The electoral victory of the NPD in Saxony and the prospects for future extreme-right success in German elections

ABSTRACT

Largely because of Germany's traumatic experience of National Socialism, German extreme right-wing parties have remained a marginal post-war political phenomenon. The spectacular electoral victory of the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) in the Saxon parliamentary elections of September 2004 (9.2 per cent of the vote) nurtured the fear that a far-right party could establish itself at the national level. Backes explains the election victory by relating it to a set of Saxon and Eastern German circumstances. He demonstrates that unfavourable conditions, which have so far prevented the establishment of extreme right-wing parties at the national level, still prevail. Against this background, he shows that the NPD's capacity for taking advantage of advantageous conditions (like economic problems and xenophobia, rampant in some places) reaches its limits very quickly.     

Russian revisionism: Holocaust denial and the new nationalist historiography

Holocaust denial has appeared in Russia only recently and has attracted almost no attention in the academic sphere, and relatively little from monitoring organizations. The research for this article - examining the place of Holocaust denial in contemporary Russia - was conducted over three months in Russia and on the Internet. The results indicate that the phenomenon remains of marginal significance and that the majority of material is of western origin. While there are several factors that make the development of Holocaust denial probable - the comparatively high level of antisemitism in Russia, post-Soviet suspicion of historiography and lack of education about the Holocaust - the Soviet war experience and associated anti-Nazi feeling arguably act as restraints on those who would propagate it. Rock concludes that Holocaust-denial material is of less importance than other antisemitic revisions of Russian history that have entered the mainstream of contemporary Russian society.     

Religious fundamentalism and the extreme right-wing camp in Israel

Over the last ten years, a sizeable body of social science research has been devoted to two troubling phenomena—right-wing extremism and religious fundamentalism—both of which have seen a recrudescence in the last two decades. While the first is largely a secular phenomenon, the latter is, by definition, religious in orientation. Although most literature has treated these phenomena separately, in Israel the overlap between the two is so extensive that it could very well serve as the basis for a generating hypothesis. Utilizing features of both European right-wing extremism and characteristics of fundamentalism, Bermanis, Canetti-Nisim and Pedahzur attempt to demonstrate how the extreme right, with its secular underpinnings, has withdrawn from the larger picture, and how a new, complex and more extremist approach, based on fundamentalist ideals, has taken its place.     

Gender and right-wing populism in the Low Countries: ideological variations across parties and time

ABSTRACT

Although scholarship on the general ideological orientation of right-wing populist parties is well established, few scholars have studied their ideas about gender. De Lange and Mügge therefore ask how differences in ideology shape right-wing populist parties' ideas on gender. Drawing on the qualitative content analysis of party manifestos, they compare the gender ideologies and concrete policy proposals of national and neoliberal populist parties in the Netherlands and Flanders from the 1980s to the present. They find that some parties adhere to a modern or modern-traditional view, while others espouse neo-traditional views. Moreover, some right-wing populist parties have adopted gendered readings of issues surrounding immigration and ‘Islam’, while others have not. The variation in stances on ‘classical’ gender issues can be explained by the genealogy and ideological orientation of the parties, whereas gendered views on immigration and Islam are influenced by contextual factors, such as 9/11.     

Fighting with phantoms: a contribution to the debate on antisemitism in Europe

ABSTRACT

The point of departure of this paper is the polarization of ways of thinking about antisemitism in Europe, between those who see its recent resurgence and those that affirm its empirical marginalization and normative delegitimation. The historical question raised by this polarization of discourses is this: what has happened to the antisemitism that once haunted Europe? Both the current camps—‘alarmists’ and ‘deniers’, as they are sometimes known, or, perhaps more accurately, new antisemitism theorists and their critics—have the strength to challenge celebratory views of European civilization. One camp sees the return to Europe of an old antisemitism in a new and mediated guise. The other sees the return to Europe of a rhetoric of antisemitism that is not only anachronistic but also delusory and deceptive. Overshadowing this debate is the memory of the Holocaust and the continuing presence of the Israel–Palestine conflict. The aim of this paper is to get inside these discourses and deconstruct the dualism that generates homogenizing and stigmatizing typifications on either side. The spirit of Hannah Arendt hovers over this work and the question of the meaning of her legacy runs through the text.     

From apathy to obsession: the reactions of A. K. Chesterton and the British far right to imperial decline

ABSTRACT

Mulhall sets out to explain how, contrary to what one might expect, imperial decline was rarely a pressing issue for the British far right, usually falling below both the perceived threats of Communism and immigration on their list of priorities. By first explaining these unexpected findings and then placing them in an international comparative context, new evidence emerges that supports those imperial historians who subscribe to the ‘minimal impact’ orthodoxy regarding the effect of empire on the metropole. In addition, however, those aspects of the radical right that did concern themselves with imperial decline, namely A. K. Chesterton and the League of Empire Loyalists, are explored in depth, revealing a peculiarly British form of conspiratorial antisemitism that blamed imperial decline on secret Jewish power. This strand of conspiracy thinking, best articulated by Chesterton, is traced back to its origin so as to illuminate the continuity of ideas and ideologies between the interwar and post-war periods within the British far right. The result is an article that contributes to several existing historiographical debates and provides an exploration of a less well-known aspect of the work of A. K. Chesterton and conspiratorial antisemitism more generally.     

The Swedish dystopia: violent imaginaries of the radical right

ABSTRACT

Thorleifsson examines the ways in which violent imaginaries of Sweden have been discursively constructed and used by populist radical-right (PRR) parties and actors in contemporary Europe. Based on multisited fieldwork among politicians and supporters of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the Hungarian Jobbik party, this article demonstrates how individual acts of violence are ‘transvaluated’ into violent imaginaries of migrants from Muslim-majority lands. What Thorleifsson terms ‘the Swedish dystopia’ not only entails a message of alarm and warning. PRR actors also use the trope of the Swedish dystopia in their call for action against Muslim migrants and minorities who, they claim, pose an ethnoreligious threat to national identity, security and even (Judaeo)-Christian civilization as a whole.     

The Discourse of the Extreme Right and Its Ideological Implications: The Case of the Alleanza nazionale on Immigration

Against the background of research on Italian parliamentary debates on immigration, ter Wal looks at the ideological positions of the extreme-right Alleanza nazionale (AN) concerning both immigration and integration policy. In order to unravel the ideological implications she focuses on examples of various rhetorical strategies enacted in speeches by several of the party's MPs: including stategies of self- and other-presentation, and of justification and causal explanation. This analysis shows how the AN manages to propagate an ideology of ethnic nationalism that eschews the egalitarian norms and cultural pluralism necessary for full participation by migrants. The AN's transformation and re-interpretation of the meaning of the key values of equality andsolidarietàfunction as a justification for the restriction of migrants' rights. Speakers shift the perspective from immigrants' problems to the socio-economic problems of Italians in order to recommend a policy of 'the own people first'. While the AN's discourse thus continues to build on traditional extreme-right beliefs and claims, on the other hand it also espouses New Right ideologies of cultural relativism. Moreover, unlike that of radical-right parties, the AN's discourse does not express blatant forms of ethnic prejudice in the form of stereotypical beliefs and negative representations of immigrants' personal characteristics, nor does it blame immigrants, who are rather represented, and sympathized with, as victims. The moderation of and internal contradictions in its discourse makes the AN difficult     

Riots,disasters and racism: impending racial cataclysm and the extreme right in the United States

ABSTRACT

Three events in late 2005—Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in New Orleans, the Muslim riots in the suburbs of Paris, and the Cronulla ‘uprising’ in Australia—were interpreted by the American extreme right as confirmation of a long-feared impending racial cataclysm. Michael and Mulloy examine analyses of these events from various representatives of the American extreme right. While the mainstream media were often diffident about reporting frankly on the more sensitive implications of these events, this phenomenological approach may provide insight on how various controversial issues—such as immigration, race and multiculturalism—impinge on contemporary American society, culture and politics.     

Behavioral consequences of mixed electoral systems: Deviating voting behavior of district and list MPs in the German Bundestag

Electoral rules should affect parliamentary behavior. In particular, deputies elected from single-member districts should be more likely to deviate from the party line than deputies elected under proportional representation. This paper suggests a framework for conceptualizing and modeling the effect of the type of mandate on deputies’ propensity to cast deviating votes in mixed electoral systems. The proposed modeling strategy uses disaggregated voting data and integrates dependencies among observations in a multi-level design. Empirically, the paper analyses voting behavior in the 16th German Bundestag (2005–2009) and shows that the odds of district MPs to deviate are significantly higher despite frequent claims that the two types of MPs behave alike. However, the behavioral differences cannot be attributed to attempts by district MPs to follow their local constituents as competing principals.     

Between Breivik and PEGIDA: the absence of ideologues and leaders on the contemporary European far right

In the aftermath of the Norwegian terror attacks of 22 July 2011, the question of agency with regard to the convicted perpetrator, Anders Behring Breivik, has frequently been discussed. Did he really act on his own? Were his actions self-directed? Was he, as a typical ‘lone wolf’, inspired by the prevalent far-right concept of ‘leaderless resistance’ or, simply, a blind tool, a string puppet pushed and pulled by dark forces, as some commentators have claimed? His cut-and-paste manifesto points to inspiration from ideas circulating in the European Counter Jihad Movement (ECJM), in itself a contradictory mix of ideological positions. A number of these ideas were given new life when the so-called ‘populist right-wing movement of indignation’, the Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes (PEGIDA) took to the streets of Dresden in the autumn of 2014. The driving force behind PEGIDA, Lutz Bachmann, with a past as petty criminal and doorman, is an unlikely front man for one of the most successful political initiatives in post-unification Germany. Comparing Breivik and PEGIDA, Önnerfors argues that the ECJM is part of the ‘third generation’ of right-wing discourse that is without a consistent world view, dominant leaders and prolific ideologues. Instead, in a new atmosphere of ‘politics of passion’ and ‘post-politics’, fuzzy ECJM ideology turns into a screen upon which diffuse uneasiness with current political affairs can be projected and channelled. Outside the scope of Önnerfors's article but worth noting is the considerable impact these developments have had on electoral support for right-wing populist parties such as the Front National in France, the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany and the Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden.