Between the lost generation and contestatory citizenship
Anna Krasteva
Introduction
‘Youth’ is a fluid concept and a fluid phenomenon. This is, first, because of the different cultural and social contexts that define different age boundaries of ‘youth’; and second, because of the very intensive temporality and rapid transition from one status to another, each conferring different civil and political rights; and third, because of the dynamic political socialisation. Far-right populism is also a fluid concept and a fluid phenomenon: it stubbornly refuses to fit into the Procrustean bed of definitions (for the different definitions, see Chapter 1) and it encompasses a wide range of phenomena – from nationalism to extremism to radicalism. The difference between these last two is significant for a number of authors, who make a distinction between extreme and radical right, where the first opposes the essence of democracy – namely, popular sovereignty and majority rule – while the second accepts that essence, but opposes key features of liberal democracy – namely, pluralism and the protection of minority rights (Mudde 2007). Indexes have been elaborated for measuring the degree of radicalisation, assigning an increasing score to the different forms of action – conventional, demonstrative, expressive, confrontational, light violence, heavy violence – according to their growing degree of radicalism (Caiani and Parenti 2013: 207).
For the purposes of this analysis, I will follow the approach of Cas Mudde (2014), whose concept of ‘the far right’ includes both extreme- and radical-right groups. This flexible concept encompasses a wide range of parties, from the Progress Party (FRP) in Norway to the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and Golden Dawn in Greece; as well as organisations like the Bulgarian National Union (BNU; in Bulgaria) and the Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR; in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark) or associations like Lealtà – Azione (in Italy); marches such as the Salem March in Stockholm and the Lukov March in Sofia; subcultures of soccer fans, skinheads and digital hate networks. Understanding how and why far-right parties, groups and subcultures become attractive to young people is the first objective of the chapter.
What happens when two fluid concepts and phenomena meet and interfere with each other? They do not crystallise into firm, clear figures, trends and patterns; on the contrary, they multiply fluidities, problematise boundaries, contest rigid concepts. Hence, this analysis will focus on the diverse manifestations of far-right youth populism and its fluid and dynamic boundaries with agency, identities, (sub)cultures and citizenship. The analysis will be based on Paul Ricoeur’s concept of Oneself as Another (Ricoeur 1990) – a concept informed by the interaction of identity and ipseity, by the understanding of the complex intertwining of narratives that weave fluid, dynamic identities: insider narratives designed for the micro-community; insider narratives designed for the macro-society; outsider narratives designed for the micro-community; outsider narratives designed for the macrosociety. Although the present study cannot cover the whole spectrum of narratives, identities and the complex interactions between them, it takes this fluid complexity into account. The analysis will focus on two poles. The first is centered on the second type of narratives – insider narratives designed for outsiders; the interviews with young activists, conducted under the RAGE Project, are precisely of this type. This pole allows us to outline the image promoted by young extremists to society at large, an image which is often that of people devoted to the patriotic cause. The other pole is dominated by the outside gaze, which labels, guides, evaluates. The activists themselves are situated in different positions across the wide spectrum of far-right agency, forming a bricolage of identities, images, imaginaries. Two hypotheses – those of the lost generation and of contestatory citizenship – will be examined from the point of view of their sphere of validity in explaining far-right youth. Those two conceptions differ, both in their subject of research and in their analytical focus. The lost generation conception looks for the socio-economic and political factors for the emergence and development of youth extremism. The contestatory-citizenship conception focuses on the dynamic processes of the construction of youth agency as political commitment, identity formation and citizenship in societies marked by ‘expansion of conflict’ (Schattschneider 1975), ‘protest populism’ (Kriesi 2014: 361) and ‘counter-democracy’ (Rosanvallon 2006).
The youth connection
Every party has young members, supporters, voters, fans. Is radical youth activism simply part of politics-as-usual? This chapter will argue that it is not, demonstrating the privileged and intimate relationships between the far right and youth and their systemic affinities.
The most remarkable characteristic of the meeting of radicalism and youth is the early age at which it takes place (Mudde 2014). A young activist of the French Front National (FN) boasted that his father joined the FN at fourteen years old and even now, at forty-five years old, remains ‘very, very active’ (Benveniste and Pingaud 2014: 16).1 Another young activist, whose parents are both activists of the FN, proudly pointed out that in 1981, aged twenty-one, her father was the FN’s youngest candidate in the local elections in the region (Benveniste and Pingaud 2014: 16).2 A militant from the Bulgarian National Union said:
I’m a patriot at heart. I’ve been a nationalist ever since I was at school, for as long as I can remember. I spent some time in other organisations, too, but I discovered myself and my ideas in the Bulgarian National Union when I joined it quite a few years ago and I’ve remained a member ever since.3
Radicalism is reaching out to, and attracting, teenagers. Future voters but present extremists, the very young prove to be particularly attractive to extremist leaders, as they are protected by the law. According to the president of the Afghan community in Athens, Golden Dawn recruits young people from a very young age and they participate as minors in action squads that attack immigrants. In this way, if they are caught by the police, they will be treated more leniently (Konsta and Lazaridis 2014: 34).
‘Youth are a strategic pool of eager supporters and future electors: 24% of Jobbik’s supporters are too young to vote’ (Saltman 2011: 122). Extremism precedes citizenship. Many young people join extremist groups, circles and organisations long before they come of voting age. Before the state and political society grants them the right to make electoral choices, they have already made their political choice.
Whereas the first characteristic of the meeting of youth and extremism applies at the micro-level – political socialisation and early formation of political identity – the second characteristic refers to the meso-level – a change in the character of the radical right itself, its rejuvenation. This is the most significant trend: ‘In just one generation, a radical transformation in the demographic base of the right has meant that popular support for the right wing is largely cemented in working-class youth, rather than in lingering Nazi party members from WWII’ (Miller-Idriss 2014: 243). This transformation consists not merely in growth in the number of far-right young people, but in a new turn in far-right movements. Youth have become not just a key target group, but the main characteristic of radical-right organisations. Asked how he would characterise his organisation, the leader of the Bulgarian National Union replied: ‘We are, first of all, a youth organisation, and second, we are a nationalist organisation.’4 If before the 1980s the radical right recruited people mostly from the older and more ideologically identifiable groups, the new radical mobilisations in recent years are younger, less organised in parties and more fluidly connected online and offline: ‘Accompanying the shift toward youthful activism has been a trend away from classic, membership-based organizational forms. The young perpetrators are less likely than their predecessors to be ideologically sophisticated and organizationally connected’ (Watts 2014: 150). Revolutions love young people. Paradoxically, so do counter-revolutions. One of the privileged terrains of youth extremism is post-communism. That is where revolution and counter-revolution meet and intensify each other (Kürti 1998).
Intensive as the meeting of youth with the far right may be, it has not led to a symmetric distribution on the map of the far right: young people prefer less political parties than youth organisations, such as the English Defence League (UK), Movimento Giovani Padani and CasaPound (Italy), Les Identitaires (France) and the National Rebirth of Poland. Youth organisations are the political formation where far-right youths feel ‘at home’, where they feel they are both ‘the head and the heart’:
In political parties, the young are a labour force. Within Generation Identity we are the head and the heart. Among us, youth command youth. We are comrades, friends, brothers, a clan. More than a youth movement, we are the youth itself in movement.
(Les Identitaires)5
Leadership in ‘serious’ politics – in other words, in parties – continues to be occupied and dominated by seasoned politicians, such as Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Nigel Farage. Young people, however, are boldly entering into a territory that was, until recently, the preserve of professionals: Jobbik began as a youth group, and youth are a key factor in its success as the strongest radical party in Eastern Europe; the Sweden Democrats have young leaders and a strong core of young activists (Mudde 2014). ‘I like it that they are very young. The leadership is made up solely of young people, too. True patriots, nationalists, but also very ambitious. Here there is a way forward for young people, for their ideas’,6 stated a young supporter of the Bulgarian National Union.
The constellation of reasons for the inseparable connection between the far-right and youth includes a theoretical one. Theoretical attention is asymmetrically focused on the quadrangle of ideology – parties – voters – activists: whilst the first three get the lion’s share, research on activists is still on the periphery of the theoretical map. Activists are the most neglected issue (Eatwell and Mudde 2006) of the radical right’s studies. The first comprehensive cross-national study, Extreme Right Activists in Europe: Through the Magnifying Glass, was published less than a decade ago, in 2006, by Bert Klandermans and Nona Mayer. This neglect holds true for radical youth activism (Mudde 2014). Paradoxically, this theoretical deficit lends radical youth activism a certain enigmatic quality, which is often presented as attractive.
There is a place for everybody and everybody should stay in his place
The more formally structured the organization, the less attractive it is to young people, and the less important their roles within it are. This applies to all youths, not just those of the extreme right.
(Mudde 2014: 3)
Here, I disagree with Cas Mudde – one of the most renowned theorists and researchers of the radical right. Measuring radical-right youth’s participation through the liberal understanding of political involvement is seeing similarities where there are differences – and those differences are substantial. Our field work identified less liberal youths enjoying fluid organisations and more authoritarian personalities strongly attracted to order and discipline: ‘Yes, we have a very strict discipline. We receive rigorous instructions. They [the organisation] are very well organised and want to organise us too’,7 stated a seventeen-year-old activist. ‘What I also like very much is that there is clear order and discipline’,8 a thirty-two-year-old university graduate who owns a private business points out, explaining why he finds a far-right organisation attractive. Leaders and activists speak in one voice. A leader of a far-right organisation is explicit:
We are guided by the unity-of-command principle and that is why, for example, there is no voting in our organisation. Decisions are made by the person responsible at the respective level, who is authorised to make such decisions. Of course, he is advised to consult other people in order to make the best decision, but he is the sole decision-maker and the sole person accountable for those decisions. One of the major problems of today’s parliamentary democracy is that no one is accountable for the wrong decisions made in the State. And this is the main difference between us and the other organisations.9
Order and discipline is conceived not as a leadership strategy, but as a ticket to the vibrant community of co-believers. Indoctrination reaches highs: the stricter the control, the more poetic the description:
There are specially [appointed] people who see to it that we follow the rules, yes. If someone breaks the rules, they can remove him from the march without any explanation. They’ve even told us how to carry the flags properly: we are to carry them at an angle of 45 degrees, not in resting on the shoulder or in some other way. But the most awesome thing are the torches they hand us out – for them, too, there are specially [appointed] people who light them for us.10
Every culture of political organisation indicates what is forbidden and what is possible, good and bad, inside and outside, ritual and subversive, ordered and disordered, important and accessory, imposes marks and frames, gives meaning to life in the group and to political life in general (Johnston and Klandermans 1995). This is particularly true for radical youth organisations united by the need to express and share hate: ‘Being a Nazi means I’m part of something, part of a group. It gives me a chance to express my hate’, says Andrew from a working-class Stockholm suburb (Kimmel 2014: 68). The more crisis-ridden, uncertain and destructive the world becomes, the more the need grows for a well-ordered, structured community that can compensate for the macro-deficits at the micro-level of groups:
In the Greek context youth participates in identitarian populist parties such as the Golden Dawn, in order to feel a sort of ‘belonging’, a sense of ‘security’ and protection against a collapsing world. Especially Golden Dawn with its military-like organisation of the youth provides a sort of structure and stability in a disintegrating and deconstructed society.
(Kosta and Lazaridis 2014: 34)
Discipline and hierarchy, law and order weave the threads of the far-right youth community, where there is a place for everybody, but everybody should stay in his place.
The lost generation
In Italy every day you consume social tragedies such as youth unemployment, which reached the peak of 40%, and the failure of small businesses…. There are real issues that take away more and more opportunities from the children of this land, from the young people that are doomed to a future increasingly dark and increasingly uncertain …11
(Campani 2014a: 56)
This gloomy forecast by a young activist of Forza Nuova introduces us to the logic of the social and political causes of the frustration that drives people to look for radical solutions. The losers of the crisis/modernisation/globalisation is among the most influential concepts for understanding the ‘why’ of far-right youth. Wilhelm Heitmeyer (1987) explains right-wing extremism as a consequence of social and economic change and locates it at the edge of society, where youths suffer from lack of integration and marginalisation (Heitmeyer 1987, cited in Gabriel 2014: 44). The theory holds that unemployment, both at the national and individual level, ‘leads to marginalization, which leads to political frustration and extremism’ (Mudde 2014: 15). The losers – those who cannot cope with the crisis – form the pool where the extreme right fishes. This is particularly true for the alienated working-class youth, many of whom are likely to end up unemployed (Miller-Idriss 2014: 243). This theory is substantiated by five types of arguments: the sociological profile of radical youth; the political transformation which overproduces losers; the urban developments of increased multiculturality of big cities’ suburbs producing transformations in power and minority–majority relations; the economic crisis; and the politics of decommodification.
The low-educated, often unemployed, white young working-class male illustrates the portrait of the loser’s archetype. ‘In just one generation, a radical transformation in the demographic base12 of the right wing is largely cemented in working-class youth, rather than in lingering Nazi-party members from World War II’ (Miller-Idriss 2014: 243). The skinheads are defined as a class phenomenon: an English working-class subculture (Brake 1974; Brown 2004). The sociological profile – combining class, gender, ethnic, educational and socio-economic characteristics – is the first argument of the lost generation theory. Empirical studies demonstrate the impact of being unemployed on the political marginalisation of young people. Unemployed youth express less confidence in politics, and they more frequently support revolutionary or extremist ideas (Bay and Blekesaune 2014: 21).
The second argument reinforces the first one by identifying political transitions that overproduce marginalisation and losers. The German reunification is the most emblematic in this respect – it was accompanied by a spectacular rise of extreme-right violence (Watts 1996). In just four years, between 1989 and 1992, right-wing violence in Germany increased ten times – from 173 to 1,485 violent acts per year. Later it decreased, but still remained at a much higher, stable level: 784 (1994), 619 (1995), 790 (1997) (Watts 2014).
Figure 8.1 Number of violent acts from 1989 to 1998.
The theoretical outcome is equally spectacular: ‘There are more studies on [extreme-right youth in] Germany than on all other countries combined!’ (Mudde 2014: 16).
The third argument refers to urban developments of increased multiculturality of big cities’ suburbs producing transformations in power and minority–majority relations:
In many big cities, ‘native’ youths grow up as a minority in their neighbourhoods and schools. Previous generations were part of an ethnic majority at the national and local level, yet contemporary urban youths are part of the majority at the (abstract) national level, but a minority at the (concrete) local level. This creates a somewhat schizophrenic situation in both the ethnic identities and ethnic power relations.
(Mudde 2014: 11–12)
Support for the extreme right, as well as for the extreme left, is greatest among youth that reside in urban areas with a high level of unemployment and poor living standards (Bay and Blekesaune 2014: 24):
… in major cities of Greece … Athens … Thessaloniki … in some areas … the percentage of the youth participation in Golden Dawn is far ahead of the other parties … far ahead … it means that … desperate young person … seeing that there is no hope … no perspective … turns to nationalism … thinking that this closed system …might spare him the problems of … Uh … monopolies and globalization.13
(Konsta and Lazaridis 2014: 35)
This observation from a member of Golden Dawn introduces the fourth argument – the crisis overproduces new losers and they are particularly numerous among the youth:
The economic crisis severely hit the young. From the second quarter of 2008, the youth unemployment rate has taken an upward trend peaking in 23.8% in the first quarter 2013, before receding to 21.4% at the end of 2014. The youth unemployment rate in the EU-28 was more than double the overall unemployment rate in 2014. At 22.2%, more than one out of every five young persons in the labour force was not employed. In the euro area, the youth unemployment rate was even higher at 23.8%. The unemployment rate among young persons was higher than the rate for those aged between 25 and 74 in all Member States. In Spain (53.2%), Greece (52.4%), Croatia (45.5%), Italy (42.7%), Cyprus (35.9%) and Portugal (34.7%) youth unemployment rates were particularly high.14
The welfare politics of decommodification lies at the core of the fifth argument. Gøsta Esping-Andersen (1985) argues that welfare politics as decommodification weakens the individual’s dependency on the market and assures broad availability of welfare support on the basis of citizenship. The decommodification policy is inspired by T. H. Marshall’s (1950) concept of social citizenship, where social rights include a minimum of financial security that should enable citizens to realise their political and civil rights. Whereas the first four arguments explain the road to extremism, the fifth one looks for ways to distance youth from extremism or to facilitate and channel their exit.
The major advantage of the lost generation concept is that it assigns responsibility to the state for marginalised youth and highlights the need for more effective policies of economic, social and cultural integration. Where the state has not abdicated from its duties, the positive results are obvious – as in Germany, where far-right violence decreased by half in the mid-1990s.
The contestatory generation of radical youth
‘Why we hate politics’ – this is a question that is more important than the answer. A book with this title (Hay 2007) could not but be a success.15 This is not a book about the far right; it is a book addressing the fundamental causes that make the far right possible, even inevitable – the growing crisis of legitimacy, the climate of political disenchantment, the pervasive condition of political dissatisfaction and disengagement, the making of politics out of politics. Why has hating everything – politics, elites, Others, globalisation, Brussels, the list is long and open – become one of the most effective political strategies? ‘Why have these social movements become so successful in such historically different national and sociopolitical contexts?’ (Wodak 2014: 24) Why have hate dealers found so many attentive ears among youths?
The ontology responsible for the persistence and reproduction of the far right is the one of crisis, insecurities, ‘pathologies’ of capitalism and liberal politics (Saull et al. 2015). The ambition is to propose a ‘hierarchy of causality’ (Saull et al. 2015: 8). The second part of this analysis does not aim to deconstruct the figure of the far-right activist, but to scrutinise the validity of socio-economic explanations of the lost generation hypothesis and to open different theoretical perspectives. It does not deny the marginalisation argument, but concentrates on the re/de/construction of far-right youth. This opens a larger theoretical space for agency, images, imaginaries, social media and networks, where identities are forged and transformed. The new extremist youth are socialised by a new type of far right. An emblematic example is the ‘Haiderisation of politics’ – the mix of politics of fear, calculated ambivalence and discursive provocation that is becoming the only game in town:
Right-wing populist parties cleverly manage to frame media debates; other political parties and politicians as well as the media are, in turn, forced to react and respond continuously to ever-new scandals. Few opportunities remain to present other frames, values and counterarguments, or another relevant agenda.
(Wodak 2014: 34)
This theoretical perspective does not underestimate ontology, but if it chooses to favour discourse, rhetoric, images and imaginaries, it is for two fundamental reasons. The first is that the ‘ontology’ is changing radically and we are witnessing a transition from ‘class politics’ to ‘values politics’ (Wodak and KhosraviNik 2014: xxii). The second is that in the information society of new media and new social networks, the discourse is becoming more ‘ontology’ than ever. The ‘Berlusconisation of Europe’ (Wodak and KhosraviNik 2014: xxii) is just one expression of a more general trend which makes possible and boosts the new populist wave – tele-politics, people-isation of the public sphere, deideologisation of political rhetoric (Miscoiu 2014). An interrelated tendency is the charismatic personalisation of power as both an expression and engine of the transformation of party politics into symbolic politics. Expanding the explanatory toolkit so as to deal with the ever-changing faces of the far right is the ambition of the second theoretical perspective.
Diversifying radical youth agency starts by diversifying its class belongings and socio-economic background. ‘One of the most disturbing aspects of the Jobbik phenomenon is how young and educated many of its supporters are’ (Saltman 2011: 123). One of the most disturbing aspects of my field work was meeting former students of mine among the interviewed far-right activists. Empirical studies question social marginality as a major explanatory narrative and substantiate more subtle conclusions that there is: ‘no evidence that right-wing actors come from socially disadvantaged groups. They come from all social strata, though mainly from lower middle-class families. They do not suffer from social exclusion or social deprivation’ (Gabriel 2014: 44). This empirical evidence could be biased by the specificity of the studied Swiss case with a stratification pyramid different from that in the UK or Germany or other European countries. However, studies on far-right youth in Scandinavia arrive at similar conclusions: they come from a declining lower middle-class background, metropolitan suburbs, small towns and often from divorced families (Kimmel 2014).
Virility versus violence
In order to become Hammerskin – ‘the elite of the elite’ of the skinhead movement – the boy must follow a lengthy process that lasts at least four years. He undergoes initiation rites – beatings against immigrants and struggles with the knife in dogs’ fighting. Only at the end the new member can get the patch and tattoos on a visible part of the body, neck or arm, the symbol with the two hammers borrowed from Pink Floyd’s movie ‘The Wall’.
(Campani 2014b)
Two opposite messages are implied by the initiation rites described by Giovanna Campani (2014b). Violence is so important that it is shown off like a badge of honour, a supreme distinction. It is tattooed on the body so as to stay there forever, as well as to mark the body as a supreme body. It is displayed in order to create hierarchies and rank people: the most militant are at the top of the pyramid, and the others must follow and obey them. This glorification of violence sends another implicit message, though – that violence is not for everyone; it is an initiation into the exclusive club of the elect, it is their exclusive privilege. It is similar to what duelling was for the aristocrats. But with one fundamental difference – that while aristocrats killed each other, violent extremists attack and kill Others, immigrants, foreigners and minorities. This example introduces us to the subject of violence through the perspective of organised extremist groups.
There is also another point of entry into the subject of hate violence, and it is through the prism of extremists who are not members of any organisation or group. An interviewee of Giovanna Campani describes the murder of a young left-wing militant. This murder was a family business: conceived and perpetrated by two brothers and a father; the younger brother being the actual killer, while the older brother assumed the blame for the crime and was sent to prison (Campani 2014b). The family story of this hate crime is a controversial illustration of the ideal of brotherhood as one of the mega imaginaries. If I cite this crime, it is to emphasise that hate crime is not the preserve of radical-right groups. A number of empirical studies provide evidence that many extreme-right groups are not involved in political violence, while most extreme-right violence is perpetrated by people who are not involved in extreme-right organisations (Mudde 2014: 83; Lööw 2014). Only one of the four categories of perpetrators of anti-foreigner violence identified by Helene Lööw (2014: 137) is made up of right-wing extremist activists, the other three being ethnocentric youth, criminal youth and ‘fellow travellers’.
The third point of entry into the subject of youth and violence is through the prism of the latter’s mythologisation and glorification: violence is as much a reality as it is a fantasy and imaginary; it is as much a practice as it is a masculine identity, masculinity conceived as virility and machismo:
In conversation, skinheads seemed obsessed with violence. As is typical of this type of subculture, there was more myth and fantasy concerning violence, than there was actual violent behaviour. Partially this reflected working class machismo, and the admiration for the hard man, and partially it reflected the violence done to them. And the hardness of their lives.
(Brake 1974: 191)
My analysis will develop this third perspective, will focus more on virility than on violence and will look through the lens that best illustrates the meeting of youth and extremism – the rite of passage: ‘Participation in the extreme right is more a masculine rite of passage than evidence of a firm commitment to racialized ideologies’ (Kimmel 2014: 65). Among the many motives for entry into extremism, I will look at two polar opposite ones – hate and fun – each one of which illustrates, albeit in an opposite way, the idea of the rite of passage.
Hate as a remedy for frustrations paves the main road to extremism. Frustrations of all sorts – social and personal – interfere and become unbearable for an adolescent:
Young men of the extreme right experience their downsizing, outsourcing, or economic displacement in specifically gendered ways: they feel themselves to be emasculated. This political and economic emasculation is accompanied by a more personal sense of emasculation: most have been bullied in school.
(Kimmel 2014: 71)
Hate happens to be a powerful mechanism for both therapy and mobilisation. I will emphasise three perspectives of its performance: attaining manhood, rebellion and building a community. Attaining manhood is understood as the transformation of the vulnerable and often bullied child into a strong man. The alchemy of attaining manhood is made possible by the amalgamation of force, threat and aggression. They are induced in an almost magic way through one’s very integration into an extremist group and the display of one’s new identity.
Extremism is a perfect recipe for adolescent rebellion (Kimmel 2014: 74) against parents, a hostile environment and imagined enemies. It is a channel with a double function – expressing rage and anger, as well as entertaining fantasies of revenge (Kimmel 2014: 74). ‘Being a Nazi in a country like Sweden is probably the worst thing you could be’, stated Lasse, an eighteen-year-old former skinhead. ‘And since I wanted to be bad – really bad – I decided to be a Nazi’ (Kimmel 2014: 74).
‘We like to hate together’ unites as strongly as it divides. Hate is a powerful community-building mechanism for all extremists, elder and adolescent. ‘Being a Nazi means I’m part of something, part of a group. It gives me a chance to express my hate’, explained Andrew, a former Nazi from Stockholm (Kimmel 2014: 71).
The second motive for entry into extremism is the opposite; it is synonymous with partying, fun, music, new friends and exciting feelings. As David, a former Nazi from Uppsala, explained:
The meetings would become parties, and then everyone would go out afterwards. The girls used to start the fights, provoking some immigrants or something, but then they’d run away, leaving me to clean it up. But it was OK, and there were plenty of girls.
(Kimmel 2014: 65)
Whatever the motive for entry may be, the exit is more problematic; however, this aspect is beyond the scope of my analysis.
The idea of violence as a rite of passage does not have global ambitions to explain the entire phenomenon of youth extremism. It is valid for a more limited sphere, of which I will point out two productive ideas. The first is related to the gender specificity of youth extremism, and the second to the generational specificity. ‘I’m a better man for having been a Nazi’: this is how a former neo-Nazi summed up the extremist experience as a masculinising project. Michael Kimmel, one of the key authors of this theoretical perspective, summarised the asymmetric relationship of identity and ideology in youth’s extremist experience: ‘an adolescent search for manhood rather than a commitment to ideology’ (Kimmel 2014: 78). Extremist engagement as a virility and strong masculinity project is also a productive way to understand the gendered, dominantly male profile of far-right youth agency.
The second productive idea emphasises the distinction between the way adults and youth enter extremism:
While most adults participate in extreme-right activity by voting for extreme-right parties, the majority of youth do so through a connection to far-right sub-cultures. In fact, for many this is their only extreme-right activity, and it remains limited to a short period of their youth.
(Mudde 2014: 5)
This explanation is productive in explaining the transitory character of extremist participation of a number of youths and it also casts a bridge to ‘aesthetics versus extremism’.
From ‘Volvo and a wife’ to hypermasculine outlaws in the criminal underworld (Kimmel 2014) – the paths of extremist youths run across the spectrum between those two poles of integration and criminal marginalisation. If this analysis focuses more on the symbolic interpretation of extremism as a rite of passage, which is because of one theoretical consideration and another, related to public policies. The purpose is to open up a theoretical space that can more subtly conceptualise the fluidity of interactions between commitment and extremism, the various ways of their meeting, as well as, above all, the possibility for reversibility and exit. The civic and political implications of this theoretical choice are the search for constructive policies in an attempt to avoid the Scylla of stigmatisation and the Charybdis of moralisation.
Aesthetics versus extremism
Millions of viewers are deeply moved by the iconic final scene of The Lord of the Rings, where everyone – from the king to the soldier, from the farmer to the merchant – bow to the little hobbits. For courage, valour and honour are above power, titles and hierarchies. I am recalling this fact because Tolkien’s genius happens to be invoked in the symbolic politics of the radical right: ‘Tolkien with his adventure books like The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit has been considered by the Italian extreme right as an example to follow and as a world we should reconstruct’, explains a far-right activist (Dechezelles 2014: 53). I begin with this example, in order to uncouple the topic of aestheticisation from art labelled ‘far right’. Every piece of art proves to be welcome as long as it can serve a purpose – the purpose being to create an affective community bound together more by emotions and pathos than by a political doctrine. Mobilising art resources with their powerful affective potential as a means of political mobilisation is not an invention of the far right, but it is practised by the latter’s youth leaders with particular inspiration and consistence. This is the first aspect of the aestheticisation of extremism. The second is related to the public sphere’s hunger for spectacular images of bad guys.
‘Most right-wing extremists are not skinheads and most skinheads are not right-wing extremists’ (Mudde 2014: 1). ‘Only some skinheads are racist and most racists are not skinheads’ (Watts 2014: 152). Why, then, has the young male skinhead become the embodiment of radical extremism? The effacement of the analytical and ontological distinction between right-wing extremists and skinheads and the promotion of the latter as the emblematic figure is due to a variety of factors, of which I will analyse three here: the media visibilisation, the aestheticisation and glorification of violence and the commodification and commercialisation of extremism.
Where it is a meeting of small neo-Nazi groups or larger radical right parties, media will focus their attention disproportionately on the most extreme elements within the crowd: young men, heavily tattooed, heads freshly shaven, with a fanatic stare and, preferably, their right arm in the air (to make the fascist salute).
(Mudde 2014: 1)
If the skinhead had not existed, the media would have created him. The media adores spectacles, scandals, provocation and violence and looks for everything and everybody that can satisfy their hunger for sensationalism.
The media and extremism are a mutual and shared passion. The 2015 local elections in Bulgaria were dominated not so much by the competing parties’ promises for boosting local development, but by the scandal over the storming of the Theatre Academy building in Sofia by Volen Siderov, the leader of the far-right party Ataka, and his aggression against students. The anti-Semitic Lukov March, organised annually in Sofia by the far-right Bulgarian National Union, is scheduled so as to maximise the spectacular effect of the flaming torches at nightfall and to secure a spot on the prime-time news. Several rallies, marches and other far-right initiatives are scheduled so as to ease and attract media coverage. Media visibility is extremely performative. The media highlight extremism, but also boost and inspire it: ‘“The music got harder and harder. You’d sit there, not knowing you were a racist. You’d get your boots, your flight jacket and peel off your hair”, explains a former Scandinavian Nazi’ (Kimmel 2014: 73). Music, fashion and politics form the explosive mix of the extremist right. Hate rock, white power music, Rock Against Communism (RAC), National Socialist Black Metal – the terms vary, but the embrace of art and hate remains intimate. While this meant rock and punk initially; today, all genres are mobilised: from techno to folk to hip-hop. Skrewdriver, the punk rock band whose iconic leader Ian Stuart was both a music icon and a prominent radical-right activist, is the emblematic example of the interference of extremism and mass culture. The geography of white power music is diverse and transcontinental: from Norway (Burzum) to the UK (OI! and No Remorse), from the US (Bound for Glory) to Russia (Kolovrat) to Germany (Landser and Macht und Ehre), from the Czech Republic (Orlik) to Canada (RaHoWa). Music has two functions: one instrumental, the other identity formation. The Italian Free Space Association organises a skinhead music festival every year, in order to pay the legal fees for its arrested members (Campani 2014b). The concerts – in Italy, Sweden, the UK, the US, everywhere – ‘provide a sort of instant community, a place to meet friends, get drunk, slam dance, and take out all of one’s frustrations and rage’ (Kimmel 2014: 73). Being a perfect ‘empty symbol’, the music is filled in with all sorts of identity feelings, even contradictory ones: ‘The music reinforces the feelings that I’m righteous and outside of society’ (Kimmel 2014: 73).
The affective capital of music and its powerful effect on youth interfere in identity building: both individual (personal empowerment through belonging to a community) and collective (empowering of the group through the number and motivation of its members).
The media and mass culture interfere for the aestheticisation and glorification of violence. The bad guys breaking rules and taboos are attractively instituted as role models. The worse the bad-guy role model, the stronger the challenge to surpass him: ‘I will be perceived as the greatest ever known (Nazi) monster after SWW’, proudly declared Anders Breivik (Deleersnijder 2014: 22).
Immanuel Kant defines beauty as disinterested value. Today, aestheticisation is not a ‘glass bead game’; it is a vested interest, trade, profit, business. Today, the extremist aesthetics is materialised in ‘cultural artefacts, memorabilia, music, and literature that provide an economic incentive for widening and deepening the scene’ (Watts 2014: 159). Paradoxically, the political survival/extension of youth extremism is largely determined by economic incentives: ‘the international commercialization … appears to help stabilize the scene, allows it to expand, and gives it a longer life than might have been expected’ (Watts 2014: 159).
If the Tolkien example illustrates the transformation of poetic images and imaginaries into a resource for the political mobilisation of radical youth, the second example reverses the picture and transforms the real activists into media images and imaginaries of bad guys. The paradox is that both procedures of aestheticisation are equally performative, both promote and strengthen an attractive image of extremism, both seduce new young fans.
Body politics versus party politics
I didn’t talk about the [neo-fascist] party with him but we talked about uniform, duty, patriotism, fidelity and coherence. I can describe my uncle with these five words. And these five words became my political program…. To become part of the MSI for me was as natural as being part of my family.
(Dechezelles 2014: 59)
This brief excerpt from an interview with Elena, an Italian radical activist, is telling in three respects. The first one is the primacy of the body. The body itself appears in uniform, strongly marked and subordinate to belonging. This voluntary subordination and assumed subsidiarity of the Self vis-à-vis the community is brilliantly manifested in the conspicuous redundancy of terms of affiliation: fidelity, duty, coherence. In contrast to the abundance of belongings, ideological identifications are reduced to one and represented by patriotism, unaccompanied by any political label. What is most characteristic is the representation of party membership not as a political choice but as something natural. To Maria, membership in the Italian Social Movement (MSI) is as natural as the family. The more biologising the discourse, the more normative it becomes: both the family and the homeland are owed fidelity and duty.
The condensed, affective language of body politics succinctly conveys powerful messages which, in conventional politics, would require long party programmes and multiple political speeches: messages about preserving proletarian identity by translating it into a ‘subculture’ and thus transforming the class identity into a cultural identity; defending the macho interpretation of gender roles by opposing the ‘feminisation’ of men; demonstrating a contestatory pathos for social change not through peace and love (as propagated by the hippie movement), but through force and violence:
During the original wave of the late-1960s, the short hair of the skinhead represented a working-class reaction against changes in class and gender roles, especially the feminization of men represented by the hippie movement. The adoption of traditionally proletarian clothing, attitudes, and behaviors, at precisely the moment when these were beginning to disappear, was … a symbolic recovery of working class identity that sought to preserve the boundaries of class through culture. This manoeuvre was a type of resistance against the ‘coming man’ of the late-1960s – the middle-class, peace-loving, long-haired student – the skinhead – short-haired, violent, and working-class – became the rebel par excellence.
(Brown 2004: 159)
In body politics, both terms are key: the body is a visualisation of politics; politics is marked on the body. This interdependence can become almost bizarre when taken literally, where every change in political identity is translated into the language of the body and the look:
These second-generation skins – many of them themselves ex-punks – took the style to new extremes, emphasizing the threatening aspects of the look at the expense of the sharp stylishness prized by the original skins. Boots became taller, military surplus MA-1 jackets replaced earlier more ‘civilian’ looks, tattoos – previously confined to the arms or torso – began to crop up above the neckline, and hair became shorter to the point of baldness. These changes in style mirrored, to an extent, changes in the content of the subculture, with the more extreme looks coming to signify affiliation with the radical right.
(Brown 2004: 159)
Body politics is both affective and effective. From indignation to adulation, the political marking of the body seldom leaves the public indifferent. The very display of the political body structures and hierarchises the agency – those whose bodies are marked become visible and watched and, hence, active and central, while those whose bodies are not marked are relegated to the more passive and unidentifiable category of spectators of the former. The tattooing of one’s political choice fixates it; liberal liquefaction and volatility are displaced by non-liberal rigidity. The political body on a pedestal is a visible and impressive reincarnation of the organic understanding of politics with clear messages of the naturalness, subordination and inconceivability of life outside the community. Body politics does all those, as well as many other things, but here I will point out only another two. The contemporary generation of new technologies and new media is becoming ever more visual and ever less conceptual. What more effective way of exerting influence than the entry of politics through the most sensitive sense and in the most easy-to-digest form – through images. Facebook voyeurism and photo-narcissism are growing exponentially: ranging from the photos of young extremists in uniform (such as the leader of the unregistered Nationalist Party of Bulgaria, Simeon Kostadinov) posted on far-right websites to Anders Breivik, who poses for his Facebook photo sessions dressed in all sorts of uniforms and disguises (Deleersnijder 2014: 23). The second source of influence is theatricality – the body is disguised, becoming an artefact, an object to be looked at.
Meta-politics versus extremist politics
With the various social actions, and the gatherings we organise, like the ones where children are learning about Greek history and ideology … so this is how our ideology is cultivated … but slowly they see and they are fully nurtured by our ideology … through our various social actions.16
(Konsta and Lazaridis 2014: 35)
This quote from a Golden Dawn activist is telling of the way young supporters and activists are recruited by far-right parties. This method does not lead directly to entry into extremism; on the contrary, it is mediated by multiple other causes. I will take as an example three such causes: de-ideologised nationalism, social solidarity and organic ecologism.
De-ideologised nationalism as an empty symbol
Nationalism is the nation’s immune system, we are the corpuscles that defend and protect it. The spirit of Bulgaria. So being a nationalist is a calling. It isn’t something to boast of and to take to extremes. On the contrary, [nationalists] must always defend the weaker – women, children, old people. In general, [nationalism is] gentlemanship. A supreme form of idealism. People must develop themselves spiritually, too, not just physically and materially.17
This quote from an Ataka activist illustrates the concept of nationalism as an empty symbol which is so widely open that it can accommodate a great variety of ideas – both the nation’s spirit and the nationalist’s strength, which is so vast that it can take care of all the weak. The weak themselves are defined in terms of generation – children and old people – as well as of gender: in the far-right universe, women are systematically relegated to second place – in this particular case, as weak beings cared for selflessly by the nationalists. Nationalism is also both biology (the immune system) and sophisticated civilisedness (gentlemanship) – the nationalist vocabulary abounds in both organic and spiritual metaphors. Nationalism is dissociated from any form of extremism and placed on the pedestal of idealism, spirituality, vocation and calling.
Nationalism plays first fiddle in the symbolic cartography of the far right. Its mention invariably gives rise to waterfalls of poeticised metaphors and boundless idealisations. Nationalism is omnipresent – it is key in the identity construction of young activists, as well as in the political and discursive strategies of far-right leaders. This omnipresence is due to its symbolic effectiveness. The analysis of the latter is beyond the scope of this chapter; here, I will mention just one of the roles of this concept of nationalism, which is particularly important to young people – the de-ideologisation of the far right, its dissociation from extremism, its resolute move away from the far-right pole of the political scene and its determination to position itself at the political centre:
That is why we don’t declare ourselves to be a far-right organisation, we don’t want to position ourselves in this spectrum at all. We are nationalists, and the idea of nationalists is to unite their people – that is to say, we are for uniting the Bulgarian people by one idea, by one cause as a whole, and just as everyone has a left and a right arm, [so too] we are trying to unite people, not to divide them into left, right, centrists, less left, and so on. That is why we have never defined ourselves as anything [in those terms].18
… people are accustomed to think in terms of left or right, this is something that we prefer to bypass, even if in the collective imagination or by journalists we are always defined as the extreme right, it is one thing that we prefer to avoid … for the people right is often liberalism, capital, and so on, while we are strongly in favour of a welfare state, on the contrary, the left is in favour perhaps of certain social reforms, etc…. But the left does not have a sense of patriotism, the love of the country, the nation, etc., which in theory would have the right, so let’s say it is difficult for us to respond in terms of left or right, because of the way in which these terms are intended today, we do not fit neither in the one nor the other definition … we take what we believe is positive from both …19
(Campani 2014a: 57)
The nationalist narrative is key to the shedding of labels such as ‘far right’ and ‘extremism’ – which is precisely what young people looking for a cause, not simply for negation, need. The same role – of an attractive cause that has the advantage of appearing to be completely de-ideologised – is played by social solidarity, too.
Social solidarity as an overfilled symbol
‘The site of Golden Dawn (www.xryshaygh.com/) avoids references to neo-Nazism or fascism and mainly promotes issues related to the party’s social programme’ (Konsta and Lazaridis 2014: 38). The same preferences for social discourse are also found in the interviews with young far-right activists from different countries. Skinheads from Italy talk about the social activities they organise (Campani 2014b). Far-right activists from Bulgaria describe their charity actions before Christmas – handing out tea and food to elderly people, clothes for the Bessarabian Bulgarians, as well as books for the local library.20 The social narrative is narrated by two instances of authorship – from the bottom, by activists and supporters, and from the top, by the leadership. Its content – charity and social actions – is similar, but the two instances of authorship mobilise one and the same narrative for two different types of messages. Far-right youth fill the social narrative with positive content; what is important to many of them is not just being against the elites, immigrants and minorities, but also being for – for the poor, the needy and the vulnerable:
All interviewees from Golden Dawn asked felt quite strongly about their party’s social action programme and they were keen to promote it as the only alternative to the failure of the Greek welfare state. They are fascinated by the party’s social action programme, which may create a sense of ‘meaning’ in their lives making them feeling useful in a society where more than 60% of the young, aged between 15–24, are unemployed, and there is a strong sentiment that youth is obsolete.
(Konsta and Lazaridis 2014: 35)
The far-right elite is more instrumental and skilfully uses the social narrative to promote its vision of a Nietzschean world of the strong leader and weak individuals. A characteristic example is Ataka’s campaign in the elections in Bulgaria in recent years, conducted under the telling motto ‘Orthodox Solidarity’. The campaign itself was designed as a charity event: the leader, accompanied by local activists, provided people experiencing financial difficulties with scholarships, funds for medical treatment and so on. The campaign has been completely replaced by a strategy that exchanges debate for donation, autonomous citizens for powerless individuals.
Organic ecologism
We have identified three themes, three E’s, energy, economy and ecology. We divided the kids into groups, each one chose the theme that felt more his/her.21
(Campani 2014a: 57)
We teach young people to dig the earth, that is not a joke it is the truth. There is a beautiful experience in Pisa, as we believe strongly in agriculture.
(Campani 2014a: 57)
Similar to the eco-pathos of Italian far-right activists, for the French Identitaires, defending identity politics is also combined with defending the land, and environmentalism plays a key role in their political vision.
Whereas nationalism and social solidarity are master narratives regularly found in many far-right youth organisations, the ecological pathos of the far right still tends to be an exception. But it illustrates the concept of contestatory citizenship and the common roots of the two contrasting strands of activism – the extremist and the green one.
All three narratives attest to the search for a discursive alternative to extremism and find it in the meta-politics that goes beyond the traditional political action and which concerns ecology, cooperative work, cultural activities and events planning that become ways to express and disseminate their own vision of the world (Caiani and Parenti 2013: 139).
Digitalisation of hate and Tweeterisation of extremism
Ataka was totally censored in recent years by the traditional media, the mainstream [media] – we weren’t allowed at all [to appear] in traditional media such as national television and radio stations, and dailies.22
Internet is crucial for strengthening the party and as defence against attacks by established mass media, stressed Panos Kammenos, leader of the Independent Greeks in his speech at the party’s Youth Inaugural Congress [13 April 2013].
(Konsta and Lazaridis 2014: 38)
These quotes simultaneously articulate and underestimate the meeting of the World Wide Web and extremism. They define the Internet as a powerful instrument for disintermediation – the possibilities enabled by the Web for organisations and leaders to establish direct contact with a large public, bypassing the filter and control of typical intermediaries in politics such as journalistic elites (Caiani and Parenti 2013: 150). The media are neither a particularly systematic nor a particularly effective filter and instrument for control of hate speech. French media publicity is telling of the transition from ignoring to normalising the Front National leader, a transition that ultimately turned Marine Le Pen into one of the most frequent guests on TV political shows. This transition has not even been necessary for a number of post-communist media, which give extensive airtime to extremist leaders. Two Bulgarian examples illustrate this permissiveness and even keen interest of the media in extremist speech: during ethnic tensions, along with the interviewed representatives of parties and institutions, journalists readily give air time to the president of the Association of Football Fans, Elena Vatashka, who is known for her extremist views; the Nationalist Party of Bulgaria was refused registration because of its extremist programme, but its leader appeared on various TV and radio shows for weeks, demonstrating aggressive and arrogant behaviour.
The traditional media’s role as a restraining filter varies significantly from country to country, but even if it had been exercised systematically, the meeting of the Web and youth extremism would still have taken place. This meeting was inevitable for a number of reasons, of which I will point out three here: systemic affinities between the Internet and youth extremism; empowerment through crowdsourcing; and from arborescent to rhizomatic networking.
Systemic affinities between the Internet and youth extremism
Digital natives and far-right youths belong to the same generation – Generation Y. Both are socialised through social networks, and both form and express their civic and political identities in the virtual agora. A number of comparative empirical studies show that the virtualisation of extremism depends on the Internet penetration rate in the respective country (Cainai and Parenti 2013). Those variations apply to a significantly less extent to young activists – digitalisation is their space-time. The RAGE Project has not found any significant national differences between the uses of social networks by far-right youths in different countries and confirms the systemic affinities between them and the Internet. The Facebook generation is named ‘Why’ for its lack of respect for authority and determination to question and challenge them. The hackers with their dissident spirit are the role models of the digital natives. Radical youth understand this dissidence as challenging the norms of political correctness and overproducing hate speech. The e-streets become more extremist than the streets.
Empowerment through crowdsourcing and ‘cloud’ mobilisation
‘ANEL is an “internet party” in the sense that it was actually created a couple of months before the Greek national election due to internet youth mobilization’ (Konsta and Lazaridis 2014: 38). Far-right youths are not the discoverers of the polyfunctionality of the Net. Network theories have long since proved that networks are a form of social capital and a powerful instrument for empowering individuals. The far right utilises this potential successfully in the digital world, too, using social networks both as a resource and opportunities for mobilisation.
Offline society restricts the activity of far-right actors through laws and regulations. Those regulations vary from more open systems, such as the Italian one, to Germany’s stricter regime of monitoring extremism. The more limited the parameter of action in the offline public sphere, the more indispensable the Internet:
In those countries where the participation of specific right-wing actors is limited, they try to compensate for their marginal role with a dense network of linkages among themselves, which potentially support mobilisation and favour the emergency of shares goals and collective identities.
(Caiani and Parenti 2013: 79)
Two main mechanisms work to this effect: networked activism and crowdsourcing. Networked activism often replaces formal membership, thereby multiplying fans and participants on the periphery, whose identity has not crystallised and does not want to be formally identified with a far-right organisation, but is mobilised for a particular cause or event. Networked activism draws on anonymity, and thus increases the cohorts of extremists who prefer not to be known as extremists and therefore can express views in the public digital sphere that they would have otherwise kept private. Crowdsourcing takes a variety of forms – fundraising, practical advice, e-commerce. In the digital world, even single activists and small groups never feel alone: the Net advises, supports and promotes. If crowdsourcing refers to the instrumental aspect, to the increase of resources, community-building refers to the symbolic aspect, to building a community that is discontinuous offline and which unites online in order to multiply and consolidate itself.
From arborescent to rhizomatic networking
At events, we gather from everywhere – from our [organisation], from the Bulgarian National Union, from Ataka; football fans come to support us, too.23
I’ve passed through both Ataka and the Bulgarian National Union, but they disappointed me. I want a new party that is more strong, more militant, more consistent.24
Those two excerpts from an interview with a young leader illustrate the pulsating relationships of closeness and distancing between the far-right parties and organisations. Their online ‘translation’ takes a variety of forms: polycephalous, both centralised and segmented, or star model, more centralised (Caiani and Parenti 2013: 79–80). Manuela Caiani and Linda Parenti find the first model in the most manifest form in Italy and the UK, while the second is more characteristic of the German and the French far right (Caiani and Parenti 2013: 79–80). More significant for my analysis are less the national specificities, which are very fluid and quite dynamic, than the general tendency of a transition from arborescent to rhizomatic networks (Roos and Oikonomakis 2014: 119). Arborescent networks sprout from a common trunk that branches out, each branch sprouting new ramifications. Rhizomatic networks do not have a common trunk; they have multiple hubs and nodes that interconnect or not in various ways. It is precisely the rhizomatic networks, with their flexible and non-systemic connections between the nodes, that are the adequate online form of the complex relationships of attraction and mutual support, but also of competition and rivalries between the separate far-right political actors.
Contestatory citizenship
It’s time to stand up and say enough is enough with the rules laid down by the government … which does nothing but destroy what little remained of Italian healthy, it’s time to pull ourselves together and fight for the future of our students, condemned by birth to the circle of hell and eternal insecurity. We therefore call on all stakeholders to join us in this fight, to propose a new alternative political, social and radical. We are the future of Italy!25
(Campani 2014a: 56–57)
This appeal by an Italian activist illustrates the contestatory pathos of far-right youth and the ambition for political innovation, for proposing an alternative to the status quo. The concept of contestatory citizenship (Krasteva 2013; Krasteva 2016) views the formation of a new type of citizenship where belonging and participation interfere, but where participation, activity and mobilisation play a key role.
While the ‘silent revolution’ of the late 1970s created the Green parties, the ‘silent counter-revolution’ of the 1980s gave way to the populist radical parties. In many ways the two party families are mirror images, giving way to a new political divide: while the latter are in favor of libertarianism and multiculturalism, the former hold authoritarian and nationalist views.
(Mudde and Kaltwasser 2013: 497)
The current political context is the same – disenchantment with party politics, growing distrust and increasing perceptions of crisis: economic, cultural, identity – but the reactions are contrary. The young generation, since the turn of the twenty-first century, disillusioned with ‘politics as usual’, is determined to innovate. Up to a certain point, it has followed the same road of political innovation, bringing about two changes: rejecting the socio-economic discourse and materialist values of traditional party families; and accumulating protest experience. The young generation has increasingly fallen in love with the streets and prefer to enact politics on the squares: real and virtual alike. Discontent citizens are more and more prepared to resort to protesting; we observe the ‘expansion of conflict’ (Schattschneider 1975) and ‘normalization of the unconventional’ (Fuchs 1991). Protests have transformed Western societies into ‘movement societies’ (Meyer and Tarrow 1998). Young people are particularly sensitive to the protest potential of populism, as the ‘pure politics of non-politics’, the ‘perfect anti-politics’, the ‘absolute counter-democracy’ (Rosanvallon 2006: 271–277). The radical youth embrace all three characteristics of populism as anti-politics: the stigmatisation of the governing authorities; the apocalyptic vision of politics and its total rejection; the criminalising or ridiculing power (Rosanvallon 2006; Kriesi 2014; Krasteva and Lazaridis 2016).
Protest is a response to the failure of the party system to fulfil its representation function (Kriesi 2014). However, on the matter of choosing a cause to mobilise the protest potential and the type of protest to give vent to their anger, young protesters go radically separate ways. Some of them opt for the green cause, the future, openness to others and solidarity. Others, who feel uneasy about permissiveness, multiculturalism and open doors, go for the ethnicity and the nation cause, whose integrity they seek to protect from the Others, so as to restore their purity, power and greatness. The populist ‘past’ is as much a construct as the green ‘future’, but the visions of these two types of activists are genuinely trained in opposite value-based and political directions. Despite the active antagonism between the two forms of participation, the common root of these protest cultures has not been forgotten entirely and sometimes informs the urge to unify extremist and green values, as the role of ecology for both the French Identitaires and Italian skinheads certifies.
The conception of contestatory citizenship argues the idea of one generation mobilised for two protests. The two types of protests – the green revolution and the populist counter-revolution – signal the same transition from party politics to symbolic politics, from interests to passion, from structures to mobilisations.
These developments are linked to the emergence of a new generation of cleavages. The socio-economic cleavages shaping the political scene in Western Europe after World War II have been giving way to socio-cultural ones over the recent decades (Saltman 2011). In Eastern Europe, the socio-political cleavage between communism and anti-communism has also begun dissipating over the past decade, opening up political space to socio-cultural cleavages that prioritise national identity and cultural revitalisation. Young people are the ‘coevals’ of the new cleavages and constitute some of the key bearers of the new symbolic politics (Krasteva and Lazaridis 2016).
The two types of far-right populism – identitarian and contestatory – mobilise two different clusters of narratives. Othering is the core of the first, with the overproduction of Islam, immigrants, Roma, homosexuals and so on, building the universe of a politics of enemies. The anti-elite pathos – anti-parties, anti-government, anti-Brussels, anti-globalisation – is the centre of contestatory far-right populism. Whereas we distinguish and separate them analytically, far-right youth prefer to mix them in the construction of the far-right agency and identity. Contestatory citizenship rejects the neo-liberal globalisation that needs capital, not human beings, and aspires towards bringing human beings back into politics, towards ideologies based on passion, not (only) on interests, personal commitment – not a simple mandate for representation. Far-right youth are one of the faces of re-ideologisation, of the transition from ‘cold’ to ‘hot’ ideologies – the dark face (Krasteva and Lazaridis 2016).
Conclusion
I will structure my concluding remarks with regard to three groups of problems: the theoretical problem of how to understand and explain far-right youth activism; the social problem of the construction of the figure of the extremist activist, both from the inside – through commitment, identity and activity – and from the outside – through reifying images, imaginaries, discourses and media strategies; and the democratic problem of how to counter youth extremism.
Two concepts were introduced in the analysis as different theoretical perspectives for explaining youth extremism: that of the lost generation and contestatory citizenship. Each one of these concepts defines the subject of research in a specific way; mobilises a different conceptual arsenal; and arrives at different conclusions. This analysis has shown that they are complementary rather than rival. The lost generation conception seeks to identify the structural causes and factors for the emergence and development of the phenomenon of youth extremism; the contestatory citizenship conception seeks to understand the youths themselves as actors, as authors of their political choices. The first concept is premised on the assumption that socio-economic deficits and contradictions play a crucial role: there is an economic crisis that overproduces marginalisation; a neo-liberal globalisation that needs capital, not human beings; a party system that is increasingly losing its representative function. In this theoretical perspective, far-right youth have a clear class-based and social profile. The youth unemployment rate is two to three times higher than the average unemployment rate; it stands to reason, and has been established empirically, that young people are a crucial target and actor of far-right parties. The contestatory citizenship conception problematises the sphere of validity of socio-economic explanations. In doing so, it does not seek to reject or refute them; nor does it deny that the main resource of the far right are young people from disadvantaged urban neighborhoods with high unemployment rates, where the national majority is often a local minority. Building on these findings, the contestatory citizenship conception seeks to open up new theoretical horizons along two lines. The first line concerns theoretical sensitivity to data which show that the far right attracts young people from different social classes, and that the reasons for joining it may have to do less with socio-economic marginalisation than with identities and protest. The second line is based on a conceptual apparatus whose focus is not on society and its deficiencies, but on actors with their energy and activism. Actors are conceived through the concept of contestatory citizenship, which has two main implications: protest becomes a normal form of mobilisation in societies where there is ‘expansion of conflict’, ‘normalisation of the unconventional’, Internet with a rebellious and hacker spirit. Youth are the main carriers of contestatory citizenship in its two opposite variants: green, open and solidarity-minded; denying/rejecting/hating otherness and diversity in its various forms.
The second group of conclusions concerns the fluid and dynamic relationship of self-images and images, of young activists’ self-narratives and of the narratives of the media, social networks, public opinion and mass culture about them. Not only do they not coincide, they often diverge in opposite directions. Here, I will note only three. The first is the external hate image, to which young activists oppose their self-image that is less against than for – for national identity, for social causes, for eco-activities, for meta-politics. The second difference is the external political positioning at the far-right pole of the political scene and the strong internal conviction that nationalism is neither right nor left, that it has no colour and political location and that if it has to be localised somewhere, it will be only in the political centre. The third difference is in the complete reshuffling of roles and primacy between images and originals, between discourses and actors. The media and mass culture heroise and aestheticise violence and extremism, life on the edge of the law and morality. Where there is a march or a parade, the cameras inevitably focus on the most extreme elements, remaining fixated on them, especially if they are tattooed and in skinhead attire. The media’s hunger for visibilising extremism is so acute that they transform the real activists into media images and imaginaries of bad guys. Their aestheticisation and glorification are extremely performative, they both promote and strengthen an attractive image of extremism, seducing new young fans.
Former Nazis said they wish they had been stopped earlier, but the society of ‘niceism’ facilitated their Nazism (Kimmel 2014: 77). This admission of ex-Nazis sounds like an accusation against the institutions, the political class and civil society that they are not sufficiently responsible and active in facilitating, accelerating and easing the exit from extremist activism. What are the democratic responses to youth extremism is a question that is beyond the scope of this study. Here, I will sketch out the lines along which the answer should be sought. The lost generation concept categorically defines the responsibilities of the state and public policies, both for counteraction and for prevention. There are lessons to learn from Germany, which succeeded in coping with the huge wave of youth violence after reunification and reducing it by more than half. The contestatory citizenship concept fully supports the key and central role of public policies, but also looks for answers in another two directions. One is the idea of Isin and Nielsen (2008) about acts of citizenship, about the construction of citizens through their activity and commitments. Considering that both extremist and green youth are an expression of one and the same shift from party politics to symbolic politics, from interests to values, from structures to protest mobilisations, then innovative solutions should be sought for bridging those two forms of protest, for increasing the attractiveness of eco- and solidarity-based mobilisations and making them cool and strong in identity and community-building. The other direction is that of militant democracy (Kirshner 2014). The hot extreme-right ideology and mobilisations require strong democratic responses, and the concept of militant democracy looks for them in the combination of conciliation and militant vigilance (Kirshner 2014: 168). The question of how effective militant democracy can be in restricting extremism without restricting the right to protest outlines a wide research field for future studies.
Notes
References
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