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.

Building on a novel approach that places civil society (and the local civic state) at the centre of analysis, this fellowship is a mixed-method scholar-activist ethnography in two peripheralised working-class communities in Bristol, UK. This has three parts: 1) explore how far-right actors make sense of and engage with local communities and civic life, 2) understand community-scale and institutional pathways used for disseminating and/or challenging far-right attitudes, and 3) assess the role of local culture and ‘habitus’ in shaping far-right enactments of citizenship. I will also collaborate with local activists and community organisations to produce a toolkit designed to support self-organised community action for contesting radical-right ascendancy.