Hi! / Who are we? We are a group of four university students studying in Maastricht. What brought us together to create a blog was our mutual interest in the rise of the far-right in contemporary Europe. In our previous course, we were asked to write a literature review regarding interesting topics we found within the field. Now, we have come together to combine our work into our own mini-project to further elaborate on our research.
Our individual literature reviews
In her literature review, Anna primarily focused on understanding the comparisons between classic fascism and the new far-right. She paid specific attention to Donald Trump’s rhetoric and policies. Her goal in doing such research was to understand whether parallels can be drawn between classic fascism and current far-right parties. Therefore, she evaluated the possibility to view far-right parties as an expression of populism. Anna’s blog post will further elucidate her findings, whilst providing us with an improved perspective as to whether the term fascist is exemplary of modern far-right parties.
Oscar’s literature review takes a closer look at populism. He attempts to find the essential workings and ideas of right-wing populist parties and how their ideas distinguish them from left-wing populist parties. In his blog, he will also take a look at the “ losers of globalisation” theory in assisting the support of right-wing parties in contemporary Europe.
In Owain’s literature review he attempts to present how the Swedish Sverigedemokraterna have made such inroads in electoral politics. Upon answering this question, he later explains the response by the political establishment to their sudden rise. He supports his answer by citing what the Swedish political science community has also said about the rise of the party. Owain will look to further build upon why the Sverigedemokraterna has risen quickly in his upcoming blog post.
Cian’s literature review primarily looks at why the Spanish political party Vox has risen so quickly in Spain. He does this by explaining three socio-cultural explanations. Firstly, the pro-Catalonia independence movement, secondly, the splintering from Partido Popular and lastly the immigration crisis. He essentially posits that Vox’s rise can be explained through socio-cultural explanations rather than socio-economic. He will further explore his findings in his blog post.
Finding a common thread
We have decided that in our blog, we will first discuss the theory behind Fascism and whether it is worth linking classic Fascism to today’s far-right parties. Then we will discuss the theory behind Populism and whether this can be used as a better description for current far-right parties in Europe. The last two posts will be case studies of Spain and Sweden respectively. In these posts, we will look at VOX and the Sverigedemokraterna. Overall this blog focuses on the ideologies of far-right parties and how they managed to rise in prominence over the last decade.