Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T14:23:51.777Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Race, Religion, or Culture? Framing Islam between Racism and Neo-Racism in the Online Network of the French Far Right

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2018

Caterina Froio
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

When debates about Islam acquire importance in the public sphere, does the far right adhere to traditional racist arguments, risking marginalization, or does it conform to mainstream values to attain legitimacy in the political system? Focusing on the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks in France, I explore the framing of Islam, discussing how the far right’s nativist arguments were reformulated to engage with available discursive opportunities and dominant conceptions of the national identity. By looking at actors in the protest and the electoral arenas, I examine the interplay between the choice of anti-Islam frames and baseline national values.

I offer a novel mixed-method approach to study political discourses, combining social network analysis of the links between seventy-seven far-right websites with a qualitative frame analysis of online material. It also includes measures of online visibility of these websites to assess their audiences. The results confirm that anti-Islam frames are couched along a spectrum of discursive opportunity, where actors can either opt to justify opposition to Islam based on interpretations of core national values (culture and religion) or mobilize on strictly oppositional values (biological racism). The framing strategy providing most online visibility is based on neo-racist arguments. While this strategy allows distortion of baseline national values of secularity and republicanism, without breaching the social contract, it is also a danger for organizations that made “opposition to the system” their trademark. While the results owe much to the French context, the conclusions draw broader implications as to the far right going mainstream.

Type
Special Section: The Persistence of Authoritarianism
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 696 - 709
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/Q8YTNL

This research was partly funded by VOX-Pol. The VOX-Pol Network of Excellence is funded by the European Union under the 7th Framework Programme for research, technological development, and demonstration under Grant Agreement No. 312827. The author is grateful to former colleagues Grant Blank, Huw Davies, Bharath Ganesh, and Ralph Schroeder of the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript and to Stelian Dumitrescu and the Médialab of Sciences Po for methodological advices. She is indebted to the three referees and to the editor of Perspectives on Politics for their careful and constructive comments, which definitely helped to improve the quality of the paper.

References

Albertini, Dominique and Doucet, David. 2016. La Fachosphère. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar
Bail, Christopher. 2015. Terrified: How Anti-Muslim Fringe Organizations Became Mainstream. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bar-On, Tamir. 2011. “Intellectual Right - Wing Extremism: Alain de Benoist’s Mazeway Resynthesis Since 2000.” In The Extreme Right in Europe, ed. Backes, Uwe and Moreau, Patrick. Göttingen:Vadenhoeck & Ruprech.Google Scholar
Bar-On, Tamir. 2012. “The French New Right’s Quest for Alternative Modernity.” Fascism 1(1): 18–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barth, Fredrik. 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.Google Scholar
Bastow, Steve. 2002. “A Neo-Fascist Third Way: The Discourse of Ethno-Differentialist Revolutionary Nationalism.” Journal of Political Ideologies 7(3): 351–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berntzen, Lars Erik and Weisskircher, Manès. 2016. “Anti-Islamic PEGIDA Beyond Germany: Explaining Differences in Mobilisation.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 37(6): 556–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bleich, Erik. 2011. “What Is Islamophobia and How Much Is There? Theorizing and Measuring an Emerging Comparative Concept.” American Behavioral Scientist 55(12): 1581–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borgatti, Stephen, Everett, Martin, and Johnson, Jeffrey. 2013. Analyzing Social Networks. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.Google Scholar
Brewer, Marilynn B. 1999. “The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love and Outgroup Hate?” Journal of Social Issues 55(3): 429–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers. 2010. “The Return of Assimilation? Changing Perspectives on Immigration and Its Sequels in France, Germany, and the United States.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 24(4): 531–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers. 2017. “Between Nationalism and Civilizationism: The European Populist Moment in Comparative Perspective.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40(2): 1191–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burris, Val, Smith, Emery, and Strahm, Ann. 2000. “White Supremacist Networks on the Internet.” Sociological Focus 33(2): 215–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Busher, Joel. 2015. The Making of Anti-Muslim Protest: Grassroots Activism in the English Defence League. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Caiani, Manuela, Porta, Donatella Della, and Wagemann, Claudius. 2012. Mobilizing on the Extreme Right: Germany, Italy, and the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camus, Jean-Yves. 2007. “Un conflit instrumentalisé par les communautaristes.” Revue internationale et stratégique 2(58): 79–86.Google Scholar
Carvalho, Joao. 2014. Impact of Extreme Right Parties on Immigration Policy: Comparing Britain, France and Italy. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Castelli Gattinara, Pietro. 2016. The Politics of Migration in Italy: Perspectives on Local Debates and Party Competition. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Castelli Gattinara, Pietro. 2017. “Framing Exclusion in the Public Sphere: Far-Right Mobilisation and the Debate on Charlie Hebdo in Italy.” South European Society and Politics 22(3): 345–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crépon, Sylvain, Dézé, Alexandre, and Mayer, Nonna, eds. 2015. Les Faux-Semblants Du Front National: Sociologie D’un Parti Politique. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po.Google Scholar
Dolezal, Martin, Helbling, Marc, and Hutter, Swen. 2010. “Debating Islam in Austria, Germany and Switzerland: Ethnic Citizenship, Church–State Relations and Right-Wing Populism.” West European Politics 33(2): 171–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eatwell, Roger. 2000. “The Extreme Right and British Exceptionalism: The Primacy of Politics.” In The Politics of the Extreme Right: From the Margins to the Mainstream, ed. Hainsworth, Paul. London: Pinter.Google Scholar
Engesser, Sven, Ernst, Nicole, Esser, Frank, and Büchel, Florin. 2017. “Populism and Social Media: How Politicians Spread a Fragmented Ideology.” Information, Communication & Society 20(8): 1109–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Entman, Robert. 1993. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43(4): 51–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Favell, Adrian. 2016. Philosophies of Integration: Immigration and the Idea of Citizenship in France and Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Freeman, Linton. 1979. “Centrality in Social Networks Conceptual Clarification.” Social Networks 1: 215–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gamson, William A. 2004. “Bystanders, Public Opinion and the Media.” In The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, ed. Snow, David, Soule, Sarah, and Kriesi, Hanspeter. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Gimenez, Elsa and Voirol, Olivier, eds. 2017. L’Internet Des Droites Extrêmes. Vol. Réseaux 202–203 Paris: La Découverte.Google Scholar
Guolo, Renzo. 2000. I Nuovi Crociati: La Lega E l’Islam. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Halikiopoulou, Daphne, Mock, Steven, and Vasilopoulou, Sofia. 2013. “The Civic Zeitgeist: Nationalism and Liberal Values in the European Radical Right.” Nations and Nationalism 19(1): 107–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hänggli, Regula and Kriesi, Hanspeter. 2012. “Frame Construction and Frame Promotion (Strategic Framing Choices).” American Behavioral Scientist 56(3): 260–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helbling, Marc. 2012. Islamophobia in the West. Measuring and Explaining Individual Attitudes. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Helbling, Marc. 2014. “Framing Immigration in Western Europe.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40(1): 21–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacomy, Mathieu, Girard, Paul, Ooghe, Benjamin, and Venturini, Tommaso. 2016. “Hyphe, a Curation-Oriented Approach to Web Crawling for the Social Sciences.” In International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media Köln, Germany: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.Google Scholar
Koopmans, Ruud and Olzak, Susan. 2004. “Discursive Opportunities and the Evolution of Right-Wing Violence in Germany.” American Journal of Sociology 110(1): 198–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koopmans, Ruud, Statham, Paul, Giugni, Marco, and Passy, Florence. 2005. Contested Citizenship. Minneapolis-London: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Koopmans, Ruud and Zimmermann, Ann. 2007. “Visibility and Communication Networks on the Internet: The Role of Search Engines and Hyperlinks.” In A European Public Sphere: How Much of It Do We Have and How Much Do We Need, ed. de Vreese, Claes H. and Schmitt, Hermann. Mannheim: Connex.Google Scholar
Lazaridis, Gabriella, Campani, Giovanna, and Benventiste, Annie, eds. 2016. The Rise of the Far Right in Europe. Populist Shifts and “Othering.” London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liogier, Raphael. 2012. Le Mythe de L’islamisation. Essai Sur Une Obsession Collective. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Marzouki, Nadia, Roy, Olivier, and McDonnell, Duncan. 2016. Saving the People: How Populists Hijack Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mayer, Nonna. 2012. “‘Islamophobia’ in France: Old Prejudice in New Clothes?” In Methods, Theories, and Empirical Applications in the Social Sciences, ed. Salzborn, Samuel, Davidov, Eldad, and Reinecke, Jost. Cham, Switzerland: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.Google Scholar
Mayer, Nonna, Michelat, Guy, Tiberj, Vincent, and Vitale, Tommaso. 2015. “Rapport Annuel Sur Le Racisme, L’antisémitisme et La Xénophobie.” Paris: Commission Nationale Consultative des Droits de l’Homme.Google Scholar
Messina, Anthony M. 2007. The Logics and Politics of Post-WWII Migration to Western Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mondon, Aurelien. 2015. “The French Secular Hypocrisy: The Extreme Right, the Republic and the Battle for Hegemony.” Patterns of Prejudice 49(4): 392–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mudde, Cas. 2007. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mudde, Cas. 2010. “The Populist Radical Right: A Pathological Normalcy.” West European Politics 33(6): 1167–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, Han Woo. 2003. “Hyperlink Network Analysis: A New Method for the Study of Social Structure on the Web.” Connections 25(1): 49–61.Google Scholar
Pilkington, Hilary. 2016. Loud and Proud. Passion and Politics in the English Defence League. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Ramet, Sabrina. 1999. “Defining the Radical Right: Values and Behaviors of Organized Intolerance in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe.” In The Radical Right in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989, ed. Ramet, Sabrina. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Rydgren, Jens. 2005. “Is Extreme Right-Wing Populism Contagious? Explaining the Emergence of a New Party Family.” European Journal of Political Research 44(3): 413–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Safran, William. 2003. “Pluralism and Multiculturalism in France: Post-Jacobin Transformations.” Political Science Quarterly 118(3): 437–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schafer, Joseph. 2002. “Spinning the Web of Hate: Web-Based Hate Propagation by Extremist Organizations.” Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 9(2): 69–88.Google Scholar
Taguieff, Pierre-André. 1998. Le Racisme. Un Exposé Pour Comprendre, Un Essai Pour Réfléchir. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar
Taguieff, Pierre-André. 2013. Dictionnaire Historique et Critique Du Racisme. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Tajfel, H. 1982. “Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations.” Annual Review of Psychology 33(1): 1–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tateo, Luca. 2005. “The Italian Extreme Right On-Line Network: An Exploratory Study Using an Integrated Social Network Analysis and Content Analysis Approach.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 10(2): 00–00.Google Scholar
Titley, Gavan, Des, Freedman, Gholam, Khiabany, and Mondon, Aurélien, eds. 2017. After Charlie Hebdo: Terror, Racism and Free Speech. London: ZED Books LTD.Google Scholar
Vieten, Ulrike M. and Poynting, Scott. 2016. “Contemporary Far-Right Racist Populism in Europe.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 37(6): 533–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Virchow, Fabian. 2016. “PEGIDA: Understanding the Emergence and Essence of Nativist Protest in Dresden.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 37(6): 541–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wieviorka, Michel. 2005. La Différence : Identités Culturelles : Enjeux, Débats et Politiques. La Tour d’Aigues: Édition de l’Aube.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 2015. The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zúquete, José Pedro. 2008. “The European Extreme-Right and Islam: New Directions?” Journal of Political Ideologies 13(3): 321–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar