Europeanisation of the Contemporary Far Right

Generation Identity and Fortress Europe

Anita Nissen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032128306
• eBook ISBN: 9781000547085
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Europeanisation of the Contemporary Far Right explores the role of transnational European identity in far-right mobilisation strategies.

Focusing on the national members of two trans-European far-right coalitions – Generation Identity and Fortress Europe – the author explores the extent to which European far-right extra-parliamentary actors Europeanise their mobilisation. Drawing on social movement literature, the book argues that national extra-parliamentary actors' Europeanisation processes are influenced by their political and discursive opportunities and resources. Focusing on the groups' mobilisation during the 'refugee crisis' (2015–2017), the analysis considers the groups' frames, collective action, and coalition-building in the period, finding that the depth of the groups' resources particularly affects their capacity to mobilise.

This book will be of interest to scholars, students, and civil society actors in fields related to the far right, European studies, social movements, and migration.

1 Introduction Europeanisation, the far-right, and the ‘refugee crisis’

DOI: 10.4324/9781003226604-1

Due to the EU’s expanded judicial and political competences, the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 brought EU policies and institutions much closer to the European population (Graziano & Vink 2012). As the new treaty turned the EU into a space of contention for social movements and other collective actors, they increasingly began turning their claims towards the European polity. This led scholars to begin exploring how such actors manoeuvred the EU’s multilevel governance structure and its particular rules and norms (della Porta & Caiani 2009). Later, this research agenda was elaborated to also consider the extra-institutional, transnational setting, including the trans-European relations between civil societal contenders outside of the EU institutions. Newer definitions of social movement Europeanisation thus argue that it “occurs when movements collaborate, or make horizontal communicative linkages with movements in other countries, contest authorities beyond the state, frame issues as European and claim a European identity” (Bourne & Chatzopoulou 2015: 34). In other words, the EU arena offers new possible protest targets but also a shared space of contention for collective actors from across Europe (Monforte 2014).

Currently, we know a lot about left-wing bottom-up Europeanisation, including the actors’ strategies, frame shifts, and transnational collaborative relations (della Porta & Caiani 2009; Monforte 2014; Parks 2015). Yet, while this literature continuously expands (Caiani & Graziano 2018), so far, few scholars have explored the Europeanisation of far-right extra-parliamentary¹ actors (for partial exceptions, see Caiani & Kröll 2015; Denes 2012). The conceptualisation of the ‘far right’ term is highly contested. Yet, scholars broadly agree on several defining features, namely, that far-right actors adhere to (exclusionary) nationalism, anti-liberalism, and authoritarianism (Camus & Lebourg 2017). More elaborately, Ravndal and Bjørgo (2018) define far-right actors as sharing an “authoritarian inclination, that is, an inherent need for sameness, oneness, and group authority, resulting in intolerance towards diversity and individual autonomy, and some form of nativism or ethnic nationalism” (2018: 6). Yet, inside this political spectrum, we find a plethora of expression and organisation forms, requiring a further division. In Europe, there are two main sub-categories, namely the ‘radical’ and the ‘extreme’ right, which again are divisible into the ‘Populist right’, ‘Anti-Islam’, and ‘New right’, plus ‘(Neo-)Fascist’ and ‘(Neo-)Nazi’ groups, respectively. These distinctions are further explained below.

The far right and Europeanisation

Returning to Europeanisation, nothing indicates that far-right actors should not Europeanise their contention to the same degree as the left (albeit not in the same manner). For one, many “movements on the right” strongly criticise the EU, as they “feel that national identities are under threat, not only as a result of loss of national sovereignty, but also due to EU policies that foster immigration and cultural pluralism and integration” (Flesher Fominaya 2014: 4). Numerous far-right actors formulate such sentiments, both at the extra- and parliamentary levels (Vasilopoulou 2018). However, while many left-wing groups and activists also express EU-criticism, for instance in their transnational discussions about, and calls for, an ‘alternative Europe’ (see Agustín 2017; della Porta & Caiani 2009), their critique is usually not as dismissive as those on the right. Della Porta and Caiani (2009), in fact, refer to most of such actors as Critical Europeanists, as they advocate for alternative policies, yet still call for more EU competences in a given area. Conversely, the two scholars define Eurosceptics as actors, who wish to limit EU competences and strongly criticise most of its policies, thereby objecting to the idea of an ‘Ever closer Union’. It is in the latter category, we find most far-right actors today, commonly voicing strong dismay, if not outright disdain, of the institutions.

Yet, aside from far-right party Europeanisation (e.g. through EP-participation and deliberation) (see Almeida 2010; Brack & Startin 2015), and more general European far-right transnational networking (Hafez 2014; Zúquete 2015), we lack knowledge about far-right Europeanisation processes regarding protest politics,² despite their strong engagement with EU policies and politics. Most previous research on Eurosceptic extra-parliamentary actors has considered transnational progressive mobilisations (Agustín 2017; della Porta & Caiani 2009; Monforte 2014). Moreover, studies tend to focus on mobilisations that, while being critical, still largely agree with the EU’s general raison d’être, thereby omitting actors, who oppose the international organisation. Such actors often belong to the European far right, a group that “represents an important reservoir of contestation against the European polity” (Almeida 2010: 250),³ but whose contestation is still somewhat underexplored.

This research gap needs amending, particularly in light of recent events, which demonstrated the role of far-right contestation for the member states’ EU policies. Both at the Dutch referendum on the ‘Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement’ in 2016 and the referendum on the British EU-exit (‘Brexit’), far-right extra- and parliamentary actors were highly vocal and to some extent determining for the negative end-results. Similarly, the European far right also strongly contested the 2018 ratification of the UN’s ‘Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration’, an agreement which several member states ended up abandoning.

The far right thus increasingly challenges the EU institutions, their ethos, and their role as a main European decision-making polity. While the COVID-19 pandemic has imposed an (at least temporary) end to the onmarch of the European far right, EU developments in recent years show that the threats of nationalism, illiberalism, and member-state retrenchment must be taken seriously. Considering the EU’s more or less self-created crises within the last decade (financial, legitimacy, and refugee crisis, to name a few), a strong Eurosceptic far right forms an “inconvenient solidarity” for EU proponents (Caiani & Pavan 2017). Moreover, as the far right’s various “alliance structures […] oppose and distort current efforts towards transnational democratisation, particularly at the European level” (Ibid.: 147), both the path-dependent ‘Ever Closer Union’ project of the Treaty of Rome (1957) and the EU’s normative reputation are endangered, along with any ambitions of EU federalisation. As the current events in Hungary and Poland illustrate, “Fidesz and Law & Justice have mobilized nativists against a multilevel and multicultural Europe” (Hooghe & Marks 2019: 1127), exerting strong far-right pressure on the EU institutions, and illustrating the continued strong relevance of national interests for further European integration. While neofunctionalists assume that the activism by the European Commission and the European Court of Justice may lead to more supranationalism (Ibid.), unilateralist decisions taken in recent years by the EU member states, their ideological conflicts at the negotiation table, and the strong general politicisation of EU politics (Börzel & Risse 2018) indicate a bleaker EU future. This makes it extremely relevant to consider if, how, and when European far-right extra-parliamentary actors mobilise against, or around, EU policies, to better understand the (potential) challenge posed by such actors.

Setting out to fill this research gap, the book explores how and why far-right extra-parliamentary actors Europeanise their contention. Empirically, it focuses on the member groups of the two transnational far-right coalitions Generation Identity and Fortress Europe. It explores these actors’ frames, collective action, and transnational networks during the ‘refugee crisis’, emphasising the role they assigned to the EU and Europe. Before introducing the two specific cases, the following section first outlines the rationale for such a theoretical, empirical, and analytical focus.

Far-right Europeanisation of protests, networks, and frames

Since the early 1990s, immigration has become one of the most salient topics for civil societal political contention, mainly due to the role of the populist right. Based on protest event data, Hutter and Kriesi (2013) show that up until that point, most protests were around cultural liberalist claims, where after immigration-related protests took the lead. Such protests can involve both pro- and anti-immigration actors. However, the general European right-wing turn infers that far-right extra-parliamentary actors have improved mobilisation opportunities as the political “climate” has become “less repressive” (Mudde 2017a: 609). Moreover, the left’s lacking ability to agree on a common future political direction provides further possibilities for far-right gains.

Due to both issue-congruence and alliance-building, the past decades have also witnessed a rapprochement between the European political parties and the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Europeanisation, the far-right, and the ‘refugee crisis’
• 2 Social movement Europeanisation and far-right collective action, coalition-building, and frames
• 3 Introducing Generation Identity: origins, resources, opportunities, and protest actions
• 4 Introducing Fortress Europe: origins, resources, opportunities, and protest actions
• 5 Framing Generation Identity: shared threat perceptions and visions of a European ‘Us’ of ethnically homogeneous peoples
• 6 Framing Fortress Europe: a ‘resistance’ movement against Islam and the political mainstream
• 7 Europeanisation of Generation Identity’s collective action: jointly mobilising in the defence of Europe
• 8 Europeanisation of Fortress Europe’s collective action: domestic protests against the ‘Islamisation’ of Europe
• 9 The trans-European Generation Identity coalition: sustained by a strong leadership
• 10 The Fortress Europe network: event-specific and lacking professional leadership
• 11 Conclusion: far-right Europeanisation?
• Epilogue: the groups’ developments from January 2018–July 2021
• Appendix: methods and data collection
• Bibliography
• Index