Cooperation
Understanding and taking action: New anthology ‘Taking a Stand Against the Far Right’ published
The editors regard effective action against right-wing influence as a long-term, institutionally embedded collective endeavour. // Photo: Colourbox/#105565*
“Anyone who decides to take a stand against the far right must first engage with the strategies employed by far-right actors,” say the editors, led by Florian Monstadt and René Breiwe. Both are research assistants at the Institute for Educational Research at the University of Wuppertal.
It is precisely for this reason that their anthology – published in conjunction with colleagues from Freiburg, Siegen, Duisburg and Essen as a follow-up to the inter-university event series ‘EINMISCHEN’ – covers a range of research areas and topics. Taking a stand against the far right is a task that education, upbringing, care work and academia must tackle together and embed permanently within institutions.
“A entrenched culture of far-right thinking has established itself, which succeeds in binding people to it in the long term and winning over new generations to this ideology,” says the collective of authors. In the field of education, this intensified influence is particularly evident. Examples of this include targeted disinformation in the digital sphere and attacks on approaches that challenge discrimination.
Why is it important to take a stand against the far right?
A guest post by the editors on the Budrich Verlag blog.
Among other things, this anthology analyses how far-right networks and actors use social media to gain cultural interpretative power; how conspiracy narratives operate within families, partnerships, friendships and in the workplace; how the battle over the concept of ‘neutrality’ is being waged by authoritarian forces, thereby placing democratic engagement under legal pressure; and what it means when – as in the case of social work – entire professions, along with their clients and structures, are discredited, isolated and depoliticised through right-wing campaigns.
No single counterstrategy can be derived from the findings gathered in this volume. Rather, the editors are concerned with exploring a common course of action. In addition to their call for institutional rather than individual safeguards, they also include the following steps: recognising far-right tactics, defending democratic positions, taking empirical knowledge seriously, integrating research and practice, and developing media literacy programmes that address digital environments as a distinct sphere of influence.
About the anthology
„Einmischen gegen Rechts” has been published by Barbara Budrich Verlag and is available as an open-access document for free download.
Florian Monstadt, René Breiwe, Isabel Dean, Georg Geber-Knop, Simon Küth, Lisa Tölle (eds.): Einmischen gegen Rechts. Extrem rechte Interventionen als Herausforderung für Bildung
* The rights to use this image are held by the University of Wuppertal. It is not licensed for publication by third parties.
