FORUM Th e politics of aff ect Perspectives on the rise of the far-right and right-wing populism in the West Sindre Bangstad, Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, and Heiko Henkel (eds.) With Douglas Holmes, Don Kalb, Nitzan Shoshan and Cathrine M. Th orleifsson Abstract: Th is article is based on the transcript of a roundtable on the rise of the far-right and right-wing populism held at the AAA Annual Meeting in 2017. Th e contributors explore this rise in the context of the role of aff ect in politics, ris- ing socio-economic inequalities, racism and neoliberalism, and with reference to their own ethnographic research on these phenomena in Germany, Poland, Italy, France, the UK and Hungary. Keywords: inequality, neoliberalism, politics of aff ect, right-wing populism, the far-right For the American Anthropological Association Ahmed 2004; Massumi 2015; Mazzarella 2017; (AAA) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, 29 Navaro 2017; Papacharissi 2014; Skoggard and November to 3 December 2017, we organized Waterston 2015; White 2017). By invoking “the a double panel on anthropological perspectives politics of aff ect” in this context, we have as on the rise of far-right and right-wing populism conveners and editors meant to signal our view in Europ e and the United States. Th e overall aim that the current political tide, which to a var- of organizing these panels was to shed light on iegated extent, but nonetheless signifi cantly what anthropology and ethnography may con- across many nation-states across Europe and the tribute to our understanding of these phenom- Americas, combine the intertwining of neolib- ena. Featuring leading anthropologists from eralism and right-wing populism, the mediated both sides of the Atlantic, the second of these politics of a Debordian “society of the specta- two panels analyzed the question of what role cle,” and an “outrage industry,” in some pro- inequality have played and continue to play in found senses make a break with the post–World the rise of these social and political formations. War II, liberal illusions (or indeed, delusions) Th e anthropological and other scholarly lit- about rational and deliberative democratic poli- erature on aff ect is by now voluminous (see, e.g., ties. Th is of course raises the perennial question Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 83 (2019): 98–113 © Stichting Focaal and Berghahn Books doi:10.3167/fcl.2019.830110 Th e politics of aff ect | 99 as to whether it was ever thus, so we also want are as anthropologists of course predisposed to to make it clear that “the politics of aff ect” in think that anthropology and anthropologists do our view has long historical genealogies, that have something unique to contribute to these it has always been central to all kinds of polit- debates, not the least in the form of the detailed ical mobilizations in the name of “the popular knowledge and insight into ordinary people’s will” and “the people” left or right, and that it lives, ideas, and behaviors that other disciplines has even played a central part in providing the may not always provide us with. grounding for the Western liberal politics of the Whatever the reasons for this may be—and post–World War II era which now seem an in- anthropology’s generally liberal, left -of-center creasingly distant memory. orientation and predisposition to study people But we live in an age in which political an- we “like” (Bangstad 2018) comes to mind as pos- ger seem to have returned with a vengeance sible vectors here—we did fi nd a paucity of rele- (Mishra 2017). Across several nation-states in vant anthropological research on these matters. Europe and the United States, right-wing pop- Arlie Russel Hochschild (2016) may be right ulism has recently thrived in the context of ris- to speak of this as a proverbial “empathy wall” ing socioeconomic inequalities within Western that prevents us from engaging in seriousness nation-states, the likes of which the world has with the life-worlds and worldviews of far-right not seen since the Gilded Age of the early twen- and populist right-wing supporters. With a few tieth century (Piketty 2014). But the fact that exceptions (Teitelbaum 2017), anthropologists far-right and right-wing populism have proved across the world generally seem to have reacted perfectly amenable with neoliberalism and cor- with a profound sense of unease or even out- porate-plutocratic elite interests on both sides of right hostility to the rise of far-right and right- the Atlantic should give us pause to refl ect crit- wing populism in Europe and the United States. ically on the widespread liberal political science Th at sense of unease or hostility, which we as notion (see, e.g., Müller 2017 and Mudde and organizers admit to sharing, is no excuse to us Kaltwasser 2017) of an intrinsic link between devoting attention to these phenomena, and right-wing populism and “anti-elitism” and the people attracted to and by them (Shoshan claims to speak for “the interests of ordinary 2016). people.” As any other social and political phenome- non, the rise of far-right and right-wing popu- Sindre Bangstad: Welcome to this second of lism in Europe and the United States must be two roundtables at this year’s AAA Annual analyzed in their particular historical and cul- Meeting that we have organized in order to tural contexts, and requires multicausal and shed light on what anthropology and ethnog- interdisciplinary approaches and explanations. raphy may contribute to our understanding of It must therefore be stated at the outset that we the rise of far-right and right-wing populism in as organizers do tend to think of the diff erent Europe and the United States. We fi rst started emphases of these two roundtables—(1) what’s planning this at last year’s AAA Annual Meet- culture got to do with it? and (2) what’s inequal- ing in Minneapolis, having been struck by the ity got to do with it?—as pragmatically artifi cial inevitable corridor and panel talk in the wake in the sense that we do not subscribe to either/ of Donald Trump’s presidential election victory or propositions when it comes to exactly where merely a week before this. One year on, there the analytical emphases should be and that we has of course been a virtual torrent of analysis, hope and encourage our participants and you but it is still very much the case that public and in the audience to think of these emphases in academic debates on this have featured political conjunction, rather than in opposition, and to scientists and sociologists in the most promi- conceive of these two roundtables as speaking nent roles, rather than anthropologists. Yet, we to each other. 100 | Sindre Bangstad, Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, and Heiko Henkel As organizers, we will not off er introductory highly educated technocratic elites in many so- textbook defi nitions of what far-right and right- cieties, as well as a sense of being threatened by wing populism is and is not, or off er any intro- demographic decline; loss of status and power ductory analysis of what relationship far-right in the face of immigration, which populist and right-wing populism stand in in particular right-wing leaders across the world have made contexts, but rather leave it to our roundtable sure to link discursively to radical Islamist ter- panelists to hopefully provide specifi city, con- rorism; and feminism. Th ough a proportion textualization, and clarity with regard to some of white voters without college degrees clearly of these matters. Th e documentary fi lmmaker played a decisive role in Trump’s election vic- Michael Moore famously characterized the tory in the swing states (Lamont et al. 2017), election of Trump as the “greatest ‘fuck you’ in we know of course very well from any number US history,” and we would suggest that a uni- of analyses that the idea that the “white work- fying factor in the rise of far-right and right- ing class” explains Trump’s election victory is a wing populism in Europe and the United States myth (Gusterson 2017). But it is of course a con- is a “politics of aff ect” that once more unsettles venient myth, especially in center-liberal circles, ideas about politics being a domain of reasoned since it provides an opportunity for these very democratic deliberation based on facts. From same center-liberal circles to continue to stig- the extensive anthropological literature on af- matize “white working-class” people as “deplor- fect, we also know that aff ect is social through ables” (Isenberg 2017) to defl ect attention from and through (Skoggard and Waterston 2015). the worlds made by neoliberalism since the One of the best anthropological monographs 1980s, and center-liberals’ part in their making, ever written by nonanthropologists is to my and to avoid talking about the fact that the rise own mind James Agee and Walker Evans’s me- in socioeconomic inequality continue to aff ect ticulously detailed and self-refl ective account minorities and immigrants to a much greater of the lives of poor white sharecroppers in De- extent than white working-class people. pression-era Alabama in their 1941 classic Let According to economists, we are now in a Us Now Praise Famous Men. Of George Gudger, “Second Gilded Age,” in which socioeconomic Agee writes: inequalities within Western societies have not been so marked since the age of the Rockefel- Th e only deeply exciting thing to me lers, the Vanderbilts, and the Carnegies in the about Gudger is that he is actual, he is liv- mid-war era.