference to expertise—with organizational competence. These findings contribute to research concerning the antecedents critical to organizational competence and also add to the growing research on cyberterrorism.     

Legacy of the Housing Act of 1949: The Past,Present, and Future of Federal Housing and Urban Policy

Abstract

This article summarizes a special issue of Housing Policy Debate, which commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Housing Act of 1949. The act is best remembered for its declaration that every American deserves a “decent home and a suitable living environment.” The articles in this collection offer varying perspectives on how this act helped shape the postwar metropolis. The authors—urban planners, historians, and public officials—each consider a different part of the legacy.

The first three articles deal primarily with the act's creation and social and political ramifications, while the next three look at how Titles I, II, and III have influenced the past 50 years of housing and urban policy. The record of the Housing Act of 1949 is mixed, and so are its lessons. There remains an ongoing struggle to find the right mix of housing support to reach the goals first expressed in this landmark legislation.     

Some realities about sprawl and urban decline

Abstract

Many urban analysts believe suburban sprawl has become an important issue because it helps generate two types of problems: growth‐related difficulties like rising traffic congestion, and high concentrations of poor minority households in core‐area neighborhoods. However, a careful regression analysis of measures of both sprawl and urban decline shows no statistically significant relation between these two conditions.

The basic nature of the American urban development process would cause core‐area poverty concentrations even if sprawl were replaced by more compact growth forms. But sprawl does aggravate growth‐related problems. Those problems could be attacked through either alternative overall growth strategies—such as high‐density, tightly bounded growth—or specific anti‐sprawl tactics, such as regional tax‐base sharing and regional coordination of land uses. But no feasible policies are likely either to alleviate traffic congestion much or cause most American regions to abandon sprawl.     

Islamophobia and the Europeanness of the other Europe

ABSTRACT

In this article, Sayyid’s focus is on the relationship between the emergence of Islamophobia and the crisis of Europeanness. What is it about Europeanness right now that makes one of its most vocal expressions an insistence on the Muslim question? To answer, or perhaps address, the question of why the Muslim question and why now, Sayyid places the formation of European identity in a postcolonial context. That is, the horizon opened by the decentring of the West not only geopolitically or economically but also culturally and philosophically is explored. East Central Europe in its various permutations—historical and cultural—provides an excellent platform to study the impact of the postcolonial on Europeanness. The East Central European experience of the postcolonial is inflected through a history of imperial articulations and peripheralizations that demonstrate not only the contingency of the idea of Europeanness but also its imbrication with the Orient.     

Introduction: the history of anthropology

Abstract

On 24 January 1999 a new party was formed by the former Front national (FN) number two, Bruno Mégret. The Front national–Mouvement national was subsequently renamed twice: it became the Mouvement national (MN) following the loss of a court case, and later the Mouvement national républicain (MNR). Mégret claims that the MNR is a party not of the extreme right but of the moderate right, labelled by him the ‘national right’. This is a definition with which many political analysts in France seem to have concurred. In this article Bastow analyses the extent to which the characterization is a true one. First, he outlines the context in which Mégret formed the MNR, focusing on his political background and the strategy which he previously sought to impose on the FN. An extended treatment of the policy proposals put forward by the MNR is then followed by an analysis of the extent to which these amount to a break from an ideology which can be identified as extreme right. He concludes by assessing the prospects for the MNR's success.     

Barack Obama and the American island of the colour blind

ABSTRACT

Kuryla maps a metaphorical American island of the colour blind—in law, public rhetoric and culture—in the process locating the first black president of the United States on it, evaluating the claim that his presidency represents a colour-blind or post-racial politics. Barack Obama rejects colour blindness as a fact in the present yet gestures to its ‘better history’ (his modern transposing of Lincoln's ‘better angels’) while refusing any theoretical resolution of the idea. Obama, in public pronouncements and by sheer fact of his being and his biography, reveals the epistemic irony of the colour-blind idea, its persistence amid the conditions of its impossibility.     

Transnationalism and the French Nouvelle Droite

ABSTRACT

Born in 1968, the French Nouvelle Droite (ND) is a ‘cultural school of thought’. It created a sophisticated European-wide political culture of the revolutionary right in an anti-fascist age; it helped to nurture the discourse of ‘political correctness’ among extreme right-wing political parties, and turned former French ultra-nationalists into pan-Europeanists seeking to smash the egalitarian heritage of 1789. Bar-On argues that the ND world-view has been shaped by transnational influences and that the ND has, in turn, shaped a decidedly more right-wing political culture in Europe in a transnational spirit. The transnational impact of ND ideas is a product of three key factors: first, the intellectual output and prestige of ND leader Alain de Benoist; second, the ‘right-wing Gramscianism’ of the ND's pan-European project that mimicked earlier attempts to unite interwar fascists and post-war neo-fascists into the revolutionary right; and, finally, the political space opened up by the decline of the European left after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Bar-On concludes by considering the influence of the ND on contemporary European politics, as well as the implications for the struggles against racism and the extreme right.     

Books

Some extreme right groups in Britain have become concerned about the possibility of nuclear war and are encouraging their members to organize for survival after an attempted ‘Marxist takeover’. With the extreme right's poor performance at the polls this move can be seen as a way of mobilizing fresh support.     

Local housing plans: Learning from Great Britain

Abstract

As the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development refines the new Consolidated Plans, which replace the Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategies, it should examine Britain's experience with local housing plans. Case studies of four best‐practice cities—Glasgow, Dundee, Birmingham, and York—highlight the value of these plans in assessing the success of cities in their new “enabler” role.

Five key lessons for American cities emerge from this article. First, these plans can serve multiple roles beyond bids to central government. Second, local housing plans should address market‐rate as well as below‐market‐rate housing issues. Third, American housing plans should use a wider range of data sources than census information alone and should incorporate housing market analyses dealing with specific areas and population groups. Fourth, the stress on implementation and strategy in British plans should be emulated. Finally, aspects of Britain's competitive bidding system should be considered for implementation.     

Bible and Gun: Militarism in Jerusalem's Holy Places

Abstract

Violence is a regular occurrence at many of Jerusalem's holy sites. Ongoing civilian clashes play a role, but official modes of control through the Israeli army (IDF) and Border Police, as well as more informal private security operations are often involved. Such militarisation may keep violent upheavals in check, but it is carried out within the framework of a long and harsh occupation. The two sites considered here—the Western Wall in the Old City and Rachel's Tomb on the border of Jerusalem and Bethlehem—each have a history of war and are fixtures of the occupation. This study explores the mechanisms that embed religious and militaristic meanings at each site. In so doing, certain questions are addressed. Firstly, how are the sites being constructed and used as popular and dramatic settings for certain constituents to promote religious militarism/militarised religion in Jerusalem? In which ways do these characteristics act to intertwine with the religious and militaristic aspects of the sites, making them more extreme but also, in some circles, more attractive? And finally, how do these sites contribute to the character of Jerusalem, both in their own construction and image but also in the roles they play within the wider urban topography?     

Opposing Islamification or promoting Islamophobia? Understanding the English Defence League

ABSTRACT

The emergence and growth of the English Defence League (EDL) in the past two years as a socio-political mass movement are unprecedented in the British setting. Initially dismissed and duly condemned as a racist and Islamophobic far-right organization, little is known about the EDL. Allen's article begins by tracing the development of British far-right political groups that were trail-blazers in campaigning against the alleged threat posed by Muslims and Islam since 2001. The rise—and subsequent fall—of the British National Party is considered as a vehicle for understanding the climate in which hostility to Muslims has become increasingly apparent. It is in this context that the messages and discourse of the EDL are explored, as well as in regard to the organization's roots in the English football hooligan fraternity and specific events in Luton in the spring of 2009. Allen looks at the EDL's innovative use of social networking—in particular its use of Facebook—to support its street marches and protests, as well as its recognition of the economic impact it has had, given the costs associated with policing its marches and protests. Having established how the EDL is supported both actively and passively, not least through a somewhat unique coalition that brings together sometimes disparate groups on the basis of ‘the enemy of my own enemy is my friend’—including groups that have historically been discriminated against by the far right—Allen considers the the arguments for recognizing the EDL as a multicultural movement. He concludes that the messages of the EDL are indeed Islamophobic—understanding Islamophobia as an ideological phenomenon—in that they create a form of order that clearly demarcates Islam as the Other.     

The Paradoxes of the Revolutions of 1989 in Central Europe

Abstract

The self-limiting revolutions of 1989 in Central Europe offer an alternative paradigm of revolutionary change that is reminiscent more of the American struggle for independence in 1776 than the Jacobin tendencies that grew out of the French Revolution of 1789. In order to understand the contradictory impulses of the revolutions of 1989—the desire for a radical renewal and the concern for preservation—this article takes as its point of departure the political thought of Hannah Arendt and Edmund Burke.     

Au Revoir to “Sacred Cows”? Assessing the Impact of the Nouvelle Droite in Britain

This article assesses the impact of the Nouvelle Droite on the extreme right in contemporary Britain. Occupying a central focus is the role of Scorpion magazine, edited by Michael Walker. The author examines the promotion of the Nouvelle Droite by Scorpion, and in particular Walker's attempts to encourage the British far right to bury two of its “sacred cows”: conspiracy theory and biological racism. He then identifies how Nouvelle Droite thought influenced the ideology and discourse of the 1980s National Front, before moving on to discuss its impact on Nick Griffin's recent attempts to modernize the ideology of the British National Party.     

The Place of Human Rights in American Efforts to Expand and Universalize Healthcare

This article explores the very limited cases historically in the twentieth century when human rights was used in American policy debate as a defending principle for the provision of government-guaranteed universal healthcare. It discusses these cases and examines various reasons as to why this is so, noting the major emphasis in American political culture on negative rather than positive liberty. It examines the shift in political culture from the Roosevelt, Truman, and Johnson eras that embraced social and economic rights and defined them as such to the post-Reagan era when conservative ideologies were ascendant. These ideologies reject the legitimacy of social and economic rights and remain dominant in the United States. It comparatively situates the American refusal to consider universal healthcare a human right with European affirmations of such a right and to those found in various treaties of international law. Finally, it analyzes how Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—while not adopting the rhetoric of human rights does, functionally, enable as a matter of public policy an entitlement to healthcare.