The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right (Oxford Handbooks) by Jens Rydgren

Author:Jens Rydgren
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

RESISTANCE AND REBELLION

A second set of cultural explanations for far right wing engagement has focused less on mechanisms of social integration through identity and belonging and more on mechanisms of social isolation. In this set of explanations, far right engagement is driven in part by anger and a rejection of societal norms or of mainstream society and its institutions through breaking taboos or lashing out against a system that is perceived as corrupt or as having “failed” an individual. Scholars have argued that youth engagement in the far right is driven in part by a desire to rebel or lash out (Van der Valk 2014). The recent work of Simi and colleagues on military experience and far right terrorism, for example, examines the fact that a disproportionate number of convicted far right extremists in the United States possess military experience (Simi, Bubolz, and Hardman 2013). Through in-depth analysis of a number of individual cases, they find that during the transition to far right terrorism from far right extremism, individuals develop a political framing of their own personal experiences, “reframing personal failure as ‘unfair betrayal’ resulting from a corrupt system” (657). In their research, the experience of involuntary exit from the military created significant anger toward an “unjust system” (660) and helped facilitate individuals’ radicalization process toward far right terrorism. This is not a straightforward formula; rather, they find that “anger finds greater focus after the person begins affiliating with similarly situated individuals” (662).

Related research has suggested that far right wing participation—particularly for young people—is a mode of resistance and cultural subversion. Social movement research has demonstrated, for example, that social spaces and social movement “scenes” can aid in enacting and expressing countercultural and oppositional cultures (Poletta 2001; Leach and Haunss 2009; Goodwin and Jasper 2004; Futrell and Simi 2004). I have argued in the German case, for example, that the deployment of coded, commercialized symbols in brands such as Thor Steinar, which are popular with the far right, may be a conduit of youth resistance to a perceived pressure to conform to societal expectations about what youth should be (Wallace and Kovacheva 1996). For example, elsewhere I detail several ways in which far right wing youth in Germany deploy images and references to death (Miller-Idriss 2017b) as aggressive displays that provoke fear, anxiety, and horror by threatening or even terrifying viewers. The use of death symbols is also a countercultural move against prevailing societal and cultural norms and taboos that render death silent and invisible. This would support van der Valk and Wagenaar’s (2010) findings that the extreme right is “a place of excitement, provocation and violence” for youth. In sum, explanations rooted in resistance, rejection, and anger suggest that far right wing engagement may be for some a form of youth protest or an expression of anger against mainstream society and its institutions (Shoshan 2016).

Of course, these culturally based explanations—that far right engagement is explained by issues of identity and belonging or by issues of rebellion and resistance—are not mutually exclusive.

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