Far-right parties and movements are on the rise in Europe, where they are either leading or participating in nine countries’ governments.
Meanwhile, centrist parties in Europe and beyond are adopting far-right policies or stances on issues like LGBTQ+ and minority rights or immigration in a desperate attempt to win votes. In India, Israel and the USA, reactionary populism has gained support from a significant portion of the population.
This global context led Oxford-based New Internationalist to launch a fundraising campaign to support the production of a special edition dedicated to tackling the far right.
As a publisher owned by a multi-stakeholder co-op which also has the non-hierarchical structure of a worker co-op, New Internationalist engages with its reader-owners on a regular basis. During one of these engagements, readers were asked to vote for topics to be tackled in a special issue, with options including the rise of the far right, forever wars and climate refugees.
“It was very clear from their feedback as well that this is a topic that they’re very, very worried about,” says co-editor, Bethany Rielly who will lead on this issue.
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“It was interesting getting this feedback, because the far right was the most voted for by quite a lot – but comments noted that as the far right is ideologically opposed to migration and movement, that will heavily impact how climate refugees are treated; but at the same time, they have climate denialism ideas.
“So the more that these kinds of parties get into power and influence our politics, the less action we’re going to see on the climate, the worse the climate crisis will get, the more they’ll generate climate refugees – all feeding into this vicious cycle.
“The far right are also not the most peaceful, so this feeds into conflict too. We’re going to incorporate all of these topics into this edition.”
Rielly warns that the re-election of Donald Trump in the USA is invigorating far right movements worldwide. At the same time, she believes the rise to power of far-right politicians and parties as well as the move towards more radical approaches within traditionally centrist and conservative parties has been enabled by a range of factors.
“We can’t just come up with solutions of tinkering around the edges now,” she says. “There needs to be much larger thinking and reform of the systems that govern the world that we live in to make sure that people like Trump don’t keep on returning to power, and this is something that we wanted to do a deep dive on in New Internationalist.
“That’s something that our journalism allows us to do, because we have these big stories where we dive into a topic over 2-3 pages, sometimes more, and can give our readers a really zoomed out look on something rather than just surface level, snippet into these big topics.”
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But how is the New Internationalist going to define the far right? On the one hand, politicians like Georgia Meloni are attempting to appeal to more voters and keep international alliances by trying to appear more moderate after taking office.
“It’s interesting seeing how Meloni has managed to keep friendships and alliances with more centrist social democratic governments in Europe by being pro-NATO, pro-EU,” says Rielly. “But then you see her domestic policy on the ground, which is eroding things like the right to abortion, and the horrific policies in the Mediterranean to stop refugees coming over.
Meanwhile, in Hungary, journalist Paul Lendvai has described the prime minister Viktor Orbán as going through a transformation from “one of the most promising defenders of Hungarian democracy” into “the chief author of its demise”.
Rielly says the far right will be defined as falling under two categories: the extreme right and the radical right. The former is a more authoritarian, anti-democratic form of far-right politics and ideology while the latter’s supporters claim to believe in democracy and get into power by democratic means, but once they’re in power they try to erode democratic institutions, to keep and stay in power.
Both of these approaches rely on “essentially polarising us” and an ideology of “mostly nationalistic, anti-immigration, anti minority rights”, she adds.
Recent years have also seen far-right and illiberal politicians attempt to undermine press freedom. As a multi-stakeholder co-op, the New Internationalist is less likely to be impacted by this: “We can see now how Trump is trying to defund PBS and other public media outlets. In Hungary, Orban has completely decimated critical media. I think 80% of media is now owned by his allies and by stripping funding to state media. So being in a position where we are supported and rely on our co-owners, means we’re more sustainable in that regard.”
But the New Internationalist is not immune to all of these challenges and there are other ways the far right tries to undermine or attack press freedoms, says Rielly, including by weaponising libel laws.
“This is something that could potentially impact us, if we wanted to go down the route of doing more investigative reporting, and it’s something I’m sure all independent media are keeping in mind when they do reporting on the far right, because of the money power involved.
“But I do think that being a co-op – being owned by our readers, not having state funding or billionaire backers, not being at the whims to the wealthy – means we are in a more stable place.”
In addition to backing the publication financially, readers are involved in the New Internationalist’s work by providing feedback and pitching story ideas. They will be able to share the publication’s take on the new campaign, says Rielly.
“I had quite a few calls with readers and they suggested some really interesting new angles that I hadn’t thought about to explore in this edition that we’re going to do,” she says.
While news avoidance is continuing to affect news media organisations, Rielly says the New Internationalist’s readers remain loyal to the publication.
“I think we’re lucky that we have a very loyal readership. It was really nice actually to read a lot of the comments on the fundraiser page of people saying, ‘I’ve been a subscriber for 40 years. This is my window into finding out what’s going on around the world and feeling connected to other struggles in other places’. I think our readers are very engaged. They do want to know what’s going on.
“Our readers are hungry to know what’s going on, and they feel like a duty to know as well. But I can sympathise with news avoidance – the world is a very depressing place.”
On the other hand, the New Internationalist acknowledges that some readers may want to consume the news in a different format than a print magazine. Last year the publisher launched The Word Unspun, a podcast that it will use to tell stories, including on the rise of the far right.
Members and supporters proved their support of the publisher by donating £58,993 to its campaign to boost its coverage far right coverage.
“We’re just very grateful for everyone who gave to the fundraiser and supported the project, because, as a lot of people know, it’s been a real struggle to sustain independent media in this climate,” adds Rielly.
“We want to be able to continue doing the journalism that we do and covering these important topics. Without support from readers, it just becomes a lot more difficult to do that.”
