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Regional nationalism in Spain – particularly those movements in Catalonia and the Basque Country – have been characterized at the parliamentary level by political parties from both the traditional left and right of the political spectrum. While calls for greater autonomy and even secession are made from both ends of that spectrum, the framings of their calls for self-government vary in content and scope. Since the turn into the 21st century, sub-state nationalist parties of the left - those more typically associated with a prioritization of environmental concerns - in both regions have taken an increased share of the seats in their respective parliaments. Over the same period, climate change has increasingly moved to the front of the list of the concerns of European citizens. This paper investigates the degree to which key regional nationalists of the left have moved to incorporate environmental and climate change concerns into their claim making, narrative, and framings, highlighting both regional, and governance level comparative dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pope Francis’ pastoral response to trans people represents a compromise between his negative-affective political stance towards transness, and his positive-affective theology of pastoral welcome. By reducing away transness to sickness or sin, he can welcome trans people as individuals in a depoliticized personal sphere apart from the political – at the cost of a reductive ‘domestication’ of trans people, and the reproduction of right-wing populist politics evoked by his own negative-affective political transphobia. This paper argues for a better compromise, which enables positive-affective attitudes specifically in and amidst negative-affect, enabling trans people to be welcomed without reduction. It does this by reading Francis as championing a utopianism similar to that of José Esteban Muñoz. It argues that his recovery of a Franciscan ethic of self-subjection gestures towards an unimagined relationality in which trans people can be welcomed amidst the tensions of the present, and against theopolitical transphobia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper characterizes four Polish and Italian Catholic organizations that operate within the ecological field. The study of these organizations zooms in on the process of "greening of Catholicism" in Poland and Italy taking place. Studied Catholic organizations in Poland and Italy operate within different social and religious contexts. They face challenges, including resistance from traditionalists who view ecology as a leftist notion. To overcome this, the organizations studied frame ecological issues as religious duties, drawing on diverse traditions within Catholicism and emphasizing figures like John Paul II. They use religious resources such as Catholic identities, values, and symbols to appeal to a broader audience beyond traditional activists. Yet, their emphasis on Catholicism hinders cooperation with secular environmental groups and limits engagement with left-wing environmental politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's involvement in the Middle East is primarily focused on criticizing US diplomacy in the region. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been vocal about the US's use of international law as a tool when convenient. This criticism has resonated with countries in the Global South who feel marginalized and disrespected by wealthier nations. China's strategy in the Middle East is to use the region to constrain US global power and enhance its own influence. China has positioned itself as a leader of the Global South, championing smaller states' interests and reforming international relations. Arab publics have a more favorable attitude towards China than the United States, with many Saudis believing that the Saudi-China relationship is more important than the relationship with the United States. However, the United States is still seen as a more important security partner than China. China's approach in the Middle East is focused on state-directed economic engagement rather than direct action on political or security issues. Middle Eastern states see China as a way to pressure the United States to meet their needs and hope it will lead to a stronger alliance with the US. The United States needs to establish clearer priorities in the Middle East, redefine its role as a security partner rather than a policeman, and understand the motivations of Middle Eastern states in their relationships with the US and China. Despite China's growing influence, the US remains critical to the Middle East's economic and security landscape. [Extracted from the article]

This study explores how the ideological divide between the radical right and liberal left is anchored in the common sense reasoning of ordinary citizens. Across Western Europe, cleavage research has documented a divide in attitudes towards immigration and cultural liberalization which some view as a new cleavage of 'universalism' versus 'particularism'. Yet it is unclear how this squares with the fact that most citizens are non-ideologues with only moderate political interest and knowledge. Building on Clifford Geertz, Pierre Bourdieu, and recent research into the politics of group identities, we theorize how even in the absence of fully worked-out political ideologies, citizens mobilize forms of common sense reasoning based on group distinctions and moral intuitions. We apply this approach in a rare qualitative comparison of political reasoning on both sides of the new divide, analyzing narrative interviews (N=64) with groups positioned on its opposing sides: workers or small owners voting for the radical right; and sociocultural professionals voting for the liberal left. We show how 'common sense particularism' and 'common sense universalism' draw on distinct intuitions regarding the worthy self, the scope of solidarity, and the normative status of community. These intuitions resonate with class-specific social experiences and group referents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we empirically test the impact of ideological distance between opposition parties and incumbents on consensus in parliament in two different countries, Portugal and Spain, amid changing economic conditions. To do so, we employ the Comparative Manifesto Project database and develop a measure of ideological distance on the left-right and the centre-periphery dimensions based on parties' preferences as expressed in their manifestos. We demonstrate that the economic crisis had different effects in the two countries. In Portugal, it amplified the negative impact on consensus of ideological distance between the incumbent and opposition parties. As expected, parties more distant from the incumbent on the left-right continuum were more likely to vote against legislation. In Spain, by contrast, changes in the party system forced traditional mainstream parties, especially the socialists, to increase their opposition in parliament. Moreover, the crisis amplified the effect of the centre-periphery dimension on parliamentary conflict. As a result, not only parties ideologically distant from the incumbent on the left-right continuum were more likely to vote against legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017, for the first time in more than 60 years, a populist radical right party, the AfD, gained seats in a Bundestag election. While the AfD's stance against immigration and European integration is well documented, its preferences towards other foreign and security policy issues are less clear. To overcome this lacuna, I investigate voting records and introduce an original dataset of the legitimising rhetoric in parliament, to grasp the AfD's position on military interventions vis-à-vis other parties in the Bundestag. The analysis of voting patterns and rhetoric reveals the AfD as a distinct outlier within the German party system. Studying the AfD's positioning on security issues also contributes to the emerging literature on partisan ideologies, populism and foreign policy. Together with the Left Party, military intervention policies are now contested at both ends of the political spectrum. At the same time, the AfD introduced novel discursive frames for the German context based on the party's distinct populist radical right ideology. While the AfD has voted in favour of some smaller interventions, it regularly opposes deployments in the Middle East. Furthermore, its nationalist rhetoric breaks with Germany's traditional 'civilian power' role and fuels the politicisation of foreign policy decisions in parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The video streaming app TikTok is increasingly deployed by political actors to reach younger voters, and this includes populist radical right (PRR) parties. In this study, our expectation is that longstanding PRR parties will be more likely than new PRR challengers to try to de-demonise their image as they land on the platform, in order to counteract years of negative coverage. To test this argument, we use a novel theoretical framework that captures visual de-demonisation and eudaimonic appeals, applying it to the study of strategic communication on TikTok by a combination of established and novel radical right parties and leaders. Our selection includes Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini on the one hand, and Eric Zemmour and Vox Spain on the other. We find that - contrary to widespread assumptions linking radical communication with toxic rhetoric and the spreading of fear – positive and optimistic appeals including inspirational cues that foster hope and communicate values and virtues play a significant role in how PRR actors adjusts their communication to the needs of the medium. Moreover, long standing PRR parties are found to be less likely than new PRR challengers to focus mainly on negative content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper questions the opportunities that Yellow Vests as a Networked Social Movement (NETSM) created for politically underrepresented groups. Without a clear authority structure and a formal organisation, NETSMs challenge traditional leadership understandings. Nonetheless, their ability to determine precision in setting goals, demands, and strategies is disputed in the NETSM literature. Considering both aspects, the paper evaluates Yellow Vests' success in bridging two underrepresented groups inclined to radicalisation. The study rests on 77 interviews with young-adult French citizens who support Radical Right movements (n=40) or self-identify as Muslim in the public sphere of Paris and Lyon (n=37). I argue that Yellow Vests' baseline arguments (e.g., against the pension reform and tax hikes) were precise enough to be shared by our interlocutors. Meanwhile, our interlocutors left the group boundaries sufficiently imprecise so that the movement could reach beyond their parochial identities. Bringing the two features together, the movement opened up new (e.g., class-based) radicalisation possibilities other than those relying on the Islamist and nativist vocabularies. After analysing this combination of precision and imprecision in the context of several unresolved problems, I conclude that the movement's vulnerability emanates from its failure to refine the combination that initially symbolised a shared future imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, populism has had a massive resurgence across the world. This has been especially impactful for young people who grew to political consciousness amidst increasing normalization of populist political sentiments. The presence of populism is especially evident in young Americans on social media due to the mutualistic relationship between populism and the internet. This research examines young Americans' interactions with populism on the left and the right side of the political spectrum on Tik Tok, especially in regards to the themes, key words, and radicality of their comments. The comments are chosen based on peer engagement and the degree to which they promote populist rhetoric, and analyzed using a mixed-methods content analysis. The evidence suggests that populist sentiment is present in young American political culture on both the left and the right side of the political spectrum, and America is not, as many would suggest, predisposed to right-wing populism. As the world enters the second decade of the 21st century, populism has had an unprecedented rise all over the globe (Berman 2021). Due to the nature of populism, it is often attached to more extreme ideologies, such as fascism, socialism, or anarchism (Mudde 2004). It appeals to the socially marginalized, economically distressed, and politically frustrated, and it poses a threat to democracy in its longterm destructiveness towards established order (Liddiard 2019). Many studies have focused on the reasons behind populism's rise and its impact on current politics; however, few have focused on the implications it has on the future of political ideologies (Dippel et. al. 2021; Mudde and Kaltwasser 2018; Stavrakakis 2014). This research is interested in the effect of the normalization of populism on politically active adolescent Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media platforms have become crucial channels for radical right populist leaders to broadcast anti-immigrant views. These politicians employ various rhetorical appeals, such as pathos (emotional language), logos (logical arguments), and ethos (speaker credibility), to sway public opinion. This study considers the anti-immigrant rhetoric of prominent European populist radical right leaders across X, Instagram, and Facebook, analysing the prevalence of these rhetorical strategies across different platforms. From the perspective of mediatization theory, politicians can adjust their messages to fit with the design and formats of various social media platforms. Party leaders often resort to emotional appeals on X, with its limited space for communication, as well as on Facebook, where emotional interaction buttons and discussion features can encourage emotional rhetoric as well. Logical appeals (logos) are common on platforms such as Facebook and X, which offer options to easily share information in the form of texts and links. Additionally, ethos, associated with speaker's credibility, is common in posts on platforms that facilitate closer engagement with the party leaders' constituents, such as Facebook and Instagram. These findings underscore the importance of considering platform design when shaping political communication strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Jewish Left is having an intertwined renaissance and crisis, with a level of influence and growth not seen in decades. What explains the revitalization of the Jewish Left? What can the older generation teach to and learn from the young generation? What are the possibilities for institution-building? And why should scholars care? To tackle these questions, Boston University's Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs (CURA) organized a symposium on the Jewish Left. Bringing together activists and theorists, scholars and practitioners, grandparents and grandchildren, the event worked to theorize the past and present to map the Jewish left's path forward. Speakers included some of the leading voices of the Jewish Left, representatives of progressive Jewish organizations, and provided a gathering space for scholars, students, and activists to examine the evolving role of the Jewish Left in world affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a transcript of a talk given by Andy Izenson at the Jewish Left symposium at Boston University's Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs on May 3rd, 2024. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay engages the challenges and future of the New Jewish Anti-Zionist Left in America. How has anti-Zionism become an expression of progressive Jewishness and in what ways is this anti-Zionism itself a product of the Zionization of American Judaism in the past half century? The essay then turns to ask the ways progressive Jewish America can move past anti-Zionism and in doing so move past Zionization and begin to construct a New Radical Jewish Diasporism that would include new forms of religious/spiritual expression not bound by fidelity to Israel. This final section is more a prolegomenon for a possible future for the Jewish Left today to revive a new form of Radical Diasporism that is both not Zionist, and not anti-Zionist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Jewish Left in Palestine/Israel has its own legacies of Palestinian-Jewish activism. I will examine those legacies with a particular focus on the thirty years from 1993 to 2023, when the Jewish anti-occupation independent Left shifted from prioritizing Left anti-colonial secular internationalist ideologies as grounds for regional and international visions of equality from the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea into a hermeneutical introspection of what "Jewish" might mean in Palestine/Israel through intersectional and decolonial prisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public discourse has become more polarized, especially when it comes to moral issues. Moral issues related to gender and sexuality—particularly concerning children—are politically fraught. To assess the extent to which ideologies about gender and parenting are polarized, we interviewed eighty-five gender activists from diverse political orientations. Surprisingly, we found some convergence in how activists on the political left and right discussed gender and parenting. Specifically, those on the right endorsed some traditionally progressive ideas, including that girls should be able to play with "boy toys" and to aspire to traditionally male pursuits. Meanwhile, in affirming children's right to express their gender identity, those on the left treated gender identity as innate, an idea traditionally associated with conservatives, while saying little about sexism. These similarities, notwithstanding, we also found important differences between how these two groups discussed gender socialization. We discuss the implications of these different approaches and how caregivers and other adults can reconcile a commitment to affirming children's gender identity while also addressing gender inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of emotions in politics is drawing increasing scholarly attention. Yet, despite this heightened interest, the ways in which politicians concretely appeal to emotions of their target audience are still blurry. Let aside how they do so in different contexts. This article focuses on an affect that is frequently mentioned as the key driver explaining the electoral appeal of populist radical right-wing parties (PRRPs): resentment. In that respect, several authors have used the term "the politics of resentment," even though the exact definition of resentment often remains unclear. In this article, we theorize what resentment precisely is and how it is used politically, and hypothesize how it is mobilized in different ways by PRR parties in different contexts. Empirically, then, we employ content analysis to study a corpus of party documents of PRRPs in three West and two East European countries from 2004 onwards and identify three types of resentment mobilized by the radical right: (1) redistributive resentment; (2) recognitory resentment; and (3) retributive resentment. Despite being expressed in a more heterogeneous way than we theoretically expected, these forms of resentment share important commonalities that, we argue, can help to better understand the electoral appeal of radical right-wing parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who supports the populist radical right (PRR)? And under what circumstances? We theorize that social status-related envy (SSRE) is the construct that integrates personality- and grievance-based theories of PRR support. To assess our theory, we estimate psychological network models on German survey data to map the complex relationships between PRR support, Big Five personality traits, facets of narcissism, political attitudes, and multiple constructs measuring objective and subjective social status. Our findings confirm previous studies detecting two routes to PRR support: a disagreeable and an authoritarian one. The Bifurcated Model of Status-Deprived Narcissistic Right-Wing Populism claims that SSRE is the distant predictor of PRR support and the two constructs are connected by two pathways. The middle-class route is characterized by disagreeable narcissism (Rivalry) and nativism, while the lower-class route by Neuroticism (potentially Vulnerable Narcissism) and authoritarian right-wing populism. Moreover, we find preliminary support for our expectation that PRR voting is explained by the activation of narcissistic traits by SSRE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sovereignism is at the crux of the current wave of radical right-wing populism (RRP). While sovereignism may concern different dimensions, claims by RRP parties and leaders about regaining sovereignty are increasingly associated with socioeconomic issues such as welfare, redistribution and international trade. Adopting a demand-side perspective, this article draws from an original cross-national survey to investigate the intersection between economic sovereignism, economic populism and globalization attitudes, and how such attitudes may shape RRP voting in Western Europe and the United States. Our results confirm that economic populism and sovereignism form coherent sets of attitudes together with perceptions of globalization, and that such attitudes have a significant effect on support for RRP actors. We find different patterns of association, however, across our European cases and the United States, which suggests that the relationship between populism, sovereignism and economic globalization is partly dependent upon national context and historical legacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Right-wing populists often mobilize popular support by employing a people-versus-elite dichotomy in which they cast 'the people' as the underdog, or by 'performing' crisis to discredit the elite. Such 'underdogism', and the reliance on crisis more broadly, remains an effective strategy for as long as populists are in opposition. But what happens when populists gain power? One would expect that they would not be able to exploit their position as effectively and their appeal would weaken drastically. In certain cases, however, they still manage to sustain the underdog illusion. This article argues that memory politics are an important locus for populists to maintain their underdog rhetoric, and within that field the performance of victimhood is key. Building on theories about the performance of crisis and recent trends in research on memory politics in Central Europe, we propose a framework for understanding how governing right-wing populists justify vindictive policies and thus try to cement their power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of grassroots members of populist radical right (PRR) parties is on the rise, in contrast to the trend of membership decline in mainstream parties. While scholars have explained this by studying PRR parties' organizational strategies, I focus on party members and ask: Why do people join PRR parties? To answer this, I look not only at motivations, which is the dominant framework in party membership studies, but also at triggers – factors activating those motivations. Drawing on collective action scholarship, I argue that grievances and efficacy can work as triggers for joining PRR parties. Using interviews with 82 members of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the League in Italy and the Sweden Democrats, I uncover three elements in the path to PRR party membership: disaffection, affiliation and action. As well as questioning established narratives on why citizens join parties, my findings provide a novel theoretical framework to investigate this form of political participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on sociology, anthropology, constitutional law, and political philosophy, this issue explores how the concept of ethnicity functions as a salient category for understanding the experiences of minorities in Europe today. It considers ethnicity as a powerful means of self-identification and the assertion of differences between as well as within ethnic groups. This issue engages the tension between group-based stigmatization on the one hand, and the reality of increasingly fragmented forms of identification under the influences of de-institutionalization and individualization. It also hones in on the ethnicization and racialization of nationhood under the influence of right-wing identity politics, and the exploitation of ethnic differences for political and electoral purposes. In its engagement with socio-legal studies, this issue considers a number of strategies for alleviating the pressure on ethnic minorities, for example through the use of private sector duties as well as potential innovations of anti-discrimination infrastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While TikTok has established itself as a new platform for political communication, its role during elections remains understudied by researchers. In this article, we present a content analysis of actor dynamics and ideological content characteristics on TikTok during the early phase of the 2022 election campaign in Sweden, combined with an analysis of how political orientation and utilization of TikTok's platform features impact user engagement. Results reveal that party youth organizations had a prominent presence during the campaign, while traditional party actors were less established. TikTok tends to lean toward right-wing content, with right-wing praise being a significant predictor of user engagement. Semiotic resources such as stickers and emoticons but also added music, were widely used platform features, but these features had no or weak negative effects on user engagement. Added speech, particularly when praising right-wing politics, positively influenced user engagement, suggesting the importance of verbal communication on a platform characterized by multimodal experimentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Psychological Borders in Europe and the United States: Contemporary Nationalism, Nativism, and Populism" by Maria del Mar Fariña provides a timely and informative analysis of the sociopolitical landscapes in Europe and the United States. It explores the complexities of nationalism, nativism, and populism, highlighting their interplay and impact on contemporary society. The book utilizes an integrated sociopolitical and psychological analysis to examine the formation of collective identities and the role of trauma and historical processes in shaping political conflicts. While the focus is primarily on Europe and the United States, the book offers valuable insights into the rise of right-wing politics and ideologies globally. [Extracted from the article]

The paper examines how the radical right parties´ leaders work with emotions while addressing their voters and sympathizers on Twitter/X social media. We focus on the "supply side" on the level of leaders´ discourses. The goal is to demonstrate how they work with emotions, especially those of fear and anger. The context represents Russian aggression against Ukraine, because, typically, circumstances of a crisis bolster the ability of radical right leaders to use emotional rhetoric devices. Czechia, Hungary, and Slovakia represent three particularly relevant and distinctive cases among the CEE countries according to the relevance, relative strength, and stability of radical right parties. We examined social media, particularly Twitter, since it is one of the most prominent tools of political communication today, especially for populists. We collected the data of all Tweets between February 24, 2022 and February 24, 2023. We combined a systematic quantitative content analysis with a more in-depth qualitative analysis of the key characteristics of the discursive construction of the two most salient emotions: anger and fear. We did not confirm the assumption that they would utilise the war in Ukraine since most tweets addressed issues related to domestic politics. The research, however, confirmed that despite differences, anger and fear play a substantial role in the emotional repertoire and represent necessary rhetorical devices. Our findings concur with the literature on radical right populism and its employment of emotional discourse. We found that even a crisis in international politics has been reframed primarily as a domestic issue and integrated into classical discursive practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is an editorial introduction to a special issue of the journal Contemporary Jewry. The special issue focuses on Jewish virtual spaces in Europe and explores the significance of these spaces for Jewish life in Europe. The editors discuss the challenges and benefits of virtual Jewish spaces, including their potential to foster Jewish/non-Jewish interactions and shape contemporary Jewish identity. The special issue also examines how digital platforms can help European Jews navigate crises and combat antisemitism. The editorial introduces the contributions of the five essays included in the special issue and provides information about other articles and collections in the journal. [Extracted from the article]

People frequently assume that attitudes towards the government's involvement in the economy differentiate left- from right-wing politics. This paper compares this idea to a version of acceptance of inequality theory, where acceptance of inequality is the principal element of left–right competition, but the specific inequality motivating individuals' left–right choice may differ. Using multilevel regression models with survey data from the World Values Survey, as well as two case studies, this paper finds that: (a) acceptance of inequality is a better context-independent predictor of left-right self-placements around the world; and (b) in the Netherlands and Denmark, the correlation between acceptance of an inequality (regarding class or immigration) and right-wing self-placement is stronger when the specific issue dimension is salient to citizens. However, the paper finds no equivalent interaction effect for attitudes towards economic statism. The evidence thus supports the view that the left–right dimension concerns acceptance of inequality, rather than economic interventionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differential media treatment of climate change, including conservative media's tendency to reject the anthropogenic climate change scientific consensus, has reinforced polarized perceptions of climate change. Studies have found differences in coverage patterns and in perceptions among those relying more heavily on conservative rather than liberal or moderate media. This scholarship has been limited by narrow measurements of media exposure, climate-related outcomes, and the mechanism of effects. We analyzed nationally representative US data (N = 1,181) using measures that included not only reported use of mainstream print, cable, and social media captured in past research, but also science programming, as well as far-right, alternative-health, and Christian media. On average, participants relied more heavily on centrist and liberal media, followed by Fox News and social media. The results corroborate findings associating exposure to centrist media with pro-climate attitudes, and conservative media, including Fox News with the opposite views. Use of far-right outlets was associated with the lowest levels of belief in anthropogenic climate change, perceptions of personal threat, and support for climate-friendly policy. Reliance on science media was associated with pro-climate views. Most associations were mediated via perceptions of science and scientists (using the Factors Associated with Self-Presentation of Science, FASS scale). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various analyses show that right-wing populist parties (RWP) tend to be sceptical of climate science and policy. This points to a blank space in the dominant analyses of populism: their blindness towards society-nature relations. This paper aims to develop an approach grounded in Cultural Political Economy (CPE) that can be used to decipher the mediation of RWP within the context of economic, political, and cultural developments as well as society–nature relations. Against this background, the argument is developed that RWP is concerned not only with countering migration and processes of societal liberalisation, but also with defending an existing way of life that is firmly rooted in the destructive appropriation of nature. As a current of right-wing politics, RWP defends the imperial mode of living by expressing scepticism towards the existence of anthropogenic climate change. The paper contributes to a better understanding of the political economy of RWP by linking the dimensions of social domination with the appropriation of nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This piece takes its cue from a pair of incidents – a not unfamiliar theme in game studies – relating to game scholarship and its engagement with right-wing politics. In the first case, well-known game scholar Bonnie 'Bo' Ruberg called on editors and reviewers to stop insisting that scholars include a reference to a certain online campaign of harassment, doxing and threats of physical violence. In the second case, I had a reviewer insist that I had to include a reference to the 'Fortnite to alt-right pipeline' because clearly games were causing alt-right lunacy. To be sure, these both constitute genre criticism – among others – at its most reductive and cynical, deciding what the institutional and audience expectations entail based on an assumption of the industrial ones. Then, biographical criticism and assertions about authorial intent or the necessary 'touchstones' began to appear. There seems to be a consistent and persistent insistence that somehow even the best and most accomplished scholars should forget decades of scholarship because 'games are different' and this tendency has been conditioned and shaped by reading games through the 'lens' of the Trump presidency. This is important because it confirms that essays about games still tend to fit into one of the two boxes Ruberg ticks: game scholars who are not necessarily adept at the specific content area or specialists in a given field who are not really game scholars. It is telling and symptomatic of the centripetal and centrifugal movements in game studies; that is, from within and without. Admittedly, games are different, but not so different that we should forget or ignore decades of scholarship or worse, do not bother to find out if it exists at all. Not only are many of these positions ahistorical – ignoring the fact that, as some much maligned games quite cleverly point out repeatedly within, the same things have been said about the corrupting power of soap operas, romance novels, comic books, wrestling, rap and hip hop, backwards masking in heavy metal and plain old rock 'n' roll – the positions are also tacitly or unwittingly ageist, classist and/or occasionally racist, homophobic and transphobic even as the author purports to be concerned with inequitable representations. Moreover, there are peculiarly US American concerns that are transposed onto ostensibly universal ones. These reveal that even the most 'woke' of the American left can be a cultural imperialist and that American exceptionalism is inescapable if not ineluctable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The simplification of the political landscape in terms of ‘left’ and ‘right’ is common across most democracies, if not most of the world. This would suggest that the terminology has a shared core meaning in different political contexts. While no such stable element has been established in the political science literature, various potential dividing lines that may form the core meaning have been proposed. This paper is the most extensive comparative study to our knowledge that evaluates these proposals by studying responses to open-ended survey questions on what voters associate with the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’. Data from eight different democratic political contexts are analysed using quantitative text analysis methods. The results demonstrate varied support for the different explanations. Evidence is found in all contexts for the hypothesis that acceptance of inequality divides left- from right-wing politics. That the left-right dimension is a divide between those for and against government intervention in the economy, or between those for change and against change, is mostly congruent with our findings. We find less evidence that either secular/religious divisions, or different conceptions of equality, consistently differentiate left from right. Our findings point towards the existence of a context-independent underlying dimension of left-right competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how the critique of the monopoly of Western liberal thought through the decolonisation movement that was intended to increase the number of voices heard has been co-opted by nationalist politics in India and Russia. The debates in higher education in these countries reflect current key questions on the nature of the Indian and Russian nations—both under respective nationalist governments—where both are advocating a cutting off from Western modernity. Using Mignolo's concept of "de-linking" that was intended to raise up non-Western ways of thinking, the article shows that India and Russia have adapted and simplified decolonial discourse to reject "Western-influenced" critiques of development, inequality, and authoritarianism. Under political pressure from these authoritarian regimes, universities have helped to embed repressive majoritarian politics through anti-Western rhetoric disguised as de-linking, enabling democratic backsliding by discrediting opposition. This is done to protect a new identity based upon state conceptions of traditional values, paradoxically erasing minority voices that do not fit neatly into the unified national narrative. When universities are branded as Western agents for being critical of local traditions and schools of thought, the space for critical thinking and democratic debate is ultimately removed, leaving those who oppose Putin and Modi with no safe way to engage with political discourse, and this actually undermines the intentions of decolonial philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a boom in the power of right-wing parties that are becoming government parties in Latin America and Europe. It has been pointed out that these are distinguished from traditional right-wing parties by their common ideology that transcends national contexts, which is why they have been grouped as New Right-wing parties. This article questions whether these parties share ideological themes or whether they are heterogeneous and obey national interests. This study systemizes the New Right-wing parties' programs and classifies them to answer the question. This corpus is then studied through frequency, network, and principal component analysis. Two conclusions are reached from this. First, these parties agree on issues such as provider States and nationalist claims, and, second, their programs have diverse themes that do not show the formation of an identifiable transnational ideological agenda in their programs. Consequently, grouping these parties as an ideologically homogeneous phenomenon can make invisible the fact that they are parties that adjust to particular demands of their political environment, in a logic that obeys more catch-all parties than ideological and dogmatic parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microaggressions are behaviours constituting indirect or unintentional discrimination, but little is known about how group identity affects perceptions of their harm. Canada and the United States have similar socio‐cultural backgrounds, but different socio‐political climates, with greater political polarisation and arguably stronger ties between politics and race in the United States (Pew research, 2020). Thus, the interplay between ethnic/racial identity (ERI), political identity, and perceived harm of microaggressions may differ across these countries. In a recent study of Canadians, perceived microaggression harm was associated with leftward political orientation rather than ERI. Here, we extend this work to a U.S. sample. In two experiments (N = 99; N = 210), White participants and Participants of Colour rated the severity of microaggressions and reported their political orientation and the strength of their ERI. Microaggression severity ratings were associated with left‐leaning political orientation, regardless of ERI. In Experiment 2, vignettes in which the perpetrator of a microaggression sought reparation by signalling a "reparatory open‐mindedness" reduced severity ratings compared to instances in which the source doubled down on the microaggression. Interestingly, the size of this reduction in perceived severity was smaller than for Canadian participants. Thus, perceived microaggression harm is governed by similar forces in Canada and the United States, but signalling mindset, while still effective, leads to smaller reductions in perceived harm in the United States. This could indicate differences in intergroup trust and polarization between these nations. This work underscores the role of political orientation in perceptions of microaggressions and highlights the efficacy of mindset signalling in mitigating their harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly treatments of the human rights agenda tend to posit civil society organisations (CSOs) as its defender and the state and mainstream political actors as its violators. Even when raising the problem of an 'uncivil society', the literature labels these CSOs as reactive and hostile to the human rights agenda they perceive as 'Western' and 'foreign'. I argue that these treatments of the issue overlook another phenomenon: the emergence of CSOs that adopted the language of human rights and participated in its formal processes yet subtly redefined, subverted, and undermined the core commitments of the human rights agenda. This paper discusses such developments by referencing right-wing non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Malaysia that redefined the parameters of the human rights agenda to undercut state commitments to protect religious freedom, sexuality rights, and gender minorities. Through actor and discourse tracing, this paper illustrates how right-wing Islamist NGOs employed a novel two-pronged strategy that no longer openly repudiated the human rights agenda but continued to erode, eviscerate, and reformulate its contents and principles. The first prong involved institutional measures of 'getting in' to gain legitimacy by participating as a stakeholder within local and international human rights processes. The second prong encompassed social strategies of 'pushing out', whereby actors and their networks mobilised populist pressure to expose, ostracise, and subvert established human rights norms, institutions, and actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends to the study of populist argumentation a framework for the analysis of inferences implicitly emerging from multimodal artifacts. The framework builds on a post-structuralist approach to populism and integrates multimodal critical discourse studies and argumentation studies, specifically the Argumentum Model of Topics. Particular emphasis is laid on the contribution of visual discourse to the process of inference-making in interrelation with verbal discourse. We illustrate the framework by examining the social media posts of three populist right-wing parties/party members from Sweden, Greece and Romania. Finally, we discuss future avenues for the analysis of populist communication practices online from the perspective we propose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many institutional investors are active political donors, but the impact that their political partisanship has on corporate practices and policies has mostly eluded academic examination. As political donations can reflect investors' views and values, we theorize that the nature of investors' political donations can shape managerial decision-making in important ways. We test this idea by examining changes in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, an area where managers have a high degree of discretion over how they account for investors' views and values. Our theory introduces two focal constructs: political position, which captures the average political affiliation of actors within a group, and political dispersion, which captures the variance in political positions across group members. After hypothesizing a positive relationship between liberal-positioned investors and a firm's CSR activities, we argue that political dispersion among investors mitigates this positive effect. To account for between-group dispersion, we also suggest that liberal-positioned investors have a stronger positive effect on CSR in firms with more conservative managers. Our analysis of 19 years of shareholder political donations data for 2,062 U.S.-based firms supports our theory. This paper lays new groundwork for research on shareholder politics in management, and contributes to research on investor influence, political ideology, and CSR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article problematizes the intensification of censorship movements in Brazil in relation to literary education for children and youth, particularly in schools and on the recent processes of offering and choosing works by the PNLD (National Book and Teaching Material Program), considering the rise of transnational alt rights and their regressive agendas in the field of culture, education and rights (lawfare). The manuscript, of a cartographic theoreticalmethodological nature, exemplifies and analyzes some of the motivations for the censorship, through critical studies of childhood, as well as on alt right-wing politics and their social/cultural impacts. The work highlights the increasing weakening of the human right of children, adolescents and young people to democratic education, information and free participation in cultural and artistic life, as recommended by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Unicef, 1989) and the Statute of Child and Adolescent (Brazil, 1990), while highlighting some counter-hegemonic fronts of action, centralizing the role and mediations of literary reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around 1979, with the Nicaraguan revolution, the cycle of anti-capitalist revolutions of the 20th century was closed. Due to the subsequent failure of these attempts (with capitalist economic regression, from China to Russia and from Algeria to Vietnam) and due to the appearance of postmodern culture, the revolution is outside the historical horizon. Does it make sense, then, for the left to continue? On the one hand, the reasons for that epochal failure have not been evaluated. On the other, the criticism of capitalism is still valid, although not the models of society that accompanied it. Maintaining the social struggle and opening new options is what is possible today, linked to the effort that national/popular governments have made in Latin America to introduce into the democratic/bourgeois political system, the historical claims of the left. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, many once stable democracies have experienced various degrees of disruptive communication, along with the erosion of core institutions such as the press, elections, courts, and the rights of citizens. We propose a framework to compare the logics of illiberal and liberal democratic communication and contrast traditionally dominant communication norms of tolerance, civility, responsiveness, and reasoned resolution of differences in liberal democracies with transgressions of those norms by illiberal rightwing movements, parties, leaders, and voters. We suggest that unlike 'counter publics' that seek inclusion in liberal democratic systems, engagement with illiberal communication creates "transgressive publics" that attempt to exclude others in the process of promoting ethnic and religious nationalism. This framework offers a corrective to recent scholarship on democratic public spheres that focuses mainly on why the ideals of more inclusive and egalitarian communication are ever more remote. We shift the focus to the systematic disruptions of mainstream public communication and the authority of public institutions. Our analysis develops a broader theoretical context in which interactions between illiberal leaders and publics occur, with the aim of understanding national variations in how communication systems contribute to democratic erosion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incivility in parliaments is always prominently displayed in media reports, often with the implicit or explicit commentary that the situation is getting worse. This paper processes and analyses the records of verbal interactions in the Australian Parliament for over 100 years to provide a first approximation on the evolution of civility. It provides a framework for understanding the multidimensional nature of civility that examines both 'politeness' and 'argumentation', with the latter grounded in notions of public-mindedness. The analysis focuses on the interactions between parties of the orators and the party in power, the chamber of utterance, and the year. The results indicate that instances of impoliteness have increased since the 1970s but only modestly and remain highly infrequent. Minor parties, particularly those representing right-wing and Green politics are more likely to use dismissive or offensive language than the dominant centre-left and centre-right parties, although direct insults and swearwords are the particular remits of right-wing 'system-wrecker' parties. All these minor parties, nonetheless, also display higher levels of argumentation in their interventions. This combination of aggressive language and increased argumentation highlights the pressures on minor parties to convey their points in a forceful way, a challenge that is particularly pressing in two-party systems like the Australian one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]