In Organizing against Democracy, Antonis Ellinas meticulously profiles the Greek Golden Dawn, while providing supplemental analysis of German and Slovakian extreme right parties. The principal contributions of this monograph are its in-depth analysis of subnational extremist organizations and the wealth of data brought to bear on the subject, including interviews, party publications, and other media. Ellinas advances subnational extreme right organization as a novel dependent variable, asking how environmental and endogenous factors affect the development of far right parties beneath the surface of national politics. In so doing, the author uncovers a variety of tensions within the family of extreme right parties between conventional and contentious politics, subnational variation in organizational activity despite centralized charismatic leadership, and the extreme right’s pursuit of seemingly suboptimal electoral strategies.
Ellinas is mainly concerned with the extreme right party family, in contrast to the better studied “radical right,” as he makes clear in chapter 2. In part, systematic research on these parties is rarer precisely because they are smaller and more extreme. Ellinas highlights the comparatively “biological,” or racial, nationalism of the extreme right, its interwar origins and imagery, its emphasis on party membership, and its commitment to contentious politics as the primary differences between radical and extreme right parties. Furthermore, although green or radical left parties may also practice contentious politics or have close linkages with social movements, the extreme right’s exclusive membership practices, hierarchical structure, and occasional violence are inseparable components of its ideology. These characteristics result in conflicts within extreme right parties as they seek to expand their electoral appeal, recruit and retain moderate members, or otherwise maneuver around legal obstacles—up to and including party bans. In three cases considered in this book, these tensions are often resolved in favor of militants over moderates. However, little attention is given to extreme (maybe now “radical”) right parties that developed in the other direction, such as the Front National or, arguably the British National Party, circa 2009, leaving some variation on this new dependent variable unaddressed.
Chapter 3 further establishes party organization as a dependent variable, and a particularly important one for the extreme right. Because far-right parties are centralized charismatic parties without many institutionalized procedures, significant subnational organizational variation suggests that endogenous and environmental (i.e., electoral, institutional, and societal) factors affect local development. The history, ideology, and membership of the extreme right fortify it against its environment to a greater extent than most other party families. However, parties like the Golden Dawn (GD), National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), and the Slovakian People’s Party–Our Slovakia (LSNS) are not entirely insulated from their environments. They face electoral incentives that may amplify tensions between activists and politicians, legal barriers against violence and extremism, and social pressure to which local organizations must adjust. Six subsequent chapters further introduce the GD and examine these factors in greater detail. Shorter case studies on the NPD and LSNS follow and generally confirm impressions from Greece.
As detailed in chapters 4 and 5, the Golden Dawn developed as a political party from a newspaper with explicit ties to National Socialism (p. 65), moderating somewhat as it developed and enjoying modest success at the municipal level throughout the 1990s before its parliamentary breakthroughs in 2012. Their entry into electoral politics and subsequent successes resulted in expansion into new districts and participation in a variety of activities. Ellinas systematizes organizational activity in chapter 5, with a thorough analysis of branch longevity (i.e., age and continuous operation) and activity, including events (e.g., lectures or meetings), political activism (e.g., marches or protests), and social engagement (e.g., food or clothing drives “for Greeks only”). Ellinas theorizes that the durability and activity of an organization will be shaped by endogenous and environmental factors, including institutional and societal responses to far right activities.
Although they lack institutionalization, the most successful far right parties resemble the postwar mass parties in their emphasis on local footprints and party membership. They also engage in contentious politics while maintaining a hierarchical structure and restrictive membership (p. 95). When extreme right parties are successful, they must expand party membership to include both militants and moderates. However, extreme right parties lack the institutional mechanisms to absorb more moderate members after electoral breakthroughs and to take advantage of their skill sets and resources. Chapter 6 demonstrates that militants tend to advance over moderates, which limits extreme right parties’ ability to develop. Branches evolve differently from one another, with older branches, staffed with militants, being more active, consistent, and continuous. Thus, for reasons endogenous to the party family, far right parties may not moderate their activities or establish new organizational toeholds in potentially favorable environments, even if doing so would be electorally wise.
Chapters 7–9 focus on environmental factors constraining extreme right organizations. Extreme right parties may not behave like vote-maximizing parties even when they enjoy the credibility, publicity, and resources associated with electoral success, for reasons internal to them. However, far right parties do generally build up organizations in districts where they expect to be competitive, and active party branches on balance foreshadow electoral support. Where this is not the case, it is likely due to institutional pressure, social opposition, or a combination of both. Chapter 8 demonstrates that “militant democracy”—the erection of legal barriers to far right operation—affects organizational development. If unsuccessful, militant democracy can burnish the antiestablishment credentials of the extreme right. However, the threat of legal sanction or the prosecution of party members can scare off moderate members, amplifying the foregoing tensions, and force branch closures when resources become scarce (again, older militant branches are more resilient [p. 243]).
Similarly, chapter 9 indicates that left-wing opposition to far right parties is most effective at driving branches out of urban areas where they have institutional support from local officials. Electoral, institutional, and societal factors are all interrelated, which is logical, but prevents the isolation of clear-cut mechanisms. Ellinas suggests extremist right-wing organizations are most confounded by the confluence of institutional and societal factors. Generally, the foregoing trends are confirmed in chapter 10 for Germany and Slovakia, although in the absence of a strong radical left party, the Slovakian LSNS appears to have freer rein, and the German NPD’s lack of institutional support means it turns more regularly to street politics. Again, although the qualitative work and data gathering are thoughtful and detailed, the quantitative analyses are comparatively threadbare, at times supplementing but sometimes obscuring the author’s conclusions.
Considering the subnational imprint of extreme right parties is a worthwhile endeavor. Many of Europe’s extreme right parties—including the NPD—are or were almost irrelevant at the national level but have had an influence on regional and municipal governments across Europe for decades. In other cases, regional strength has anticipated successful incursions into national parliaments, affecting national and supranational governance. Moreover, extreme right parties are somewhat rare in European politics; with their emphasis on street politics, local cells, and brick-and-mortar branches, they are almost a premodern form of party organization (p. 51)—further justifying systematic analyses of these parties at a subnational level. As such, Ellinas provides a timely and ambitious project and suggests ample avenues for future scholarship. As he suggests in chapter 11, future research should include a greater number of parties, some of which overcame their extremist roots, entering parliaments and governments. Organizing against Democracy provides an invaluable step in that direction.
