How liberalism accommodates far-right social movements: on “mainstreaming” and the need for critical theory in far-right studies

Abstract

Scholarship on social movements, racism, and nationalism increasingly falls under the purview of “extremism studies” and its subfield “far-right studies.” Prominent extremism scholars have developed generalist theories purportedly explaining far-right politics and power dynamics (or “mainstreaming”) across liberal societies. They define “far-right” as “illiberal” politics promoting dehumanization, exclusion, and inequality. Their theory of mainstreaming suggests that “the” far-right is a coherent entity that “enters” mainstream institutions or discourse from the outside. For these scholars, strengthening liberal-civic principles prevents far-right political power (mainstreaming). I call these approaches “grand theory templates,” which I critique for simplistic interpretations of power and for overlooking critical theory scholarship showing how liberalism accommodates far-right politics. Using the Canadian nationalist movement as a case study, I show how liberal chauvinism can be crucial to empowering right-wing populist movements. My data include over 40 hours of participant-observation at 20 right-wing events and 35 interviews with 42 current leaders and members of on-the-ground nationalist groups. Right-wing nationalists foregrounded liberal-civic ideas, such as “security,” “rights,” “objectivity,” and “tolerance,” to advance anti-Muslim sentiment and populist conspiracism. My findings suggest that far-right movements can gain power by embracing liberalism’s ambiguity and contradictions. In other words, mastering liberal messaging can be essential to the growth of far-right movements, challenging any easy dismissal of these politics as “illiberal.” Altogether, “top–down” grand theory templates oversimplify political distinctions and power, compromising research design and analysis. I advocate for more granular and “bottom–up” inductive approaches that prioritize sociological traditions over theories recently popularized by extremism scholars.

Introduction: extremism studies and the eclipsing of social science

Studies of conservatism, social movements, political power, and nationalism are increasingly subsumed under the “extremism studies” umbrella and its related subfield “far-right studies.” While these fields are interdisciplinary and encompass diverse topics and approaches (Mondon 2023), a growing subset of “extremism scholars” argue that extremism itself can be isolated as an object of study. There are now books, articles, and volumes proposing generalist explanations for how political extremism works (see Mudde 2014, Berger 2019). Growing demands among governments to police extremism further incentivize scholars to develop generalist and conclusive explanations for political behaviors (el-Ojeili & Taylor 2020; Tetrault 2022). Building on this momentum, extremism scholars such as Mudde (2019), Miller-Idriss (2020), and Pirro (2022) have proposed grand theories of far-right politics and their “mainstreaming” allegedly applicable across Westernized countries. This extremism scholarship is increasingly influential for how we understand and study contemporary politics and power (el-Ojeili and Taylor 2020). These generalist approaches, however, eclipse rather than synthesize diverse fields of social science.

In this paper, I borrow from critical theory and social movement studies to show how generalist theories can confuse our understanding of far-right movements and right-wing populism in particular. Extremism scholars broadly define “far-right” as dehumanizing politics allegedly opposed to liberal democratic values and institutions or what they term “the mainstream.” For them, the far-right is a political Other that “enters” or “infiltrates” mainstream discourses and institutions, a process they call “mainstreaming” (Miller-Idriss 2020, 59). In other words, extremism scholars essentialize far-right politics as separate or opposed to liberalism, allowing them to purportedly study “the” far-right in isolation. Using a case study of Canada’s nationalist movement, I show how liberal chauvinism can be crucial to the growth of far-right movements, challenging any easy dismissal of these politics as illiberal. As I will show, extremism scholars often idealize liberalism as fundamentally distinct from far-right ideas. This premise ignores critical theory literature demonstrating liberalism’s symbiotic relationship with far-right and dehumanizing politics. Premised on a false dichotomy (liberal versus far-right), the concept of “mainstreaming” is largely unintelligible and no substitute for rich sociological traditions covering power, social movements, and social change. I conclude that far-right studies should prioritize more open-ended theoretical frameworks rooted in established sociological traditions over the fixed and neat templates recently popularized by extremism scholars.

This article relies on data collected from 2016 to 2020 on Canada’s nationalist or “yellow vest” movement, including over 40 hours of participant observation at 20 right-wing events and 35 interviews with 42 current leaders and members of on-the-ground nationalist groups. In this study, participants married liberal-civic ideas, such as “security,” “rights,” “democracy,” “objectivity,” and “tolerance” with populist conspiracism and anti-Muslim sentiment. Instead of dismissing this movement as illiberal, it is more intellectually and ethically useful to consider how nationalist groups capitalize on modern liberalism’s often ambiguous, incoherent, and contradictory principles and terminology.

In Section I: Literature Review: Liberal Hegemony in Far-Right Studies, I outline my theoretical approach and review generalist definitions of far-right and its subcategory, right-wing populism. I show how scholars essentialize far-right politics as separate from idealized liberalism, which makes mainstreaming legible as a concept. In Section II: Social Context: Canadian Exceptionalism  and Right-Wing Populism in Canada, I outline my case study of Canada. Extremism scholars have argued that Canadian liberalism prevents far-right politics despite the country’s extensive history of right-wing populism recently manifesting in anti-Muslim and “freedom convoy” protests. In Section III: Methods and Findings, I outline my methods and findings on the Canadian nationalist movement, showing how participants used liberal chauvinism to construct Muslims and “globalists” as perceived threats to liberal democracy. Finally, in Section IV: Discussion and Conclusion, I explain how my inductive qualitative approach differs from what I call “grand theory templates,” which depend on neat taxonomies that idealize liberalism, compromising research design and analysis. Altogether, my contribution is foremost methodological: I am advocating for more granular, inductive, and sociological research and heightened skepticism of broad theoretical frameworks.

Section I: Literature review: liberal hegemony in far-right studies

Theoretical approach and terminology

Far-right studies tend to center on political parties, rather than grassroots protests and activist groups (Pirro 2022, 102; Brown et al. 2023). There is also minimal ethnographic research involving far-right actors, especially in Canada. Due to this limited knowledge, my study uses an exploratory qualitative approach prioritizing inductive analysis and local context. In other words, I develop theories and concepts through empirical attention to context and social interactions to minimize assumptions about my sample population. For example, I conceptualize the ideologies of my participants and their organizations by accumulating and assessing qualitative data in the form of interviews and participant observation. While this approach complicates grand theories, it does not reject them altogether: I necessarily rely on generalist conceptualizations of liberal and far-right politics, as I detail next.

Defining contemporary liberalism

Liberalism is a philosophy that significantly shaped modern government and culture in Westernized nations, influencing foundational policies related to human rights, government power, punishment, markets, and the welfare state. This vast “political vocabulary” centers on core concepts like rights, justice, equality, individualism, tolerance, democracy, liberty, and security (Freeden & Steers 2013). Additionally, liberals often advocate for rationalism and universalism, supporting ideas such as equality before the law, property rights, free markets, and political freedom (e.g., freedom of speech and assembly). While liberalism was historically a distinct movement, contemporary liberalism is challenging to define, given the dominance, universalization, and contestation of its ideas and their increased abstraction from lived experiences (Freeden & Steers 2013, 344). Much of today’s political discourse involves attempts to wield liberal hegemony by controlling its language (Freeden & Steers 2013, 330).

Social theorists have critiqued liberalism from a leftist perspective under the umbrella of “critical theory,” most notably using Marxist, feminist, decolonial, and critical race approaches. Scholars developed critical theory in the Frankfurt School in the 1920s to understand and critique the rise of fascism and other forms of oppression. In short, critical theory shows how dominant institutions and power relations—often assumed by the layperson to be “natural” or “common sense”—can marginalize groups and cause harm. For example, Bonilla-Silva’s (2014)  Racism Without Racists influenced my approach. That book outlines the rise of “color-blind racism” in liberal democracies, referring to people claiming not to “see race,” denying how history and racial inequality impacts life chances. Other critical theory I draw from includes Brown’s (2006) critique of liberal tolerance discourse and Billig’s (1995) theory of “banal nationalism.” I also borrow from critical theorist Axel Honneth (1996, 2007) to assess how grand theories impact research design. Finally, my analysis borrows from social movement studies theory, such as Snow and Benford’s (1992) social movement “master frames,” and from scholars who have explored liberalism’s role in right-wing politics, such as Orwell (1946), Berntzen (2019), Sibley (2023), Hughey (2012), el-Ojeili and Taylor (2020), McCluskey (2019), Landa (2012), Mondon and Winter (2020), and Braune (2024).

It is beyond this paper’s scope to assess debates about how liberalism ought to be defined and practiced. My study concerns how activists capitalize on liberalism’s ambiguity and hegemony. Dominant theories of “mainstream/ing” do not capture such nuances, and I consequently do not use that terminology. Instead, critical theory and social movement studies include analyses of power more robust and precise for assessing social movement dynamics and growth.

Defining the far-right: right-wing populism and extremism

This study broadly concerns right-wing nationalism, an orientation promoting a country’s perceived traditional national values and culture. These actors defend their imagined national identity by accusing “deviant” cultures or “ideologies” of causing social problems, such as the idea that Islamic “ideology” causes terrorism, “gender ideology” harms children, or that Black or Indigenous cultures cause crime. Right-wing nationalists also admonish people promoting “globalism.” In academic discourse, globalism is nearly synonymous with globalization, as the increasing interconnectedness of people across the world. In right-wing politics, however, globalism refers to a political ideology that allegedly puts international institutions ahead of the nation-state (Stack 2016).

Some argue that the preceding politics constitute a novel “national conservatism” movement. While more research is needed on this development, these ideas have arguably influenced conservatism throughout modern history and may represent a conventional right-wing reaction to contemporary developments, such as increasingly globalized societies (Abrahamsen & Williams 2023). Altogether, right-wing nationalism plays an important role in establishment conservatism but can manifest in extreme or “far-right” politics seeking to challenge social norms.

Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde’s (2019, 25) widely accepted definition represents “far-right” as an umbrella term encompassing two subcategories: right-wing populism) and extremism. “Populism” is a rhetorical strategy and discourse where political actors construct or emphasize antagonism between “the elites” and “the people” and claim to represent the latter (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017, 5)¹. Populism can also be understood as a “thin ideology” that complements “thick” political ideologies (Mudde & Kaltwasser 2017, 6). I use these basic definitions in my case study of the Canadian nationalist movement, where groups constructed populist narratives through thick right-wing ideologies of globalism and nationalism. Adherents of right-wing populism (henceforth RWP) widely express skepticism or hostility toward public institutions and may see themselves as “anti-establishment,” in contrast to traditional or moderate conservatism, which typically holds institutions in high regard. “Extremists” typically refer to overt fascists or neo-Nazis, whose beliefs overlap with the basic premise of RWP, such as racializing “the people” as White and elites or “globalists” as a Jewish cabal.

Generalist theories of far-right politics can be a useful starting point for studying political movements. My critique concerns overtheorizing, where scholars overgeneralize the qualities of rightist social movements, such as presupposing the beliefs or motivations of political actors prior to study. Extremism scholars now propose theories of “mainstreaming” to explain how rightist ideas gain power across the social world. As I explore next, grand theories often rest on the dubious premise that far-right politics are separate from liberal democracy.

Liberalism and far-right studies: drawing distinctions

“Right-wing populism is ethnonationalist”

Hunger and Paxton (2022) and Stavrakakis et al.(2017) found that experts often conflate “populism” with the extreme Right (such as ethnonationalists) (421; De Cleen and Stavrakakis 2017; see also conflation by Perry et al. 2018, 69). Prominent theorists also foreground ethnonationalism as a defining feature of RWP. Arguably the most popular academic definition of RWP comes from Mudde (2019), who argues that the “ultimate goal” of the populist radical right is an “ethnocracy,” meaning:

a democracy in which citizenship is based on ethnicity. It wants to (re) create this monocultural state by closing the borders to immigrants and giving “aliens” a choice between assimilation or repatriation (27).

Wodak (2015) similarly characterizes ethnocracy as RWP’s “ideal imaginary” (27). Scholars use ethnonationalism to differentiate RWP and extreme racism from the liberal or civic center, suggesting an ethnic versus civic nationalist dichotomy. Civic nationalism, a liberal view of nationhood, suggests that the nation should consist of individuals united by a political creed, transcending factors like race, ethnicity, and religion. Historically, scholars characterized the “good” nationalisms of Western Europe as completely civic, liberal, and democratic, contrasting the “bad” “Eastern” nationalisms as ethnic, irrational, and authoritarian (dubbed “ethnic nationalism”) (Trautsch 2019, 7).

Many scholars use the concept “ethnic” or “ethno-”nationalism to represent RWP as deviating from—if not antithetical to—civic nationalism. Akkerman (2003) argues that for the “populist radical right”, “the people” in populism refers to “ethnos rather than demos” (151). Tamir (2019) argues that “liberal nationalism” is crucial to “fend off the extremists and save nationalism from fascists” (xi). Beiner (2019) suggests the “rise of the populist right” represents “subordination of the civic by the ethnic” and “reminds us…that nativism and tribalistic cultural and ethnic animosities are a perennial threat to civic life”(200, 209; see also Trautsch 2019). By essentializing far-right politics as ethnonationalist, scholars argue or suggest that liberal-civic values play a negligible or secondary role in such movements.

“Right-wing populism is illiberal”

Extremism researchers rarely consider liberalism in much detail, if at all (el-Ojeili & Taylor 2020, Brown et al. 2023). Some scholars, such as Mudde (2019), overtly conflate liberalism with “the mainstream” and call for defending liberal democracy from far-right politics (179; see also Miller-Idriss 2020; see el-Ojeili & Taylor 2020’s critique). In short, prominent scholars argue or assume that RWP is inherently illiberal (see also Moffitt’s (2017) critique). As Berntzen (2019) observes, writers often characterize right-wing groups foremost as “movements of exclusion,” defined by their intolerance rather than what they support—epitomized by labels such as anti-immigration, anti-gay, anti-communist, hate group, etc. (29; see also Tetrault 2021b). Prominent scholars essentialize RWP as illiberal due to the belief that promoting exclusion, hierarchy, dehumanization, inequality, intolerance, or ethnonationalism opposes liberalism (see Miller-Idriss 2020, 6, Laruelle 2022). Berezin (2022) argues that the essence of illiberalism is exclusion and nativism (244). Pirro (2022) asserts that right-wing populists promote ethnonational majoritarianism and are therefore far-right and “fundamentally illiberal” (5; see also Blokker 2022, 267). Mudde (2019) opens his influential book The Far Right Today by stating that: “This book is not concerned with the so-called ‘mainstream right’, such as conservatives and liberals/libertarians, but only with those on the right who are ‘anti-system’, defined here as hostile to liberal democracy” (15, emphasis added). Mudde (2019) implies that far-right politics (RWP and “extreme racism,” as per his definition) oppose “mainstream” politics and liberalism (see also Mudde 2019, 28, 29; Mudde 2007, 5). Moffitt (2017) offers more nuance and advances the concept “illiberal liberalism,” referring to how political actors selectively use liberal ideology to “defend an ultimately illiberal position”(114; see also Pappas 2019, 65). Moffitt (2017) defines “illiberalism” as exclusionary and asserts that scholars “cannot seriously call [right-wing populists] liberal” (118).

Altogether, widely accepted theories of RWP suggest that these politics are distinct from the liberal civic center, implying that ethnonationalism, exclusion, dehumanization, inequality, and intolerance are inherently illiberal. However, scholars often tell rather than show: few empirically demonstrate how RWP movements diverge from or intersect with liberal politics and institutions.

Making “mainstreaming” legible

Extremism scholars increasingly offer explanations of “mainstreaming” of far-right politics, despite minimal attention to what mainstream or mainstreaming means (Brown et al. 2023). Miller-Idriss (2020) describes the “mainstreaming of extremism” as a process whereby “previously extreme ideas become normalized as part of the acceptable spectrum of beliefs within democratic societies” (46). For Miller-Idriss (2020), the “extreme ideas” of the far-right are “illiberal” ideals promoting exclusion, hierarchy, and dehumanization (6). She argues that mainstreaming involves far-right actors “smuggling” extreme ideas into mainstream society by “softening” their “violent underpinnings” (46, 47). Mudde (2019) does not define mainstreaming but posits that RWP represents a “pathological normalcy” where “mainstream ideas” are “radicalized” or taken “to an illiberal extreme” (73, 109, 112). Altogether, theories of mainstreaming derive their substance from vague political abstractions that typically idealize liberalism (el-Ojeili & Taylor 2020). Put another way, the idea of mainstreaming is only legible if we accept that “the far-right” and “mainstream” are separate and coherent entities (see also Blee et al.’s (2024) critique). In other words, for extremism scholars, far-right politics are a political Other that purportedly “enter” liberal institutions from the outside (Miller-Idriss 2020, 59; see also Berger’s 2023 “lawful extremism”).

When used carelessly, mainstreaming is a repackaging of the concept power into a vague and overly broad framework. The study of power—and its related sociological tools: hegemony, social norms, institutionalization, power/knowledge, and deviance—has rich traditions across sociology, political science, philosophy, criminology, and social psychology, among other disciplines. In short, “mainstreaming of the far-right” is too crude to universally explain right-wing political power across liberal democracies. This sweeping terminology increasingly overshadows inductive research seeking more detailed and nuanced analyses of political power.

Scholars of critical far-right studies, such as Brown et al. (2023), also use the “mainstreaming” term, which they define as follows: “. . . the process by which parties/actors, discourses and/or attitudes move from marginal positions on the political spectrum or public sphere to more central ones, shifting what is deemed to be acceptable or legitimate in political, media and public circles and contexts” (170). Here, Brown et al. (2023) present mainstreaming as a critical theoretical model for analyzing how liberal actors and institutions can empower far-right politics (see also Vitek 2024). This approach is useful for assessing broad power shifts but less tailored for studying more micro-level or “bottom–up” social processes and power relations, such as audience meaning-making and political agency (how people come to acquire right-wing beliefs). Consequently, I analyze the political dynamics of my case study using social movement studies and other critical theory approaches.

Altogether, while critical scholars are improving analyses of far-right power, dominant grand theories represent “the far-right” as an illiberal Other and homogenous entity that infiltrates or perverts liberalism by promoting dehumanization, inequality, and other controversial ideas. As I will show, this premise idealizes liberalism and is too simplistic for studying modern politics.

Section II: Social context: Canadian exceptionalism and right-wing populism in Canada

Canada is, perhaps ironically, the ideal context for showcasing how generalist theories of far-right politics confuse our understanding of political movements. Grand theories heavily imply or state that upholding liberal-civic values discourages far-right sentiment. By this logic, far-right politics should have minimal influence in emphatically liberal nations like Canada. Indeed, Canada is widely celebrated for its liberalism. Prominent writers have argued that Canada’s championing of liberal principles (especially tolerance and multiculturalism) is a safeguard against the xenophobia and cultural chauvinism of RWP movements. Extremism scholars such as Ambrose and Mudde (2015), for instance, declare an “absence” of RWP and racist movements in Canada, arguing that federal multiculturalism and Canada’s political culture prevents far-right politics. Perry et al. (2018) similarly argue that RWP in Canada is “Trumpism,” which will fail because: “the Canadian public is averse to the kind of cultural chauvinism and xenophobia expressed by Trump and the alt-right”(67). These arguments reinforce what social scientists call “Canadian exceptionalism,” a national myth portraying Canadians as morally superior, which manifests in the country’s political climate and policies (Lipset 1990; Cooper 2017). An empirical assessment of Canada’s historical and contemporary political culture, however, challenges these arguments.

RWP movements have influenced establishment conservatism throughout Canada’s history. The most prominent RWP movements were the Social Credit (1935–1993) and Reform (1987–2000) movements, which began as grassroots groups representing discontent with establishment conservativism. Social Credit and Reform were distinct from other political movements of the period, as they evolved into powerful enterprises propelled by charismatic leaders and familial legacies, such as the Mannings in Alberta, the Bennetts in British Columbia, and the Coattes in Quebec. These leader-centric movements later formed federal political parties (see Harrison 1995). Conservative parties absorbed movement figures, the most famous being Stephen Harper, a founding member of the Reform Party of Canada who later became prime minister from 2006 to 2015. The Harper government embodied penal populism and introduced an omnibus crime bill in 2012, which critics argue criminalized poverty and dramatically increased incarceration rates for Indigenous peoples (Newell 2013). They also aggressively expanded anti-terrorism laws and, in 2015, proposed a police hotline for reporting “barbaric cultural practices” (Barber 2015).

Canadians have also expressed RWP-aligned opinions over the last decade. Polling suggests that roughly half of Canadians hold anti-Islam attitudes and increasingly express criticisms of immigration (Todd 2014; Reid 2017). Other polls suggest rising belief in conspiracy theories and growing distrust of institutions and experts (Elliot 2019; Proudfoot 2019; Weber 2019; Anderson & Coletto 2022; Canseco 2019; Stokes 2022). Canada also received international attention for the “Freedom Convoy” protests in 2022. The convoy movement opposed COVID-19 restrictions and was among the largest political protests in Canadian history (Preston 2022). Activists mobilized populist rhetoric by representing “average Canadians” as victims of corrupt “elites” of the “medical establishment” (Gillies et al. 2023). Roughly 40% of Canadians were sympathetic of the protestors, and Canadians donated millions to the convoy’s GoFundMe (Turnbull 2022; Bricker 2022). RWP attitudes are also evident in the election of Pierre Poilievre as leader of Canada’s Conservative party. Media and experts regard Poilievre as a “populist” for frequently admonishing “elites” and promoting World Economic Forum conspiracy theories (Canadian Press 2023; Gillies et al. 2023; Aziz 2023).

Extremism scholars argue that far-right politics in Canada are foremost a foreign aberration that Canadian liberalism will expel or render “absent” (Perry et al. 2018; Ambrose and Mudde 2015). These arguments do not reflect Canadian history nor recent political trends (see also Ryan’s 2016 critique). Studying far-right politics in countries such as Canada demands a more nuanced and critical understanding of liberalism. Contrasting the claims of extremism scholars, my case study of the Canadian nationalist movement shows how liberal chauvinism can animate far-right politics.

Section III: Methods and findings

Methodology

My data consist of 35 semi-structured interviews with 42 Canadian right-wing activists (RWAs) (ten of whom were open White nationalists). I also conducted over 40 hours of participant observation at twenty conservative political rallies and meetings, almost all of which my participants organized. My fieldwork spanned 2016–2020, ending shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic. Of my sample, three participants were women, and thirty-nine were men. Interviews averaged 90 minutes. Attending rallies was an opportunity to recruit participants and supplement my interview data with participant observation. Participants were not compensated for their interviews.

At the beginning of each interview, I explained that I wanted to “understand what it’s like to be a conservative activist.” I gained oral consent for audio-recording all but one interview, transcribed the interviews verbatim, and coded them using Nvivo Pro 11. I used a generalized prompt guide to ensure consistency across these conversations but asked open-ended questions, allowing participants to lead the conversation. I asked participants about their path to activism, their political beliefs, and the issues they deemed most crucial. These conversations frequently focused on Canada’s national identity, during which I probed about multiculturalism and race. I did not use the word “populism” in interviews as participants did not understand the concept².

Research on social movements cannot be politically neutral. I consider myself a progressive and approached these groups as an outsider. My recruitment may have been influenced by my identity as a White-passing and cis-gender man. I describe my approach as “semi-ethnographic” because I did not spend dozens or hundreds of hours with participants characteristic of traditional ethnography. Despite political disagreements, I aimed to accurately represent my participants’ ideas and comprehend the appeal of nationalist movements to outsiders. My approach represents a progressive political desire to develop a more precise language for discussing far-right movements and how they gain power (Pilkington 2019, 35).

Ethnographic approaches have various limitations. For instance, it is impossible to know whether participants were being truthful. This is not an issue given my focus. First, my participants were generally candid about their controversial beliefs. As other researchers have found, instead of concealing their beliefs, even the most extreme racist activists often rationalize or moralize their politics, such as exclaiming “I don’t hate [group X], I’m just a race realist” (Swain 2002). Second, I am not interested in what my participants truly believe but how they make far-right politics palpable to outsiders (of which I am a part).

Another limitation of ethnographic approaches concern generalizability. I conducted my fieldwork in Canada’s most conservative province. My participants’ statements, therefore, may not reflect right-wing sentiment across Canada. However, the purpose of my study is not to develop a general theory of the Canadian far-right but to show how activists use liberalism to advance far-right interests. This element, I contend, is common outside of Alberta and Canada and challenges generalist theories of far-right politics³.

Findings

Introduction: the modern Canadian nationalist movement (pre-pandemic)

The Liberal Party of Canada, headed by Justin Trudeau, won a majority government in 2015. Canada saw a surge in on-the-ground right-wing organizing, the largest movement being the Canadian yellow vests during the pre-pandemic era⁴. This movement comprised in-person demonstrations by numerous grassroots right-wing groups, along with representation through over a dozen Facebook groups in 2019, each boasting thousands of members. The largest online page reached 110,000 members.

Canada’s yellow vests emerged in December of 2018 during the middle of my fieldwork on the Canadian nationalist movement. Nationalist groups suddenly called their events “yellow vests rallies” and created (or renamed) social media pages “Yellow Vests Canada” or similar iterations of that name. Rally supporters donned fluorescent safety jackets, said to represent “hard-working,” “average,” and “forgotten” Canadians fighting against powerful “elites” exploiting the country for their own benefit. In short, Canada’s yellow vests were an aesthetic rebranding of existing nationalist groups representing people across the right-wing spectrum, including liberal-conservative viewpoints and neo-Nazism. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, yellow vests leaders (my participants among them), shifted focus to anti-vaccine and anti-mandate organizing, leading to the “freedom convoy” protests that occupied Canada’s capital streets for weeks (see Gillies et al. 2023).

I am guided by the following question: how do right-wing nationalist organizers and supporters in Alberta construct populist rhetoric, and what role does liberalism play in their grievances and prejudices?

I. Constructing populist rhetoric and social problems through the thick ideology of globalism

“I don’t like the Left or Right.[…]It’s not about left or right. You’re either a globalist or a nationalist.” [Gary, organizer and “yellow vester”]

Despite internal conflicts in the Canadian nationalist movement, participants united in diagnosing the core problem in Canada as the government’s alleged promotion of “globalism.” In right-wing politics, globalism refers to a political ideology whereby people put international interests ahead of the nation-state (Stack 2016). For my participants, nearly all social problems were traceable to “incompetent,” “ignorant,” “corrupt,” or “evil” people advancing globalism using their positions of power. They labeled people who promote globalist ideology as “globalists”⁵.

My participants viewed progressives and Liberal voters as sympathetic to or “duped” by globalist interests and sometimes used “socialism” or “communism” synonymously with globalism. RWAs connected nearly all political grievances to globalism: globalists promote green energy because it empowers governments and international organizations; globalists encourage “mass immigration” for cheap labor, disadvantaging Canadian workers; transnational social media companies “cancel” conservative viewpoints to silence critics of globalism; globalists have “bought out” or “corrupted” mainstream media to propagate “globalist ideology” (which participants colloquially referred to as “fake news”); homelessness is partly a result of globalists prioritizing refugees and immigrants over struggling Canadians; globalists encourage diversity, race-conscious politics, and “gender ideology” to divide and weaken Canada’s collective spirit; globalists view nationalism (or homogenous culture and morals) as “solidarity” and thus an obstacle to power; and globalists “use” Islam as a political “tool” to weaken Westernized culture, civic institutions, and national identity. Some organizers also used “globalist” or “globalist conservative” as a slur to discredit fellow groups or activists deemed insufficiently nationalist, or those they perceived as “sellouts.”

Nearly all RWAs saw Trudeau’s election as the catalyst for Canada’s alleged shift toward a “globalist agenda.” Some participants cited Trudeau’s election as their “political awakening.” While RWAs saw Canadian party politics as redeemable, they expressed disillusionment with establishment conservative parties, citing a perceived lack of moral, nationalist, and/or religious values. Nearly all participants saw conservative parties as compromised by globalist ideology and consequently viewed electoral channels as of secondary importance to collective action. RWAs prioritized raising awareness of how globalism had corrupted “good” Canadian institutions, including the Conservative Party. RWAs saw collective action as a key means to raise awareness about the globalist threat, claiming that globalist ideas and actors have compromised dominant information outlets like mainstream media, education, academia, and social media platforms. As one participant stated: “how can elections be fair when our children [and young people] are being indoctrinated into liberalism? [being made sympathetic to globalism].”

RWAs sharpened their populist and civic rhetoric after gaining increased media attention through adopting the yellow vests aesthetic. Phrases like “we the people” and “united we stand, divided we fall” became common yellow vests slogans—implying that progressives and globalists are “dividing” Canadians. Yellow vests web pages increasingly blended populist rhetoric with liberal terminology in their mission statements and objectives. A major yellow vests social media page cited their “key values” as “love over hate, truth over lies, freedom over enslavement, happiness over suffering, justice over injustice, peace over war.” At a yellow vests rally, activists handed out pamphlets listing their collective beliefs and demands, which read as follows:

We are the everyday hard working canadians [sic]. We are your brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, neighbors, coworkers, employers, and everyone in-between. We are peacefully protesting for our sovereignty and to have our voices heard through citizen initiated referendums. Our purpose is to educate and bring awareness to every canadian about how our way of life and our country is being threatened. Our sovereignty is being stripped. Our Veterans and Seniors lives have deteriorated and their voice is ignored by our government. Our energy sector has been robbed and increasing taxes makes it difficult and dangerous for regular canadians.[...]

We want to unite all canadians. We want to involve all canadians. We shall not be divided by political allegiances, race, religion, ethnicity, creed, generation or any other discriminatory division or lifestyle choices.

[...]We are a grassroots movement. We are peacefully protesting for our sovereignty and to have our voices heard through citizen initiated referendums. We are tired of corrupt governments and their repression. This movement is about freedom, inclusivity, unity and empowerment. [emphasis in original].

[...]We also seek to grow as a country with the implementation of referendums initiated by citizens. Until these policies have been fulfilled satisfactory to the People of Canada, we the people of Canada shall make our voice heard! United we stand!

The movement’s populist rhetoric foregrounded “democracy,” which participants often equated with “self-determination” and “sovereignty.” In other words, by putting foreign and monied interests ahead of Canada, “globalist elites” like Trudeau do not represent the will of the people and are therefore “anti-democratic.” Consequently, the “People of Canada” must “return” power to Canadians by fighting for government accountability, decentralization, and “direct democracy” (see also Neville and Langlois 2021). These narratives prompted Alberta organizers to focus more on local issues toward the end of my fieldwork, such as the 2019 Alberta general election.

Altogether, RWAs saw themselves as raising awareness about powerful “elites” imposing their interests on “the people.” This populist rhetoric animated the Canadian nationalist movement. In the following section, I explore how activists combined populist ideas about globalism with civic nationalism.

I‌I. Canadian civic nationalism (or liberal chauvinism)

Tolerance and civic ideology as Canadian identity

Most RWAs struggled to define Canadian identity and culture. Nonetheless, nearly all participants embraced a conventional and civic interpretation of Canadian identity, emphasizing principles such as freedom, security, and most of all, tolerance (see Brown 2006). Ideas about tolerance and intolerance significantly shaped RWA’s view of Canadian nationhood and its perceived threats. Eryk joined the Christian right-wing movement after moving to Canada in the mid-1990s, quickly becoming an influential figure. He emphasized how tolerating differences defines Canadian identity:

We are all different. [We] agree to disagree [in other words, we tolerate]. That’s Canadian identity. I would argue. The freedoms, that Charter of Rights and Freedoms clearly states–the whole constitution–that you are free to be different. You are free to believe differently than your neighbour. You’re free to have certain values that your neighbour may not understand. That’s the identity of Canada.

RWAs, connected “being Canadian” to tolerance, including ideas such as politeness, kindness, civility, acceptance, and openness. Consequently, most RWAs accepted the basic tenets of multicultural philosophy, sharing the Conservative Party’s interpretation of multiculturalism as a belief that “anyone can succeed” regardless of their cultural background or immutable characteristics. Under the guise of neutrality, RWAs believed that Canada should be racially color-blind and tolerate diversity and differences but should not promote, uplift, or subsidize certain groups. For RWAs, progressive politics that acknowledged racial inequality, such as protecting Muslims from hate speech, investing in Indigenous communities, or addressing anti-Black racism in Canada, are a kind of “ethnic favoritism” and are therefore “racist” (resembling Harrison’s 1995 findings on the Reform Party, 176). Some participants labeled these efforts “radical multiculturalism” or “liberal racism.” RWAs also applied this rationale to gender and sexuality, asserting that institutions should not “elevate” certain “lifestyles.” In short, RWAs viewed equality as achievable through “neutrality” or “objectivity” that is: without acknowledging differences, history, and structural inequality, especially not through policy. In their view, tolerance maintained a “peaceful” Canada, which was being disrupted by “progressive ideology.”

Perhaps ironically, tolerance discourse informed how RWAs’ demonized certain groups (see Brown 2006). RWAs romanticized Canada as a historically utopic society that intolerant and divisive subcultures were destabilizing. Corey, for example, imagined Canada as a peaceful, apolitical, and tolerant society that globalist politicians were undermining:

Yeah, Canadian values for me, are ones of acceptance, you know? I [...] don’t feel that there’s a whole [lot] of racism. I know there’s pockets of racism [...] But I mean, people in [Canada] are very accepting, and people … I guess, they’re very much concerned about their neighbour’s welfare, and that’s a big Canadian value [...] Honesty, integrity, I think is another sort of Canadian value or some of Canadian values. I think… patriotism is a Canadian value. People who love their country, people who love their countrymen [...]

I think Canadians tend to be … a lot less politically minded than say, you know, in the United States, where people are a lot more politically minded. But I think that’s, that’s beginning to change now because people are [more aware of] political corruption and what’s happening since the Trudeau Liberals got into power.

Corey cited the “balkanization” of Canadian society as sparking his activism. Many participants echoed this sentiment, such as Ellie, who proclaimed:

We’re the tolerant ones! The patriots! They’re [progressives] the ones bringing up race, and race differences, and stuff like that, like that’s the most important thing.[...] Canada’s never been like this! This is all new! We never had to organize like this in the, before Trudeau! He’s creating divisions and it’s only going to get worse.

RWAs viewed their own liberal-civic values as inherently tolerant and non-ideological or “neutral.” As one RWA explained to me, “I wouldn’t even say we’re right-wing, we’re simply patriots speaking truth to power.”

Ethnonationalism is “identity politics” and repels support

RWAs prided themselves on political “objectivity” or “neutrality,” which, in their view, was being undermined by “identity politics,” which they viewed as purely ideological. RWAs tended to express their hostility at the “ideologies” people adhere to, rather than people themselves, such as “gender ideology,” “Islamic ideology,” “the gay agenda,” “globalism,” “communism,” and “liberal racism” (race-conscious politics). Consequently, most RWAs expressed that White nationalists were their opponents, as they viewed extreme racists as “dividing” Canadians using “white identity politics” comparable to race conscious movements such as Black Lives Matter (BLM).

My participants included 10 open White nationalists who viewed globalism as a Jewish plot to “replace” White Canadians with immigrants and people of color. The White nationalist groups in my sample were more private and exclusive. These participants did not identify with more popular nationalist groups like the yellow vests, viewing them as too moderate or “infiltrated by Jews.” While some White nationalists attended “the odd [right-wing] rally” in Alberta, these participants constantly expressed disappointment that Canadians were not receptive to White nationalism. As I have explored elsewhere (Tetrault 2022), White nationalists led some anti-Muslim groups but avoided using White nationalist framing in their social media pages and rallies as it repelled moderate supporters, as well as LGBTQ* people and people of color. RWAs recognized ethnonationalism as a poor framing strategy in Canada. Grant was my youngest participant at 19 years old and a new member of a men-only nationalist group. I asked him about White nationalism in Canada:

Yeah, stuff like that is ridiculous. I will say that, I’ve always said that if you want to take the white ethnostate somewhere, you need to take it to Europe, because that’s the only place where it would make sense. And the only reason I say that is because America, Canada, and those kind of places, they were founded on ideas, they weren’t founded on race. Whereas, generally speaking, Europe was a pretty mono-ethnic kinda society, right? So I don’t–personally, I don’t think a white ethnostate or anything like that should happen–but I’m saying, if you want to take that idea somewhere, you need to take it somewhere where it had already worked at one point.

Newcomers to the broader movement seemed unaware of—or denied the presence of—White nationalists in Canada. For instance, when I asked Ellie about how her group managed White nationalist viewpoints online, she dismissed racist Facebook comments as “Liberal trolls” trying to sabotage their group’s image: “this is Canada [chuckles], those people [white nationalists] aren’t here”. While the Canadian nationalist movement contained a vocal segment of White supremacists (particularly online), most of my participants, especially organizers, viewed ethnonationalists as “un-Canadian” and a threat to the movement’s legitimacy and goals (see Tetrault 2022).

RWAs are “fighting hate”: securitizing against intolerant ideologies and cultures

RWAs viewed “globalists,” progressives, and White nationalists as “ideologically driven” actors encouraging intolerance and division by “politicizing” issues. RWAs explained how leftist groups, such as antifa and BLM were the “real hate groups” or “real extremists,” using “identity politics” to stoke hatred between different groups, such as between White Canadians and Indigenous peoples, police and Black Canadians, and between “the two genders.” RWAs also viewed progressives as intolerant of conservativism, Jews, police, and Christians but overly tolerant of globalism, Islam, and criminals, among other groups. Some RWAs emphasized the prime minister’s hatred of average Canadians, as Bernard outlined:

You heard of Justin Trudeau’s statement saying that evangelical Christians are the worst part of Canadian society [...] all the people that built this great country. He says “you guys – all the volunteers in the churches, and Christian organizations, are the worst part of this nation – we hate you, we hate what you do, and what you stand for”.

RWAs applied similar views to “globalists.” When I asked Peter what motivates globalists, he responded: “Hatred of the West, hatred of Christianity, hatred of Jewish people”. Some participants framed the struggle for transgender rights as “hatred of women”.

Tolerance narratives also featured prominently in discussions about Islam: RWAs asserted that Muslims were intolerant of Canadian culture, Christians, women, Jews, and the LGBTQ* community, among other groups. Eryk outlined this perspective:

Majority of the newcomers [Muslim immigrants], they hate Western standards, they hate our heritage, they hate what this nation stood for, and they do not want to integrate [...] You got newcomers from nations that hate what we stand for, and they will never integrate, they have no desire to integrate. [his emphasis] [...] That’s why multiculturalism, that way [through policy], is not working in the European countries. It will never work. It’s impossible. Because you’re mixing two totally, two different values together, commanding them [through law] to respect each other. While they hate each other. They cannot live in peace with each other. Islam says that there will never peace unless all the Jews will be destroyed, and all the Christians submitted. So how can those two values work together?

Here, RWAs connected tolerance discourse to another core liberal value: security. In other words, RWAs represented their intolerance of Islam as a rational, objective, or “common sense” response to the alleged threat that “Islamic ideology” posed to women, Jews, LGBTQ* people, and Canadians generally.

Participants also used in/tolerance narratives for political boundary work, using concepts like “hate group” to distance their views from the perceived “real” hateful racists. For nearly all my participants, hate, racism, misogyny, anti-Muslim, and anti-gay prejudices could only manifest in overtly hateful statements and criminal acts (such as hate crimes and hate speech). Eryk, for instance, regularly collaborated with far-right groups while running an anti-gay church. He viewed his organization as outside of the “hate group” label. When asked about working with other far-right groups, Eryk explained that he would not collaborate with “hate groups”:

Well always, I’m a Christian [...] I disagree with every group that entices hate. And I don’t care which group. It can be hate against Muslims or hate against homosexuals, transgender. Any hate – you see, hate, will never bring love. If you put hate to hate, it will create a bigger hate.[...] No, I believe that only love, and the freedom to express that love can change human beings. Hate will never achieve that. So I disagree with any form of hate. I will speak, I will disagree with your lifestyle, I will say I disagree with Islam, because it’s based on hate. I will disagree with your ideology, but I do not hate the Muslims [emphasis added].

Despite their expressed commitment to “free speech,” many RWAs supported Canada’s hate speech laws. Most participants shared Grant’s view that Canada’s hate speech laws should be applied across the political spectrum: “Far-left and far-right both hate Jews, that’s the basic idea.” Corey provided a longer explanation:

Our hate speech laws have worked! You know, people that have denied the Holocaust for example […] to add another layer of sort of, anti-Islamophobic law, makes no sense whatsoever. Because you’ve already got, in my opinion, some of the strictess hate laws in the world.

While some RWAs supported hate speech laws when used against “real racists” such as neo-Nazis, they also expressed concern that their “common sense” anti-Muslim sentiment and “political incorrectness” could soon be labeled hate speech.

Summary: liberal chauvinism and the Canadian nationalist movement

My findings suggest that the Canadian nationalist movement gained momentum and growth due, in part, to RWAs foregrounding liberal or civic principles in their messaging. During events and interviews, participants primarily expressed nationalist grievances through civic or liberal platitudes such as “securing the border”, “keeping the public safe”, “love over hate/intolerance”, “protecting Canadian sovereignty”, “promoting freedom,” “speaking truth to power”, “fighting oppression,” and “protecting the rights of Canadians.” As a more specific example, RWAs stereotyped Muslims through the language of tolerance and public safety, referring to Islam as an “oppressive” and “hateful” “ideology” that “opposes diversity” and promotes “extremist violence.” For RWAs, Islam is “incompatible” with “tolerant” and “peaceful” Canadian culture and poses a “security risk” to the country (see also Brown 2006; McCluskey 2019). Perhaps ironically, RWAs also emphasized “color-blind” ideology (Bonilla-Silva 2014). My participants deemed themselves the “true anti-racists,” arguing that race-cognizant policies uplifting or protecting certain groups creates inequality through ethnic favoritism. RWAs also tried distancing themselves from extreme racist elements within their movement by portraying White nationalists as the “true extremists” or “real racists,” labeling them “un-Canadian” for “dividing” people using “identity politics.”

RWAs also married liberalism with populist conspiracism. For RWAs, globalists represented a “tyranny of the minority” and an existential threat to Canadian human rights, national sovereignty, and democracy. For example, participants often expressed how self-interested “media elites” (such as people running the CBC or Facebook) undermined “freedom of the press” by propagating “pro-globalist” “fake news” (i.e. centrist or progressive views). They also accused online platforms of attacking “freedom of speech” through policing disinformation and hate speech, such as racist social media posts. In short, my participants viewed liberal democratic institutions as fundamentally “good,” “neutral,” and “fair” but believed they had been corrupted by “ideological” bad actors. Put another way, RWAs tended to reduce politics to personal responsibility, attributing nearly all social problems to moral failings by individuals and groups—especially people promoting “globalism” or “divisive” ideologies or cultures.

Section IV: Discussion and conclusion

Discussion: a critique of grand theory templates

In this section, I explain how my inductive qualitative approach differs from what I call “grand theory templates” in far-right studies. The grand theories popularized by extremism scholars are more than ideas or definitions: they are templates that structure the research process. Dominant grand theory approaches encourage speculation and dogmatisms that avoid the complexity, precision, and critical analysis necessary to explain modern politics. Altogether, scholars risk compromising their research design and analysis should they rely on the neat taxonomies demanded by such approaches. I advocate for a more “bottom–up” and granular approach to studying politics and power.

Inductive qualitative approach (bottom–up and open-ended theorizing)

My research uses an inductive strategy: I attempted to minimize assumptions about my participants’ politics and motivations, including the notion that nationalist groups can be easily isolated from Canadian liberalism. My analysis of the Canadian nationalist movement prioritizes themes that became prominent through data collection, rather than fitting my data into existing grand theoretical frameworks. However, grand theories are still necessary: I rely on broad theories of populism, far-right politics, and nationalism to contextualize and analyze my case study. I also borrow ideas from critical theory to analyze Canadian liberalism and social movement studies to analyze my participants’ collective actions. These frameworks also inform my analysis of power and hegemony. Put another way, I assess the political visibility and influence of my sample using an interdisciplinary approach, engaging theories of power, and by situating my findings in local political contexts. Altogether, this approach refrains from making definitive statements about far-right politics and power, choosing instead to complicate our understanding of such movements by embracing nuances and being open to surprises. What insights do my approach and case study offer our understanding of far-right social movements?

Social movements are an assemblage of fluid ideologies and interests, with specific political “framings” rising to prominence as activists capitalize on political conditions (see also Blee et al. 2024). My findings suggest that Canadian nationalists mobilized broader support in Alberta through developing a master frame that resonated across the broader Canadian Right (Snow & Benford 1992), uniting sub-movements including discontent conservatives, Christian and petro-nationalists, crime control groups, and more extreme anti-Muslim and White power groups. This master frame can be characterized as liberal chauvinism akin to War on Terror rhetoric but coupled with populist skepticism of governmental and institutional actors⁶. My participants also combined their rhetoric with Canadian exceptionalism.

The resonance of this master frame can be attributed, in part, to the ambiguity and banality of contemporary liberalism. Terms like freedom, security, equality, extremism, hate/intolerance, law and order, rights, democracy, truth, and oppression are simultaneously ubiquitous yet poorly defined and easily contested across popular culture (Orwell 1946). In other words, modern liberalism is so malleable yet hegemonic that actors across the right-wing spectrum can map their beliefs onto this heuristic framework. Moreover, civic terminology is so familiar that—for some onlookers—it can appear neutral (de-politicized), awarding such ideas greater power (Billig 1995). This is evidenced in how RWAs represented their beliefs as objective or common sense while describing their political opponents (such as BLM, progressives, Muslims, and antifa) as ideological, extremist, biased, emotionally compromised, intolerant, or agenda-driven. Indeed, the right-wing mobilizing of “common sense” arguably draws its power from the familiarity and comfort of liberal ideas. The populist rhetoric of RWAs was also marked by ambiguity, featuring vague or inconsistent interpretations of elites, “the people,” globalists, etc. In short, the Canadian nationalist movement gained broader appeal by leveraging familiar civic-liberal language vague enough to accommodate diverse and contradictory right-wing grievances and prejudices (see also Preston 2023).

Grand theory templates: a critique of top–down (over-)theorizing

My critique is directed at scholars proposing grand theories of RWP as external or opposed to liberalism⁷. These scholars represent far-right politics as a political Other that infiltrates liberal democracy to gain power. What might a grand theory approach offer our understanding of Canada’s far-right groups? Using this template, “mainstreaming of the far-right” occurs when illiberal politics breach mainstream institutions or when liberal ideas or policies are made illiberal by far-right actors. Mainstreaming can also happen when people prioritize ethnonationalist over liberal-civic values. From this perspective, liberalism prevents dehumanizing and exclusionary politics. A far-right actor’s use of liberal ideas is always illegitimate, insincere, or a perversion of liberal philosophy.

Using this formula, far-right groups in Canada represent an illiberal movement attempting to undermine Canada’s liberal-civic values. Their liberalized messaging represents no more than a moderate veneer concealing my participants’ “true” ethno- or White nationalism. In this analysis, the increased power, support, or visibility garnered by Canada’s nationalist movement, known as mainstreaming, is the product of illiberal activists deceiving liberal audiences who ostensibly do not share the same political values. Another interpretation using this formula is that “mainstream values” have radicalized (Mudde 2019, 112): Canadians have become more illiberal and thus more inclined to support far-right ideas.

While the preceding framework can arguably generate useful insights, it also restricts lines of inquiry. It suggests that politics can be neatly categorized and oriented around threats to liberalism. Indeed, the legibility and substance of grand theory templates hinge on alleged distinctions between far-right versus the mainstream, liberal versus illiberal, civic versus ethnonationalist, and moderate versus extremist or radical. We should not assume that such dichotomies are valid or useful for analyzing politics and power. For instance, the framing of “mainstream values radicalizing” (Mudde 2019) is too sweeping and vague. Applying this to my case study suggests that Canadian culture or government policies today are further right compared to the Harper-era years of peak tough-on-crime and War on Terror sentiment. Another plausible (though equally vague) interpretation could be that Canadians are becoming more progressive, and an active far-right movement indicates people seeking recognition not reflected in “the mainstream” (Honneth 1996). Put another way, the sudden visibility of far-right politics does not mean that such ideas have gained more prominence and influence across society. Power dynamics require study and debate.

By compartmentalizing far-right politics as ethnonationalist, illiberal, or extremist, grand theories problematically presume the ideas, motivations, meaning-making, and goals of political actors in advance of study. Whereas social movement studies encourage us to view political movements as a complex and fluid assemblage of competing ideas, motivations, and interests; a grand theory template essentializes “the” far-right as a monolithic political bloc motivated to undo liberalism. Whereas critical theory prompts us to question liberalism and be mindful of how our language and research can perpetuate liberal hegemony, a grand theory template suggests that “moderate” expressions of civic principles or liberalism by far-right actors are fraudulent. This template suggests that only illiberalism radicalizes. Following this logic, far-right studies ought to focus on identifying illiberal and crypto-illiberal messaging and address the conditions that make liberals susceptible to that messaging. This is a self-validating and non-falsifiable theory hinging on the assumption that far-right politics and liberal democracy are fundamentally distinct, which is inaccurate.

Scholars increasingly argue or suggest that we can isolate far-right politics from liberal moderation because far-right politics promote illiberal notions of exclusion, hierarchy, dehumanization, intolerance or hate, and other antagonistic or controversial ideas (see Miller-Idriss 2020). Consequently, extremism scholars suggest that far-right individuals, ideologies, and groups are the primary source of these social problems and must therefore be cataloged and policed to defend liberal democracy (see also Vitek’s (2024) overview). For these scholars, the liberal democratic mainstream—by definition—is unsullied by such illiberal far-right values. Critical theory and research, however, demonstrate an extensive history of liberal democratic institutions and policies dehumanizing, excluding or discriminating, and maintaining or establishing hierarchies and inequality—from overtly racist policies such as the Jim Crow laws and Indian termination policy in the United States to the Indian Act and residential schools in Canada. More recently, criminologists widely agree that mass incarceration in countries like the United States and Canada is not only dehumanizing and exclusionary but also reproduces hierarchies and inequality by discriminating against poor and racialized populations (see Alexander 2010; Chartrand 2019). As a further example, it is arguably impossible to separate the dehumanization, intolerance, and violence of the “War on Terror” from civic nationalism and liberalism. Policies comprising the War on Terror and “tough-on-crime” agendas also saw bipartisan (or “mainstream”) support among liberal progressives and hardline conservatives.

Popular definitions of far-right suggest that the politics of dehumanization, intolerance, hierarchy, inequality, etc., are exclusive to illiberalism, ethnonationalism, and extremism. This wrongly implies that liberal democracy transcends or opposes such politics, despite extensive scholarship and history showing the contrary (see also Landa 2012; Walsh 2024). By representing undesirable, coercive, or antagonistic politics as illiberal, scholars idealize liberalism and essentialize far-right politics as a political Other (see also Mondon 2024). This denies the complexity of politics and power while depoliticizing and de-historicizing the systemic violence of liberal democracies (see also el-Ojeili & Taylor 2020). Instead of Othering far-right politics as exceptional or illiberal, it is more intellectually and ethically fruitful to investigate and critique how liberal ideology and institutions animate and accommodate far-right politics (see Mondon & Winter 2020). Far-right studies require more systematic and granular analyses of politics and power that do not idealize nor defer to liberalism.

Conclusion: re-centering sociology and curiosity

Understanding RWP in liberal democracies is among the most pressing issues in social science. By centering local context and “bottom–up” research design, I have tried to develop a more nuanced way of studying the power of right-wing social movements and how people may come to acquire certain far-right views. My approach differs from scholars offering “top–down” templates explaining the “global far-right” and its “mainstreaming” purportedly applicable across liberal democracies (Miller-Idriss 2020; Mudde 2019). Canada should be an ideal context showcasing the explanatory power of grand theories: the country is a celebrated liberal democracy appearing to face growing RWP sentiment in polls, protests, and establishment politics. Instead, grand theory templates can confuse the analysis of politics and power. These approaches speak through vague generalities suggesting civic-liberal principles are unimportant or antithetical to far-right movements and that true liberalism does not promote such undesirable politics. RWP movements have influenced popular conservatism throughout Canadian history, suggesting that far-right politics overlap with liberalism (Johnson 2022; Harrison 1995). Moreover, my case study shows how far-right actors amplified anti-Muslim and populist conspiracism by capitalizing on liberalism’s ambiguity and contradictions. This raises important questions about liberalism’s malleability for advancing far-right causes and its potential for radicalizing audiences. Essentializing far-right politics as illiberal, ethnonationalist, or extremist creates the illusion of simplicity, harmony, coherence, and consistency in understudied and often erratic political groups and ideas. Put another way, far-right politics are not an aberration that “enters” liberal democracy—exclusionary and dehumanizing values are part of liberal societies. Sociologists, for instance, have long studied marginalized peoples’ experiences with dehumanizing and exclusionary (or “far-right”) policies under liberalism. A more inductive and localized research design can capture the complexities of political movements by integrating social movement studies, critical theory, and other sociological traditions.

Grand theories are most effective when they critically reflect on their relationship to social norms, broader scholarship, and their historical and future relevance for explaining social phenomena (Honneth 2007, 64). Grand theories of far-right politics increasingly prevent such reflection, as extremism scholars position liberalism above critique. As these scholars broaden their scope to explain power dynamics as mainstreaming, grand theory templates further eclipse social science, discouraging the curiosity and granular inquiry necessary to understanding modern politics.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Kevin Haggerty, Jonathan Simmons, Ajay Sandhu, Sandra Bucerius, William Schultz, Prof-Collins Ifeonu, Lorielle Giffin, Sara Thompson, Dominque Clement, and Rob Aitken for their guidance on earlier drafts of this piece. Thank you to my participants for sharing their views. Thanks also to Michael Granzow for the many fruitful conversations on this topic. Finally, thank you to the anonymous reviewers at Political Communication and Social Forces for their insightful feedback that made this piece stronger.

About the author

Justin is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Alberta, Augustana, studying social movements, Indigenous justice, and prisons. Justin has published on extremism and hate crime in Current Sociology and the British Journal of Criminology. He also works with the University of Alberta Prison Project and has published on prison gangs in Sociology and decolonizing prisons in Crime and Justice and Incarceration. Justin is a proud citizen of the Red River Métis Nation.

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under Grant 752-2016-2115.

Conflicts of interest

None declared.

Data availability

To protect the privacy and security of the human subjects in this article, I cannot make the qualitative dataset public due to ethics agreements with participants. Many interviews included personal information that could identify them if transcripts were released. My ethics agreement also specifies that only I can access the full transcripts, and breaking this could jeopardize both my participants and myself. This research project received ethics approval from the University of Alberta Research Ethics Board, project name “Nationalism and Rightist Activism in Canada”, ID Pro00065590, October 26, 2016.

Endnotes

References