Transferability,transnationality and the Americanization of the far-right ideology: A response to Santamarina and Ince

Abstract

Santamarina and Ince analyze case studies in the UK and Spain to diagnose far-right ideologies and the multiple dimensions along which these processes have transgressed from the local to the global and vice versa. The authors interweave a sizable body of academic work at the neighbourhood scale, and they argue that far-right mobilization is much more than a local-scale phenomenon. The article examines community-level politics and narrative creation and addresses questions of urban politics and political economy within the wider framework of urban geography. The authors touch upon a wide range of social and urban topics and illustrate through interesting case studies about how the narratives get built at the local and global scales. In addressing a variety of issues, they discuss how the displacement driven by gentrification and wider dimensions of competitive neo-liberalization create self-perpetuating cycles of isolation and cultural exclusion, which eventually create vulnerabilities for far-right politics by producing representations of people and spaces as villainized ‘others’. This is an excellent piece of literature that can be of special interest to critical social scientists, urban and political geographers, city planners and everyday citizens who take a keen interest in local-scale politics and city dynamics.