Much research has been dedicated to the question of why people support, and ultimately join, far-right movements. People are attracted for many reasons: one of the major reasons being an attraction to the subculture surrounding the far-right movement, rather than the ideologies themselves. This means that people find the aesthetics, the music, activities, and general culture of the movement so attractive that they join and ultimately start to believe in their ideas. The Radical-Norm project takes this idea one step further, looking at how the far-right has managed to normalize some of its concepts and beliefs in mainstream society. The project will aim to do this by looking at the aesthetics and cultural production of the movement from the point of view of some main themes: historical narratives, gender, spirituality (including religion), and the environment (including nature and animals). Through this, we hope to gain a better understanding of how hateful movements can influence everyday society.
The project will include five European countries: Hungary, Germany, Italy, Norway, and one other.
The project is led by Katherine Kondor (Senior Researcher).
Questions asked in the project include:
- What are the aesthetics of far-right and extreme-right music?
- What are the aesthetics of extreme-right fashion?
- What are the aesthetics of images used by the extreme right online?
- How are the themes of history, gender, spirituality, and nature represented in extreme-right aesthetics?
- How does the extreme right use aesthetics and cultural production to normalize their views?
Involved in the project are three research partners:
- Greta Jasser / Institute for Democracy and Civil Society - Amadeu Antonio Foundation (Germany)
- Fabio Ferrarini (Italy) / University of Fortaleza (Brazil)
- Celestine Kunkeler / Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX), University of Oslo (Norway)
Funding for the Radical-Norm project is provided by the Research Council of Norway.