Metapolitics of the ‘good citizen’: the far right and civic habitus in UK communities

Why have far-right activists targeted children’s storytelling events run by drag queens, hiring practices and curricula in schools, and led campaigns against transport and quality-of-life improvements in local communities? And what have been their effects on how communities develop distinctive political cultures? This project examines under-researched relationships between far-right politics and local-scale civic life by interrogating far-right expressions of ‘metapolitics’ – the politics of what becomes political. Current research on drivers of far-right attitudes emphasises either political-economic factors such as austerity or deindustrialisation, or individual psychological traits such as social isolation, trauma, and fragile masculinity. This work is important, but the space in between the macro and micro – the local scale, and particularly local civil society – is often overlooked.