Misconceptions of racism in far right studies (and what we can do about it)

Paradoxically, while the exclusion of racialised ‘others’ is at the core of far right ideology, there is a paucity of dialogue between far right studies and the field of critical race theory (CRT). The present paper, theory-driven, focuses on the concept of racism and underlines the gap between its elaborations by CRT’s scholars and its utilisation among studies on far right voters, organisations or ideologies. Firstly, building on previous works (Bhambra 2017; Mondon 2022 ; Newth 2023) which demonstrated how far right studies have insufficiently engaged with concepts of race, racism or whiteness, I argue that this field of research is dominated by three ways of (non)integrating the concept of racism: circumvention, euphemisation, individualisation. Secondly, in order to extend this statement, I propose three shifts in the conceptualisation of racism that can facilitate the necessary dialogue between CRT and far right studies. First, a shift from extreme to norm. While CRT begins with the idea that racism is normal in our societies, the notion is most often used in the field of far right studies as the “worst” and most extreme form of exclusion. In contrast, I contend that racism should be used as a generic category (Hardimon, 2019) in which it is possible to distinguish some subsets (e.g. islamophobia, anti-migrant attitudes, anti-Black racism, etc.). Second, a shift from individual belief to collective power relation. Research on the far right, and especially on the far right vote, utilises attitude scales as a primary method for the measurement of racism. The paper will demonstrate how CRT’s theoretical framework can prevent racism from being conceptualised solely through “levels” of personal racist beliefs, and instead to study how each individual form of racism is linked to a specific position within the socio-racial order. Third, a shift from hierarchisation to articulation. When explaining the success of far-right formations, the literature often focuses on the question of identifying “what counts more” between economic or cultural factors, class concerns or racial fears. I argue that this “economic vs. culture” (or sometimes “class vs. race”) debate can be counterproductive and/or unrealistic. Indeed, it overlooks the fact that racism is not only “cultural” but also rooted in economic interests, and that the rise of far right is precisely based on its capacity to intertwine class and race issues. Therefore, I propose that a logic of articulation (Hall, 1985) is preferable to a logic of hierarchisation when analysing the factors that determine far right sympathies.