Rethinking The French New Right

This book focuses on the philosophy, politics and impact of the 'New Right' which originated in France and has since influenced activism, ideology and policy in a number of European countries. This book explores the idea that revolutionaries do not necessarily need to come from the left, nor use arms in order to overturn liberal democracy. In the post-World War Two era, the extremists of the revolutionary right took three different paths: 1) parliamentary; 2) extra-parliamentary; and 3) metapolitical. The New Right (nouvelle droite – ND in France) took the metapolitical path, but that did not mean it abandoned its revolutionary desire to smash liberal democracy throughout Europe. The book examines four interpretations of the New Right. These interpretations include the following: 1) The New Right as a fascist or quasi-fascist movement; 2) The New Right as a challenge to the traditional right-left dichotomy, which has structured European political debates for more than 200 years; 3) The New Right as an alternative modernist movement, which rejects liberal and socialist narratives of modernity; accepts the technical but not political or cultural effects of modernity; and longs for a pan-European political framework abolishing liberal multiculturalism and privileging ethnic dominance of so-called original Europeans; and 4) The New Right as a variant of political religion and conversionary processes. The book concludes by analysing the positions, cultural and political impact, and relationship to democracy of the New Right. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of racism, fascism, extremism, European politics, French politics and contemporary political theory.

This book focuses on the philosophy, politics and impact of the 'New Right' which originated in France and has since influenced activism, ideology and policy in a number of European countries. This book explores the idea that revolutionaries do not necessarily need to come from the left, nor use arms in order to overturn liberal democracy. In the post-World War Two era, the extremists of the revolutionary right took three different paths: 1) parliamentary; 2) extra-parliamentary; and 3) metapolitical. The New Right (nouvelle droite – ND in France) took the metapolitical path, but that did not mean it abandoned its revolutionary desire to smash liberal democracy throughout Europe. The book examines four interpretations of the New Right. These interpretations include the following: 1) The New Right as a fascist or quasi-fascist movement; 2) The New Right as a challenge to the traditional right-left dichotomy, which has structured European political debates for more than 200 years; 3) The New Right as an alternative modernist movement, which rejects liberal and socialist narratives of modernity; accepts the technical but not political or cultural effects of modernity; and longs for a pan-European political framework abolishing liberal multiculturalism and privileging ethnic dominance of so-called original Europeans; and 4) The New Right as a variant of political religion and conversionary processes. The book concludes by analysing the positions, cultural and political impact, and relationship to democracy of the New Right. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of racism, fascism, extremism, European politics, French politics and contemporary political theory.

In Europe, the far right is gaining momentum on the streets and in parliaments. By taking a close look at contemporary practices and strategies of far-right actors, the present volume explores this right-ward shift of European publics and politics. It assembles analyses of changing mobilization patterns and their effects on the local, national and transnational level. International experts, among them Tamir Bar-On, Liz Fekete, Matthew Kott, and Graham Macklin, scrutinize new forms of coalition building, mainstreaming and transnationalization tendencies as aspects of diversified far-right politics in Europe.

Resentment and the Right: French Intellectual Identity Reimagined, 1898-2000 examines a century-long struggle between cultural spokesmen on the extreme right and left to dominate and define the concept of “the intellectual.” This struggle began with the introduction of the “intellectual” during the Dreyfus Affair of 1898 and continues even today among the intellectuals of the Nouvelle Droite. This struggle to monopolize the public perception of intellectual identity, and the status of moral and political guide the title conferred, consumed the intellectual leaders of the extreme right and left and saturated their engagement in political affairs. Because the left was the first to claim the title of intellectual in 1898, they defined the concept according to their own values and experiences. Hereafter, when intellectuals of the extreme right felt called to engage in public affairs, they portrayed their struggle for recognition as one of an oppressed and ostracized minority against a hegemonic left. Their resentment of this perceived repression became integral to their linguistic tropes, professional trajectories, cultural practices, and their self-conceptualization as intellectuals. The book is organized around the argument that at each perceived national crisis throughout the century, when intellectuals felt called to engage, the right-wing struggle to define true intellectual identity for the public followed a similar cycle: self-identification as intellectuals, perception of exclusion by the intellectual left, resentment of this ostracism and development of linguistic tropes of left-wing hegemony and right-wing repression, differentiation, revaluation, and reappropriation of cultural values, self-imposed segregation of social networks and professional trajectories, internalization and revaluation of their perceived role as intellectual pariahs, and eventual isolation, alienation, and radicalization from the mainstream intellectual and political world. All together this has resulted in a very different experience of intellectual life and a distinctive understanding of what it means to be an intellectual over the century.

The American conservative movement as we know it faces an existential crisis as the nation's demographics shift away from its core constituents—older white middle-class Christians. It is the American conservatism that we don't know that concerns George Hawley in this book. During its ascendancy, leaders within the conservative establishment have energetically policed the movement’s boundaries, effectively keeping alternative versions of conservatism out of view. Returning those neglected voices to the story, Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism offers a more complete, complex, and nuanced account of the American right in all its dissonance in history and in our day. The right-wing intellectual movements considered here differ both from mainstream conservatism and from each other when it comes to fundamental premises, such as the value of equality, the proper role of the state, the importance of free markets, the place of religion in politics, and attitudes toward race. In clear and dispassionate terms, Hawley examines localists who exhibit equal skepticism toward big business and big government, paleoconservatives who look to the distant past for guidance and wish to turn back the clock, radical libertarians who are not content to be junior partners in the conservative movement, and various strains of white supremacy and the radical right in America. In the Internet age, where access is no longer determined by the select few, the independent right has far greater opportunities to make its many voices heard. This timely work puts those voices into context and historical perspective, clarifying our understanding of the American right—past, present, and future.

The radical right : an introduction / Jens Rydgren -- Ideology and discourse -- The radical right and nationalism / Tamir Bar-On -- The radical right and islamophobia / Aristotle Kallis -- The radical right and anti-semitism / Ruth Wodak -- The radical right and populism / Hans-Georg Betz -- The radical right and fascism / Nigel Copsey -- The radical right and euroscepticism / Sofia Vasilopoulou -- Issues -- Explaining electoral support for the radical right / Kai Arzheimer -- Party systems and radical right-wing parties / Herbert Kitschelt -- The radical right and gender / Hilde Coffé -- Globalization, cleavages, and the radical right / Simon Bornschier -- Party organization and the radical right / David Art -- Charisma and the radical right / Roger Eatwell -- Media and the radical right / Antonis A. Ellinas -- The non-party sector of the radical right / John Veugelers and Gabriel Menard -- The political impact of the radical right / Michelle Hale Williams -- The radical right as social movement organizations / Manuela Caiani and Donatella Della Porta -- Youth and the radical right / Cynthia Miller Idriss -- Religion and the radical right / Michael Minkenberg -- Cross-national links and international cooperation / Manuela Caiani -- Political violence and the radical right / Leonard Weinberg and Eliot Assoudeh -- Case studies -- The radical right in France / Nonna Mayer -- The radical right in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland / Uwe Backes -- The radical right in Belgium and the Netherlands / Joop J.M. van Holsteyn -- The radical right in Southern Europe / Carlo Ruzza -- The radical right in the UK / Matthew J. Goodwin and James Dennison -- The radical right in the Nordic countries / Anders Widfeldt -- The radical right in Eastern Europe / Lenka Butíková -- The radical right in post-soviet Russia / Richard Arnold and Andreas Umland -- The radical right in post-soviet Ukraine / Melanie Mierzejewski-Voznyak -- The radical right in the United States of America / Christopher Sebastian Parker -- The radical right in Australia / Andy Fleming and Aurelien Mondon -- The radical right in Israel / Arie Perliger and Ami Pedhazur -- The radical right in Japan / Naoto Higuchi

Democracy must be anti-racist. Any less is cowardly. Any less is reactionary. Democracy is not necessarily progressive, and will only be if we make it so. What Mondon and Winter call 'reactionary democracy' is the use of the concept of democracy and its associated understanding of the power to the people (demos cratos) for reactionary ends. The resurgence of racism, populism and the far right is not the result of popular demands as we are often told. It is rather the logical conclusion of the more or less conscious manipulation by the elite of the concept of 'the people' and the working class to push reactionary ideas. These narratives place racism as a popular demand, rather than as something encouraged and perpetuated by elites, thus exonerating those with the means to influence and control public discourse through the media in particular. This in turn has legitimised the far right, strengthened its hand and compounded inequalities. These actions diverts us away from real concerns and radical alternatives to the current system. Through a careful and thorough deconstruction of the hegemonic discourse currently preventing us from thinking beyond the liberal vs populist dichotomy, this book develops a better understanding of the systemic forces underpinning our current model and its exploitative and discriminatory basis. The book shows us that the far right would not have been able to achieve such success, either electorally or ideologically, were it not for the help of elite actors (the media, politicians and academics). While the far right is a real threat and should not be left off the hook, the authors argue that we need to shift the responsibility of the situation towards those who too often claim to be objective, and even powerless, bystanders despite their powerful standpoint and clear capacity to influence the agenda, public discourse, and narratives, particularly when they platform and legitimise racist and far right ideas and actors.

The study of association football has recently emerged as vibrant field of inquiry, attracting scholars worldwide from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. "Soccer As the Beautiful Game: Football’s Artistry, Identity and Politics," held at Hofstra University in April 2014, gathered together scholars, media, management, and fans in the largest ever conference dedicated to the game in North America. This collection of essays provides a comprehensive view of the academic perspectives on offer at the conference, itself a snapshot of the state of this increasingly rich scholarly terrain. The diversity of approaches range from theory to pedagogy to historical and sociological engagements with the game at all levels, from the grassroots to the grand spectacle of the World Cup, while the international roster of authors is testimony to the game’s global reach. This collection of essays therefore offers a state of the field for soccer studies and a road map for further exploration. The chapters originally published as a special issue in Soccer & Society.