Journal of Right-Wing Studies

In the wake of the October 1929 stock market crash, conservatives formed an array of organizations and publications that aimed to resist the nation’s steady embrace of New Deal liberalism. Crucial to their opposition was a group of “nationalist conservatives” whose most prominent member was the operative and propagandist Merwin K. Hart. Hart’s worldview, which embraced nativism, antisemitism, anti-interventionism, and economic libertarianism, was shared by a range of figures on the right whose contributions to the emergence of the postwar conservative movement have not been studied. Hart’s organization, the New York State Economic Council (later renamed the National Economic Council), played a critical function in propagating conservative ideas throughout the years of liberal political hegemony. Scholarship on conservatism has generally cast the early opponents of the New Deal as principled libertarians, unsullied by bigotry and nativism; this article challenges that picture, arguing that the nationalist conservatives were critical in shaping the ideology of the postwar right.

The manosphere consists of numerous anti-feminist websites, blogs, and online forums that are now widely considered misogynistic and male supremacist. Among the heterogeneous manosphere groups is the gender-separatist Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW). This article recounts a four-week digital ethnographic study that investigated the emotional and relational dynamics of the Reddit MGTOW forum. I found that rage and fear toward women are central to MGTOW users, as users worked together to reinterpret their feelings of rage and fear to construct a shared narrative that positions women as perpetrators. This worldview obscures the important role masculine ideology plays in male loneliness and disconnection. Giving advice and emotional support on the forum cultivated a sense of belonging and provided a space for men to navigate feelings of loneliness, frustration, and social displacement. Ultimately, MGTOW users expressed a desire to transcend restrictive gender ideals such as husband and father, yet paradoxically still adhered to a conservative, essentialized, and hierarchical gender order. MGTOW users thus performed hybrid masculinity, as they self-conceptualized as victims of society and simultaneously upheld preexisting gender hierarchies that situate femininity as biologically inferior. This study offers a new insight into the magnetism of anti-feminist groups like MGTOW and the ways digital platforms like Reddit amplify such harmful and antagonistic worldviews. Overall, this article highlights the importance of unpacking the affectionate and positive relationships within extremist groups to help explain the emergence into mainstream discourse of male supremacism and an increase of misogynistic beliefs concerning masculinity, femininity, and feminism. 

This article is an attempt to provide a genealogy of the sexual emotions and desires at work in contemporary far-right antisemitism. Embedded in primary research while also drawing heavily on the existing literature on antisemitism, the article seeks to make an intervention into the historiography of antisemitism and to argue for the existence of a sexual component at the heart of antisemitism, both historically and today. The article starts by briefly discussing a very short and specific story from Irish Jewish history in the 1900s, and then moves to a seemingly very unconnected story about the vocabulary of twenty-first-century American politics. And then what follows—a discussion of how these two stories are essentially intertwined and a broad overview of the history of antisemitism—argues for sexual antisemitism as a key concept for understanding anti-Jewish ideologies.

To conceal their activities, far-right networks manipulate similarity heuristics that suggest their constituent organizations are discrete and coherent. When an organization crafts a public image indicating that only those who wear the same uniforms and march in the same marches are part of an organization, it implies that those who do not, are not. This use of cognitive shortcuts assists far-right organizations in crafting their organizational boundaries to obscure internal divisions of labor. That these disguised internal divisions of labor exist is strong evidence to support a renewed focus on the intra-organizational dynamics of far-right organizations—a focus that pivots from a discursive to a materialist understanding of the far right. I use the case of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), one of the world’s largest far-right organizations, to argue that similarity heuristics disguise far-right connectivity. Paying granular attention to the organizational boundary-making practices of the RSS demonstrates that the true organizational focus of the RSS is its managerial manifestation, rather than its cadre division, which is just one organization the managerial RSS manages. This key finding suggests that scholars must focus on the mechanics of the managerial RSS over the aesthetic phenomenon of the cadre RSS. Such a focus inevitably leads to a network-centric approach to the Indian far right that better captures the mechanics of its mobilization.

Students in India have played politically significant roles both before and since independence. Organizations of both the left and the right attempted and at various points succeeded in mobilizing mass support among students. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the front organizations spawned by it, known collectively as the Sangh, have long been major proponents of Hindu nationalism and have considered students important. Despite this, the Sangh’s relationship with students has not received systematic analysis. This article, using sources primarily produced by the Sangh, analyzes different aspects of the Sangh’s relationship with students between 1947 and 1985. It attempts to demonstrate how during this period, primarily through its student front, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (All India Students’ Council, ABVP), the Sangh was keen on gaining control and influence over student politics. To do so, the ABVP sought to strategically moderate its image. At times the agitational or Hindutva aspects of the organization were foregrounded while on other occasions or even simultaneously the ABVP was portrayed as a peaceful “organization with a difference” that was nonpolitical and interested in service activities. 

The process of globalization in recent years has ignited an unprecedented level of far-right transatlantic cooperation. Individuals and members of organizations from the United States traveled to Europe intending to establish permanent relations with their ideological cousins, while new ways of online communication enabled extreme right-wing organizations to share ideas and methods of political activism and learn from each other. This phenomenon is observable in Serbia even though bilateral relations with the United States are troubled by the US-led NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. For this reason, anti-American feelings developed among many Serbs, with the far right taking the most uncompromising attitude. Nevertheless, the American far right has inspired and influenced right-wing and even mainstream political organizations in Serbia. The first part of this article examines how extreme right-wing groups in Serbia became exposed to American far-right ideas over the Internet. It also shows how more recent connections have been established between the Serbian far right and alt-right figures from the United States. The second part will examine the effect of the populist right-wing movement created by Donald Trump on Serbian mainstream politics. Trump’s non-interventionism in his first term awakened optimism that better relations between Serbia and the United States are possible while influencing Serbian narratives, ideology, and political practice. 

The article explores the influence of far-right publishing in Greece since 1974. It examines the role of publishers in spreading ultranationalist and neo-Nazi ideologies, highlighting the connection between publishing and political action. It discusses the rise of the Golden Dawn party and the shift from traditional Greek nationalism to international far-right extremism. The study reveals how far-right publishers operate outside mainstream channels, using specialized networks to distribute materials. It also notes the emergence of new publishers and the integration of international far-right themes into Greek politics. The research underscores the cultural impact of far-right publishing, emphasizing its role in shaping public discourse and normalizing extremist ideologies. The article provides a comprehensive analysis of the far-right publishing landscape, documenting its evolution and influence on Greek society.