The far-right in world politics/world politics in the far-right

ABSTRACT

This paper provides an introduction to the special issue: ‘The Far-Right in World Politics’. In setting out the special issue, the paper does four things. First, we provide a definition of what we mean by the ‘far-right’ and identify its core characteristics over the longue durée and across different spatial locales. Secondly, we provide a brief discussion and critique of existing approaches to the study of the far-right and offer an alternative methodological framing centred on ‘the international’. Thirdly, we discuss the ambivalent connections between the far-right and liberal international orders – both today and in the past. Finally, we provide brief summaries of each contribution to the special issue.

KEYWORDS:

• Far-right
• neoliberalism
• liberal order
• fascism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This includes the rise of neo-fascist ‘movement-parties’ such as Jobbik (Hungary), Golden Dawn (Greece), and the Swedish Democrats and more ‘respectable’ far-right groupings like the Rassamblement national (formerly the Front national) in France and the Lega in Italy.

2 As demonstrated by the recent international diffusion of ‘QAnon’ conspiracy theories and associated movements and ideas.

3 In contrast to the past when far-right racism was associated with a white supremacy based on imperial domination and violence against an external ‘Other’, the contemporary far-right is defined by a more ‘defensive’ racism based on the separation from and expulsion of ‘non-indigenous’ racialized Others and Muslims in particular (Betz & Meret, 2009; Mudde, 2007).

4 This is not to sanitize liberalism or downplay its racialized or racist features. Rather, it is to single out the unique properties of the manner in which race defines the far-right in a way that is different from liberalism, not least of which is the latter’s assumption of and commitment to equality in theory if not practice.

5 As suggested by the widely held assumption that the contemporary far-right draws its support overwhelmingly from workers and the so-called ‘left behinds’ (see Ford & Goodwin, 2015; Williams, 2017).

6 For notable exceptions, see Drolet and Williams (2018), Antunes de Oliveira (2019) and Kiely (2020).

7 This has not stopped the far-right from drawing on aligned transnational networks (see Bryden, 2019) to assist its domestic projects or constructing international networks even if they have failed to deliver much politically (see Macklin, 2013; Rivera & Davis, 2020).

8 For example, liberalism’s focus on the ‘sovereign’ individual, ambivalence towards fixed territorial orders and the establishment of binding agreements and rules on international conduct, commitment to universalism and human equality (if formal rather than substantive), defence of representative rather than popular democracy, attachment to limited constitutional states based on the rule of law, assumption of progress based on material enrichment, and promotion of the relatively ‘free’ expansion of market exchange, commerce and ideas, etc.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexander Anievas

Alexander Anievas is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of Capital, the state, and war: Class conflict and geopolitics in the thirty years’ crisis, 1914–1945 (University of Michigan Press, 2014), for which he was awarded the Sussex International Theory Book Prize, and co-author (with Kerem Nişancıoğlu) of How the west came to rule: The geopolitical origins of capitalism (Pluto, 2015), which was awarded the best book prize by the International Political Sociology Section of the International Studies Association for 2016–17.

Richard Saull

Richard Saull is Reader in International Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London. He has written and published on the Cold War, US hegemony and the history and politics of the European far-right and is the author of Capital, race and space, in two volumes (Brill, forthcoming/2022).