Imogen Richards

This book offers a groundbreaking exploration of the complex relationships between aesthetics, politics, and environmental concerns within far-right movements. Drawing on critical theory and insights from Walter Benjamin, Jacques Rancière, and others, it examines how both institutional far-right political parties and extra-institutional extremist actors manipulate environmental narratives to advance their distinct political agendas. Its unique approach features a comparative analysis of far-right individuals and organisations, investigating how they use imagetic media to promote ethnonationalist and authoritarian responses to environmental degradation, including the adverse effects of climate change. Spanning recent historical and contemporary contexts, the book provides a nuanced account of how eco-fascist and other far-right political ecologies are embedded within broader far-right ideologies. It critically analyses various dimensions of this alignment, including the romanticisation of nature as national identity, the instrumentalisation of ecological crises to justify authoritarian, anti-immigration, and other forms of social control, and the use of conservation rhetoric as a façade for nativist policies. It offers a broad overview of how images and other visual media are used for propaganda. This book will be of interest to policymakers, scholar-activists, and practitioners.

Global Heating and the Australian Far Right examines the environmental politics of far-right actors and movements in Australia, exploring their broader political context and responses to climate change. The book traces the development of far-right pseudo-environmentalism and territorial politics, from colonial genocide and Australian nationalism to extreme-right political violence. Through a critical analysis of news and social media, it reveals how denialist and resignatory attitudes towards climate change operate alongside extreme right accelerationism, in a wider Australian political context characterised by reactionary fossil fuel politics and neoliberal New Right climate change agendas. The authors scrutinise the manipulation of environmental politics by contemporary Australian far- and extreme-right actors in cross-national online media. They also assess the political-ideological context of the contemporary far right, addressing intergovernmental approaches to security threats connected to the far right and climate change, and the emergence of radical environmentalist traditions in ‘New Catastrophism’ literature. The conclusion synthesises key insights, analysing the mainstreaming of ethnonationalist and authoritarian responses to global heating, and potential future trajectories of far-right movements exploiting the climate crisis. It also emphasises the necessity for radical political alternatives to counter the far right’s exploitation of climate change. This book will be of interest to researchers of climate change, the far right, neoliberal capitalism, extremism and Australian politics.

Global Heating and the Australian Far Right examines the environmental politics of far-right actors and movements in Australia, exploring their broader political context and responses to climate change. The book traces the development of far-right pseudo-environmentalism and territorial politics, from colonial genocide and Australian nationalism to extreme-right political violence. Through a critical analysis of news and social media, it reveals how denialist and resignatory attitudes towards climate change operate alongside extreme right accelerationism, in a wider Australian political context characterised by reactionary fossil fuel politics and neoliberal New Right climate change agendas. The authors scrutinise the manipulation of environmental politics by contemporary Australian far- and extreme-right actors in cross-national online media. They also assess the political-ideological context of the contemporary far right, addressing intergovernmental approaches to security threats connected to the far right and climate change, and the emergence of radical environmentalist traditions in ‘New Catastrophism’ literature. The conclusion synthesises key insights, analysing the mainstreaming of ethnonationalist and authoritarian responses to global heating, and potential future trajectories of far-right movements exploiting the climate crisis. It also emphasises the necessity for radical political alternatives to counter the far right’s exploitation of climate change. This book will be of interest to researchers of climate change, the far right, neoliberal capitalism, extremism and Australian politics.

This ground-breaking book examines the political-economic characteristics of twentieth- and early twenty-first-century ‘neo-jihadism’. Drawing on Bourdieusian and neo-Marxist ideas, it investigates how the neo-jihadist organisations Al Qaeda and Islamic State engage with the capitalist paradigm of neoliberalism in their anti-capitalist propaganda and quasi-capitalist financial practices. Richards reveals interactions between neoliberalism and neo-jihadism characterised by surface-level contradiction, and structural connections that are both dialectical and mutually reinforcing. Neoliberalism here constitutes an underlying ‘status quo’, while neo-jihadism, as an evolving form of political organisation, is perpetuated as part of this situation. Representing unique and exclusive examples of the (r)evolutionary phenomenon of neo-jihadism, Al Qaeda and Islamic State have reconstituted the dominant political-economic paradigm of neoliberalism they mobilised in response to.

Criminologists in the Media presents the results of a cross-national study examining the structures that shape criminologists’ contributions to news and social media discourse. Drawing on interviews with criminologists and a survey of 1,211 criminologists working in the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, and South Africa, this book represents the first cross-national study exploring how, why, and to what extent criminologists working in these countries engage in newsmaking and digital public criminology. Through examining the predictors of criminologists appearing in news media, the research presented in this book demonstrates that newsmaking practices within criminology are not reflective of equal access, interest, or opportunity. Rather, newsmaking operates within ‘fields of power’ shaped by the political economy of higher education, and researchers’ academic rank, gender, and areas of research expertise. Together, these factors generate several ‘situational logics’ that predispose criminologists to pursue particular courses of action in promoting their personal projects. Key among these logics, Wood, Richards, and Iliadis argue, are a ‘social logic’ informing criminologists’ moral-political views on newsmaking and an ‘industrial logic’ responsive to the demands of academic capitalism and the rise of the ‘entrepreneurial’ university. With its focus on the practicalities, challenges, and inequities of newsmaking in the post-broadcast era, Criminologists in the Media will appeal to researchers interested in the public role(s) of criminology, as well as researchers concerned with the challenges of communicating social scientific knowledge beyond the academy.

Criminologists in the Media presents the results of a cross-national study examining the structures that shape criminologists’ contributions to news and social media discourse. Drawing on interviews with criminologists and a survey of 1,211 criminologists working in the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, and South Africa, this book represents the first cross-national study exploring how, why, and to what extent criminologists working in these countries engage in newsmaking and digital public criminology. Through examining the predictors of criminologists appearing in news media, the research presented in this book demonstrates that newsmaking practices within criminology are not reflective of equal access, interest, or opportunity. Rather, newsmaking operates within ‘fields of power’ shaped by the political economy of higher education, and researchers’ academic rank, gender, and areas of research expertise. Together, these factors generate several ‘situational logics’ that predispose criminologists to pursue particular courses of action in promoting their personal projects. Key among these logics, Wood, Richards, and Iliadis argue, are a ‘social logic’ informing criminologists’ moral-political views on newsmaking and an ‘industrial logic’ responsive to the demands of academic capitalism and the rise of the ‘entrepreneurial’ university. With its focus on the practicalities, challenges, and inequities of newsmaking in the post-broadcast era, Criminologists in the Media will appeal to researchers interested in the public role(s) of criminology, as well as researchers concerned with the challenges of communicating social scientific knowledge beyond the academy.

This ground-breaking book examines the political-economic characteristics of twentieth- and early twenty-first-century ‘neo-jihadism’. Drawing on Bourdieusian and neo-Marxist ideas, it investigates how the neo-jihadist organisations Al Qaeda and Islamic State engage with the capitalist paradigm of neoliberalism in their anti-capitalist propaganda and quasi-capitalist financial practices. An investigation of documents and discourses reveals interactions between neoliberalism and neo-jihadism characterised by surface-level contradiction, and structural connections that are both dialectical and mutually reinforcing. Neoliberalism here is argued to constitute an underlying ‘status quo’, while neo-jihadism, as an evolving form of political organisation, is perpetuated as part of this situation. Representing differentiated, unique and exclusive examples of the (r)evolutionary phenomenon of neo-jihadism, Al Qaeda and Islamic State are characteristic of the mutually constitutive nature of ‘power and resistance’. Just as resistance movements throughout modern history come to resemble the forms of power they sought to overthrow, so too have Al Qaeda and Islamic State reconstituted the dominant political-economic paradigm of neoliberalism they mobilised in response to.