Who Is a Right-Wing Supporter? On the Biographical Experiences of Young Right-Wing Voters in Poland and Germany

Abstract

<jats:p>This article explores the selected cases of the biographies of right-wing supporters from a larger sample of narrative interviews with young (18-35 years old) people in Poland and Germany. In the existing literature, we can find the socio-economic explanations of the sources of the right-wing turn (related to economic deprivation, precarisation, social exclusion, labor market competition with immigrants and others), as well as cultural explanations connected with new identity politics, symbolic exclusion and divide between society and political elites, the disembedding from previously solid communities, and the fear of new risks related to the inflow of cultural Others. Despite notable exceptions, it is rather uncommon to discuss in this context the actual biographical experiences of right-wing and far-right supporters. In the article, we take a closer look at four biographical cases of people declaring their political support for far right parties. The analysis of the cases leads to the distinction of socio-economic and socio-political pathways to right-wing populist support.</jats:p>

Mobilization of shared victimhood in the radical right populist Finns Party supporters’ identity work: A narrative–discursive approach to populist support

“…The above‐presented social psychological research on populism demonstrates that populist leaders on the supply side actively read and shape demand‐side grievances through narratives to achieve political objectives (Mols & Jetten, 2014; Reicher & Uluşahin, 2020). However, only a few studies have examined the role of narratives in how supporters construct populist politics as meaningful in talk (e.g., Mrozowicki et al., 2019). Hammack and Pilecki (2012) argued that because narratives play a significant role in how people explain the world around them and construct their identities as a part of it, there is a need for empirical studies analysing the ways in which political leaders’ narratives impact individual subjectivity.…”

Becoming a young radical right activist: Biographical pathways of the members of radical right organisations in Poland and Germany

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Becoming a Nationalist Activist: Exploring Biographical Paths of Polish Football Fans

“…Second, by analysing the issue in focus, it shows how the biographical approach can be a useful method to study the processes of reproduction of bottom–up nationalism, an approach that is still underrepresented in nation studies (Fangen, 1999; Kajta, 2020). The advantage of the biographical method is that it allows one to grasp relational processes between social organisation and individual agency (Mrozowicki et al, 2019), and thus to bridge the micro and macro perspectives to some extent (Hearn and Antonsich, 2018: 603). This study draws on Thomas and Znaniecki’s (1976a [1918], 1976b [1918], 1976c [1918]) classic theory of ‘social becoming’ and their proposal of analytical framework using biographical data.…”