Radicalisation of the Masses? Ontological Security and the Rise of the Far Right

Abstract

For the past decades, the effects of globalisation in societies across the world have not only increased economic development and interconnectedness but also brought about new forms of inequality and loss of social structures, that in the last years have provoked heightened polarisation and, in Western liberal democracies, the rise of the far-right in the form of political parties and movements. This dissertation argues that this phenomenon can be assessed with the lenses of radicalisation studies, proposing that the electoral far-right, as any form of extremism, should be equally treated as a security threat due to its questioning of fundamental rights and liberties. Using the theory of ontological security, this work attempts to demonstrate the processes that mainstream extreme narratives among wider sectors of society, proposing that the avoidance of uncertainty and its resulting existential anxiety opens individuals, groups and societies alike to extreme discourses to find a sense of self, and that in a wider society, extremist actors can do this through processes of mainstreaming taking advantage of the political opportunity posed by rapid socioeconomic and cultural changes like globalisation.