Nationalism and the Extreme Right in Europe

1
Nationalism and the Extreme Right in Europe

• Nationalism, like the modern age is the product
  of two revolutions the Industrial revolution and
  the French revolution. Without them it would be
  impossible or very different. There are in fact
  many nationalisms, and there is a puzzle why is
  nationalism such a successful story.
• The industrial revolution made possible the sense
  of national community that comes from the
  destruction of localisms, from better transport
  etc. In the 1780 to 1800 there was the take off
  period the creation of an urban proletariat. In
  the 1840s a massive construction of railways
  facilitated state and nation building.
• The conceptual features and variations of
  Nationalism as a political concept are discussed
  by Freeden (1996)

2
The French Revolution

• The French Revolution was a state breakdown that
  acquired a special meaning because of the
  existence of a set of ideas of the philosophes
  who saw in the dignity of people a counterpart to
  the power of the king. A discredited king was
  replaced by the idea of nation. In 1789 the
  Declaration of the rights of men and citizens
  stated that the source of sovereignty was the
  nation. Symbols had a powerful role in the
  Revolution as Lynn Hunt shows.
• The French revolution made others aware of what
  could happen and of the risks and limits. That a
  doctrine can spread, that a social revolution is
  possible, that nations are independent of states,
  people independent of their rulers, that the
  revolution can spread. It was the revolution to
  put an end to all revolutions (until the Russian).

3
Nationalism of the 1830s

• After the 1830s, the movement in favour of the
  revolution split. One product was nationalism.
  There were youth movements inspired by Giuseppe
  Mazzini (Young Italy, Poland, Switzerland,
  Germany, France) Members saw no contradictions
  between their demands and those of other nations.
  They felt united in an ambiguity of nationalism.
• As the educated classes grew in the 1830s, they
  began to use national languages instead of
  foreign languages (Czech, Rumanian, Hungarian etc
  emerged as languages with textbooks). Nationalism
  was essentially a middle class issue, and for a
  long time remained such. However, while Western
  nationalisms are generally bourgeois phenomena,
  populist nationalisms are now also widespread as
  in the Lombard League

4
The role of these nationalist bourgeois classes
was to

• Encourage political assertion of the community
• A movement to place the community in the homeland
• A movement to economic unity
• A re-education to national values, memories,
  symbols which are the most potent aspect of
  nationalism.
• A movement to confer civil, social and political
  rights to ethnic communities.

5
The essence of nationalism

• Although there are different types of
  nationalism, they all share the belief that there
  should be continuity between a cultural and a
  political unit the nation and the state.
• The two main types are civil-territorial ones
  and ethnic-genealogical ones.
• In explaining nationalism social scientist are
  divided between a primitivist position and a
  cultural construction approach.

6
Common Elements of modern national identity
(which define a nation) are

• a historic territory, or homeland
• Common myths and historical memories
• A common, mass public culture
• Common legal rights and duties for all members
• A common economy with territorial mobility for
  members.

7
Functions of National Identity

• National identity has several functions It
  underpins the state, it provides social bonds,
  and it defines and locates individual selves in
  the world in an Ethnic Community. An ethnic
  community can be distinguished by (Smith A.)
• A collective proper name
• A myth of common ancestory
• Shared historical memories
• One or more differentiating elements of common
  culture
• An association with a specific homeland
• A sense of solidarity for significant sectors of
  the population.

8
Nationalism in Contemporary EU

• The European Union is an area of relatively
  similar legislative and social dynamics. In
  recent years, broad geopolitical factors and the
  process of European integration have spurred
  comparable migration patterns and reactive social
  movements and parties.
• Increased internal geographical mobility, and the
  arrival of an unprecedented influx of third world
  refugees and migrants have made ethnicity newly
  relevant and sparked reactive movements.

9
Extreme Right Movements

• These movements are often locally active among
  the indigenous population in areas where new
  migrants have settled, often in large cities, and
  are frequently opposed by counter-movements that
  advocate ethnic tolerance.
• The cultural exchanges between the two types of
  movements reflect debates taking place in public
  discourse, and in turn influences its formation.

10
The Extreme Right and Public Discourse

• With Gamson (1992), I differentiate public
  discourse from its media aspect. The media is
  just one arena among others where a discussion on
  societal themes occurs. Thus, an important area
  of discourse such as the one on ethnic relations
  has a media dimension and is the subject of
  discussions in families, political parties, work
  organizations and other discussion arenas.

11
Other arenas in social life

• If the importance of the media arena is
  universally recognized, it is also important to
  investigate the arena that takes place in the
  everyday life of inner cities where different
  ethnic groups interact with each others, with the
  images of each other reflected by the media, and
  with the social movement activists for whom they
  are relevant.
• In fact, social movement demonstrations and other
  protest events are often the impetus for media
  coverage, and cadres' framing of issues is likely
  to be reported and thus constitute the initial
  presentation of topics. Topics are then
  re-elaborated in other arenas.

12
The Right and the Media

• Whilst movement's themes have been accepted by
  the media, the solutions proposed have been
  re-evaluated according to largely independent
  dynamics emerging in the arena of media
  discussion.
• A set of similar geopolitical conditions in
  Europe have sustained a a specific relation
  between anti-immigrant movements, the media and
  civil society. The frames produced by these
  movements have been accepted by the media only in
  their agenda-setting character.

13
Media and Publics

• It is to media framings of the migrants issue
  that public discourse is sensitive. Specific
  networks re-elaborate media positions and produce
  autonomous frames on issues of multiculturalism.
  All over Europe, nationalist social movements
  have defined multiculturalism as a problematic
  phenomenon and a threat to indigenous populations
  and community integration.

14
Movements and Grievances

• In stigmatizing migrants, right-wing movements
  have responded to a typical need of social
  movement that of constitution an enemy that by
  virtue of its existence creates the 'us' versus
  'them' feeling that supports activism and sustain
  their identity of challengers.
• This enemy has varied in different countries, but
  it is often the last immigrant group arrived.
  Negative traits are ascribed to it, but this
  image change over time as new groups arrive and
  new framings emerge in public discourse.
• The nationalist movement frame has emerged on the
  one hand on the basis of ethnic competition for
  resources of the welfare state, but equally
  important has been a need for community that the
  changing structure of several labour markets and
  patterns of urban life have undermined.

15
Cities, Migrants and the Right

• Cities hold a special role in the formation of
  public discourse. Their size, concentration of
  the media, and of political and industrial elites
  makes them uniquely relevant in advancing and
  reflecting cultural change, and thus in
  constantly re-defining conceptions of the
  'other'.
• Specific sections of these cities are good
  indicators of processes happening elsewhere in
  other large cities, such as processes of change
  in family structure, the use of leisure time and
  patterns of occupational life. Other dynamics
  such as some political ones related to
  regionalist movements are unique, but crucial in
  influencing countries.

16
What differences?

• As "notions of cultural difference and processes
  of boundary maintenance arise from aspects of
  social organization, not from 'objective'
  cultural difference" (Hyllard Heriksen 1993, p.
  58), it is important to understand what are the
  relevant social patterns that sustain perceptions
  of difference.

17
The Discourse of the Extreme-Right

• Typically the right claim that specific areas
  need to be protected from the economic or
  cultural predatory behaviour of nation states.
  They advocate an increase of various types of
  political and economic resources ranging from
  subsidies to depressed areas to the institutional
  protection of linguistic differences. Their
  independence claims range from limited autonomy
  in specific areas, to seeking secession and
  promoting ethnic nationalism and statehood.
• Right-wing nationalist groups in contemporary EU
  claim to protect entire nation-states from
  cultural, economic or social threats and adopt
  right-wing doctrines, which typically idealize
  the state. Although recently right-wing movements
  have attracted much media attention, there is a
  paucity of academic work on them. This is due to
  several reasons.

18
The Extreme-Right as an Academic Topic

• In recent years, the field of social movement
  research has traditionally specialized on
  intellectually sophisticated and socially
  middle-class movements such as the new-left, and
  the new social movements of the seventies and
  eighties, and to a lesser extent some new
  religious movements.
• Both in its concepts, and general value
  orientation, the literature is ill equipped to
  tackle the often violent and uneducated right
  wing movements of the nineties. Furthermore,
  their nationalism has been taken as an
  unimportant corollary of their racist character
  and they have been neglected since their impact
  on public discourse was considered limited until
  recently.

19
Distinction between nationalism of the right and
regionalism

• The 'enemy' of regionalist and right-wing
  nationalist groups is different.
• Regionalist parties are concerned with a specific
  dominant group of their nation-state such as the
  Basque and Catalan concern with the 'Castilians'
  or the Welch's concern with the English,
• whilst the right-wing nationalists define the
  enemy in 'racial' terms as the 'non-whites'.

20
Occasional coincidence of regionalism and
right-wing nationalism

• The two sets of concerns can of course be both
  present at the same time, thus the Northern
  League is against both non-white immigrants and
  Italian southerners. But more frequently, there
  is a difference of political emphasis, which
  corresponds to a different characterization of
  the enemy, and the two types of movements propose
  different methods to enhance the communities of
  concern.
• The idealized solution proposed by right-wing
  nationalist movements is the expulsion of
  immigrants or moves in that direction.
• Regionalist parties, which range in political
  orientation are generally focusing on ensuring
  the institutional primacy of their nationals in
  their regions. However, in some cases, they might
  also advocate the expulsion of non-nationals from
  their territory such as is the case of parts of
  the Welch movement.

21
Boundaries

• Boundaries between groups are maintained by
  aspects of cultural reproduction and occupational
  and lifestyle segmentation that this tradition
  has investigated. Ethnic separation can be
  assessed through Handelman (1977) typology of
  ethnic category, ethnic network, ethnic
  association and ethnic community.
• Cultural differences and processes of boundary
  maintenance are rooted in aspects of social
  organization and not in 'objective' cultural
  differences. At the same time the role of the
  media should be considered independently in its
  function of cultural reproduction.