The Radical Right During Crisis

ibidem-Press, Stuttgart

Contents

Preface

Authoritarianism Revisited

The Psychology of a Fascist Leader: Hitler’s “Blond Beast” Reinhard Heydrich

Hegel and Fascism

The ‘Silent Majority’: Populist Cliché or Warning?

How Fascists Have Used Panics to Consolidate Power

Can the Radical Right’s Reductionist Narrative Withstand Real-World Complexity?

Alternative Epistemologies of the Radical Right: How Grand Narratives and the Quest for Truth Offer Recognition and a Sense of Belonging

Radical Right Voters and Democratic Support

Nationalism and Memory

Grieving Greater Hungary: Trianon, Orbán, and the Hungarian Radical Right

An “Ambivalent Day”: How the AfD Attempts to Re-frame the 8th May as Day to Commemorate German Victimhood

Putin’s Amendments to Russia’s Constitution Sparks Debate About Russian Nationalism

Eco-fascism “Proper”: The Curious Case of Greenline Front

Terrorism and Political Violence

A New Wave of Right-Wing Terrorism

Germany’s Terrorist Attack: Migrant Communities Have Lost Trust

Far-Right Terrorism is Global, But Coverage is Not: Hindu Nationalist Violence in India

In Germany, Anti-semitism on Social Media Can Be Linked to Offline Violence

Does Norway Have a Neo-Nazi Terrorist Problem?

Canada Filed the First Incel Terrorism Charge. How Do We Combat This Threat?

The COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 Could Be a Harbinger of Authoritarianism

Anti-government Ideology in the Times of COVID-19

The Radical Right is Weaponizing COVID-19 Online

Under Lockdown, Germany’s PEGIDA Goes to YouTube

Europe’s Far-Right Fails to Capitalize on COVID-19

Quo Vadis, Europe? Coping with Old and New Crises

COVID-19 Will Have Long-lasting Consequences for International Migration

How COVID and Syria Conspiracies Introduce Fascism to the Left: The Red-Brown Media Spectrum

QAnon: A Conspiracy for Our Time

Black Lives Matter, Policing, and Military Presence

I Predict a Riot: An Analysis of White Supremacist Propaganda in the Wake of the George Floyd Murder

“Get in the Bin!” The Far-Right “Guarding” British Monuments

Contemporary Tensions Between Blacks and Jews in America: July Fireworks and Why They Matter

Is America Edging Toward a “Racial Holy War”?

Nuancing “Chan-Culture”: /K/ and the Visual Culture of Weapons Boards

The Other Epidemic: White Supremacists in Law Enforcement

No Bargain: Why Don’t Bad Cops Get Fired? The Power of Police Unions

‘Press the Reset Button’: Right-Wing Extremism in Germany’s Military

Investigating the Radical Right’s Presence in the Canadian Military

Alt-Tech

The Social Media Platform That Welcomes QAnon with Open Arms

The Transnationalization of White Supremacist Discourse: The Hundred-Handers and the It’s Okay to Be White Campaign

Networked Hate: White Supremacist Activity on Telegram

Why Do Hate Groups and Terrorists Love Telegram?

Ideology, Intellectuals, and Metapolitics

Did a French Far-Right Thinker Predict 2020?

Why Did Heidegger Emerge as the Central Philosopher of the Far-Right?

Sweden Heading Towards “Academic Freedom” as Battlefield of the Radical Right

Why is the Brazilian Right Afraid of Pablo Freire?

The Right’s War on Science & Experts Escalates Amid COVID-19

What WhatsApp Conversations Reveal About the Far-Right’s Ideology

Racist Occultism in the UK: Behind the Order of Nine Angles (O9A)

Sexuality and Gender

The New Man and Fascism

Incels: Alienated Men and Violence in the Digital Age

The Proud Boys Are Standing By

Marching On, But Not Together: The Georgian Far Right versus Guram Kashia

The “Rainbow Nation” is Not Immune to Anti-gender Activism: Attacks on Queer Bodies and Knowledge in South Africa

Turning Family Into a Political Weapon

Islamophobia in Sri Lanka, or the Sterilization Obsession

The Radical Right is Exploiting a Swedish Teen’s Murder

New Voter Strongholds

When Ethnic Minorities Vote for Right-Wing Populism

In Bed with the Far Right in Thuringia: A Watershed Moment for Muslim CDU supporters?

The German AfD Makes Appeals to Russian-Germans

The Radical Right in Turmoil

Disunity within the Ranks? Party Expulsions in the European Radical Right: 2000-2020

Is Italian Right-Wing Populism in Decline?

The Dusk after the Dawn: Fall of a Greek Neo-Nazi Party

Countering the Radical Right

Collecting Hate: The Ethics of Archiving and Researching on the Radical and Far-Right

The Many Faces of the Radical Right and How to Counter Their Threat: CARR’s Report “Faces” of the Radical Right

Treating “White Men” as a New “Suspect Community” is Not the Answer

Tackling Online Radicalisation at Its Offline Roots

Moving Away from Islamist Extremism: Assessing Counter Narrative Responses to the Far-Right Online

How to Counter Radical Right Narratives Head on

Can Anything Be Done Against Radical Right Misinformation?

The Effects of Censoring the Far-Right Online

Is Antifa the Answer to Today’s Fascism?

Remembering Kevin Coogan

How to Laugh Away the Far-Right: Lessons from Germany

CARR 2020 Bibliography

Preface

To say that 2020 was a memorable year would be an understatement. While the COVID-19 pandemic overshadowed all else and would quickly have a lasting impact on our daily lives, other events related to the radical right soon surfaced.

The year started off with tragedy as a shooter in Hanau, Germany opened fire targeting Turkish “immigrants” (although in reality German citizens). Driven by racist and misogynist conspiracy theories, the terrorist uploaded a manifesto and YouTube video shortly before carrying out the attack. Only a few days later, riots broke out in New Delhi, India, as Hindu nationalist mobs descended onto Muslim neighbourhoods in brazen acts of violence that left dozens dead and hundreds injured. The riots were incited by far right politicians who equated protesters—of a newly passed bill that discriminates citizenship based on religion—as anti-national and worthy targets of murder.

Soon after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic in March, we witnessed radical right leaders enact sweeping authoritarian powers, weaponizing upon societal instability to bolster their agendas. Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party in Hungary passed legislation that would allow the prime minister to rule by decree indefinitely, thus further contributing to erosion of democracy. Meanwhile, Russia’s constitutional referendum outcome secured Vladimir Putin power in office until 2036. Other radical right world leaders who later tested positive for COVID-19, such as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, continued to promote falsehoods steeped in anti-science and anti-expert claims. Fear of democratic backsliding became entrenched as panic surrounding the coronavirus spiked across the world.

While anti-mask protests gained strongholds in North America and Europe, another social movement started taking to the streets. The gruesome murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota mobilized a summer of Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S. and those in international solidarity. Championing the call for police reform, however, soon faced backlash from far right counter-protestors. Militia groups such as the self-described Boogaloo Bois, and male supremacist organizations like the Proud Boys, began roaming the streets intimidating BLM protestors, at times with direct violence. Coupled with mounting unemployment levels and economic hardship as a consequence of the pandemic, and social media disinformation circulating at unprecedented rates, 2020 witnessed the height of political polarization.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government charged a young man with the first ever designated case of an “incel” attack. Although terrorist attacks have been carried out by self-described incels in the past, the recognition of this hateful, violent misogynistic ideology as a motivation for murder added weight to an increasing area of national security concern. Growing incel online communities is not the only digital network with deadly offline effects that rose to prominence last year. Soon enough, QAnon began appearing in media headlines. This conspiracy theory, which dates back to 2017 on the imageboard 4chan, advocates that a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles, most of whom are prominent politicians from the Democratic Party, are running a global child sex-trafficking ring. This group of elites are supposedly plotting against Donald Trump, who is heroically defending against their pursuits. Information concerning new developments are released in small increments by an anonymous user who goes by the name “Q”, a person claiming to have high-level security clearance in the American government with access to classified information.

The rise in popularity of QAnon adherents coalesced with their increasing visibility at Trump rallies and rapid sharing of disinformation on social media in the buildup to the U.S. presidential election. Although American in origin, the QAnon movement spread to other countries, including the UK, France, Germany, and Japan. Combined with false narratives concerning the development and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine and a summer of social unrest, many feared impending violence in the run-up to election day. Such violence was delayed, however, until the beginning of 2021 when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol following incitement to violence by the president. After months of claiming election fraud and failure to concede to Democratic challenger Joe Biden, Trump galvanized this group of insurrectionists in a final display before leaving office.

In spite of these worrying developments, particularly concerning the role of far right actors, 2020 was a year that also witnessed positive events. A nationwide law that would prohibit abortion in Poland was delayed implementation after large scale protests, delivering a major blow to the ruling right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party and narrowly re-elected President Andrezj Duda. The end of the year also saw activists celebrating Argentina’s passage of legalizing abortion, a massive step that may influence a domino effect in the region. Both of these advances gives hope towards expanding women’s reproductive rights in the future.

In Greece, the trial of the openly neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn with the court ruling its role as a criminal organization, was met with widespread jubilation. Although this does not signal the end of the far right in Greece, the verdict provides much needed vindication to victims and their families. It further sends a pivotal message concerning the importance of justice in upholding the rule of law. Meanwhile, Belarusians protested for free and fair elections in the face of authoritarianism. Although ongoing, the demand for democracy in Belarus remains strong. And despite acts of state-sponsored violence, a youth-led movement in Nigeria against police brutality and human rights abuses has been likened to once-in-a-generation change.

Finally, a Biden-Harris administration achieved through the peaceful transfer of power signals a benchmark of liberal democracy. The administration has already dedicated efforts towards reviewing and assessing domestic violent extremism as a serious threat to public safety. While some criticism can, and should, be levied against this approach, it is a welcome step in the right direction towards countering the far right.

This Yearbook features contributions by academic, practitioner, and policy Fellows at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR), providing a holistic overview of radical right activity in 2020 in relation to global events. CARR was established in 2018 and is chaired by a group of researchers: Professor Matthew Feldman, Dr William Allchorn, Professor Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Dr Archie Henderson, Professor Tamir Bar-On, Dr Eviane Leidig, Bàrbara Molas, and Augusta Dell’Omo. Special thanks to Pragya Rai and James Hardy for their assistance in compiling this Yearbook

The following entries comprise only a small amount of the hundreds of blog posts written by our Fellows as part of the CARR Insight Blog (radicalrightanalysis.com). The increased visibility and readership of these blog posts are in great part due to CARR’s media partners where several of these posts were first published by openDemocracy, Fair Observer, and Rantt Media. An additional thanks goes to Walid Houri, Anna Pivovarchuk, and Ahmed Baba, for their editorial cooperation and dedication.

The Yearbook begins by returning to a recurrent theme—exploring how studies of authoritarianism and fascism can offer insight into explaining developments today—before turning to radical right nationalist imaginaries and memory reconstruction. It then switches to an empirical focus, analysing terrorist events in 2020 not only enacted by the perpetrator and their broader ecosystems of radicalization, but also detailing those harmed in the process and offering counter-terrorism recommendations.

Of course, it would be remiss to avoid reflections of radical right responses during the pandemic, discussed extensively in the following section of the Yearbook. Succeeding this are important assessments of the relationship between the radical right and Black Lives Matter, policing, and military presence. Technology has been especially crucial in radical right communication, recruitment, radicalization, and mobilization in these contexts, which is examined in the next section.

The Yearbook then situates the ideological and intellectual undercurrents of the radical right, often targeting left-wing academia and scientific experts. Added to this list of “enemies” is an effort towards controlling sexuality, reproduction, and gender norms, which is explored by several authors.

Penultimately, the Yearbook compares both the strengths and weaknesses of the radical right in 2020 with respect to political parties. New voter strongholds are identified, as well as areas of decline in radical right support and acceptance. Lastly, it concludes by exploring a wide array of approaches to countering the radical right, including much needed online and offline solutions.

This comprehensive and timely edited volume maps the radical right in 2020 with the aim of disseminating essential knowledge of this phenomenon to a broad audience of scholars, educators, practitioners, policymakers, security services, journalists, and the general public. We hope that the analysis provided by these leading experts will aid towards a more nuanced understanding of the radical right and effective counter responses in challenging this threat to democracy.

Dr Eviane Leidig

Oslo, Norway

January 2021

Authoritarianism Revisited

The Psychology of a Fascist Leader: Hitler’s “Blond Beast” Reinhard Heydrich

Chris Webb

Reinhardt Heydrich was born in Halle, Germany, a provincial town in Prussian Saxony, on 7 March 1904. He was the son of a Dresden music teacher who had founded the First Halle Conservatory for Music, Theatre and Teaching. Heydrich joined the Freikorps in 1919 and was strongly influenced in his early years by the racial fanaticism of Völkisch circles. On 30 March 1922, he entered the Reichsmarine in Kiel, serving for a time under Wilhelm Canaris, who nurtured his taste for naval intelligence work. In 1931, Heydrich was forced to resign from the navy by Admiral Raeder for ‘conduct unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman’, after compromising the virtue of a shipyard director’s daughter.1

In July 1931, he joined the Nazi Party and then the Schutzstaffel (SS), attracting the attention of Heinrich Himmler and he rose rapidly through the ranks. He was appointed SS-Sturmbannführer on 25 December 1931, then SS-Standartenführer and Chief of the SD (Security Service) in July 1932. Heydrich was promoted to SS-Brigadeführer on 21 March 1933 and, in reward for his murderous services during the Ernst Rohm Purge (later dubbed “The Night of the Long Knives”), he became an SS-Obergruppenführer on 1 July 1934. Around the time he became a SS-Sturmbannführer, the dropped the “t” from his Christian name, and henceforth was known as Reinhard. Heydrich was tall, slim, blond-haired, with slanting, deep-set blue eyes. He possessed a military bearing and ice-cool hardness, which seemed to epitomise the “Nordic-Aryan type” of Nazi mythology. His athleticism—he was a first-class fencer, an excellent horseman and a skilled pilot—allied to his talent as a violinist and his orderly, disciplined exterior impressed Himmler, who selected him as his right-hand man.

As Himmler’s assistant in securing control of the Munich and then Bavarian police after the Nazis seizure of power, Heydrich assured the successful co-ordination of the political police in the other German Landser during 1933-34. Heydrich soon negotiated his way to becoming Chief of the Berlin Gestapo and by 1936 was given command of the security police throughout the Reich. An able technician of power, ruthless, cold and calculating, without any compunction in carrying out the most inhuman measures, Heydrich made himself indispensable to the masters of the Third Reich. Yet the arrogant facade disguised a deeply split personality, a neurotic temperament and pathological self-hatred which found its outlet in a boundless greed for power, morbid suspiciousness and exhibitionism. A sense of “racial” inadequacy, the gnawing uncertainty caused by his suspected half-Jewish origins—utilised for blackmail purposes by his rivals for power, though never established as a fact. All this added to his built-in sense of inferiority.

As head of the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo), the unified, centralised, militarised and Nazified security police, Heydrich reacted with pitiless harshness in dealing with so-called “enemies of the State”. His cynicism and contempt for human beings led him to exploit the basest instincts—sadism, envy, intolerance—in weaving his gigantic spider’s web of police surveillance in the Third Reich. He filed extensive dossiers not only on enemies of the Party, but also on his rivals and colleagues, using the police apparatus to set his opponents at each other’s throats. Scientific studies of the modus operandi of potential enemies of the State, like Marxists, Jews, Freemasons, Liberal Republicans, religious and cultural groups, went hand-in-hand with arrests, torture and murder of those who stood in the way of the totalitarian police apparatus.

The “Blond Beast” who controlled the sole intelligence service of the Party after 1935, specialised in devious methods of blackmail alongside the weapons of open terror and persecution. Heydrich’s hand was most probably in the Tukhachevsky Affair, which led to the purge of the top Red Army generals in the Soviet Union. He also fabricated the scandalous intrigue among his peers, which brought down the leading German generals, including Werner von Blomberg and Werner von Fritsch in 1938. His proclivity for “dirty tricks” was again in evidence when he masterminded the fake attack on the Gleiwitz radio transmitter station, which provided Hitler’s excuse for invading Poland on 1 September 1939. In the same year, Heydrich was appointed head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) which incorporated the Gestapo, the criminal police and the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS (or SD). A gigantic political machine for centralising and transmitting information to all corners of the Third Reich, which gave Heydrich the opportunity to perfect the techniques of secret police power.

The most satanic consequence of this accumulation of power was revealed in Heydrich’s implementation of the order for the wholesale extermination of European Jewry. Already before the war, Heydrich had concentrated the management of Jewish affairs in his hands, though in 1938 the emphasis was still on a policy of forced emigration. One of the instigators of the Krystal Nacht (Crystal Night) pogrom of November 1938, Heydrich had sent Adolf Eichmann to Vienna to organise a “Centre for Jewish Emigration” and, impressed by his success, had created a similar centre in Berlin.

After the conquest of Poland, Heydrich ordered the concentration of Polish Jews in ghetto’s and the appointment of Jewish councils, using a characteristically perfidious tactic of forcing the Jewish communities to “collaborate” in their own destruction. With Eichmann’s help, he organised the mass deportations of Jews from annexed parts of Poland, Germany and Austria to the territory of the General-Gouvernement. In his directive of 21 September 1939, Heydrich distinguished, however, between the “final aim”, requiring longer periods of time and the stages required or achieving it. On 31 July 1941, following the invasion of the Soviet Union, in the first six weeks of the campaign Heydrich had, with typical bravado, flown with the Luftwaffe, Goering commissioned Heydrich to carry out a ‘total solution of the Jewish question in those territories of Europe which are under German influence’. Both the terms Gesamtlosung (Total Solution) and Endlosung (Final Solution) were used in the document to Heydrich and he was delegated to take responsibility for all the necessary organisational, administrative and financial measures to achieve that terrible, murderous end. His Einsatzgruppen, which had already killed tens of thousands of Poles and Jews with the co-operation of the German Army, were to murder hundreds of thousands of Russian and Polish Jews as well as Soviet officials.

To co-ordinate the action of various government and Party agencies, Heydrich convened the Wannsee Conference in a Berlin suburb on 20 January 1942 to discuss the ways and means of implementing the “Final Solution of the European Jewish Question”. In the circumlocutory language used to disguise the policy of mass murder, which he had a considerable part in devising. Heydrich described how Jews capable of work ‘are brought to these areas in the eastern occupied territories and employed in road building, in which task undoubtedly a large part will fall out through natural diminution’. In other words, they would be sent to their death through hunger, exhaustion or disease and, where required, by murder squads. The surviving remnant would be given appropriate “treatment” as they represented a “natural selection,” constituting the “germ-cell” of a new Jewish development should they be allowed to go free. Having laid the groundwork for the “Final Solution”, Heydrich left his Berlin headquarters to assume the post of Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia on 23 September 1941. Taking up residence in Prague, Heydrich adopted “the policy of the whip and the sugar”, speeding up repression and ordering mass executions while attempting to win over the workers and peasants by improving social conditions. Overestimating his success in “pacifying” the Czechs, Heydrich abandoned normal security precautions and drove about in an open car without armed escort.

On 27 May 1942, he was gravely wounded by two Free Czech agents, Josef Gabcik and Jan Kubis, who were trained in England and parachuted into Czechoslovakia, who opened fire on his car and when one of their guns jammed threw a grenade into the vehicle. The assassins were discovered, along with other members of the Resistance group, sheltering in the St. Cyril and Methodius church in Prague. On 18 June 1942, after a pitched battle with scores of SS troops, Josef Gabcik killed himself in the crypt, while Jan Kubis was fatally wounded and later died in hospital.

On 4 June 1942, Heydrich died at 4:30AM from blood poisoning and four days after his death, about 1,000 Jews left Prague in a single train, which was designated “AaH” (Attentat auf Heydrich, or Assassination of Heydrich) in “honour” of Heydrich’s death. This transport was officially destined for Ujazdów in the Lublin district, Poland, but was gassed at the Bełżec death camp. The members of Odilo Globocnik’s resettlement staff henceforward dedicated the murder programme to Heydrich’s memory under the code name “Einsatz Reinhardt”.2

Heydrich’s body was transported from Prague by special train to Berlin and his funeral on 9 June 1942 was the grandest of any funeral ceremony conducted during the history of the Third Reich, held in the Mosaic Hall of the Reich’s Chancellery on Vos-Strasse. Following the funeral oration delivered by Hitler, the coffin was transported through the streets of Berlin on a gun carriage towed by a half-track to a simple grave in Invaliden cemetery. As Heydrich was being buried Hitler ordered the complete destruction of the little Bohemian village of Lidice as retaliation for the assassination of Heydrich on 9 June 1942, under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Max Rostock.

This was originally published on the Holocaust History Society website.

Chris Webb is a Senior Fellow at CARR and founder of the Holocaust Historical Society.

1 Robert S. Wistrich, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany (London: Routledge, 1995).

2 Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution (London: Vallentine, Mitchell & Co., 1968).