Contesting the 'authentic' community: far-right spatial strategy and everyday responses in an era of crisis

Ince, Anthony ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5279-0997 2011. Contesting the 'authentic' community: far-right spatial strategy and everyday responses in an era of crisis. Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization 11 (1) , pp. 6-26.

Preview

PDF - Published Version Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

The idea that voting alone will eliminate far-right and fascist politics is fundamentally flawed. Politics takes place in the hearts and minds of people; in their streets, communities and homes. It inhabits the everyday constitution of authenticity and is partly articulated through the spatialities it produces. I illustrate this through a discussion of the recent history of British fascism’s decline and re-emergence, and its development of new spatial strategies. The British National Party’s re-branding mobilises around a particular idea of the authentic (white, British) community and subsumes into itself a dubious analysis of class divisions and interests. This re-branding can be seen as a particular form of territorialisation in the face of an increasingly fragmentary, mobile and globalised world, and is exaggerated in the wake of the global economic crisis which has had a disproportionate effect on working class communities. The struggle against the far right is in part a struggle over the spatial articulation of and claims to authenticity in differing understandings of working class values. Authenticity, I argue, is primarily a politico-discursive tool to which competing politics lay claim, perching on the ill-defined border between reality and artifice.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Publisher:	University of Leicester and University of Essex
ISSN:	1473-2866
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Last Modified:	06 May 2023 03:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/79472

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item