Books by Eviane Leidig
Columbia University Press, 2023
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles by Eviane Leidig
Journal of Language and Politics, 2023
This article situates the largest political party in the world, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ... more This article situates the largest political party in the world, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India, within the literature on the populist radical right. After providing a brief overview of Hindutva ideology and organizations, with a particular focus on the BJP, it analyzes how nativism, populism, and authoritarianism are key defining elements in both theory and practice for the BJP. It further examines two important ideological tenets that go beyond these three defining attributes of the (European) populist radical right-anti-colonialism and neoliberalism-which lend towards the success of the BJP. Since holding a majority in national government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP has been able to implement its vision of creating a Hindustan, or Hindu ethnostate. Like other populist radical right parties in power, the BJP is more radical in deeds than in words, but the future of the party without Modi's leadership is uncertain.
ICCT Journal, 2023
Despite the growing complexity of the online misogynist landscape and important efforts to study ... more Despite the growing complexity of the online misogynist landscape and important efforts to study some misogynist groups through singular case studies, scholars have a limited understanding of the distinctions between the various relevant misogynist communities in terms of their rhetorical, operational, and social facets. The current research aims to address this gap by employing a multi-layered analytical framework of different misogynist communities. We begin with a comprehensive literature review conceptualising extreme misogyny with an overview of the current misogynist spaces and ideological narratives. Consequently, we sample the online ecosystem of extreme misogyny both within and across these communities while utilising a multi-categorical tool in order to identify the discursive, organisational, and operational distinctions between various misogynist communities. Our findings reflect substantial differences between the various misogynist communities in terms of their legitimacy to violence, the conceptualisation of their adversaries, ideological vision’s time orientation, and overall operational discourse.
Religions, 2021
This article traces the transnational flows of constructions of the hypersexualized Muslim male t... more This article traces the transnational flows of constructions of the hypersexualized Muslim male through a comparative analysis of love jihad in India and the specter of grooming gangs in the UK. While the former is conceived as an act of seduction and conversion, and the latter through violent rape imaginaries, foregrounding both of these narratives are sexual, gender, and family dynamics that are integral to the fear of demographic change. Building upon these narratives, this study analyzes how influential women in Hindu nationalist and European/North American far-right milieus circulate images, videos, and discourses on social media that depict Muslim men as predatory and violent, targeting Hindu and white girls, respectively. By positioning themselves as the daughters, wives, and mothers of the nation, these far-right female influencers invoke a sense of reproductive urgency, as well as advance claims of the perceived threat of, and safety from, hypersexualized Muslim men. This article illustrates how local ideological narratives of Muslim sexuality are embedded into global Islamophobic tropes of gendered nationalist imaginaries.
Nations & Nationalism, 2021
Diaspora networks are one of the key, but often invisible, drivers in reinforcing long-distance n... more Diaspora networks are one of the key, but often invisible, drivers in reinforcing long-distance nationalism towards the 'homeland' but simultaneously construct nationalist myths within their countries of residence. This article examines Indian diaspora supporters of Brexit and Trump in the United Kingdom and the United States who promote exclusionary nationalist imaginaries. Combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, it analyses British Indian and Indian American users that circulate radical right narratives within the Brexit and Trump Twittersphere. This article finds that these users express issues of concern pertinent to the radical right-for example, Islam and Muslims and the leftoriented political and media establishment-by employing civic nationalist discourse that promotes cultural nationalism. It sheds light on digital practices among diaspora actors who participate in the reinvigoration of exclusionary nationalist imaginaries of the Anglo-Western radical right.
Patterns of Prejudice, 2020
Leidig’s article addresses a theoretical and empirical lacuna by analysing Hindutva using the ter... more Leidig’s article addresses a theoretical and empirical lacuna by analysing Hindutva using the terminology of right-wing extremism. It situates the origins of Hindutva in colonial India where it emerged through sustained interaction with ideologues in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany who, in turn, engaged with Hindutva to further their own ideological developments. Following India’s independence, Hindutva actors played a central role in the violence of nation-building and in creating a majoritarian identity. Yet Hindutva was not truly ‘mainstreamed’ until the election of the current prime minister, Narendra Modi, in 2014. In order to construct a narrative that furthered Hindu insecurity, Modi mobilized his campaign by appealing to recurring themes of a Muslim ‘threat’ to the Hindu majority. The result is that Hindutva has become synonymous with Indian nationalism. Leidig seeks to bridge the scholarly divide between, on the one hand, the study of right-wing extremism as a field dominated by western scholars and disciplines and, on the other, the study of Hindutva as a field that is of interest almost exclusively to scholars in South Asian studies. It provides an analytical contribution towards the conceptualization of right-wing extremism as a global phenomenon.
Media and Communication, 2019
The Brexit referendum to leave the EU and Trump’s success in the US general election in 2016 spar... more The Brexit referendum to leave the EU and Trump’s success in the US general election in 2016 sparked new waves of discussion on nativism, nationalism, and the far right. Within these analyses, however, very little attention has been devoted towards exploring the transnational ideological circulation of Islamophobia and anti-establishment sentiment, especially amongst diaspora and migrant networks. This article thus explores the role of the Indian diaspora as mediators in populist radical right discourse in the West. During the Brexit referendum and Trump’s election and presidency, a number of Indian diaspora voices took to Twitter to express pro-Brexit and pro-Trump views. This article presents a year-long qualitative study of these users. It highlights how these diasporic Indians interact and engage on Twitter in order to signal belonging on multiple levels: as individuals, as an imaginary collective non-Muslim diaspora, and as members of (populist radical right) Twitter society. By analysing these users’ social media performativity, we obtain insight into how social media spaces may help construct ethnic and (trans)national identities according to boundaries of inclusion/exclusion. This article demonstrates how some Indian diaspora individuals are embedded into exclusivist national political agendas of the populist radical right in Western societies.
Book Chapters by Eviane Leidig
Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic by the radical right, 2020
Political Integration in Indian Diaspora Societies, Sep 18, 2020
Uploads
Books by Eviane Leidig
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles by Eviane Leidig
Book Chapters by Eviane Leidig