Gabriella Lazaridis’s research while affiliated with University of Leicester and other places

The UK chapter by Don Flynn and Gabriella Lazaridis presents the version of populism as a mode of doing politics on the ascendency in Britain since the 1980s in the form of the “authoritarian populism” of Margaret Thatcher’s governments. The subsequent New Labour administration rested on populist methodology promoted through a “progressive lens.” The rise of the “insurgent” populist party, UKIP, is understood as, in Arditi’s phase, an example of the “threatening underside” of the democratic discourse, when conflicts within the political order are heightened and the sense of fragmentation becomes more pervasive across society. As the political discourse revolves around definitions of “the people” and presumptions of its interests, populism also provokes reactions at the base of society, giving rise to what we term the “antibodies” of populism. The processes that give rise to these actions and the way they represent themselves in the politics are considered in a series of case studies.

Recent years have seen the rise in popularity of far-right populist organisations, movements and parties. Issues related to gender and sexuality have been constantly present in the public discourse of far-right populist political parties and movements. The Internet has provided a new alternative platform not only for politics but also for all other human communications. New media have entrenched in everyday life and have created a new sense of belonging. New media manage to enhance democratic deliberation and create a fruitful environment for virtual communities to develop. The construction and legitimation of difference and inequality - based on biological or cultural arguments - is central for sexist practices within the far-right populists. In terms of religion in the Nordic and Western European countries, for example France, the UK and Austria, the parties of the far-right populists do not engage with strong religious rhetoric.

This article focuses on forms of opposition to ‘othering’ and far-right politics in present-day Greece. This opposition takes a variety of forms, comes from a range of actors, and is motivated by a number of concerns with differing assessments of what should be done. More specifically, the article focuses on the far right in Greece and discrimination, hate speech, and hate crime against the ‘other’ from the perspectives of those who are active in mobilizing against racism and counteracting the country’s populist and neo-nationalist turn. Concentrating on the forces opposing discrimination, the analysis describes present-day social movements and actions from grassroots to governmental level, their strategies and politics, their diversity of thought and action, and their contribution in providing the resources for social change, and the production of new meaning in the context of anti-racism in Greece. Trying to provide answers as to how social movements and activists produce meaning, we argue that activists develop less intentional, inadvertent meanings which emerge in the course of the not-always conscious schemas of their struggle. This calls for a more dynamic explanation of the relationship between practice and meaning-making in social movement contexts.

Alledging the fundamental incompatibility between Western societies and Islam, the Counter-Jihad Movement has managed to become a transnational and online network that can be construed as an assortment of political parties, online communities, think tanks, and street movements. This paper aims to emphasise the emergence of this phenomenon, by analysing the western hegemonic discourse of online advocates and by providing a network analysis of the CJM. In this paper we first synthesise existing understandings of the wider CJM and offer an overview of counter-jihad discourse. We argue that online presence is a key characteristic of the CJM, and we enrich the understanding of CJM by looking at multispatial manifestastions of the CJM, in both digital and physical places. Social Network Analysis is employed to visualise and explain the social ties in the CJM-Network (CJM-N) based on data collected from the counter-jihad conferences that took place during the period 2007-2013. Furthermore, the online discourse of the CJM is examined by means of data mining on Twitter and the official websites and blogs. We examine ways in which the CJM-N has been developed and the reasons for the level of distribution and decentralisation within it. The emergence and wider embrace of internet technologies has had an impact on the social connections and the social organisation of the CJM as well as the ways it communicates and distributes information. SNA in this respect demonstrates that the claimed equal connectedness between the CJM-N participants and the empowering of the internet for the CJM discourse diverges from reality. In fact, there is a strong decentralisation of the CJM and clustering around certain nodes.

The aim of this chapter is to look at populism as a concept and its historical evolution across Europe, acknowledging some of the limitations, most notably its extreme fragility and chameleon-like qualities. It discusses its usage and style (populist narrative). It concentrates by and large on right-wing populism and views populism as a narrative rather than a distinct ideology, a form of an argument that pits an in-group (us) against an out-group (them). It illustrates how the rest of the book is structured: providing examples from interview material carried out with populist political parties and groups in eight EU member states (Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Slovenia and the UK), we reveal a ranging of ‘othering’ discourses and practices that encompass both minority groups such as migrants, Muslims and the LGBT community, and the political elites (in some cases, anti-elitism was as strong a focus for populist narratives as ‘othering’ behaviours); in each chapter we look at their target groups and commitments to recruiting and/or influencing young people in particular, and raise questions about the capacity of young people to contextualise the kinds of populist arguments they many encounter online. The introduction will show how timely and important is the topic addressed in this book: the (re-)emergence of rightist populism across Europe. Each country chapter contains original data in the form of face-to-face interviews with party activists and followers, and with focus groups from non-governmental organisations (NGOs), pro-migrant and pro-LGBT organisations, and explores their activities combating right-wing populist hate speech and crime. The strength and novelty of this book lies in its in-depth analysis of the rise of far-right populism, of the challenges it poses and of the way civil society and the state in different countries are developing ‘anti-bodies’ to combat this phenomenon.

This chapter examines the role of 'identitarian populism' in 'othering' and hate incidents, with a focus on three 'populist groups' in Britain, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), the British National Party (BNP) and the English Defence League (EDL). For the purpose of this chapter, fieldwork data from the RAGE project have been used, including interviews and ethnographic work with both the 'populist groups' along with a range of organisations who work with those who are presumed to be the victims of 'populist othering' and hate incidents or crime. Evidence suggest that the leadership of UKIP, BNP and EDL recognise the importance of a more popularised rhetoric, in order to attract the attention of the public. UKIP's approach against EU migration or the party’s homophobic sentiments and similarly, EDL's Islamophobic tactics, place the ‘other’ in the centre of their discourse. With the victim representatives agreeing on Gilroy’s (2012) point that it is mainstream culture and politics that have a greater impact on e.g. hate speech and hate crime in general the chapter concludes that the violent acts of the EDL, the rhetoric of UKIP and BNP and the inconsistent media coverage create a breeding environment for politics of fear.

Bearing in mind that the focus of all political parties remains the access to political power, they all not only attempt to acquire political power within government, but more importantly work towards its acquisition and maintenance. The paper examines the case of far right populism in three political parties in Greece, the Golden Dawn, LAOS and ANEL. Since 2007 different forms of far right populist parties have managed not only a successful parliamentary representation but also participation in coalition governments. With a realignment of the electorate away from the established political parties, far right populism, with rhetoric on nationalism, extremism, xenophobia and racism has achieved a strong impact. The analysis focuses on monitoring the thread that led to the support of such parties with a challenging level of legitimacy, and aims to propose a sense of a collective identity and a wider understanding of the popularised version of hate crimes in a profoundly entrapped country struggling to overcome a period of economic and socio-political crisis.

The results of the last European Elections of 2014 confirmed the rise of right and far right ‘populist’ parties across the EU. The success of a range of parties, such as Denmark’s Dansk Folskeparti, Slovenia’s Slovenska demokratska stranka, France’s Front National, Greece’s Golden Dawn, the United Kingdom Independence Party, Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement in Italy and the Austrian FPÖ, has been perceived as a political wave which is transforming the face of the European Parliament, and challenging at some level the hegemony of the ‘big four’ well-established European political forces that lead the Strasbourg’s assembly: the ALDE, EPP, S&D and Greens/ALE. As ‘populism’ has become a major issue in many EU countries, this collection aims to provide a critical understanding of related trends and recommend ways in which they can be challenged both in policy and praxis, by using the gender-race-ethnicity-sexual orientation intersectionality approach. This international volume combines extensive transnational comparative data analysis, as well as research at discursive, attitudinal and behavioural levels.