Extreme Right Activists in Europe: Through the Magnifying Glass (review)

This remarkable book is the result of a transnational survey conducted between 1997 and 1999 in five European countries (Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands) by a team of social psychologists. The project started from the established fact that, although much is known about the electorate of the New Radical Right (or Extreme Right) parties, research is scarce in the field of the activists' beliefs and motives. What emerges from this study is a contrasted picture of the far-right scene in each country, but with the common features as well.

The first result of this research is that extreme-right activists are not necessarily "authoritarian personalities," nor are they always prone to violence. The authors show that most of them are socially integrated and that their marginalization is a result of their activism, not a cause for it. They also show that nearly all of them are primarily motivated by an exclusive nationalism, a rejection of immigration, and an antiforeigner stand, while anti-Semitism, blatant racism, and glorification of the Nazi past are not very present. A specific case is that of Italy's Alleanza Nationale members, who clearly remain fascists, despite the leadership's switch to conservative positions, but who seem to be motivated mostly by the fascist ideology of nationalism and the social state.

While many authors have stressed the "novelty" of the extreme-right parties that appeared in the last decades of the twentieth century, the study proves that most activists are firmly grounded, mostly through their families, to the traditional far right of their respective countries. The authors rightly stress the important role of what Verta Taylor called "abeyance structures"—that is, small groups that kept alive the subculture of movements that were rejected by mainstream society. Indeed, as the case of France and also Flemish Belgium shows, many militants come from a background that paid the price for having supported pro-Vichy or pro-Nazi groups during World War II. Cases of "conversion" or "compliance" membership are rare.

This brings us to what is perhaps the major finding of this research: extreme-right activists are stigmatized by surrounding society (sometimes their parents were, too) and derive greater commitment to their parties from this stigma, which is very seldom a cause for quitting. Stigmatization comes from other members of society, of course, but also from the state, by means of legal repression, and from the countermovements, that is, the so-called "anti-fascist" groups, which often present the extreme-right activists as second-class citizens and even "less human." It seems that stigmatization is the highest in the Netherlands, where the Extreme Right is the least powerful of those countries surveyed, and the lowest in Italy, where Alleanza Nationale is a party of government.

Finally, the authors have made a comparative study of extreme-right and extreme-left activists and conclude that, while both categories believe in the power of politics to change the world and give a meaning to their life, they have very distinct beliefs: the Extreme Right has a core value of authority, while the Extreme Left stands for equality first. This shows that the so-called "alliance of extremes" is everything but a scientific concept.

Overall, this study opens many fields for future researchers, from the history of "abeyance structures" to the role of countermovements and drop-out motivation. The only limitation to its findings is the choice of the surveyed political groups, which exclude the "lunatic fringe" movements and the rising German neo-Nazi party, NPD, which did not agree to be part of the research. The authors conclude that extreme-right parties do have a future in Europe, because of the globalization process, the fear of Islamic terrorism, the enlargement of the European Union, and the crisis of representative democracy.