The Radical Right Side of Civil Society: State exclusion and the popular rise of the radical right

The end of the First World War marked the re-emergence of an independent Polish state. While the first democratic election brought Polish nationalists into power, Piłsudski’s 1926 coup marked the end of both Polish democracy and the radical right’s hold on, and eventually their inclusion in, the state. In response to their political marginalization and increased repression, Polish nationalists reverted to pre-war strategies, shifting their political efforts from the state to the public sphere. That strategy paid off. By the mid-1930s, the Polish far right regained some of its national popularity despite its continual exclusion from, and repression by, the state. Most scholarship on the resurgence of ethno-nationalist movements focuses on either their rhetoric or on the socio-economic contexts that accompany their electoral success. Drawing on original, declassified state surveillance reports and documents produced and disseminated by far-right organizations in interwar Poland, this article calls for further attention to civil society as a central arena of radical-right mobilization. In interwar Poland, radical-right actors utilized the recruitment, organization and mobilization strategies detailed in this article to develop a loyal and effective network of individuals and civic associations capable of enacting a coherent national agenda. In sum, this article theorizes the underexamined radical right side of civil society with important implications for radical right research at the meso-level.