scholarly journals Memory-Politics and Neonationalism: Trianon as Mythomoteur

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margit Feischmidt
Keyword(s):  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Cultural Logic ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Symbolic Resources

AbstractAnalyzing the newly emerged Trianon cult, this article argues that the current wave of memory politics became the engine of new forms of nationalism in Hungary constituted by extremist and moderate right-wing civic and political actors. Following social anthropologists Gingrich and Banks, the term neonationalism will be applied and linked with the concept “mythomoteur” of John Armstrong and Anthony D. Smith, emphasizing the role of preexisting ethno-symbolic resources or mythomoteurs in the resurgence of nationalism. Special attention will be given to elites who play a major role in constructing new discourses of the nation and seek to control collective memories, taking their diverse intentions, agendas, and strategies specifically into consideration. This “view from above” will be complemented with a “view from below” by investigating the meanings that audiences give to and the uses they make of these memories. Thus, the analysis has three dimensions: it starts with the analysis of symbols, topics, and arguments applied by public Trianon discourses; it continues with the analysis of everyday perceptions, memory, and identity concerns; and finally ends with an anthropological interpretation of memory politics regarding a new form of nationalism arising in the context of propelling and mainstreaming populist right-wing politics. The main argument of this article is that although the Hungarian Trianon cult, identified as national mythomoteur, invokes a historical trauma, it rather speaks to current feelings of loss and disenfranchisement, offering symbolic compensation through the transference of historical glory, pride, and self-esteem within a mythological framework. This article is part of a larger effort to understand the cultural logic and social support of new forms of nationalism in Hungary propelled by the populist far right.

scholarly journals Digital Ecosystems of Ideology: Linked Media as Rhetoric in Spanish Political Tweets

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512092663
Author(s):  
Vanessa Ceia
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
General Elections ◽  
External Sources ◽  
Popular Party

That Twitter is a major form of political mobilization and influence has been well documented. But what is the role of linked media—references to newspapers, photos, videos, and other external sources via URLs—in political Twitter messaging? How are linked references employed as campaign tools and rhetorical devices in messages published by political parties on Twitter? Is there a quantifiable relationship between a party’s ideology and linked media in tweets? With the spread of fake news, threats to a free press, and questioning of the legitimacy of political messaging on the rise globally, the sources on which parties draw to convince voters of their online messaging deserve critical attention. To explore the above questions, this article examines uses of linked media in tweets generated by the official accounts of Spain’s top five political parties during, in the lead-up, and in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish General Elections held on April 28, 2019. Grounded in a corpus of 10,038 tweets collected between March 1 and May 15, 2019, this study quantifies, compares, and critiques how linked media are integrated and remixed into tweets published by the left-leaning Spanish Workers’ Socialist Party (@PSOE), right-wing Popular Party (@populares), left-wing Podemos (@ahorapodemos), neoliberal Citizens (@CiudadanosCs), and far-right Vox (@vox_es) parties. Evidence reveals that each party links to media from somewhat homophilic groups of news outlets, journalists, and public figures, an analysis of which can shed light on how parties construct their digital self-representations, ideological networks of information, and attempt to sway voters.

scholarly journals THE OUTLINES OF A POST-SECULAR SOCIETY: POLITICAL REASONS AND SYMBOLIC RESOURCES

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-17
Author(s):  
Даниил Аникин ◽  
Daniil Anikin
Keyword(s):  
Religious Community ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Past ◽  
Symbolic Resources ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Symbolic Resource

The article deals with the basic concepts of post-secular society and reveals the role of the past as a symbolic resource of the religious community legitimization. The specificity of post-secular society is the politicization of religion and the inclusion of religious interpretations of the past in the symbolic competition of political actors

Entry into the Extreme Right

2019 ◽  
pp. 104-127
Author(s):  
Arie W. Kruglanski ◽  
David Webber ◽  
Daniel Koehler
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Social Connections ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Extreme Right ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Specific Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Network Component

Chapter 6 examines what motivated the interviewees to join extreme right-wing groups and organizations. Analyses revealed that the most common soon-to-be-extremist was someone who was socially frustrated, although there were no consistent culprits responsible for their distress. It turns out that individuals joined the extreme milieu because they viewed it as place where they could find significance and acceptance—where they could be seen as idealistic revolutionaries and belong to a group that gave them purpose. Analyses further revealed the social network component of radicalization, in that the vast majority of those interviewed were introduced to Far Right organizations through various social connections. Specific analysis is applied to understand how the social aspect of radicalization occurred and the role of the hate music scene in facilitating this process. Connections are drawn to previous work with both Far Right and other extremists that addressed those processes.

scholarly journals Producing Antipetismo: Media activism and the rise of the radical, nationalist right in contemporary Brazil

2019 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Davis ◽  
Joe Straubhaar
Keyword(s):  
Press Coverage ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Media Activism ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Press ◽  
News Networks ◽  
The Right

When examining the decline of the leftist Partido dos Trabalhadores and the ascension of the right-wing extremist Jair Bolsanaro of the far-right Partido Liberal Social to the 2018 presidency, political scientists David Samuels and Cesar Zucco have argued that this shift is best understood not through positive characteristics of Bolsonaro’s candidacy but through antipetismo [‘anti-PT-ism’], an intensely personal resentment of the Partido dos Trabalhadores. We assert that popular right-wing Facebook groups and networks formed around the communication network WhatsApp-fueled antipetismo by channeling anger originating in the 2013 nationwide protests away from a variety of social, political, and issues and toward a villainous depiction of Partido dos Trabalhadores leaders and valorization of anti-Partido dos Trabalhadores activists like Bolsanaro, as well as some focus on his own conservative, nationalist agenda. To interrogate this assertion, we propose two specific lines of research. The first is a qualitative textual analysis of the social media accounts of two of the most active anti-Partido dos Trabalhadores groups: Vem Pra Rua and O Movimento Brasil Livre. Through close reading of the materials distributed on these sites, we will illustrate how they channeled general unrest into a specifically partisan attack. The next line of research and case will be an examination of the role of mainstream news networks (namely TV Record) and WhatsApp by those campaigning for recently elected president Bolsonaro for a continued negative campaign against left candidates, specifically the Partido dos Trabalhadores, using fake news items like the supposed ‘gay kit’ that was being circulated in schools by the Partido dos Trabalhadores and others on the left to persuade children to become gay. When possible, we will analyze examples of the materials that were circulated that have emerged in the press coverage and will examine the processes that were used to target and persuade people to forward the materials created for the campaign.

scholarly journals White and Minority Demographic Shifts, Intergroup Threat, and Right-Wing Extremism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Hui Bai ◽  
Christopher Federico
Keyword(s):  
Population Decline ◽  
Zero Order ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
White Population ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Intergroup Threat ◽  
Demographic Shifts ◽  
Indirect Relationship ◽  
Right Wing Extremism

We present four studies (one correlational and three experimental) of American Whites that examine relationships between White and minority demographic shifts, intergroup threat, and support for extreme-right groups and actions. We focus in particular on the role of collective existential threat (i.e., a perception that the ingroup will cease to exist), along with three alternative/competing intergroup threats: status threat, symbolic threat, prototypicality threat. Though no zero-order relationship was found between perceived White population decline and far-right variables, we find evidence that (1) perceived White population decline leads to collective existential threat net of other perceived demographic shifts, (2) collective existential threat is related to far-right support net of other threats, and (3) perceived White decline has a robust indirect relationship with measures of far-right support via collective existential threat.

scholarly journals Punishing the Poor and Fighting “Immigration into the Social System” – Welfare Reforms by the Conservative and Far-right Government in Austria 2017–2019

2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 525-552
Author(s):  
Roland Atzmüller ◽  
Alban Knecht ◽  
Michael Bodenstein
Keyword(s):  
Social Policies ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Active Labour ◽  
The Social ◽  
Underlying Causes ◽  
The Government ◽  
Welfare Reforms

Abstract The paper analyses and assesses social policy reforms of the conservative, far-right and right-wing populist coalition government in Austria between 2017 and 2019 in the light of the debates about welfare chauvinist, authoritarian and populist social policies. The latter had gained in importance over the previous years due to the upsurge of far-right and right-wing populist parties and the (at least partial) accommodation of mainstream parties to this tendency in many countries. The policies of the government were based on the view that the social problems associated with immigration were (at least) one of the main underlying causes for the problems affecting the Austrian society. The paper shows that the government initiated strategies to tackle these developments via a renationalisation of social policies. The analysis is focused on implemented and planned activities geared mainly towards the (former) margins of the Austrian welfare regime (social assistance, active labour market policies, unemployment assistance, youth integration policies), as well as on the ideological articulations the government uttered to justify these reforms via the combination of welfare chauvinist orientations with centre-right concerns about market dynamics and public finances. Our analysis concludes that nativist/racialised, nationalist and welfare chauvinist social policies transcend the distinction of deserving and non-deserving social groups, which raises the question about the social imaginaries that lie beneath the attempts of far-right political actors to shape societies through the reform of welfare.

scholarly journals Why Should We Care What Extremists Think? The Contribution of Emic Perspectives to Understanding the “right-wing extremist” Mind-Set

2021 ◽  
pp. 089124162110411
Author(s):  
Hilary Pilkington
Keyword(s):  
Academic Research ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Mind Set ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Right Wing Extremism

This article considers the implications of the mainstreaming of ‘right-wing extremism’ for what, and whom, we understand as ‘extreme’. It draws on ethnographic research (2017-2020) with young people active in movements routinely referred to in public and academic discourse as ‘extreme right’ or ‘far right’. Based on interviews, informal communication and observation, the article explores how actors in the milieu understand ‘extremism’ and how far this corresponds to academic and public conceptualisations of ‘right-wing extremism’, in particular cognitive ‘closed-mindedness’. Emic perspectives are not accorded privileged authenticity. Rather, it is argued, critical engagement with them reveals the important role of ethnographic research in gaining insight into, and challenging what we know about, the ‘mind-set’ of right-wing extremists. Understanding if such a mind-set exists, and if it does, in what it consists, matters, if academic research is to inform policy and practice to counter socially harmful practices among those it targets effectively.

The Preemptive Counterrevolution and the Rise of the Far Right in Brazil

2019 ◽  
pp. 89-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Antunes
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Military Dictatorship ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Face ◽  
Democratic Elections ◽  
The Military

During the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections, almost thirty years after the first democratic elections since the military dictatorship, Jair Bolsonaro took on the role of supposed underdog and, in the face of the collapse of the other center and right-wing bourgeois candidates, became the only one capable of countering the risk of the victory of the Workers' Party. Bolsonaro, or the captain, as he is frequently called by his acolytes, is a sort of Donald Trump of the periphery—a second-rate Trump. Though he appears to be the most radical critic of the system, he is, in fact, the very image of the status quo, in all its brutality and rawness.

scholarly journals The politics of affect

Focaal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (83) ◽  
pp. 98-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sindre Bangstad ◽  
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen ◽  
Heiko Henkel
Keyword(s):  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Economic Inequalities

This article is based on the transcript of a roundtable on the rise of the far-right and right-wing populism held at the AAA Annual Meeting in 2017. The contributors explore this rise in the context of the role of affect in politics, rising socio-economic inequalities, racism and neoliberalism, and with reference to their own ethnographic research on these phenomena in Germany, Poland, Italy, France, the UK and Hungary.

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