Abstract
Consisting of essays by more than 20 contributors, from professors to unaffiliated intellectuals, this volume offers various perspectives on contemporary right-wing strategies and practices in Europe, from electoral performance in some countries, to street demonstrations blending the lines between extreme and mainstream mobilization, to underground terrorist tactics. The edited volume originated in series of articles published on an academic blog, defines far right as ‘political space whose actors base their ideology and action on the notion of inequality among human beings, combining the supremacy of a particular nation, “race” or “civilization” with ambitions for an authoritarian transformation of values and styles of government’ (pp. 17–18). The authors share the common vision that there is a need for broader reflection on the new forms of politics within the far right and its exchanges with existing political systems. The volume discusses contemporary developments in the European far right, focusing on the actors involved and their practices in conjunction with the social development, economic crisis, and changing ethnic composition of many European societies. This background of economic and social developments is creating a favorable climate throughout European countries for spreading anxieties and resentments. The authors answer how actors on the far right respond to this new situation, how they increase their political influence using social grievances, and in which cases do they fail to do so. From a methodological point of view, the volume is based not only on presenting particular national cases, but also on comparative analysis of far-right strategies and practices. In order to share scholarly research with a broader audience, the editors have decided to keep the chapters short, the language basic, and questions of definition to a minimum. The volume lacks an overarching theoretical framework, inviting the readers to use the empirical insights to draw their own generalizations.
The book is divided into five autonomous parts called ‘terrains.’ They cover far-right strategies and practices in the following areas: competition at the ballot box, action-based performance on the street, long-term strategies for preparing cultural domination that will facilitate political change, armed insurrection underground, and internal far-right competition. The first part of the book focuses on contemporary electoral campaigns, taking examples from European countries such as Germany, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, and Ukraine. The authors analyze how populist and extremist parties are capitalizing on anti-refugee sentiments and on the current economic crisis in Europe. Bernhard Weidinger, author of books on the Austrian far right, discusses why the Austrian Freedom Party has been successful in electoral campaigns but not in terms of street-based mobilization. Mihnea-Simion Stoica, a PhD candidate from Romania, and Mathias Schmids, a researcher from Germany, analyze the changing fortunes of some populist parties in Romania and Ukraine, respectively. Moving away from electoral politics, the second part focuses on street-based practices and argumentation strategies of far-right actors, practices that receive considerable attention in the mainstream media. Examples for this part of the book are mainly provided from Germany, Italy, and Greece. Among these chapters, particularly interesting is that of Angelique Kourounis, a French-Greek documentary filmmaker, who followed the leadership of the Greek Golden Dawn movement party for many years in order to understand the intrinsic motivation of the members and the leaders in a country with traditionally strong progressive political culture. The third part suggests that far-right strategies and practices are not just focused on everyday political life. They also tend to pursue long-term strategies of influencing the cultural environment in order to produce a cultural hegemony in civil society. The illustrations for this come mainly from Germany, Austria, France, Turkey, and Poland. The common elements in these chapters is how far-right intellectuals have succeeded in bringing their arguments into mainstream political debates. The fourth part considers underground groups who use political violence as their main tool, providing examples from Germany and the UK. Daniel Koehler, director of the German Institute on Radicalization and De-Radicalization Studies, warns against prioritizing jihadist terrorism as the number-one enemy, because this leads to reducing police and intelligence resources in many European countries that investigate the far right. Alex Carter, a PhD candidate from the UK, discusses how the new information technologies have facilitated recent growth of far-right terrorism in Britain. Finally, the fifth part of the book focuses on conflicts and disagreements within far-right movements and parties based on examples from the UK, Finland, Latvia, Bulgaria, and Greece. Particularly interesting here is the chapter by Matthew Kott, a historian from Sweden, who describes the internal disputes within the Latvian far right as being due to the ethnic divide between Latvian ethnonationalists and pro-Russian neofascists.
Having the goal of sharing research with a broader audience has led the editors to opt for a mixture of analytical essays lacking a common structure and brief research reports with minimal empirical – and no theoretical – value. At best, readers can use the anecdotal evidence to draw their own generalizations. At worst, readers will end up with more questions than answers, and will be unable to systematically analyze the phenomenon under question – right-wing strategies and practices in Europe. The editors have no excuse because the phenomenon is not new and the literature has already moved beyond anecdotal empirical evidence toward a more systematic comparative approach. The choice of giving the editorial tasks to a PhD candidate and a master’s student when a few contributors are identified as faculty members, research associates, and directors of think tanks is also difficult to understand. The passion of political partisans can hardly replace the missing research arguments. The short chapters do not allow for deep presentation of scientific arguments. Nevertheless, it would be unwise to put aside this book. Although it has no overarching theory, it can still help interested readers to move ahead in understanding the contemporary far right. Anecdotal evidence is never the same and new elements may be appropriate in order to complete the entire puzzle. For graduate and undergraduate students, it may be interesting to use this book as a tool for learning how to upgrade their research techniques.