Subscribe in a readerJust finished my long-overdue review of David Art‘s latest book on Radical Right for West European Politics. I wonder how he survived those 140 interviews physically and mentally intact.
Like a premature Christmas present, my author’s copy of “The Extreme Right in Europe” arrived before the weekend. It’s a hefty volume of almost 500 pages that comes with a equally hefty price tag of just under 80 Euros. As you can see from the table of contents (the PDF also contains the introduction and a large chunk from Gilles Ivaldi’s chapter), it’s a bit of a mixed bag, but I like the idea of bringing together contributions on Eastern and Western Europe and dealing with multiple facets of the right (parties, movements, voters, ‘culture’). While I’m particularly partial to the chapters by Ivaldi and de Lange, which are on matters close to my own research interests, Heß-Meining’s piece on Right-Wing Esotericism stands out for the sheer weirdness of its subject: Hitler’s hideout in the Arctic and Al Gore the Vampire, you name it. So if you’re looking for a last-minute Christmas present for this XR-head stoner uncle of yours … just kidding of course.
As an aside, it’s remarkable that this book was published in English. The volume as well as the conference on which it is based were sponsored by French and German institutions. A few years ago, that would have meant a bilingual conference and publication. Outside Luxembourg, what is the number of scholars working in the field who could have actively participated in the conference? And how much larger would have been the number of potential readers? Individually and collectively, French and German political science might still be too big to fail for the time being, but it’s good to see that we as a discipline chose relevance. Occasionally.
To celebrate this moment of pre-Christmas clarity, here’s the author’s version of my chapter Continue reading “Just out: Backes/Moreau (Eds) The Extreme Right in Europe” »
One feels almost (almost!) sorry for the Social Democratic left: They are squeezed between the more modern Greens/Libertarians on the one hand, and the Extreme Right on the other. The latter has been remarkably successful in poaching working class voters who are worried about immigration and don’t feel particularly attached to the unions or the parties of the left. In a relatively recent contribution (Bale et al. 2010), Tim Bale and colleagues take a closer look at this dilemma and identify three Social Democratic strategies for dealing with it.
While their work is largely qualitative, I’ve crunched the numbers and tried to shed some light on two related questions: Is the Extreme Right really subject to a process of proletarisation, and can the strategies outlined by Bale et al. work to win back working class voters.
The result is still somewhat work in progress – comments are highly appreciated.
I knew it had to be so: The NPD’s miniskirt campaign of 2011 represents the final step of a long journey that took them from outright condemnation of the garment in 1965 to a slightly overenthusiastic endorsement. Proof comes form John Nagle’s slightly obscure 1970 monograph on the party. Their position on haircuts hasn’t evolved much, though.
After a lengthy hiatus, I’ve found the time to update my online bibliography on the Extreme (or Radical/Populist/Anti-Immigrant) Right in Western Europe. According to my latest count, it lists now 400 articles, books, chapters, and working papers, complete with doi- and/or http-links where available. Enjoy!
In the olden days, the world was simple. The average extreme right party was strictly socially conservative, to say the least. Abortion and homosexuality were considered sinful, mostly so because both practices deprived the fatherland of future soldiers and potential mothers of even more soldiers. So sex was supposed to be intramarital and had one purpose only: to procreate for the fatherland. Then came Pim Fortuyn and somewhat confused the message, but this was of little concern to members of the German NPD, who sometimes seem to live blissfully in a parallel universe where the 1930s never came to an end.
NPD campaign poster, 2011
Continue reading “Miniskirts and Genocide: Inside the Topsy-Turvy World of NPD Propaganda” »
My earlier post on the merger between two of the (more or less) viable extreme right parties “Deutsche Volksunion” (DVU) and “Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands” (NPD) may have been premature, as the merger has been successfully challenged in court by a number of DVU members in court. The court ruled that the ballot amongst the DVU members was flawed and has to be repeated before the merger can go ahead.
If this post’s title does make any sense to you, chances are that you are one of us anoraks who had a brilliant weekend of extreme right spotting. In France, Jean-Marie Le Pen stepped down as leader of the Front National, just under 40 years after he founded the party. He is succeeded by his youngest daughter, who is portrayed as a moderniser (hey, she’s twice divorced) and a moderate (by FN standards). While this story might conjure the image of Prince Charles, Marine’s rise through the Front’s ranks was quick, largely unexpected and a major source of aggravation for Bruno Gollnisch, the controversial academic who became the party’s number two after the old number two, Bruno Mégret, left the party to found the MNR in 1999. If Gollnisch (who was soundly beaten by LePen the younger in the leadership contest) aims to repeat that stunt remains to be seen. I’m sure there is a silly story about men named Bruno who turn out to be the real Princes Charles here (both spent a lot of time eyeing the leadership and are in their early 60s now ), but more importantly, Marine is going to change le Front, though her father might be tempted to meddle. These right-wingers know a thing or two about family values.
Continue reading “Marine anointed, DVU and NPD merged” »
I’ve recently converted my Strassburg talk on the social base of the Extreme Right Vote in Western Europe into a chapter for the volume that documents the conference. The result is a medium-length review of the literature on the Extreme Right’s electorate that tries to cover the main points from some twenty years worth of academic debate on the subject.
Over the last two decades I have accumulated thousands of references that have travelled with me all the way from bibtex-mode through Endnote, Citavi and some more obscure packages until we finally came full circle and ended up in bibtex-mode again. To my mild surprise, my use of (some) keywords has been fairly consistent so that it was relatively easy (using make, bibtool and bibtex2html) to create a 380+ entries strong online bibliography on the Extreme Right in Western Europe. Enjoy.
