Living Right

"Living Right offers an in-depth examination of far-right youth movements in Poland, Italy, and Hungary. The protagonists include students and young entrepreneurs, former skinheads, construction workers, bohemian musicians, and rich kids from the upper class who have all found a nurturing community in far-right groups. While they focus on local action, they are also part of a broader project with global ramifications. Agnieszka Pasieka engages in intensive fieldwork in these communities, particularly among members of the far-right Polish movement "National Radical Camp" (ONR), the Italian neofascist movement Lealtà Azione ("Loyalty Action, " or LA) and the FedeRazione ("Federation"), which comprises over a dozen movements across Italy, along with additional fieldwork among young Hungarian fascists. Pasieka makes some startling and counterintuitive discoveries. She observes that these groups embrace forms of civic engagement we tend to associate with left-wing organizations and movements, such as volunteerism in soup kitchens, animal shelters, and orphanages; environmental activism; and "humanitarian" missions to such places as the Balkans and the Middle East. Moreover she finds that such groups adopt language that overlaps in significant ways with left-leaning progressivism, notably a critique of globalization, consumerism, capitalism, mass culture, and "Americanization," as well as a selective embrace of the welfare state-so long as the benefits of public assistance are limited to white Christian compatriots. Members of these youth groups are often enthusiastic-but selective-readers of modern social science, and embrace notions of "cultural autonomy," "cultural rights," and "diversity." This language though buttresses an understanding of the world as made up of demarcated ethno-cultural entities, in which each entity should not mix with others. Taken together, her findings lead her to consider the far right's rejection of a hegemonic liberal order"--