For researchers looking from the outside, the small, impassioned worlds generated by the extreme right can seem, to say the least, deeply unappealing. The agendas of such extremists are often hopelessly unlikely to succeed, and the views expressed by activists render them beyond the pale for most...
Several political parties and governments around the world have centered their commitment to countering the radical right on tackling hate and racism. The most recent example was the announcement by the German cabinet in late 2020 to spend €1 billion ($1.2 billion) for a four-year program on...
For the past decade, I have been researching the impact of Islamophobia on social media. After the outbreak of COVID-19, I was commissioned, alongside my colleague Roxana Khan Williams, by the chair and independent members of the Anti-Muslim Hatred Working Group to produce an evidenced-based...
While this article is not about the extreme right’s responses to COVID-19, thinking about this issue briefly does give us a clear example of what it does focus on: the groupuscular dynamics of the extreme right. Across the globe, myriad extreme-right organizations have been finding ways to...
In February 1909, a strange new manifesto appeared, first in the Bologna-based Italian- language newspaper Gazzetta dell’ Emiliana, and then in French in Le Figaro. Readers of the declaration might have struggled to work out whether the manifesto was political or aesthetic in character. In the...
In September, the highest-ranking counterterrorism officer in Britain, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, declared the far-right to be the fastest growing terrorist threat to Britain. According to the Met, in the last year, a quarter of all terrorism related arrests were of...
In 2018, the President of the United States Donald Trump posted a rather enigmatic tweet about“farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers” by the South African government. What initially seemed puzzling was soon everywhere. A few days later, during the former UK...
As the recent furor surrounding British comedian Jo Brand’s comments on the BBC Radio 4 Heresy program attest, there is very little clarity about what does — and, importantly, what does not — constitute hate speech. In what was clearly a joke, Brand asked why anyone would bother throwing a...
“Namaste, brother” says Chaitanya, a pudgy, rosy-cheeked man from Charlotte, North Carolina, smiling broadly at me and my friend Alison. He wears a sleeveless orange tank top and white cotton balloon pants. He tells us the moniker was bestowed on him after an elaborate naming ceremony conducted...
In banning the far right from its platform, Facebook acted like a responsible media provider. In April, Facebook announced its decision to “ban” 12 UK-based individuals and organizations linked to the radical right. Arguing that each sought to "spread hate," Facebook explained that the...
