https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1193-8446- Views
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CloseAndrew Vitek, Blind Spots and Backdoors: The Growth of the Global Far-right and the Paralysis of Liberal Democracies, International Studies Review, Volume 26, Issue 2, June 2024, viae027, https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viae027
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Extract
Introduction
The growing prominence of the global far-right movement both in and out of mainstream politics continues to be a primary focus of extremism studies across a range of academic disciplines. Both shocking victories at the ballot box across multiple regions as well as rising extremist violence over the past several years have prompted scholars and other observers to interrogate not just the cause of these trends but also why democratic regimes have struggled to confront the forces of the far-right as they have done in the past with other extremist threats. In this review essay, I examine three contemporary works that directly address with the escalating challenges posed to liberal democracies by the growth of far-right political movements and extremism. Despite each work’s distinct approach, Cythnia Miller-Idriss, Cas Mudde, Aurelian Mondon, and Aaron Winter all aim to provide an answer to these questions. In all three cases, both answers are heavily rooted within the phenomenon of “mainstreaming,” highlighting the degree to which far-right theories, rhetoric, and talking points have increasingly penetrated mainstream politics across a range of liberal democracies. Despite this common focus, each project seeks to explain this process of mainstreaming in distinct ways. Mudde roots much of his analysis in traditional interactions between political parties and civil society, while Miller-Idriss’s more structural approach examines the physical and virtual spaces that drive far-right radicalization. Mondon and Winter, by contrast, frame the process of far-right mainstreaming as a much more top-down and broadly normative process, arguing that liberal elites within politics, the media, and academia have inadvertently created spaces and platforms where far-right extremism can thrive.
