Freddy Purcell-
We were really lucky to have Callum along to Phil on Tap for the second year in a row to talk about his work on the radical right, based on the PhD he completed in 2023.
Callum begun his talk with an introduction to epistemic injustice, a term developed by Miranda Fricker, that broadly describes how someone can be wronged as a knower. This talk centred around discriminatory epistemic injustice where knowers are harmed because of prejudice, as opposed to the distributive form that relates to issues around the accessibility of epistemic resources. Callum’s work focusses more specifically on testimonial injustice where someone’s testimony is ignored or disbelieved because of collective prejudice. For example, in the novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee, Tom Robinson is put on trial for the assault and rape of a girl. He gives testimony fighting for his innocence but is disbelieved by the court because he is African American and so suffers their prejudice. When applied to real life, it is then easy to how testimonial injustice can have serious personal and legal implications on the individual that suffers the injustice. Callum also argues that those complicit in this injustice suffer because in a Socratic way, their moral character is compromised. Then perhaps most importantly, the epistemic system is damaged because some parts of knowledge are excluded. For example, a scientific method that suffers from prejudice in the scientific community may have its productive conclusions dismissed without reference to the conclusions themselves. Testimonial injustice is therefore clearly a damaging phenomenon, but how does this relate to the far right?
To provide some context, Callum described how the political notions of right and left-wing emerged in the French Revolution, where the right supported the monarchy and existing system, while the left did not. Nowadays, this is of course used differently, and the paradigm more relates to how political groups approach issues like inequality or government intervention. The term far-right is then used to separate moderate groups from more extreme ones. Usually, the far-right is associated with hostility towards minorities, but Calum pointed out that the far right is actually defined by its authoritarianism and nativism. Nativism of course linking to hostility to minorities because it includes beliefs like xenophobia and nationalism. However, under the umbrella term of the far-right there are variations in belief, and we are at risk of being prejudicial if we assume all members of the far-right believe the same things.
The distinction that Callum focussed on was that between the radical and extreme right, leaving the alt-right for another time. Callum identified four ways in which these groups can be separated.
- Lineage to Nazism: The extreme right traces its political beliefs to 20th century Nazism, with group names often being references to some aspect of Nazism. An example in the UK being the BNP. The Radical right on the other hand does not associate with Nazism and is often hostile towards Neo-Nazis. For example, Callum has seen radical right protestors violently targeting Neo-Nazis instead of left-wing counterdemonstrators. An example of a radical right group is the English Defence League. Although Callum later pointed out that this relation to Nazism refers to the groups on an ideological level, instead of an individual level, as it is still very possible for radical right members to link their beliefs to Nazism.
- Type of racism used: A key part of far-right ideology is the distinction, in the eyes of its members, between native and non-native people. The extreme right uses biological pseudo-science and so is hostile towards all non-white immigrants and Jews. The radical right on the other hand uses cultural racism that is based on aversion to the integration of different ethnicities because of the belief that is causes social issues. For this reason, the radical right is typically hostile toward Islam as they believe it pushes Muslims towards extremism.
- Attitude towards the democratic system: The extreme right seeks to destroy the democratic system through terrorism, and then build a new system from this destruction. On the other hand, the radical right attempts to work within the confines of the democratic system to bring about radical change. This means that political parties like UKIP and Reform fit within the category of the radical right.
- Adoption of liberal values: The extreme right is completely against liberal values and commonly adopts racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic beliefs. This is to the extent that Callum has seen extreme right members verbally abusing members of the radical right for their perceived support of gay rights. On the other hand, Callum argues that the radical right has adopted a sort of semi-liberalism. Sometimes of course this is just a smokescreen for hidden prejudicial beliefs, but Callum argues there are genuine associations in the radical right with feminism and LGBTQ+ activism. Callum believes this is why there are many examples of radical right politicians across Europe are part of the LGBTQ+ community, e.g. the AfD’s leader Alice Weidel.
With this insightful detailing of the distinction between the extreme and radical right, Callum then focussed on how this relates to testimonial injustice. He pointed out that his sort of analysis isn’t publicly available, so most people are unaware of the differences that exist within the umbrella of the far right. This is leads to personal injustice in that a member of the radical right could be called a Nazi, something Callum has witnessed, when this isn’t necessarily true and is therefore a prejudicial comment. Callum argues that when we prejudicially conflate members of the far-right, we go against their right to recognition respect. This is a Kantian notion, importantly different to the sort of respect you earn for good deeds, that is a right owed to all human beings. Furthermore, Callum argues that this injustice leads to ineffective combatting of far-right ideology as we end up misunderstanding it. This can manifest itself in many ways, including how you might educate a person with far-right beliefs. For example, members of the radical right wouldn’t need to be combatted on pseudo-scientific biological beliefs but should be challenged on their socio-cultural beliefs. The extreme right/radical right distinction also determines the sort of groups that should be prescribed, as Callum argues that the extreme right should doubtlessly be prescribed, as happened to National Action after the murder of Jo Cox in 2016. This action would however be inappropriate for a group like Reform.
Thank you again to Callum for delivering this talk. It was greatly insightful, and everyone enjoyed it, despite its heavy themes. I also hope you enjoyed this latest Phil on Tap summary!