Far right

Subterms

    Latest story

    200 Shares78 Views

    Black History Month is a reflection of the political moment, so how do we revamp it?

    by

    It’s Black History Month in the UK, and it feels like it’s time for a rethink. Over the years, an event that started out as a celebration and reminder of history, culture and the connections between global Black communities, has taken on a corporate feel, expanding to include events where Black people are paid to talk to white audiences about “unconscious bias” and “allyship”. The 2020s Black Lives Matter protests created a surge in the business of demonstrating racial awareness. But even that moment has passed. The wave has crested, leaving a sort of hollowed out legacy of what raising awareness is for.The history of Black HistoryView image in fullscreenOriginally observed in the US and Canada, Black History Month was conceived in 1962 as “Negro History Week” by African American historian Carter G. Woodson with seven days of commemoration and observance in the second week of February. Black History Month grew out of this movement and was officially launched in 1970. Today it is observed not only in the US and Canada in February, but also in October in the UK, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands.The month has evolved since those days, focusing less on the histories of transatlantic enslavement and civil rights battles, and more on prominent Black figures in politics, culture, and activism, and broadly celebrating the contribution Black people have made to shape the country. It is in schools where Black History Month is most regularly observed, with talks and cultural events. But the way the month is celebrated is a reflection of the political moment. How it evolves is a good lesson in how co-option leads to dismantling: the reshaping of Black History Month has stymied the point of it, which is to address systemic and institutional racism.A jarring momentView image in fullscreenLittle demonstrates how important it is to rethink Black History Month more than the particular moment in which it falls this year. In the UK, a resurgent right in the shape of the Reform party is leading the polls. In the summer we witnessed the largest far-right rally in British history. Kemi Badenoch, the Black leader of the Conservative party, is a firm opponent of Black Lives Matter, and we are in a place where a member of parliament feels emboldened to say that “not seeing any white faces” in parts of a city is a cause for alarm. Meanwhile, far-right parties are surging in Europe as a whole.In the US, a colossal assault against DEI and affirmative action has been taken, often successfully, to the highest courts of the country. A campaign to scrub Black history and experience from the archives is under way. One of Donald Trump’s first executive orders targeted the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Smithsonian Institution, accusing them of a “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history” by portraying America “as inherently racist”.Against this backdrop, the month symbolises how little it can be impactful if it is limited to either dutiful corporate observances, or politically neutered celebrations of contributions in the past, rather than challenging the conditions of the present. It also demonstrates how its restricted time span means that it is detached from the wider consistent effort that is needed. Denise Miller, a prof at University of Greenwich, put it best when she raised concerns about the temporary “tokenism” of the month. “The problem with taking a tokenistic approach”, she wrote, “is that it often means that Black History Month becomes a fleeting performance rather than a catalyst for change.”Rethinking, but not jettisoningskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenFiguring out how to adjust, modify and expand efforts for racial equality and recognition in such moments of dejection and worry is a treacherous thing. There is a temptation to just do away with things like Black History Month altogether, thinking they are simply not fit for purpose, or are relics of an era that has not worked.But despite everything, Black History Month, and in fact the entire extended network and legacy of racial movements – grassroots Black Lives Matter organisations, diversity equity and inclusion initiatives, and yes, even those talks to businesses – constitute an infrastructure that a lot of work has gone into. It is there not just to decay as the politics moves on (and in fact, regresses), but to be a living breathing thing.So what would a new dynamic Black History Month look like? Well, first, it would be not just one concentrated month: something that is spread out through the year (as some institutions are already beginning to do), parts of its content (particularly around historic Black characters) incorporated into school curriculums. It would also be a period that does not shy away from politics, and leaves space for people, particularly young people, to air their fears and experiences. What use is mere awareness of the past when it doesn’t reckon with the present reality of far-right rallies in the street? Institutions who observe it should not be comforted with the passive language of “unconscious bias” and alertness to “microaggressions”, but confronted with the risks that face all if anti-racism is not taken seriously. In short, Black History Month should be made current, urgent, and reactive. Perhaps an entire name rebrand is in order – Black History is Now Month. More

    More stories

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      A US fascism expert’s warning to Australia: ‘You guys are probably next’

      by

      It’s a warm autumn evening and Jason Stanley is walking through downtown Toronto, his home of a fortnight, discussing his view that America is sliding into fascism, and its global and historical parallels.“But the far right is everywhere,” he tells the Guardian. “There is a chill of fear everywhere.”As if on cue, a man emerges walking in the opposite direction wearing a bright red T-shirt bearing the slogan “Canada First”, a nationalist political movement promoting the mass deportation of migrants.“You can feel the sense of threat,” Stanley says. “Fascism begins with immigrants and national minorities, and it moves quickly to political opponents.”The trend is a global one, Stanley argues; the United States is just further down the path than other places. It is descending more quickly – and, as the events of past days have shown, more violently.When we speak, it is a week since rightwing provocateur Charlie Kirk was murdered at a university campus in Utah. In the days since, Kirk’s death has been weaponised by some supporters to attack political opponents. In an address from the Oval Office, the US president, Donald Trump, specifically blamed “radical left political violence” for Kirk’s death.View image in fullscreenA website has been established to dox anyone the site’s creators believe has “celebrated” Kirk’s assassination, or made comments they deem insufficiently orthodox on his legacy. People’s names, phone numbers, home addresses and places of work have been listed online, accompanied by threats and acts of violence.A thread on X is celebrating people losing their jobs for making comments about Kirk’s death: the thread lists dozens of cases of journalists, teachers, even hamburger cooks and Secret Service agents, summarily fired.“And JD Vance, the vice president of the United States, has encouraged ordinary citizens to report people for their negative comments about Charlie Kirk,” Stanley says.“That was a real signal saying, ‘We’re going to police your speech at every level’ … It’s a terror campaign against ordinary citizens’ speech.”Stanley made global headlines in March this year when, as a Yale professor specialising in the study of fascism, he announced he was leaving the US because he believed it was at risk of becoming a “fascist dictatorship”.View image in fullscreenNow a fortnight into his exile, he says he is not surprised by the worsening political climate in the US, “but it’s always terrifying when it comes”.He does not regret the move, arguing he can “fight better” from outside the US.“Right now, walking through the streets of Toronto, I feel safe. Given that the president of the United States said we’re going to target the people who call us fascists and Nazis, I probably wouldn’t feel safe in the United States. A lot of people don’t feel safe in the United States.”There is historical resonance, too, in Stanley’s exile from a rising tide of fascism. His German Jewish forebears, including both his parents and grandmother (who rescued more than 400 Jews from concentration camps) fled a Nazi regime that had them marked for extermination.As we speak, Stanley is partway through writing an article on America’s current moment, drawing from his grandmother’s memoir of the Kristallnacht, a Nazi-coordinated, nationwide antisemitic riot in 1938.View image in fullscreenHe cites a quote (mis)attributed most often to Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.”“I find myself asking: ‘Is this moment exactly Kristallnacht? Is it exactly the Reichstag fire?’ It’s like it’s these jigsaw puzzles … it’s a piece of one and a piece of another.”Stanley says he sees elements of Kristallnacht in the current conflagration after Kirk’s killing – the tumult exploited to expand the target of hostility from immigrants to political opponents.There is parallel too, he says, in the militarisation of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) – echoes of the Sturmabteilung, Ernst Röhm’s feared brownshirts.Much of the US’s political upheaval is idiosyncratic to its own history and political moment, but Australia, far distant, perhaps, with a different political culture, is not immune from a descent into fascism, Stanley insists.View image in fullscreenIn fact, he argues, Australia’s history makes it acutely vulnerable to precisely that.“You guys are probably next, right? The first domino to go.“You guys had a White Australia policy until the 1970s. That’s a terrible sign. And you attacked your universities ages ago.”Stanley cites, as well, Australia’s history of Indigenous displacement, its “performatively vicious” treatment of asylum seekers and the fierce “anti-woke” rhetoric that pierces public discourse.“A lot of what you’re seeing in the United States must seem familiar to you, even though you’ve come nowhere close to what we’ve seen in the last few months; but the ideological preconditions are certainly familiar to you.”The response to this might be that Australia has just re-elected a centre-left government with a commanding majority, rejecting anti-immigration rhetoric and division to such an extent that the leader of the opposition – who ran on these campaign platforms – didn’t just lose the election, but his own seat in parliament.Australia’s institutions, too, can be argued to be more robust: the public service and judiciary are far less politicised, voting is independently overseen and compulsory (driving parties towards a more moderate centrism), political violence is rare (and not fuelled by a firearm epidemic).But Stanley points out that fascism often comes cloaked in the language, the institutions and the processes of democracy: an insidiousness that lies in seeking to appear democratic.“Fascism conceals its anti-democratic nature by representing itself as the general will of the people, where ‘the people’ are the dominant racial or religious group.“It will say ‘the majority of people want this’, but that’s not the core idea of democracy. The core idea of democracy is not the tyranny of the majority. Democracy is a system based on freedom and equality.”Fascism is not a binary question either, nor one of an absolute threshold. Democracy and fascism are concepts that exist on a spectrum – a country can be more or less democratic, more or less fascist.“Yes, the United States is quite fascist now. It’s much less of a democracy. But, officially, at least, the United States is a democracy living under an emergency.“And this emergency allows the government to scoop people up into unmarked vans; perhaps you can stay indefinitely as a democracy under emergency?”View image in fullscreenA nation’s slide into fascism carries obvious consequence for the nation itself, but Stanley argues that when the country in question possesses the strongest military on Earth, is the global superpower and dominates international politics, it carries immense ramifications for the entire world.“It normalises and legitimates fascist movements everywhere,” Stanley argues. “So you’re going to see more of that dynamic, I suspect. All the remaining democratic countries are going to face surging anti-democratic, ultranationalist movements.”For Australia, the consequence of America’s descent is particularly acute.Since the end of the second world war, Australia has depended on the United States for its defence and security (including sheltering under its nuclear umbrella). The postwar “international rules-based order” (to use the parlance so loved by Australia’s foreign policy establishment) is, some argue, more accurately characterised as a US imperialist one.But Australia’s “great and powerful friend” (another particularly Australian foreign policy nomenclature) is no longer a reliable or consistent ally. Perhaps it never was, only now it is more nakedly so.Trump’s second administration has an exposed record of treating allies with worse than indifference – rather with contempt.Here, Stanley has perhaps his strongest note of caution. “Undoing fascism is very, very hard,” he says. Democracy is not some natural default.“We shouldn’t be surprised if, very soon, there are no more democracies, or very few. Democracy wasn’t a thing for a long time: we had monarchies and we had empires, and other forms of government, but we’re now in a situation where India, Russia, the United States and China are not democratic countries. So you have to ask: what will remain?” More

    • 288 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      I quit the US and Britain seemed like a sanctuary from Trump’s Maga movement. Now I wonder, for how long | Emma Brockes

      by

      This time last year, I had just moved back to Britain from the US and was enjoying the almost universal envy of American friends. While they were looking down the barrel of a second Trump presidency with its guarantee of chaos and division, we had elected Keir Starmer by a landslide and were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves. I remember people congratulating me on the prescience of my move, which I absolutely took even though politics hadn’t been part of my decision (not least because, for most of 2024, I had assumed Trump would lose). Anyway, here we are a year later and who’s laughing now?I guess the answer to that is Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party, which has somehow managed to harness the anger, disappointment and shame felt by large numbers of people who voted for and were then let down by Brexit, and are now in search of another fire to light. To this extent, the roots of the rightwing march last weekend and the rise of Reform generally feel broadly of a piece with their US antecedents: a case, at least in part, of people clutching at anything that promises to rip up a system that has serially failed to reward them. What has felt shocking to many of us this year, however, is how quickly the political landscape seems to have changed in this country, and how a leader as frivolous as Farage could get anyone to follow him anywhere, let alone in the direction of No 10.And by frivolous, I don’t mean in the Trump/Boris Johnson style. You can despise those men while recognising their talent as mass communicators. Farage by contrast is a jackass, a grinning fool roundly mocked to his face by Democrats in Congress earlier this month when he showed up, at the invitation of Republicans, to give evidence before a House judiciary committee on free speech. (Smirking in a way that seemed to poke fun at lingering American assumptions that a British accent makes you cleverer, Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, prefaced his remarks to Farage with a sardonic hat tip to the MP’s “erudition”.)Farage didn’t organise the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally on Saturday, of course; that was Tommy Robinson, the former BNP member with convictions for violence, drug possession and fraud – facts that, British broadcasters were at pains to point out on Monday morning, shouldn’t tar all those who showed up at his march with the same brush. Americans will recognise this as a pivot-point: a parallel moment to that period of Trump’s rise in popularity during which his supporters were given endless sympathetic profiles in the US national press, and invited to explain why following a man who said monstrous things didn’t make them in the least bit venal or monstrous.Meanwhile, the whiplash speed of Reform and Robinson’s rise means that the country Trump is visiting this week is seemingly very different to the one he went into business with in January. There may be a moment when the US president pauses to admire his own work, and he will surely be gratified to see British white nationalists gaining ground. But he is also a man who abhors and is quick to distance himself from “losers” – a category into which, arguably, his pal the prime minister currently falls, and who we can assume he will drop as quickly as he embraced him.For the rest of us, it is a question of waiting to see how much traction our own version of the Maga movement will have. There are crucial differences between the two countries that leave certain large constituencies who came out in the US for Trump without direct British equivalents. British white nationalism nods to the Christian church as an influence, but evangelical Christianity has no purchase in a country where, historically, foxhunting is a bigger wedge issue than abortion. And I can’t see JD Vance’s pronatalist leanings, rooted in his fanatical Catholicism, being much of a goer here, either. In fact – and this may be pure jingoism on my part – Vance strikes me as the type of American who even Britons on the far right might regard instinctively as a creepy little piece. On the other hand, if enough people are willing to pledge allegiance to a thug or an ambitious pub bore, these are differences that may hardly matter.

      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      UK populists mix faith and politics with parroting of ‘Judeo-Christian values’

      by

      The splendours of the Parthenon, Colosseum and Great Pyramid of Giza were in stark contrast to the utilitarian conference centre in London’s Docklands, but they were there to make a point.As 4,000 people from dozens of countries filed in for a three-day jamboree of rightwing discourse this week, the images were a reminder that great civilisations of the past had risen, declined and fallen. A commentary warned that western civilisation was at a tipping point, in crisis because it had lost touch with its “Judeo-Christian foundations”.The message greeted those attending a sold-out conference for politicians, policymakers, businesspeople and “culture formers” organised by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (Arc) at the ExCeL centre in east London, where non-discounted tickets cost £1,500.The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, and the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, addressed the gathering in person. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, and the billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel joined via video link from the US.It was not explicitly a faith-based event, but a distinctly religious flavour ran through the proceedings. The Arc’s co-founders and principal faces are Philippa Stroud, a Tory peer and devout Christian, and Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychologist whose lectures draw heavily on the Bible.Among the group’s known funders is the GB News investor Paul Marshall, a hedge fund boss and media tycoon whose worldview is shaped by his evangelical Christian faith. According to one well-connected former Conservative MP, Marshall’s influence on UK rightwing discourse is growing, not just through GB News but also his ownership of the Spectator magazine and the Unherd website.Marshall is not a member of any political party and said in a pre-conference interview last week that faith and politics were a “dangerous combination”. But some rightwingers – energised by Donald Trump’s victory and beguiled by the rhetoric of his Catholic vice-president, JD Vance – see populist potential in advocating for “Judeo-Christian values”.View image in fullscreenThe meaning of this phrase, much repeated at the Arc conference, is the “moral foundation of western civilisation” based on the shared values of Christianity and Judaism, according to Dennis Prager, an American conservative talkshow host. He added: “The ultimate embodiment of Judeo-Christian values has been the United States of America.”The term, drawing on both faiths’ biblical roots, was first used in the early 19th century to refer to Jewish converts from Christianity. Much later, it was adopted by conservative Christians in the US. The former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has fought court battles in an attempt to set up an academy for the Judeo-Christian west – a “gladiator school for culture warriors” – in an Italian monastery.Some believe the phrase has become code for Islamophobia. During Trump’s first term as US president, Meredith Warren of the University of Sheffield said it was a dog-whistle myth peddled by the far right “to draw a line between imagined Christian values and a perceived (but false) threat of Muslim immigration”.Farage, whose populist brand of politics has rarely made reference to the Christian faith, told this week’s conference that Britons should have more children to restore traditional Judeo-Christian culture. “We’ve kind of forgotten that what underpins everything is our Judeo-Christian culture and that’s where we need to start. And if we recognise that, and if we value that, then I think everything comes from that,” he said.Badenoch did not use the phrase in her speech to the conference but has often described herself as a “cultural Christian”. She understands the “importance of Christian values as the foundation of family and community life”, David Burrowes, a former Tory MP and co-founder of the Conservative Christian Fellowship, said last year.View image in fullscreenThe influence of evangelical Christianity in the Conservative party remains relatively marginal, but it has grown in recent years via two prominent voices: Danny Kruger, an MP since 2019 who has become a leading opponent to legalising assisted dying; and Miriam Cates, who was elected to parliament in 2019 but lost her seat last year, who is a vocal proponent of traditional family values. Kruger and Cates are on the Arc’s advisory board.Georgina Waylen, a professor of politics at the University of Manchester who has been researching the influence of evangelical Christianity on British politics, said it had “grown in recent years, and most notably in the Conservative party, following the election of a small number of rightwing socially conservative evangelical MPs who were well organised, knew what they wanted to achieve and oppose, and have been aided by the increasing influence of evangelical Christians in the rightwing ecosphere.”She added: “The evangelicals work effectively with others, including some rightwing populists, and have taken advantage of the chaos in the Conservative party. They have been active around gender identity issues and oppose assisted dying.”Evangelical conservative Christian groups have been active in lobbying MPs on issues such as abortion and assisted dying, although their involvement has not always been explicit. In November, an Observer investigation found that Christian pressure groups were secretly coordinating and funding anti-assisted dying campaigns ostensibly led by grassroots healthcare workers and disabled people.Organisations on the US Christian right have been accused of “infiltrating” the UK, lobbying MPs to restrict women’s reproductive rights. Last year, the UK branch of the US-based Alliance Defending Freedom provided “briefing material and legal analysis” to MPs before a vote on introducing buffer zones to prevent anti-abortion activity outside abortion clinics.One reason for the sometimes covert involvement of such groups is the resistance of many people in a largely secular society to religious individuals or organisations seeking to impose their worldview on others. Evangelical Christians have fared poorly in UK politics whenever their views have come into conflict with principles fundamental to British liberal democracy.“Religion is much less of a factor in politics here than in the US,” said Nick Spencer of Theos, a Christian thinktank. “But the Christian right is gaining momentum. I don’t think the Arc conference would have got off the ground 10 years ago.”Those speaking at the conference appeared to be a mixture of conservative Christians, social conservatives, libertarians and “Maga-types”, he said. “It is clear what they’re against – internationalism, net zero, the denigration of national history – but these aren’t necessarily theological positions.”Rob Ford, a professor of politics at the University of Manchester, said there was “no comparison whatsoever between the US and UK. Britain is one of the most secular societies in the world. Very few people go to church. The largest group are the people who say they have no religion at all. The kind of highly polarised debate that the Americans have had over abortion is inconceivable in the same way.”But he added: “At the level of political elites, that’s where you get the most interesting similarity that is also a difference. In the US, evangelical Christians are a huge part of politics because they are a huge part of US life. Here you have quite a remarkably high density of evangelical Christians in elite politics.”Some evangelical Christian organisations have sought to nurture potential high-flyers in order to ensure a Christian presence in the upper reaches of public life. Half a century ago, the Iwerne Trust’s Christian holiday camps, mainly for boys attending elite public schools, had precisely this goal. Holy Trinity Brompton, London’s foremost evangelical church, has counted many high-flyers among its congregation – including Marshall.Not all evangelical Christians share the same political views. Tim Farron, the former Liberal Democrat leader who resigned in 2017 saying the role was incompatible with his Christian faith, said the use of the term “Christian values” was sometimes “a proxy for things that aren’t very Christian at all”.He said: “People who talk about the loss of Christian values often have actually lost touch with Christian values themselves. It’s really dangerous when political parties seek to appropriate Christianity for their own ends.” More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Extreme’ US anti-abortion group ramps up lobbying in Westminster

      by

      A rightwing Christian lobby group that wants abortion to be banned has forged ties with an adviser to the prime minister and is drawing up ­policy briefings for politicians.The UK branch of the US-based Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has more than doubled its spending since 2020 and been appointed a stakeholder in a parliamentary group on religious freedoms in a role that grants it direct access to MPs.The ADF’s efforts to boost its UK influence are revealed as part of an Observer analysis that shows a surge in activity within the wider anti-­abortion movement.Ahead of a historic vote on abortion later this spring, in which MPs will vote on a law that would abolish the criminal offence associated with a woman ending her own pregnancy in England and Wales, several anti-abortion campaign groups have expanded their teams, ramped up advertising and coordinated mass letter-writing campaigns targeting MPs.The findings have led to calls for greater transparency and accountability over the groups’ funding and lobbying activities. The ADF in particular is an influential player on the US Christian right and part of a global network of hardline evangelical groups that were a driving force behind the repeal of Roe v Wade – the supreme court ruling that gave women the constitutional right to abortion and was overturned in 2022.The group – which also supports outlawing sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ+ adults and funds US fringe groups attacking gay, trans and abortion rights – has faced claims its funding is not transparent due to its use of donor advised funds: a loophole in US charity law that allows people to give millions anonymously.The latest financial accounts for its UK entity ADF International UK, published last week, show it spent almost £1m in the year to June 2023, up from £392,556 in 2020, and that its income almost doubled between 2022 and 2023, from £553,823 to £1,068,552.ADF International UK, which has argued publicly against decriminalising abortion, has sought to develop closer relationships with MPs. Its latest accounts show a focus of its UK activity has been attempting to engage with “significant decision-makers” and that staff provided “briefing material and legal analysis” to several MPs ahead of a vote on introducing buffer zones to prevent anti-abortion activity outside abortion clinics.In September 2023 it spent £1,737.92 flying the prime minister’s special envoy on freedom of religion and beliefs, Fiona Bruce MP, paying for her hotel and travel to attend an unspecified conference. Last month Bruce – who reports directly to Rishi Sunak – appeared at an event sponsored by ADF International on religious freedom, speaking remotely alongside two members of the charity.Number 10 did not respond to questions about the links between the ADF and Bruce, who declared the donations in the MPs register of interests and previously voted against legalising abortion and same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. Calls and emails to her office went unanswered late last week.View image in fullscreenHeidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said the ADF had “ramped up its spending” in the UK and Europe “aggressively” in recent years and that there was “no transparency” around “where the money’s actually coming from”. She said its relationship with MPs raised “huge concerns”. “Why are politicians openly working with an organisation that has such a hateful agenda?”Rose Whiffen, senior research officer at Transparency International UK, said the donations to Bruce raised questions about conflicts of interest and that her association with the group could give it credibility in the UK.Andrew Copson, chief executive of Humanists UK, said it was “very concerning” that the UK’s envoy on religious freedoms was “accepting donations from organisations that use religious liberty as a way of denying others their human rights”. “The Christian nationalist movement is increasingly investing in the UK on a number of fronts, and all supporters of freedom and choice should take seriously the threat to human rights that this represents,” he said.ADF International UK said it was committed to protecting “liberties dear to the British people” including free speech and freedom of religion, and that its stance on abortion aimed to “protect the lives of both mother and baby in every pregnancy”. “Like much of the British public, we are concerned about political initiatives to further liberalise abortion law,” a spokesperson added.The charity, which has an office in Westminster, said it received funds from many countries, like “many UK charities on both sides of the abortion debate”; that claims it was not transparent about its funders were “baseless” and that it complied with all charity regulations. It did not comment on its link to the PM’s special envoy.View image in fullscreenJonathan Lord, co-chair of the British Society of Abortion Care Providers and a consultant gynaecologist, said: “We’ve known for some time that these extreme groups from America are infiltrating the UK, having been emboldened following the US supreme court’s actions removing women’s right to abortion there. However the scale of their spending and influence in the UK is disturbing, especially as we know they are actively lobbying MPs and want to restrict women’s reproductive rights, whether that is fertility treatment, contraception or access to abortion.”Other anti-abortion groups have also ramped up activity here in recent months. Right to Life, a leading UK anti-abortion charity, has been coordinating a lobbying campaign encouraging people to write to their MPs to tighten abortion laws, and spent £117,000 on Facebook ads in 2023, 10 times the amount in 2020.The charity – whose overall spending overall has risen from £200k in 2019 to £705k last year – also provides the secretariat to the Pro-Life all-party parliamentary group and aims to “deepen and expand relationships with parliamentarians”, according to its latest accounts. It is currently advertising vacancies for eight full-time staff and says in one ad that the role will include “producing briefings” for MPs and peers.The Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform UK – another anti-abortion group, which notoriously launched a billboard campaign featuring graphic images in pro-choice MP Stella Creasy’s constituency – has increased its staff numbers from four to 12 since 2017. Due to its status as a small company, it does not have to publish details of its income but said it was happy to engage in public debate about its “funding, growth and activities” and that its targeting of Creasy “does not equate to animosity towards her as a fellow human being”.MPs are due to vote in the coming weeks on proposed changes to abortion law that would see abortion decriminalised in England and Wales, as it is in Northern Ireland, Australia, France and New Zealand. Under a Victorian-era law that remains in place today, it is an offence to procure your own abortion. There are exemptions under the 1967 Abortion Act, which permits abortion in cases where two doctors agree that continuing the pregnancy would be risky for the physical or mental health of the woman. But the old law was never repealed and is still used today to prosecute and jail women for terminating pregnancies without sign-off from medics or after the 24-week limit.The proposal on decriminalisation from backbench Labour MP Diana Johnson has cross-party support and is expected to pass. However some in the Labour party fear it could be counterproductive and further embolden anti-abortion campaigning on related issues, such as the remote access to abortion that was introduced during the pandemic.A government spokesperson said abortion was an “extremely sensitive issue” with “strongly held views on all sides of the discussion”, and that MPs would have a free vote on the proposed law change. “By longstanding convention, any change to the law in this area would be a matter of conscience for individual MPs rather than the government,” a spokesperson said. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      The big idea: is it too late to stop extremism taking over politics?

      by

      Welcome to the 2020s, the beginning of what history books might one day describe as the digital middle ages. Let’s briefly travel back to 2017. I remember sitting in various government buildings briefing politicians and civil servants about QAnon, the emerging internet conspiracy movement whose adherents believe that a cabal of Satan-worshipping elites runs a global paedophile network. We joked about the absurdity of it all but no one took the few thousand anonymous true believers seriously.Fast-forward to 2023. Significant portions of the population in liberal democracies consider it possible that global elites drink the blood of children in order to stay young. Recent surveys suggest that around 17% of Americans believe in the QAnon myth. Some 5% of Germans believe ideas related to the anti-democratic Reichsbürger movement, which asserts that the German Reich continues to exist and rejects the legitimacy of the modern German state. Up to a third of Britons believe that powerful figures in Hollywood, government and the media are secretly engaged in child trafficking. Is humanity on the return journey from enlightenment to the dark ages?As segments of the public have headed towards extremes, so has our politics. In the US, dozens of congressional candidates, including the successfully elected Lauren Boebert, have been supportive of QAnon. The German far-right populist party Alternative für Deutschland is at an all-time high in terms of both its radicalism and its popularity, while Austria’s xenophobic Freedom party is topping the polls. The recent rise to power of far-right parties such as Fratelli d’Italia and the populist Sweden Democrats bolster this trend.I am often asked why the UK doesn’t have a successful far-right populist party. My answer is: because it doesn’t need to. Parts of the Conservative party now cater to audiences that would have voted for the BNP or Ukip in the past. A few years ago, the far-right Britain First claimed that 5,000 of its members had joined the Tory party. Not unlike the Republicans in the US, the Tories have increasingly departed from moderate conservative thinking and lean more and more towards radicalism.In 2020, Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski was asked to apologise for attending the National Conservatism conference in Rome. The event is well known for attracting international far-right figures such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the hard-right US presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. This year, an entire delegation of leading Conservatives attended the same conference in London. It might be hard for extreme-right parties to rise to power in Britain, but there is no shortage of routes for extremist ideas to reach Westminster.Language is a key indicator of radicalisation. The words of Conservative politicians speak for themselves: home secretary Suella Braverman referred to migrants arriving in the UK as an “invasion on our southern coast”, while MP Miriam Cates gave a nod to conspiracy theorists when she warned that “children’s souls” were being “destroyed” by cultural Marxism. Using far-right dog whistles such as “invasion” and “cultural Marxism” invites listeners to open a Pandora’s box of conspiracy myths. Research shows that believing in one makes you more susceptible to others.I sometimes wonder what a QAnon briefing to policymakers might look like in a few years. What if the room no longer laughs at the ludicrous myths but instead endorses them? One could certainly imagine this scenario in the US if Donald Trump were to win the next election. In 2019 – before conspiracy myths inspired attacks on the US Capitol, the German Reichstag, the New Zealand parliament and the Brazilian Congress – I warned in a Guardian opinion piece of the threat QAnon would soon pose to democracy. Are we now at a point where it is it too late to stop democracies being taken over by far-right ideologies and conspiracy thinking? If so, do we simply have to accept the “new normal”?There are various ways we can try to prevent and reverse the spread of extremist narratives. For some people who have turned to extremism over the past few years, too little has changed: anger over political inaction on economic inequality is now further fuelled by the exacerbating cost of living crisis. For others, too much has changed: they see themselves as rebels against a takeover by “woke” or “globalist” policies.What they have in common is a sense that the political class no longer takes their wellbeing seriously, and moves to improve social conditions and reduce inequality would go some way towards reducing such grievances. But beyond that, their fears and frustrations have clearly been instrumentalised by extremists, as well as by opportunistic politicians and profit-oriented social media firms. This means that it is essential to expose extremist manipulation tactics, call out politicians when they normalise conspiracy thinking and regulate algorithm design by the big technology companies that still amplify harmful content.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf the private sector is part of the problem, it can also be part of the solution. Surveys by the Edelman Trust Barometer found that people in liberal democracies have largely lost trust in governments, media and even NGOs but, surprisingly, still trust their employers and workplaces. Companies can play an important role in the fight for democratic values. For example, the Business Council for Democracy tests and develops training courses that firms can offer to employees to help them identify and counter conspiracy myths and targeted disinformation.Young people should be helped to become good digital citizens with rights and responsibilities online, so that they can develop into critical consumers of information. National school curricula should include a new subject at the intersection of psychology and internet studies to help digital natives understand the forces that their parents have struggled to grasp: the psychological processes that drive digital group dynamics, online engagement and the rise of conspiracy thinking.Ultimately, the next generation will vote conspiracy theorists in or out of power. Only they can reverse our journey towards the digital middle ages. Julia Ebner is the author of Going Mainstream: How Extremists Are Taking Over (Ithaka Press).Further readingHow Democracies Die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky (Penguin, £10.99)How Civil War Starts by Barbara F Walter (Penguin, £10.99)Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon by Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko (Redwood, £16.99) More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in World Politics

      Radicalization and the Role of Video Games

      by

      The audience for video games is massive. According to Nielsen, 82% of global consumers either played video games or watched content related to them in 2020 — a trend accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

      The Fusion of Polish Nationalist Groups and Roman Catholicism

      READ MORE

      In 2019, the anti-hate organization ADL published survey data of US gamers, revealing that 23% of respondents had been exposed to white supremacist ideology in online games. Given recent surges in right-wing extremism and violence, including concerning trends in youth radicalization, understanding the extent to which this hugely popular medium offers a potential vector for radicalization is important.

      Gaming and Right-Wing Extremism

      There is a growing corpus of literature exploring the intersection between gaming and right-wing extremism. This includes work that focuses on the cultural overlap between online extremism and gaming communities; potential vulnerabilities that might mean gamers are more susceptible to radicalization; the gamification of extremist activity; and discussion of the “gamergate” controversy that saw a number of gamers involved in coordinated online trolling help drive online extremism.

      However, there is a limited body of work exploring the use of gaming platforms for recruitment by extremists, with much of the content exploring this phenomenon being largely anecdotal, such as a report in November 2020 by Sky News on the radicalization of a 14-year-old boy in the United Kingdom which suggested that the boy had been shown “extreme neo-Nazi video games” by his older brother.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Understanding whether there are concerted radicalization efforts that seek to leverage online gaming to reach new audiences has implications for regulatory discussions, interventions and prevention efforts.

      Our Findings

      To help fill this dearth in knowledge, the digital analysis unit at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) engaged in a piece of scoping research across four platforms associated with online gaming. This included two live-streaming services — Twitch and DLive, which both host individuals who broadcast online gaming to digital audiences, and which have both been used to stream extremist activity.

      Additionally, we explored Steam, the PC game digital distribution service that also provides a platform for gamers to build community groups, and Discord, a chat application originally designed for gamers that has been notably used by right-wing extremists.

      To better understand the potential for overlap between extremism and gaming, we used digital ethnography to scope these platforms, searching for users and communities promoting extremist content. In total, we identified 45 public groups associated with the extreme right on Steam, 24 extreme right chat servers on Discord, 100 extreme right channels on DLive and 91 channels on Twitch.

      These communities and individuals commonly promoted racist, exclusionary and supremacist material associated with the extreme right, including the sharing of material from proscribed terrorist organizations on Discord.

      We then qualitatively analyzed the content shared by these extremist channels and publicly accessible discussion threads to explore the extent that gaming was being used to radicalize or recruit individuals.

      Here we identified several ways in which extremists use gaming. In some instances, extremists would use politically aligned games, such as “Feminazi: The Triggering” as a means to signify their ideology to their peers. Additionally, we found evidence that extremists used historical strategy games to role-play extremist fantasies, such as winning the Second World War for Nazi Germany or killing Muslims in the Crusades. However, although we found ample evidence that extremists are using gaming platforms, we found limited evidence to suggest they are using them to radicalize or recruit new members.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Instead, extremists primarily seemed to use gaming as a means of building bonds and community with their peers, as well as more broadly to blow off steam. Whilst there has been a focus in preexisting literature on extremist-created games, we found that a majority of extremist gamers preferred popular mainstream titles such as “Call of Duty” or “Counter-Strike.” Additionally, although anecdotal evidence suggests that young people are being groomed over online games, we didn’t find content that corroborated this.

      Future Research

      Although there were gaps in our methodology — in particular, we didn’t seek to play online games with extremists — these preliminary findings suggest that gamers seem to primarily use gaming in the same way that non-extremists do: as a hobby and past time. These findings have implications for policy responses to online radicalization as well as for future research. In particular, they highlight how extremist users have been able to find a home on gaming platforms online.

      Our project was designed as scoping research to pick up on key trends and didn’t attempt to gauge the scale and reach of these communities, but it is important that future digital research tracks the size of extremist communities so that proportional policy responses can be proposed.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in World Politics

      German Far-Right Conspiracy Theorists Step Up Attempts to Undermine Schools

      by

      Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, independent schools in Germany, particularly the Waldorf (also known as Steiner) schools attracted far-right conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers. Over the past two years, reported incidents of COVID-19 skepticism coupled with far-right conspiracy theories at Waldorf schools appear to be on the increase. Some COVID-19 deniers even attempted to establish their own schools in order to withdraw their children from government influence. Which far-right groups have been the driving force behind these developments, and what have the authorities done about it?

      Gravitational Pull to the Right

      As of February 2020, across Germany, approximately 90,000 pupils attended the 254 state-recognized Waldorf schools, whose curricula originate in an anthroposophical worldview. According to the Anthroposophical Society, the Waldorf pedagogy system, which was developed by the Austrian spiritualist Rudolf Steiner in the early 20th century, encourages “ways of recognizing and exploring the supersensible-spiritual world that exists in the sensory-material world. This ‘spiritual science’ sees itself as a new approach to a deeper and more comprehensive knowledge of nature and man.”

      German Pharmacies at the Heart of an Anti-Racism Debate

      READ MORE

      The concept behind Waldorf schools is a “developmentally appropriate, experiential, and academically-rigorous approach to education.” Compared to the pressure to perform in state-run schools, the goal is to strengthen individual responsibility as well as creative, practical and social skills. Another difference lies in self-administration by parents and teachers instead of a “hierarchically organized external control of the state schools.” 

      Through close personal ties with teachers, parents can actively influence everyday school life according to their beliefs with fewer interventions of internal school control bodies compared to state schools. Hence, the self-administration model makes independent schools susceptible to infiltration by far-right actors and conspiracy theorists. According to Ansgar Martins, a religious studies scholar at Frankfurt University, this structural weakness is compounded by the “pronounced anthroposophical inclination toward conspiracy theories” of Waldorf schools that stems from Steiner’s original teachings.

      Steiner held a developmental, esoteric and essentially racist view of humanity that saw the world divided into superior and inferior races, exemplified by countless discriminatory statements against Jewish and especially black people: “How can a Negro or an utterly barbaric savage become civilized? … The Negro race does not belong in Europe, and it is of course nonsense that it now plays such a large role in Europe.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      These remarks are joined by Steiner’s pseudoscientific conception of the physical and intellectual superiority of the white race, reminiscent of the Nazi-era Volkstum concept according to which humanity reached its developmental endpoint in the white race: “If the blue-eyed and blond-haired people were to die out, people would become increasingly stupid unless they developed a kind of cleverness which is independent of blondness. … The white race is the future race, is the spirit-creating race.”

      According to Germany’s Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, these statements “are to be regarded as particularly serious, since they are by no means random products or racist stereotypes caused by the spirit of the times. Rather, they are to be seen as manifestations of a specifically Steinerian esoteric racial science.” In the Stuttgart Declaration of 2007, the Association of Independent Waldorf Schools condemned “any racist or nationalist appropriation of their pedagogy.” Nevertheless, this declaration did little to prevent attracting far-right conspiracy theorists even before the pandemic.

      Far-Right Infiltration

      In 2013, the managing director of a Waldorf school in the German town of Rendsburg was dismissed because of connections to the far-right Reichsbürger (Citizens of the Reich) movement. He attracted attention by distributing leaflets in the school spouting that “the Federal Republic of Germany … is not a state, but the managing legal advisor of a state simulation [is]. There is no de jure and de facto state of the Federal Republic of Germany.” 

      The Reichsbürger is a heterogeneous movement that, referring to the historical German Reich, rejects the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany and its legal system, thus denying legitimacy to democratically elected representatives. A small proportion of the Reichsbürger movement is made up of right-wing extremists, but the anti-state and conspiracy theory tenets of the entire scene facilitate a connection to anti-Semitic narratives that are central to the far-right domain.

      Embed from Getty Images

      At another Waldorf school in the German town of Minden, a teacher taught unchecked for 20 years before his connections to ethno-nationalist right-wing extremist groups became known. Even before Wolf-Dieter Schröppe became a teacher, he maintained contacts with veteran Nazis, including the war criminal Erich Priebke — the man responsible for the massacre of 335 people as a captain in the SS and sentenced to life in prison. It took more than four months before the school terminated Schröppe’s employment contract, partly because some colleagues spoke out in his support.

      In 2015, these incidents prompted the Association of Independent Waldorf Schools to publish a brochure conceding that the anthroposophy-based Waldorf pedagogy has a “great attraction” for the right-wing extremist conspiracy theorists, specifically for the Reichsbürger.

      During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, Waldorf anthroposophy again garnered attention. To this day, Steiner’s worldview translates into a greater vaccine skepticism in Germany as a whole and in Waldorf schools in particular due to public acceptance and influence of anthroposophy. Underlying Steiner’s philosophy is the dangerous belief that diseases serve a karmic purpose by stimulating child development and making amends for mistakes in past lives.

      Hence, over the last decades, vaccine skepticism has manifested itself in lower vaccination rates in Waldorf schools, resulting in regular measles outbreaks. In this respect, an incident at a school in the city of Freiburg came as no surprise when 117 COVID-19 cases were recorded and more than 50 forged medical certificates were discovered exempting students and teachers from wearing a mask.

      Embed from Getty Images

      At a Waldorf school in the Bavarian town of Landsberg, a father who is both a doctor and a homeopath issued certificates to families of other students to circumvent mandatory mask-wearing, denouncing people who choose to do so as “mask hypochondriacs.” At a demonstration against COVID-19 measures, he showed the indictable Hitler salute that resulted in criminal charges.

      The Bavarian Ministry of Education confirms these incidents are not isolated cases. Mask exemption certificates were seven times more likely to be issued at Bavarian Waldorf schools than at state schools. Nevertheless, many Waldorf parents show resolve against COVID-19 deniers and far-right activities. According to the mobile counseling service against right-wing extremism in Bavaria, Waldorf parents “disproportionately often” reported similar incidents at schools during the pandemic.

      COVID-19 Denier Schools

      To evade resistance at state but also independent schools and shield children from COVID-19 measures, some parents and teachers went a step further, founding their own learning initiatives and so-called supplementary schools. Insights into the network groups behind those supplementary schools reveal political affinities not only with the Reichsbürger but with another the far-right esoteric movement.

      In Rosenheim, Bavaria, an elementary and middle school teacher founded a Querdenker (Lateral Thinkers) school to reflect the movement’s pandemic skepticism. More than 50 pupils were taught here by parents and educators, including herbalists, music teachers and shamans. On advertising leaflets, the school falsely claimed to be located on Russian territory so that German law would not be applicable.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The school principal was active in networks spreading far-right esoteric ideas of the Anastasia movement, a decentralized conspiracy group of far-right esotericists and settlers, based on the protagonist of the “Anastasia” fantasy novel series by Russian author Vladimir Megre. According to sociologist Matthias Quent, the novels “transport cultural racism and anti-Semitism. These are ideological patterns that we also know from National Socialism. According to them, modern society is doomed, and people must retreat to the native soil or family estates.”

      Connections to the Anastasia movement also existed in the newly founded Bauernhofschule (farm school) in the state of Hesse, which was registered as a supplementary school. Hesse’s school law enables parents to establish schools with scant bureaucratic hurdles as long as they supplement, not replace state curricula. According to the German state of Hesse’s public broadcaster, HR, Telegram chat transcripts revealed that the school operators proclaimed to teach children how to keep animals, grow vegetables and live in harmony with nature. Nevertheless, the chat was inundated with extremist, anti-Semitic views from the Reichsbürger and Anastasia movements.

      Even Holocaust denial — a criminal offense in Germany — received indifferent or approving reactions in the chats. The ideological connections of the Bauernhofschule reach as far as the fringes of the QAnon movement, as Martin Laker’s membership in the group suggests. Laker is an active member of the Anastasia movement and runs his own online platform where he spreads QAnon myths.

      Underestimating the Problem

      Germany’s political establishment has been slow in reacting to the growing problem. While the authorities are taking action against the newly founded supplementary schools, including enforced closures due to a lack of permits, there is still no sign yet of German politicians taking the danger posed by far-right anthroposophists seriously enough.

      In January 2021, the Green Party’s national parliamentary group issued a request asking what connections between right-wing extremist opponents of the COVID-19 measures and anthroposophical groups are known to the German government and how it assesses “the potential danger in this regard, given the fact that anthroposophy in Germany maintains a far-reaching network of companies, foundations, and public institutions.” The answer: “The Federal Government has no knowledge of this.” 

      This rection is particularly disappointing considering the fight against right-wing extremism has gained political traction in recent years due to record high numbers of politically motivated crimes by right-wing extremists. In 2020, the government published a substantial catalog of measures accompanied by a 100-page final report on combating right-wing extremism and racism the following year. According to the report, programs to prevent extremism in state schools are to be promoted more vigorously but fail to mention the right-wing extremist slant of anthroposophical groups and independent schools.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      It remains to be seen whether the new government under the leadership of Angela Merkel’s successor Olaf Scholz will turn its eye to this blind spot. There seems to be no lack of will on the part of Scholz’s fellow party member and the new minister of the interior, Nancy Faeser, who announced at her first public appearance in the new role that “A particular concern of mine will be to combat the greatest threat currently facing our free democratic basic order, right-wing extremism.” 

      The threat posed by far-right conspiracy theories and fake news might have only entered the public consciousness with the triumph of social media platforms. But conspiracy theories don’t germinate in a vacuum. Instead, often far-reaching causes are behind their emergence. In Germany, the societal impact of widespread anthroposophic views, promoted in state-approved institutions like the Waldorf schools, is one of the many causes that deserve increased critical, not at least political, attention.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in World Politics

      The Radical Impact of Canada’s Fringe Parties

      by

      Although fringe parties are generally “not considered very relevant,” they nevertheless mirror some of the dominant social or economic concerns of their times. One such fringe party that has risen to recent prominence on the Canadian political scene — particularly in the wake of its support for the anti-vaccine Freedom Convoy truck protest — yet remains otherwise neglected by academics and the international media is the People’s Party of Canada (PPC). Formed in 2018 by Maxime Bernier, the PPC seeks to defend so-called “real conservative ideas” on the basis that the Conservative Party has become too moderate. 

      Canada’s Anti-Mask Movement Demands Liberty

      READ MORE

      Indeed, as the Canadian truck protests spread across the globe, the PPC is of particular relevance given that Bernier has been quick to visit the protesters and become a vocal defender of their actions, calling upon Canadians to defend their liberté. Nevertheless, the PPC is also of interest for another reason, namely its detrimental impact in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections upon Canada’s more moderate/center-right Conservative Party. 

      Consequently, two questions stand out from the growing significance of the PPC that have implications for fringe parties in general. First, could these parties ever evolve into mainstream political parties? Second, could they, as the Canada Guide suggests, “‘spoil’ races in very close elections by pulling votes away from other mainstream parties”?

      Context: Fringe Parties in Canada

      Although there are currently five “major” political parties represented in the current Canadian House of Commons — the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, the Bloc Québécois, the New Democratic Party and the Green Party of Canada — at the time of the 2021 election there were some 17 eligible federal political parties registered. These 17 are often referred to as “fringe” parties because they have not secured electoral success, their party membership is small, they often only promote a single issue, and their supporters tend to be few and far between. 

      They can also be widely divergent. Some, such as the Communist Party of Canada, are of a leftist political persuasion and have been in existence for a century. Others, such as the Canadian Nationalist Party, have only been in existence for a short while and are of an extreme-right predisposition.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Nevertheless, labels such as “fringe” are open to debate. Indeed, the Green Party, for example, is theoretically the nation’s fifth major party. Yet at its height, it has only ever secured three seats in the Canadian Parliament in 2019 with 6.5% of the popular vote. Its parliamentary representation dropped to two seats in the 2021 election, with 2.3% of the national vote. In this context, it is not surprising that there is “no universally accepted definition of what constitutes a ‘fringe party.’”  

      In Canadian politics, it seems that success at the ballot box appears to be the nebulous cut-off point for differentiating between fringe and mainstream parties. The example of the Green Party is again illustrative of this, as it went from being a fringe party to being a major one. Yet the 2.3% that the Greens received in 2021 was less than the nearly 5% the PPC won that same year. The fact that a so-called major party received a smaller share of the vote than an ostensible fringe party testifies to the problematic nature of the term “fringe.” Furthermore, it implies that the PPC could morph into a mainstream political force. 

      Radical Impact

      However, it is the second question relating to pulling votes from mainstream parties that presents the crux of this cautionary tale. Following the creation of the Reform Party of Canada in 1987, some had argued that it had split the anti-Liberal vote on the moderate conservative right. The same outcome is true in Britain, where there existed “a widespread willingness among current Conservative Party members in Britain to countenance voting for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).”

      In order to evaluate the importance of the PPC to the Canadian landscape, it is vital to look at the party’s electoral impact. In the 2019 federal election, the PPC achieved a mere 1.6% of the popular vote. However, analysis by CBC news showed that “even with its dismal level of support — the PPC cost the Conservatives seven seats in the House of Commons by splitting the vote.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Moreover, irrespective of the PPC’s election results, it is impressive that, in just over a year, Bernier “managed to create a new federal political party, found candidates to run in all of Canada’s 338 federal electoral districts and participated in all the televised pre-election leaders’ debates.” If Bernier achieved all of this within 12 months, what can he achieve within 12 years? 

      Although the PPC failed to win any seats in the 2021 federal election, the party’s share of the popular vote increased from 1.6% to 4.94%. The detrimental electoral significance of the PPC was recognized by the Conservative leader Erin O’Toole in the run-up to the election. Direct personal communication with a source within the PPC further underlined the threat that the party’s “presence on the ballot may have cost the Conservatives about 21 ridings in this year’s election.” 

      Given the failure of O’Toole to win in 2021, an additional significant outcome of the emergence of the PPC is that the Conservative Party could face pressure to move further to the right in order to win a greater share of the popular vote. Indeed, O’Toole’s leadership position immediately came under threat by far-right elements within his own party on the grounds that he was too moderate. By February 2022, he was removed from the party’s leadership.

      Although the PPC remains a so-called fringe party, this is not to deny its impact. It was responsible for sometimes splitting the center-right vote and contributing to the Liberal Party’s success, as well as now possibly helping to force the Conservative Party into a more radically right-wing direction. Indeed, some contenders for O’Toole’s now-vacant seat as party leader have also started to speak out in support of the convoy. However, it is also worth noting that the PPC’s electoral impact might not necessarily be the beginning of a new trend. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      The COVID-19 pandemic presented Bernier with the opportunity to appeal to an outlier proportion of the population which, without the PPC, might not have had a sympathetic ear in Parliament — anti-vaxxers and anyone vehemently opposed to health measures instituted to contain the pandemic. Although the majority of Canada’s population champion vaccines, mask-wearing and similar public health measures, the fact that the PPC was the only political party opposed to vaccine passports allowed it to generate additional support from this cohort that accounts for 8%-10% of the population. 

      This support is further demonstrated by the fact that the PPC did best in those provinces with the lowest vaccination rates, namely Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The PPC’s anti-lockdown rhetoric and strong stance against Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s vaccine mandates were, therefore, partly responsible for its rise in the polls, as suggested by some academic experts who state that “Historically, populism … tends to appear in times of crises.” 

      Ideological Impacts

      The PPC has not only had a tangible impact on Canadian politics, but also an ideological one. Canada has traditionally been seen as “immune to the outbreak of right-wing populism observed in other established western democracies.” That is, until now, as Republican figures such as Ted Cruz and Donald Trump praise the actions of the Ottawa protesters and denounce Trudeau as a “far left lunatic.” 

      Bernier’s campaign manifestos of 2019 and 2021 also look similar to populist and nationalist counterparts elsewhere, namely UKIP and the Republican Party under Donald Trump in the US. The PPC manifesto, for instance, states its opposition to climate change policies (“Withdraw from the Paris Accord and abandon unrealistic greenhouse gas emission reduction targets”); commitment to end to Canada’s participation in global institutions (“Withdraw from all UN commitments”); and xenophobic resentment in its anti-immigration plans (“Substantially lower the total number of immigrants and refugees Canada accept every year”).

      A noteworthy addition to the PPC’s 2021 manifesto that also has echoes of other nationalist/populist party positions is its consideration of race. In the lead-up to the 2021 federal election, the mainstream parties focused on the economic and political rights of indigenous peoples following the uncovering of unmarked graves of hundreds of indigenous children on the properties of former residential schools. The PPC, by contrast, went in the opposite direction and instead looked to repeal the Multiculturalism Act of 1988, which aims to not only preserve but enhance multiculturalism in Canada.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      This, in addition to the PPC’s call to reduce the number of immigrants, contradicts a widely-held belief that “nativism has become impossible, even unthinkable, for a competitive political party in Canada today.” It is for this reason that “Bernier’s embrace of radical right-wing populism has heightened concerns about the importation of Trumpism and other far right ideologies into mainstream Canadian politics.”

      The emergence of the PPC has pointed a light at a potentially darker underbelly within Canadian politics, one that may demonstrate violent sentiments. The throwing of gravel at Trudeau during the 2021 election campaign by the former PPC president of the London Riding Association is a case in point. 

      The potential political impact of the PPC is undeniable. At a theoretical level, it points to a need to consider the importance of fringe parties in discussions of Canadian politics in general. The PPC also stands as a bellwether, representing a potential future trend. Furthermore, the party is significant as it has had a detrimental impact on the electoral success of the Conservative Party and possibly its future direction of travel.

      Most concerning, however, is its ideological impact. As David Moscrop posits in Global News, “The People’s Party of Canada has become a rallying point for extremists who existed before it did, but who now have an organisational anchor and home.” 

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More