The Right Proscription: Analysing the Impact of Counterterror Proscription on Far-Right Movement Organisations

This paper looks at how the mainstreaming of proscription/banning under counterterror legislation impacts on organisational tactics by far-right groups. With the rise of several far-right movements, as well as the increasing use of far-right frames in violent attacks, discussions over proscription have become more prevalent by authorities seeking to fashion a response. This study takes two case study organisations – the Identitarian ‘Generation Identity’ and neo-National Socialist group ‘Combat 18’ – to conduct a cross-national, empirical study on how far-right activist groups have adopted tactics of demobilisation, escalation or circumvention in response to the threat of proscription. It uses the country contexts of Britain and Germany, both of which have had discussions on or enaction of proscription against these groups. This research project comes at a time when proscription is becoming a central component in the arsenal of the counterterror state. Despite this, it is implemented inconsistently across different European contexts and is poorly understood, with studies suggesting that proscription may not prevent organisations operating but instead create geographical and functional substitutions whereby groups reappear elsewhere or use different forms of aggression. Both transnational case study movements show signs of differing tactical shifts in response to proscription. Generation Identity has faced growing calls for its proscription following the use of its language in violent attacks, from Oslo/Utøya in 2011 to Christchurch in 2019. Such discussions over proscription contributed to the collapse of the British branch in January 2020 but not elsewhere in Europe. Combat 18 is not proscribed in the UK, however its activism is heavily monitored and disrupted, with public servants banned from joining the party; whilst the group was proscribed in Germany in January 2020. Both case studies reveal an immediate need for understanding the implications of proscription through exploration of how they have evolved in response to the threat of their banning, and how the actuality of proscription could further impact these and other far-right movements in the future. The theory for this paper is built upon prior research conducted by the author with Islamic activist groups Hizb ut-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun, exploring tactical shifts in response to the threat of proscription in Britain and Denmark (McNeil-Willson 2019 & 2020). Using theoretical concepts of repression, analysed through a social movement lens, the author’s findings suggested that such Islamic activist groups, despite being highly similar in ideology and structure, responded with very different configurations of demobilisation, escalation or circumvention in response to proscription or the threat thereof. This highlights the flexibility of such groups to alter activism tactics and framing in response to processes of proscription and provides groundwork for examining far-right groups now falling under a similar securitised lens. Empirical data for this current paper is drawn from on-going fieldwork interviews with activists and ex-members of Generation Identity and Combat 18 in Britain and Germany since mid-2019. It represents part of a pending monograph on the impacts of proscription on groups classified by states as ‘extremist’, as well as a set of European-wide policy recommendations.