Re-public: re-imagining democracy

The politics of fear and the rise of far-right extremism in Europe – part II

The second part of the special issue explores the dynamics of the contemporary European far-right and critically assesses the anti-racist practices devised to address its influence. The influence of the far-right is surging cross Europe in multiple forms. Mainstream far right political parties have recently participated in government coalitions. Right wing extremism is becoming explosive, ranging from violent attacks against migrants and ethnic minorities to the recent mass killings in Norway. Far right political parties and groups are increasingly setting the political agenda on the European management of migration flows. Although the rise of far right movements in Europe has received widespread attention and has triggered a variety of responses from liberal, social democratic and left political forces, these seem to have been relatively ineffective. read more..

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Paul Jackson - Reflections on developing the far right research agenda through public facing encounters

When talking about a new and more successful wave of far right movements, many mainstream commentators run the risk of either minimising the threat, writing off the new wave of new far right movements as fringe and unimportant; or they can exaggerate the issue and overstate the reach of such organisations, potentially even suggesting that the far right may soon pose a fundamental threat to the political order.

Tad Tietze - Language, violence and politics

Standing up to real social power relations and structures means confronting not just the far Right but the role of the state in perpetuating hierarchies, inequalities, injustices and discrimination.

Xavier Casals - The new extreme right: A messenger of the future?

The consolidation of the extreme right raises two complex questions: Is its message at odds with democratic values? Is it possible to contain its electoral advancement?

Christoforos Vernardakis - The versatility and the contradictions of the extreme right under conditions of political crisis

The participation of LAOS in government confirms the dual strategy that it follows. It expresses “far-right” (or at least “ultra-conservative”) ideologies and attempts to inscribe them in a systemic way.

Nikolai Brandal and Dag Einar Thorsen - Social democracy and the far right

In Scandinavia, the growth of a new far right has renewed old debates about how society should combat what the Beveridge report in its day labeled as the five giant evils of modern society: Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.

Kostas Maronitis - The politics of fear as the fear of politics: Social democracy and the importance of emotions

Is it possible for Social Democracy to foster a sense of collective identity without retreating to a rhetoric of external and internal enemies and defending a fictional national and cultural homogeneity?

Mare Stijntje Visser - Consequences of the PVV: An immigrant perspective

How do Muslims handle living in an environment that is increasingly anti-Islamic? Do they face more discrimination with the increasing popularity of the PVV? What are the implications of emphasizing the Dutch national identity as “Christian and white” in political discourse for the identification of Muslims with the Netherlands?

Fabian Virchow - The rationality of racist terror

Acts of violence embody the logical expression of an inherent rationality that is based on racial nationalism and portrays the traditional European world and way of living as being under existential threat.

Carles Viñas - The skinheads as a rennovating element of the Spanish extreme right

Beyond their transgressive image, the Spanish skinheads provided a more visceral and direct message: Their radical discourse, that we can place in the so-called “periphery of politics”, included terms such as racism or immigration, which were not that common until then in extreme right circles.

Andrianos Tesas - Extreme political positions and actions

In practice very few organizations admit being "extreme" or "extremist", most often they prefer to be called using politically correct terms such as radicalism, divine will, power of the masses, salvation, liberation etc.

Ana Dinescu - How far is the Hungarian far-right from power?

The political climate during the first Orban government was marked by an outburst of identity politics, culminating in the implementation of special legislation giving privileges to Hungarians living abroad.

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Re-public: re-imagining democracy – english version

Call for papers – The politics of the unrepresentable

Online journal Re-public invites contributions for its upcoming special issue entitled “The politics of the unrepresentable”.[1] From the French banlieu riots in 2005 to their 2011 UK counterparts, from the politics of disruption and contagion of the Lulzsec and Anonymous hacking groups to the politics of “occupy everything” adopted by some strong tendencies within the global occupy movement, there seems to be a growing presence of contemporary radical political dynamics that are largely untranslatable in existing political terms and that cannot be easily represented within the existing political sphere.

A common strategy of these new politics is the refusal to articulate political demands in the existing public sphere. The “no demands” or “infinite demands” strategy is the embodiment of the call for no mediation, a refusal to utter a discourse that can be mediated through representative political bodies (be it pro or anti-government, right or left wing), and, the argument goes, for preventing their ultimate appropriation by existing power structures, or capturing by financial and political interests. more .. »

Call for papers – Porno-graphics and porno-tactics: desire, affect and representation in pornography

Pornography’s inscriptions in representation have troubled feminist writers, who since the 1970s have been critically addressing issues related to the presentation of the female body. Porn, it was contended, is for the most part a heterosexist genre, and its market circulation serves male libidinal pleasure, fixing the position of pleasure for both wo/men and abiding by patriarchal, gendered and sexually imposed norms. Later, the term was reclaimed under a critical re-perception of porn, cast as a gaze upon different others. This time race, religion, class came to the forefront. From Rosi Braidotti (m.s.) who addresses issues of racism in islamophobic representations such as the documentary ‘Fitna’, to the many commentators who related pornography to acts of torture, most notably in Abu-Ghraib (McClintock 2009) – pornography becomes a ‘concept metaphor’ that haunts autonomy (the laws of the self) through an heteronomous (laws of the other) affect (cf. Nancy 2007). Similarly, in debates over forced sex-work, the voyeuristic humanitarian gaze produces its Others either by sexualizing the other’s body, or by desexualizing the human in it. more .. »

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