The Rise of the Far Right

Social Media and the Far Right

Full-time Politician, Part-time Influencer: Social Media and the Dutch Far Right

During the last general Dutch elections in the spring of 2021, social media played a key role. Almost every political party tried to increase their social media visibility through Instagram posts, Facebook ads, and Twitter. This in order to spread their political message and reach out to potential new voters. However, one Dutch party seems to have 'won' the social media game: the far right 'Forum for Democracy' and its flamboyant frontman, Thierry Baudet. The brand 'Baudet' Baudet reading a book in the Dutch House of Representatives. ©BRUNOPRESS Ever since the beginning of the party in 2016, 'Forum for Democracy...
Social Media and the Far Right

About us: Social Media and the Far Right

Featured Image retrieved from theconstantrevolution.com Hello and welcome to all readers, We would like to welcome you to our blog. This blog will take a deeper dive into the connection of the rise of the far-right parties in Europe and social media. We are four students from Maastricht University, Macy Morris, Julia Roig, Zoë Schneider, and Sofia Cancino Corral, in the Netherlands and are in our second year of the bachelor’s program of European Studies. Social media is a new phenomenon which politics have not been exposed to for very long. Social media has reshaped the way our society works....
far-right observer

About Us

Hello there, Welcome to the far-right observer!  We are glad that this blog caught your attention. This blog is managed by Boris, Emma, Isabel, Leire, and Luisa. We are second year students studying at Maastricht University. Coming from different national backgrounds, we aim at highlighting the rise of the far-right from different angles. The focus of our blog is to explain and understand the factors that have pushed EU citizens to support far-right parties. There is no general definition for the term “right-wing party”. When looking at Europe, we can see that in different countries, right-wing parties have different positions on topics...
far-right observer

Team Reflection

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash Approaching the end of this challenge, it is time for us to reflect on the past few weeks. We thoroughly enjoyed working together as our skill sets overlapped in a valuable way. We did encounter a few obstacles along the way which provided us with opportunities to grow and to be confronted with our shortcomings. Starting off, our first obstacle was trying to find a common ground for our blog posts. Rather than choosing the umbrella approach, we decided to use a chain reaction system, where the conclusion of one post would naturally lead...
Social Media and the Far Right

Reflection on Teamwork

Featured image retrieved from liquidplanner.com When working in groups, you are faced with certain challenges. Usually, you work individually. You have gotten used to a certain “routine” which works for you. What we realized within this group assignment was, how challenging it is to combine all of our different studying and preparation mentalities in order to become an efficient, well working group. This took some time in the beginning but after two or three meetings we had it figured out and were able to even use these different mentalities to our advantage.  One of the main problems we faced was...
Far Right in Time and Space

Reflection on teamwork

Managed team in office meeting at tabletop view vector illustration. Teamwork concept. The team at table office, meeting and management brainstorming Working as a team to give life to this blog was an undoubtedly stimulating and challenging experience. We here reflect on the way we worked together to reach our goal of writing a blog about the development of fascism and the current reality of far-right parties in Europe. In particular, we will explain how we chose the members of this team, we will present how we organized the work, what we liked about working in a team, the difficulties...
‘Us v. Them’: the Strategic Use of Religion in Far-right Parties

The Defenders of Europe’s Christianity

Photo by Anna Hecker on Unsplash In Western Europe, increasingly fewer people are attending Church. Secularisation has been shaping Europe’s identity since the Enlightenment, creating a barrier between politics and religion. Nevertheless, this barrier has not always been crystal clear, not even nowadays, as religion is a rather popular topic in everyday political news. Radical right parties’ components have been invoking Christianity in their discourses, while hoping to attract voters. This use of religion in politics has been puzzling academic scholars. There is an ongoing academic debate concerning the appropriate terminology to refer to the far-right. While not all academics...
far-right observer

Social media versus reality: How representative is this tool in assessing far-right opinions?

Photo by Nick Markus on Unsplash.com An exciting new medium? Social media has been an exciting development for politics. Facebook and Twitter in particular have let academics gather large samples of data to shed light on discussions between far-right supporters. But how representative is this data? These sites are mostly used as a platform by devoted and extreme far-right followers. This means that we do not get a complete picture of the rest of the more moderate supporters. To add to this problem, it seems that up to a third of far-right social media followers end up not following suit...
Globalization,Posts

How Globalization Pushed Working-Class Voters Towards Far-Right Parties

The leader of the French National Rally Marine Le Pen in 2012 with workers of PSA, a car manufacturer. Credits: Simon Daval – Maxppp The rise of far-right parties increasingly came to the forefront in recent years due to the good electoral results of these parties in Europe. Lega Nord in Italy, the National Rally in France, or the Alternative for Germany on the other side of the Rhine are not merely anti-establishment and rebellious parties anymore but seek to exercise increasingly prominent political responsibilities. Thus, understanding and analysing this phenomenon, without settling for hasty moral judgments, appeared to me to be the appropriate intellectual response. I therefore decided, a few weeks...
Far-Right Narratives

How the Economic Crisis Came in Handy to CasaPound Italia

* Featured image from: https://www.casapounditalia.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMMAGINE-2.png The rise of far-right parties in Europe is still a persistent phenomenon. In this regard, CasaPound Italia (CPI) is the perfect concrete example in Italian politics. This blog is relevant because it represents a useful insight into the neo-fascist ideology of the twenty-first century. CasaPound was created out of a social necessity in the early 2000s, and it was viewed as a solution to the economic crisis that was sweeping Italy at the time. Italy’s precarious position during the economic crisis represented fertile ground for CasaPound to spread its political ideals and the party's ideas....
Far-Right Narratives

Money, Money, Money – but Not for Migrants

Over the last decade Europe has witnessed a rise in support for far-right parties. The focus of this particular blog entry will be the economic narratives which far-right parties use to steer voters towards them. In particular this can be observed when looking back at Great Britain and the UK Independence Party (UKIP). What is the UK Independence Party? The UK Independence Party is a right wing party which was founded in September of 1993 and gained a lot of popularity between 2010 and 2016. In 2014 the spotlight was cast on them as they gained 27% of the popular...
Social Media and the Far Right

The Rethoric of the Far Right on Social Media

Header image: El Confidencial Golden Dawn, FVD, Vox, AfD. All of these parties have seen a rise in their voter base in the 2000. Parties which previously had no place in parliaments are now getting voted in by a sizable amount of the population. While there are various reasons as to why, one of the main causes is the rise of social media. However, speaking of the media is always such a broad terminology. There are different social media which use different means of communication. This blog will discuss two forms of communication. One being a more conventional form of...
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