Scholars Push to Broaden Research on America’s Far Right
By Tom Hesse
February 10, 2017
Between the election of Donald J. Trump, the rise of the “alt-right,” and a national discussion on the morality of punching neo-Nazis, scholars who study far-right groups have been getting a lot of phone calls.
“I don’t think calling Donald Trump a fascist helps anybody,” said Matthew Feldman, a professor at Teesside University, in England, who specializes in fascist ideology. “It comes off as so alarmist because it makes people say, Well, this is exactly why we don’t listen to experts.”
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Between the election of Donald J. Trump, the rise of the “alt-right,” and a national discussion on the morality of punching neo-Nazis, scholars who study far-right groups have been getting a lot of phone calls.
“I don’t think calling Donald Trump a fascist helps anybody,” said Matthew Feldman, a professor at Teesside University, in England, who specializes in fascist ideology. “It comes off as so alarmist because it makes people say, Well, this is exactly why we don’t listen to experts.”
Where scholars can be helpful, Mr. Feldman said, is not in litigating labels but in furthering research into the American far-right movements and how they relate to mainstream politics. With the recent national interest in populism and radical-right groups, Mr. Feldman said, there’s an opening for new research, but “we academics are big boats, and we take a long time to turn.”
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Cas Mudde, an associate professor in the department of international affairs at the University of Georgia, is hoping to turn that ship a little faster. He’s in the early stages of developing a new research center that will study those questions and fill in the gaps of knowledge on fringe political movements in the United States. “When I came here,” said Mr. Mudde, who is from the Netherlands, “I was struck by how little research there was both on the radical right in Europe but even more so, particularly, on the radical right and many other issues related to threats on liberal democracy, broadly, in the U.S.”
Mr. Mudde studies extremism in democracy, and, like many researchers in the field, he’s not from America. The vast majority of research into populism, fascism, and radical political movements is happening in Europe, and Mr. Mudde has written about the lack of such research in the United States.
Mr. Feldman pointed out that new iterations of the far right gained influence in Europe in the 1980s, showing an ability to adapt to modern politics. European researchers “were able to read that early on and see the danger there. Already in the 1980s, Vlaams Belang, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and others were wearing suits, talking about identity,” Mr. Feldman said.
Mr. Mudde said he wants his proposed Center for Analysis of Democracy and Extremism to be a hub of research into fields that he thinks aren’t receiving the attention they warrant. He’s looking for funding for the center, which he’d like to have running by 2018.
The early estimate to get the center up and running is $3 million. Mr. Mudde said he’s in early talks with one individual donor and other sources looking to obtain that seed money for space on the University of Georgia campus, computers, administrative staff members, and other support. “As the old capitalist rule goes, you need money to make money,” Mr. Mudde said. Once that’s in place, the center can seek out short-term grants for specific projects, he said, and use the space to collaborate with colleagues in his field as well as other areas of study.
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Markus M.L. Crepaz, head of the international-affairs department, said Mr. Mudde’s center, while still in the proposal phase, had support within the School of Public and International Affairs. “It fits really well. The school has been created about now 15 years ago with the intent to make what we do as political scientists more relevant,” Mr. Crepaz said. “In that vein, this center that Cas Mudde is thinking about speaks directly to some of those grand challenges of our time.”
Funding Concerns
Mr. Mudde’s center wouldn’t be the first to look at far-right issues. The Center for Right-Wing Studies at the University of California at Berkeley opened in 2009 with funding for three years. Christine Trost, the center’s academic coordinator, said its staff had managed to stretch that into 2017, but the tight budget highlighted one of the biggest challenges to understanding the far right in the United States: financial support.
“Our center is more needed than ever, but we’ve had a really difficult time funding stuff,” Ms. Trost said.
The center at Berkeley originated for some of the same reasons that Mr. Mudde — who has spoken at the Berkeley center — wants to form his center at the University of Georgia. Ms. Trost said there’s just not a lot of great research on the far right in the United States.
Beyond the research itself, the Berkeley center aims “to just bring more resources and support to this area in terms of encouraging scholarship,” Ms. Trost said, adding that infrastructure funding can be hard to come by.
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That’s part of the reason Mr. Mudde wants to make sure there’s funding for a center rather than moving ahead with research and hoping the rest will follow. A center allows for multiple projects that may take place over a number of years. In Mr. Mudde’s view, it’s not worth it to try the project for three or four years, because the funds would be better spent on individual research. But a time frame of “at least 10 years” allows more opportunities for research in a field that Mr. Mudde said is poorly understood.
“If we don’t correctly assess the threat to liberal democracy, which is my main concern, our response is going to be wrong,” Mr. Mudde said.
The idea of the Center for Analysis of Democracy and Extremism was not born with the election of Mr. Trump. Other changes in the United States, like increased government surveillance and crackdowns on individual liberty, have concerned Mr. Mudde for years. “The election of Donald Trump chopped away my last excuse not to do it,” Mr. Mudde said.
“This is not an anti-Trump center,” he said. “Once Trump is away, there are still more than enough things to cover.”