SkriptaTV | Joachim Becker: The Different Currents of the Nationalist Right @SkriptaTV | Uploaded February 2018 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
Organized by / organizacija: Centre for Labour Studies (Centar za radničke studije - CRS, radnickistudiji.org)
Seminar: "Nationalism, Populism, and the New Right"
MAZ, Hatzova 16, Zagreb, 18.11.2017., 11h
Moderator: Marko Kostanić
Joachim Becker: The Different Currents of the Nationalist Right
The nationalist right is not a monolithic bloc. It consists of different currents – a neoliberal, a national-conservative and a fascist current. The lecture will provide a typology for analysing the nationalist right. Against the background of a typology, a brief map of the main nationalist right-wing forces and their respective social base will be provided.
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Nationalism, Populism, and the New Right
The political landscape of Europe (and beyond) in the years since the financial and economic crisis of 2007/2008 has been marked by the rise of right-wing forces. Public debates around astronomic public rescue packages for private financial institutions and the austerity measures accompanying them did, counter to what many on the left may have expected, not shift public opinion significantly towards left positions. Rather, it was often the populist right that proved increasingly successful in articulating economic and social anxieties into a discourse of conceptually vague anti-elitism combined with xenophobia, aggressive social chauvinism and – especially in the eastern parts of Europe – the reassertion of regressive social norms regarding women's rights and the rights of sexual and ethnic minorities. The outbreak of the so-called "refugee crisis" strengthened this trend, effectively turning the crisis narrative into one of besieged national and cultural identities, threatened by the influx of foreign – predominantly Muslim – populations. The electoral successes of parties such as Front Nacional in France and AfD in Germany signify the increasing normalization of formerly fringe political options within the parliaments of central core countries of the EU.
Many on the left have interpreted these phenomena as symptoms of the crisis of neoliberal hegemony. But even if we accept this as a broad diagnosis, the question remains as to why these reactions so often take such reactionary forms. Much like the rise of fascism in the interwar period, the current rise of right-wing forces presents a significant challenge to Marxist (or more broadly – materialist) approaches, insofar as these assert the explanatory centrality of class for social and political processes. Current political developments seem to once again drive home the fact that theoretical invocations of class as unifying social category do not necessarily correlate to a unifying experience of class subjects. The fact that the class experience of the crisis and its reverberations has proven to be fractured along "identitarian" fault lines or, at the very least, allowed its political articulation in divisive and deeply regressive terms presents both a theoretical and political challenge the left cannot afford to ignore. The challenge to theoretically come to terms with the rise of a new, aggressive right, entails the challenge of critically reassessing the explanatory instruments of the left, above all the question of the complex relation between structural factors, lived experience and political articulation.
With the seminar "Nationalism, Populism, and the New Right", the Centre for Labour Studies wishes to facilitate debates on these and related matters in a regional context that is itself marked by the resurgence of aggressive right-wing forces. By providing a platform for critical debate between regional activists and theorists as well as relevant international scholars, we hope to contribute to a both theoretically and politically more adequate response to these worrying processes.
facebook.com/events/165211720742207
Programme of Centre for Labour Studies is financed by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Southeast Europe
Organized by / organizacija: Centre for Labour Studies (Centar za radničke studije - CRS, radnickistudiji.org)
Seminar: "Nationalism, Populism, and the New Right"
MAZ, Hatzova 16, Zagreb, 18.11.2017., 11h
Moderator: Marko Kostanić
Joachim Becker: The Different Currents of the Nationalist Right
The nationalist right is not a monolithic bloc. It consists of different currents – a neoliberal, a national-conservative and a fascist current. The lecture will provide a typology for analysing the nationalist right. Against the background of a typology, a brief map of the main nationalist right-wing forces and their respective social base will be provided.
- - -
Nationalism, Populism, and the New Right
The political landscape of Europe (and beyond) in the years since the financial and economic crisis of 2007/2008 has been marked by the rise of right-wing forces. Public debates around astronomic public rescue packages for private financial institutions and the austerity measures accompanying them did, counter to what many on the left may have expected, not shift public opinion significantly towards left positions. Rather, it was often the populist right that proved increasingly successful in articulating economic and social anxieties into a discourse of conceptually vague anti-elitism combined with xenophobia, aggressive social chauvinism and – especially in the eastern parts of Europe – the reassertion of regressive social norms regarding women's rights and the rights of sexual and ethnic minorities. The outbreak of the so-called "refugee crisis" strengthened this trend, effectively turning the crisis narrative into one of besieged national and cultural identities, threatened by the influx of foreign – predominantly Muslim – populations. The electoral successes of parties such as Front Nacional in France and AfD in Germany signify the increasing normalization of formerly fringe political options within the parliaments of central core countries of the EU.
Many on the left have interpreted these phenomena as symptoms of the crisis of neoliberal hegemony. But even if we accept this as a broad diagnosis, the question remains as to why these reactions so often take such reactionary forms. Much like the rise of fascism in the interwar period, the current rise of right-wing forces presents a significant challenge to Marxist (or more broadly – materialist) approaches, insofar as these assert the explanatory centrality of class for social and political processes. Current political developments seem to once again drive home the fact that theoretical invocations of class as unifying social category do not necessarily correlate to a unifying experience of class subjects. The fact that the class experience of the crisis and its reverberations has proven to be fractured along "identitarian" fault lines or, at the very least, allowed its political articulation in divisive and deeply regressive terms presents both a theoretical and political challenge the left cannot afford to ignore. The challenge to theoretically come to terms with the rise of a new, aggressive right, entails the challenge of critically reassessing the explanatory instruments of the left, above all the question of the complex relation between structural factors, lived experience and political articulation.
With the seminar "Nationalism, Populism, and the New Right", the Centre for Labour Studies wishes to facilitate debates on these and related matters in a regional context that is itself marked by the resurgence of aggressive right-wing forces. By providing a platform for critical debate between regional activists and theorists as well as relevant international scholars, we hope to contribute to a both theoretically and politically more adequate response to these worrying processes.
facebook.com/events/165211720742207
Programme of Centre for Labour Studies is financed by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Southeast Europe
