Right-Wing Movements

Thanks largely to the Kremlin’s information war, Ukraine’s ultranationalists have become global media stars of a sort, depicted in Western and other reports as key players in Ukraine’s third major political upheaval in less than a quarter-century. How do we explain the paradox of ultranationalist parties becoming involved in a protest movement whose thrust is toward greater integration between Ukraine and the European Union? And are the fears that swirl around these parties justified?

This publication aims to critically analyse the emergence of anti.gender mobilisations in European far right and conservative party programmes and the role of the respective parties in shaping the discourse and mobilisations. Five case studies – France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia – are looked at. Common chronological overview and transnational commonalities are introduced. The authors argue that “gender” serves as “symbolic glue” for agenda setting for conservatives and the far right political forces. However, anti-gender forces have a deeper root in the crisis of neoliberalism. The publication offers policy recommendations to progressive
actors to stand against fundamentalist political activism.

This paper examines the mobilization against “gender” which has spread across Poland since 2012, pointing to both local specificities and links to the transnational context. As we will show in the present analysis, while Polish anti-genderism is part of a boarder transnational trend (a fact long invisible to most of Poland’s liberal defenders of gender), some aspects of this phenomenon are indeed locally embedded. The campaign has consisted of many initiatives undertaken by the Catholic Church and conservative groups to fight gender equality education and legislation, sexual and reproductive rights, as well as the very use of the term “gender” in policy documents and public discourse. Polish anti-gender campaigners claim that their aim is to protect the Polish family (especially children) against feminists and the “homosexual lobby”; to defend authentic Polish cultural values (which are equated with Catholic values) against the foreign influence of the corrupt West and liberal European Union. Targets include sexual education, ratification of the Istanbul Convention and gender equality policies more broadly.
In our view, the current wave of anti-gender mobilization in Poland is not business as usual or another wave of conservative backlash, but a new ideological and political configuration, which successfully combines the local and the transnational, making possible a politically effective mass movement. We argue that the success of anti-gender mobilization can be explained by its leaders’ skillful references to ordinary people’s dignity and their identity as an oppressed majority. Anti-genderism consistently presents itself as an effort to defend authentic indigenous values against foreign forces and corrupt elites – a discourse which we interpret as a variant of right-wing appropriation of the anti-colonial frame. What may be construed as an Eastern European peculiarity is that in the region gender tends to be discredited as totalitarian ideology as exemplified by the following statement made in 2013 by Polish Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek: “Gender ideology is worse than communism and Nazism put together”. While the contested policies are coming from the West and are presented as Western impositions, genderism itself is seen as a vast project of social engineering rooted in Marxism and comparable to Stalinism. This tension or ambivalence persists in many of the documents and statements examined here: genderism is demonized as a cultural imposition a foreign body that is Western and Eastern at the same time.

About the Book

The recent, devastating and ongoing economic crisis has exposed the faultlines in the dominant neoliberal economic order, opening debate for the first time in years on alternative visions that do not subscribe to a 'free' market ethic. In particular, the core contradiction at the heart of neoliberalism – that states are necessary for the functioning of free markets – provides us with the opportunity to think again about how we want to organise our economies and societies. The Rise and Fall of Neloberalism presents critical perspectives of neoliberal policies, questions the ideas underpinning neoliberalism, and explores diverse response to it from around the world.

In bringing together the work of distinguished scholars and dedicated activists to question neoliberal hegemony, the book exposes the often fractured and multifarious manifestations of neoliberalism which will have to be challenged to bring about meaningful social change.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: A World Turned Right-Way Up - Kean Birch and Vlad Mykhnenko

Part 1: The Rise of Neoliberalism

2. How Neoliberalism Got Where It Is: Elite Planning, Corporate Lobbying and the Release of the Free Market - David Miller
3. Making Neoliberal Order in the United States - Kean Birch and Adam Tickell
4. Neoliberalism, Intellectual Property and the Global Knowledge Economy - David Tyfield
5. Neoliberalism and the Calculable World: The Rise of Carbon Trading - Larry Lohmann
6. Tightening the Web: The World Bank and Enforced Policy Reform - Elisa van Waeyenberge
7. The Corruption Industry and Transition: Neoliberalising Post-Soviet Space? - Adam Swain, Vlad Mykhnenko and Shaun French
8. Remaking the Welfare State: From Safety Net to Trampoline - Julie MacLeavy

Part 2: The Fall of Neoliberalism

9. Zombieconomics: The Living Death of the Dismal Science - Ben Fine
10. From Hegemony to Crisis? The Continuing Ecological Dominance of Neo-Liberalism - Bob Jessop
11. Do It Yourself: A Politics for Changing Our World - Paul Chatterton
12. Dreaming the Real: A Politics of Ethical Spectacles - Paul Routledge
13. Transnational Companies and Transnational Civil Society - Leonith Hinojosa and Anthony Bebbington
14. Defeating Neo-liberalism: A Marxist Internationalist Perspective and Programme - Jean Shaoul

15. Conclusion: The End of an Economic Order? - Vlad Mykhnenko and Kean Birch