Studying Far-Right and Anti-Gender Actors Across National Boundaries

Despite the increasing relevance of far-right and anti-gender (trans)national politics, few scholars have engaged in methodological reflections about studying such actors and activities across national boundaries. In fact, compared to research on most progressive actors, the exploration of far-right and anti-gender activism from an internalist perspective provides larger methodological conundrums for researchers, particularly in terms of gaining access to activists. This is mainly due to the involvement of various security-, secrecy-, context- and ethics-related challenges, often exacerbated by the differences in worldview between the researcher and the research objects. Numerous hardships are thus likely to arise for researchers wishing to gather reliable empirical evidence, especially in tracing connections and activities when comparing multiple countries, cultures, and languages. Moreover, the contextual diversity of far-right expression forms only aggravates the challenge, requiring an understanding of the explored activists and their domestic settings before collecting data. Drawing on the researchers’ own work, the paper outlines and critically reflects upon possible data collection avenues for researching far-right and anti-gender actors in different national contexts. The paper focuses on collecting primary online and offline sources (including from digital platforms and interviews) and secondary sources (such as anti-racist reports, media, and expert interviews). For the primary sources, the paper both considers possible data collection strategies (in terms of tools, approaches, and access points), and the ethical and security-related aspects involved, including safeguarding the researcher’s mental and physical safety. This both relates to the psychological toll of extensively studying far-right digital milieus, the conduct of both face-to-face and online interviews with activists from unfamiliar societal and lingual settings, and suggestions for available methodological alternatives, when or if the researcher’s safety is at risk. The paper provides methodological suggestions and pathways for scholars intending to explore far-right or anti-gender transnational activism processes, including from a comparative perspective.