Checklist of extreme-right nationalist groups and symbols

Joep Leerssen

I have posted a conceptually indicative and incomplete checklist of some groups, individuals and symbols involved in racist nationalism since 1945.

The collection was started in 2018 by Max Möglich as part of a student research project at the department of European Studies, Unversity of Amsterdam.

The groups together may be considered as a political “swarm”; the individual entities are numerous, small, ephemeral, and entangled in highly volatile ways; but collectively, as a swarm, they constitute a habitat for the survival of racist nationalism since 1945. The groups’ activities are often illegal and the personalities involved are lso frequently convicted delinquents; driven by a n ideology of rancour and intolerance they are prone to break up or fall apart, but frequently re-emerge in different form as continuations, mergers or fresh formations by ex-members.

Individually marginal, they tend to hook up with like-minded activists in other countries, hosting interviews with them or organizing joint events. The internet and social media have made this much easier in recent decades. The most robust indicators of their ideological roots lie in the names they give themselves and the visual symbols they use for self-identification and branding.

As a result the dynamics and collective self-propagation of this “swarm” is extremely hard to track. That task is necessary, given their obnoxious nature and growing power. The present collection is in its bare-bones incipience, an extremely thin proof of an extremely complex concept.

The checklist can be accessed directly as http://leerssen.nl/extremeright

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