ExtremismThe Appeal of Far-Right Politics
Why do “ordinary” citizens join far-right organizations? Agnieszka Pasieka explores how far-right groups offer social services, organize festivals, and shape their own narrative to attract new members. In her Austrian Science Fund (FWF)-project, she accompanies activists to investigate their practices and philosophies. Pasieka says that difficult as it might be to empathize with someone who shares fundamentally different values, taking all parties seriously and understanding their motivation is key in a time in which a refusal to engage with other people’s views has become a feature of political as well as academic debates.
Why do “ordinary” citizens join far-right organizations? Agnieszka Pasieka explores how far-right groups offer social services, organize festivals, and shape their own narrative to attract new members. In her Austrian Science Fund (FWF)-project, she accompanies activists to investigate their practices and philosophies.
For anthropologists, it is often challenging to get in touch with research participants and win their trust. In the case of far-right activists, it turned out to be especially difficult, says Agnieszka Pasieka. “Far-right activists have had bad experiences with people who pretended to join their organizations but then gathered material and left. In my case, they first suspected that I was a journalist who was just pretending to be a researcher.”
Pasieka works at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna and received funding for her project from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) in the frame of the Elise Richter-Program. In her research, she explores a question that is more pressing than ever: How can the rise of the far right be explained? The goal of her project is to investigate not only the activists’ ways of acting but also the appeal that these groups have on “ordinary” people. Furthermore, the project aims to develop critical methods and theory that can be used to study this and kindred phenomena.
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According to Pasieka, even extreme right groups can be seen as “social movements”. They are committed to completely different values and moral principles. See the University of Vienna Societal Impact Platform’s article about her research: “Unter Eingeborenen” (Among Natives; in German).
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Hands-on Research
In order to establish first contacts, Pasieka went to a festival organized by a group of Italian activists. “It was clear that the festival was organized by a far-right group, it was openly advertised – one could buy a ticket and attend. So, that’s what I did.” There, she got to know activists from several countries and openly discussed with them her research project. “I told them that I don’t agree with them but I kept emphasizing that my aim was to try to engage with and understand their views,” she concludes. In the months to come, she followed their activities, talked to them, conducted interviews and participated in a variety of their undertakings.
