Wrestling with the local ambitions of the far right

Abstract

This commentary attempts to translate Santamarina and Ince's insights to the US context and draw out some implications for political organizing through the tumultuous present. Recognizing the importance of their emphasis on the local scale and bottom-up dimensions of contemporary far-right political organizing, we raise the question of whether national contexts might shape the extent to which such politics have a regional or city-level logic versus the neighbourhood scale they highlight in the UK and Spain. We also emphasize from our US perspective that the ‘local' and ‘neighbourhood’ serving as foundations of far-right politics is not a new development but is instead connected with a long and complicated political evolution that also sheds light on the strengths and limitations of past left responses. Finally, we build on Santamarina and Ince by exploring the cross-class character of white MAGA support in struggling US communities, in turn stressing the potential for local-scale labour organizing as a source of opposition to the far right.